While browsing through Kotaku today, I ran across a short article about how a Steam sale saved small developer Introversion (makers of Darwinia, Defcon, and others).  It was an interesting article, and it’s nice to see this particular developer saved from closing its doors, but the final paragraph irked me.

But for everyone else…Valve may be in most people’s good books, but it’s still a little frightening to think that a single company can play Kingmaker with the fortunes of developers across an entire platform, so dependant have so many PC publishers become on Steam for legitimate sales.

Impulse is a significant market for digital distribution.

It’s a common trend to call Steam a “monopoly” in the digital distribution of video games, but I don’t think most people even know what that word really means.  There is a huge difference between a dominant force in the market place and a “monopoly.”  Stardock’s Impulse platform lists 671 titles in their game section, including games from publishers such as Pop Cap, EA, 2K, and THQ.  Each of those is also a major publisher using Steam (I would imagine Activision’s limited catalog has much to do with the decision to force users to install Steam for MW2).  In fact, Kotaku ran an article on Impulse’s rise in the market about a year and a half ago.  It’s a significant market channel for a developer.  All of these publishers are also featured on Direct 2 Drive, including a more generous Activision offering.

You can get Bad Company 2, among many others, through all three services.

The fact of the matter is that Steam is just one of several options consumers have.  I believe the reason many people choose Valve’s offering over the others stems more from the convenience of the entire community aspect that Valve has built in to the experience, with easy-to-create user and community pages, friends list with text, voice, and group chat functions, and the tight integration of their own games to this entire system (achievements, easy to compare game stats, and the ability to join servers directly on friends).

It simply made financial sense for Introversion to use their biggest market for a sale that ended up saving the company.  I fail to see how that makes Valve a “kingmaker” of sorts, since it was Introversion’s decision to have the sale.  I’m sure there are contractual obligations that come into play when creating a sale via Steam, such as the cut received by Valve and whatnot.  But the term “kingmaker” implies that Valve takes some active part in deciding who lives and who dies.  That’s just absurd.  As long as Valve applies contracts in a reasonably uniform manner (and yes, of course massive publishers will get some sweetheart deals; that’s business) and doesn’t arbitrarily permit or deny sales (a dev would be a bit silly to agree to such contractual limitations, since there are other routes available for digital distribution), the only entity deciding who succeeds are the developer who made the product and the consumer who chooses whether or not to buy it.

No matter how many times I see it, this Valve logo is still creepy.

I think this remark from the comment section pretty much sums that up:

Representing another indie developer that has done well on Steam, I have to say that it isn’t “frightening” that Valve can “play kingmaker”. Like any channel, you have to figure out how to use it best and get the best back out of it. Looks like Introversion did exactly that – they figured out how to raise the profile of their product, tried it – and it worked. Works very nicely for us, too – it is about understanding your channels to market. Besides, I’ve picked up some great stuff in the Steam sales!

Alan Wilson
VP, Tripwire Interactive