Free Allegiance Forums

Response:

QUOTE Hi, [cashto] –

Can you provide a link to Steam or other similar game distribution site? I’d like to know more about their commercialization model before I answer your questions.[/quote]

Is http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/ a good link to describe Steam from a publisher point of view?

Also, Desura was mentioned in this thread ... should I point them to http://www.desura.com/development as well?

Personally, I also have a question about this:

QUOTE 3. Who sets the price for my game on Steam?

Pricing is very title specific, and we've got a lot of data and experience to help you decide on what the best price is for your title. We'll work with you to figure out pricing.[/quote]

Do we have control, at least, as to whether the game will be free-to-play or not? Are there many examples of games on Steam which are truly free-to-play (no microtransactions, premium content, pay-to-win, etc)?

Yeah, that's a good link to give them. Give a brief description for the sake of understanding.

Mention Desura, and that it has a similar business model and we may be able to distribute from there, as well.

Damn cash. I take back all the mean things I've ever said about you.

QUOTE Here’s Steam’s page for publishers who are seeking to distribute games on their network:

http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/

That page is geared towards publishers who want to sell their game, but Steam also hosts a fair number of free-to-play games (which I believe the majority of which are truly free-to-play, without premium content / microtransactions / pay-to-win, etc).

http://store.steampowered.com/genre/Free%2...b=MostPlayed#p4

Another site the community is looking at is Desura, which is similar to Steam but targeted at smaller, independent game makers:

http://www.desura.com/development

Which also hosts as selection of free-to-play games:

http://www.desura.com/#price=0

Thanks,
- cashto[/quote]

MrChaos wrote:QUOTE (MrChaos @ Mar 18 2015, 02:14 PM) Demon spawn

Always with the negative waves...

phoenix1 wrote:QUOTE (phoenix1 @ Mar 18 2015, 03:25 PM) Damn cash. I take back all the mean things I've ever said about you.

That's a lot of mean things

That's OK, I'm sure he didn't mean at least half of them.

A huge thank you Cashto!
I hope you get a positive response.

Response:

QUOTE Does Steam only make money if the game licensor charges a fee? I didn’t see any advertising on the site.[/quote]

AFAIK the answer is no (Steam doesn't make money directly on F2P games), but I don't have any evidence or argument to back that assertion up. If anyone has more authoritative information I could share it with the lawyer I am speaking to.

(Personally, I would imagine Microsoft would also care that hosting free-to-play games add value to a website even if they don't drive any revenue, and that would be considered a commercial purpose.)

My guess is that the answer is "yes." Steam's money is based on game sales through their platform. One of the marketing tricks they use is they have a huuuuuge variety of games available for purchase. Why buy your games on steam rather than, say, at Best Buy? Because you don't have to leave your house. Then why buy it on Steam rather than, say, Origin? Because all of your games are already in Steam. It's the same reason they have added functionality to let you launch non-steam games from steam: their goal is to get you to buy games from Steam, and the first step is to make sure you have Steam opened, so they want you to utilize nothing *other* than steam to launch your games.

(That's why, even after you've purchased a game, every time you launch a Steam game it launches Steam.)

Basically, having Allegiance on Steam is good for Steam because it's an advertisement for Steam every time Allegiance is launched.