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Quoting: Petethegoatit's fairly obvious this is exactly what happened. from liam's article above -

That's simply just speculation on your end.

Quoting: Petethegoatthere's a reason EA and ubisoft and activision all stopped selling games on steam for several years and have been coming back since this change went into effect. valve didn't decide to give successful games a better deal out of the goodness of their hearts.

Yeah, because they didn't like the 30/70 share. But that doesn't mean that Valve offered them special deals to bring them back as you suggested.

They get a better deal - if they earn that.

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Quoting: Nezchan

Quoting: vertigop.s: HL1 first -> HL1 expansions if you really dug the original -> HL2 -> Episodes -> Alyx -> Black Mesa

How do OpFor and Blue Sphere work into this?

Those are the HL1 expansions I mentioned.

Quoting: chickenb00

Black Mesa is for fans who have already experienced the games for what they are.

Yes and no. I agree Black Mesa is definitely for fans of the series and IMO the superior way to play the OG campaign. I'd argue if someone had a mild interest in playing HL1 (they want to experience the story because they've always heard so much about it or they're new to gaming), advise they play Black Mesa. If they're the type of gamer who enjoys or tolerates older games, play HL1.

I politely disagree - I think HL1 is still eminently playable in 2025 and should be attempted first. If a player bounces off the game due to the graphics then by all means play Black Mesa.

I don't think it's accurate to say that Black Mesa and HL1 have the same campaign. They are radically different in most every way. HL1's largest lasting impact is not the story itself but how it's told and I think experiencing that is what's important - not the story beats.

I'm not saying don't play Black Mesa - just don't confuse it with being some sort of remaster of HL1. It's a full re-imagining, not a remaster or remake.

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Quoting: kuhpunktI think people should know better now, yes - and that's still not the argument that was made. Pete claimed that Valve negotiated with publishers like EA or Activision to lure them back... when we have no indication of that ever being a thing.

As if Valve said "Hey EA, if you come back, we start with a 20/80 share, pretty please."

it's fairly obvious this is exactly what happened. from liam's article above -

It's a smart move, one I expected Valve to do at some point given how bigger studios and publishers have been leaving Steam for their own launchers.

there's a reason EA and ubisoft and activision all stopped selling games on steam for several years and have been coming back since this change went into effect. valve didn't decide to give successful games a better deal out of the goodness of their hearts.

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Quoting: scaine@kuhpunkt - I have no idea why you're being so argumentative about this - your quote-cutting sounds really aggressive, so apologies if I've pissed you off somehow.

I just care about the facts, that's all. They depict themselves as the poor victims who suddenly can't generate keys anymore... when that's distorting what happened. There was no rug pull. There was no sudden change.

Quoting: scaineBut if you believe that a game only takes 6 months to develop, and that everyone was just instantly cool about this change, you're deceiving yourself. Similarly, 5000 keys, many of which would have gone out to press already, is nowhere near enough to cover the possibility of a top-selling bundle.

I never said that the game only takes 6 months to develop, nor did I suggest anything like that. And I doubt that there were that many keys given to press. How many outlets are even there that would get a key? 100? 200? The game isn't attractive to a lot of people... if it had, it would have sold better. Again - how many keys should they be able to generate? Does Valve owe them infinite keys now? And would those keys ever sell?

Quoting: scaineFinally, sure, the Valve cut change happened seven years ago, but is predated by nearly two decades of an unchanging, non-negotiable 30% cut, a cut that's still valid for the vast, vast majority of developers. It's perfectly normal for people to have latched on to that??

I think people should know better now, yes - and that's still not the argument that was made. Pete claimed that Valve negotiated with publishers like EA or Activision to lure them back... when we have no indication of that ever being a thing.

As if Valve said "Hey EA, if you come back, we start with a 20/80 share, pretty please."

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@kuhpunkt - I have no idea why you're being so argumentative about this - your quote-cutting sounds really aggressive, so apologies if I've pissed you off somehow.

But if you believe that a game only takes 6 months to develop, and that everyone was just instantly cool about this change, you're deceiving yourself. Similarly, 5000 keys, many of which would have gone out to press already, is nowhere near enough to cover the possibility of a top-selling bundle. Finally, sure, the Valve cut change happened seven years ago, but is predated by nearly two decades of an unchanging, non-negotiable 30% cut, a cut that's still valid for the vast, vast majority of developers. It's perfectly normal for people to have latched on to that??

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As for the Steam Deck they said they don't have the ability to test it right now, and it won't be coming to Steam until "we determine our ability to comply with Steam's policies".

There was an article in Rock Paper Shotgun today that clarifies this obfuscation:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/hytale-wont-be-on-steam-right-away-as-its-devs-want-to-avoid-overindexing-on-negative-reviews-from-players-who-arent-as-well-informed-yet

In this interview, the producer and team lead, Patrick 'Lyall' Derbic, was asked if the game would be on Steam, his reply was:

"No, not initially," he wrote. "We want to spend our time in early access working with the community and improving the game, rather than overindexing on negative reviews from players that aren't as well-informed yet about what we are doing. Steam is a great marketing tool, but one that we might never need. This doesn't mean we will never be on Steam - just that we do not see the necessity of it yet."

This explanation makes much more sense to me.

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They mean in the sense of Valve's reduced cut for the biggest sellers, I assume. Which is a very real thing Valve announced.

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Quoting: Petethegoat

Quoting: kuhpunktI'm just wondering where Pete is getting the "developers can negotiate the cut" from. I'm not aware that anybody can negotiate that. Everybody has to earn it.

just a turn of phrase, sorry for the confusion.

"negotiation" in the sense that if you're EA or activision and you pull your games from steam, valve is happy to drop their cut to bring you back.

Again, where are you getting this from? What makes you think that EA or Activision are getting a better cut?

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Quoting: kuhpunktI'm just wondering where Pete is getting the "developers can negotiate the cut" from. I'm not aware that anybody can negotiate that. Everybody has to earn it.

just a turn of phrase, sorry for the confusion.

"negotiation" in the sense that if you're EA or activision and you pull your games from steam, valve is happy to drop their cut to bring you back.

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Quoting: scaineHow are they lying?? 3 years is recent in terms of a game's life-span. They had the rug pulled out from under them on this. There was no notice of it happening, just a sudden announcement that they'd changed how they issue keys.

Because it's not a recent change. The change happened in February 2023 and it made the news. Saturnalia didn't even release until November 2023. What rug has been pulled? What sudden change?

Quoting: scainePutting a poorly-selling older game into a bundle is a huge deal for a dev, generating sales that simply wouldn't happen any other way. You still get 5000 keys under the new rules, but that's not feasible for putting the game into a bundle.

They must have been able to generate those 5000 keys when they released the game. How many more keys do they want? The game has 80 reviews. There are some calculations out there, but you have to take those with a grain of salt... but apparently take the number of reviews and multiply them by 30 or up to 50. So the game sold maybe 2400 to 4000 times. Again, what do they want? Should Valve give them 20000 more keys? Just because?

Quoting: scaineNot that well known, no. Most people still tend to quote the "30% of all steam sales go to Valve", I find.

But that's on people not being informed. The change happened in December 2018. That's literally 7 full years ago... so where do people get the idea from that people can even negotiate that?

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Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: scaineAs noted in the article itself, it's the devs themselves that bemoan that this change prevents them from putting their older games in a bundle.

Yeah, but why lie about this? The change happened almost 3 years ago. If they can't be straight about this... why should anybody trust them?

How are they lying?? 3 years is recent in terms of a game's life-span. They had the rug pulled out from under them on this. There was no notice of it happening, just a sudden announcement that they'd changed how they issue keys.

Quoting: kuhpunktIf their previous game Saturnalia had sold well, I'm pretty sure that they would be able to generate more keys. The game had a peak of 15 players 1.5 years ago. It's got 80 reviews on Steam. It apparently didn't sell well... so why should they be able to continue generating keys? You can still buy some keys online, so at some point they must have been able to generate keys.

Putting a poorly-selling older game into a bundle is a huge deal for a dev, generating sales that simply wouldn't happen any other way. You still get 5000 keys under the new rules, but that's not feasible for putting the game into a bundle.

Quoting: kuhpunktYes... and that's known for years. I'm just wondering where Pete is getting the "developers can negotiate the cut" from. I'm not aware that anybody can negotiate that. Everybody has to earn it.

Not that well known, no. Most people still tend to quote the "30% of all steam sales go to Valve", I find.

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Slight addition to the article below the last quote, to note the key changes from 2023.

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Quoting: Cley_FayeCensorship is censorship, no matter how some people think they have the high ground.
Disturbing content in fictional media should not be regulated the same way we protect actual people, because those "in power" that decides where the line lays will change, and their decision is extremely dubious. I'm more annoyed by extreme violence, gore, and torture than nudity, but it seems that only the later is deemed horrible enough to warrant censorship.

As long as it's all fictional content, let it exist. If it can't find its public, then it will fail. But I am the one making the decision, not some random bureaucrat/employee somewhere. This kind of issue keeps happening repeatedly, and keep coming from countries that are usually against "nanny states", but quick to accept it when a boob is visible. The hypocrisy of it is stupid.

Hard disagree on this from me. Valve is a private company and isn't beholden to our views on right and wrong. There's a big distinction between government oversight (aka regulation) and a private company not wanting to host things it doesn't like. It has it's own reputation to consider, by association to the content it sells. Sure, that's a low bar for Valve, but it's their decision.

This reminds me of that ridiculous situation where a gay activist asked a bakery for a "support gay marriage" cake and the bakery refused. And the gay activist got up in arms about this, and it went to court! Madness. Sure, the bakery are bigoted scum, but they're a private firm, and they get to be bigoted about the cakes they sell. Thankfully the [courts agreed](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-59882444). But in summary, if I was selling pizzas and someone came in asked me to make a pizza in the shape of (insert something offensive here), I'd throw them the fuck out of my pizza parlour. My house, my rules.

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Quoting: amataiIf I understand the situation correctly, their game got rejected not because it was disturbing (that is non issue for Steam) but because of illegal content.
Either it is in good faith, and they should apologize, either it is a marketing stunt and the press, GoL included, should not play along uncritically, [edit: no offence intended. I don't want to be rude, of course Liam is king on how is media is run].

They did "apologize" in a sense; they amended the scene so that it contained no children. But Valve refused to reevaluate the game.

The thing is, assuming the scene is the same as it was in that build submitted to Steam except the character in question was a child, it still wouldn't be illegal or CSAM or whatever. The game is very overtly making a point about how regressive views of sex are often instilled by parents and institutions to the overall detriment of everyone. There's nothing inherently sexual about that scene whether the character exists as an adult or a child.

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Quoting: scaineAs noted in the article itself, it's the devs themselves that bemoan that this change prevents them from putting their older games in a bundle.

Yeah, but why lie about this? The change happened almost 3 years ago. If they can't be straight about this... why should anybody trust them?

If their previous game Saturnalia had sold well, I'm pretty sure that they would be able to generate more keys. The game had a peak of 15 players 1.5 years ago. It's got 80 reviews on Steam. It apparently didn't sell well... so why should they be able to continue generating keys? You can still buy some keys online, so at some point they must have been able to generate keys.

It's not a negotiation, but bigger devs suffer from a smaller cut.

Here's the breakdown I took from a Reddit thread, so I admit I haven't verified this, but I have no reason to doubt it.

Yes... and that's known for years. I'm just wondering where Pete is getting the "developers can negotiate the cut" from. I'm not aware that anybody can negotiate that. Everybody has to earn it.

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Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: Petethegoatthey are not good for developers in the same way they are good for consumers - especially smaller developers who do not get to negotiate down the 30% cut.

Which developers get to negoatiate the cut?!

None. To my knowledge, the only way to bring the cut down is to reach revenue thresholds: 10M$ lowers a game's cut to 25%, and 50M$ lowers it to 20%.

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Quoting: EhvisDisadvantage is that the quality can be a bit "meh" sometimes.

After going through two G305 and a G903 mice in a little over three years, and a G Pro keyboard that had a switch die and keycaps wear through in a short time, I have sworn off Logitech peripherals. My G29 driving wheel is still working well, but that may be a matter of just not using it much rather than the quality of the device.

Just bought an 8BitDo Retro R8 mouse which is nice and clicky with lots of connection methods, but man is it not made for medium to large hands. Not the most ergonomic, so I'm back to using $15 USD wired Glorious mouse. Otherwise, I'm 100% all in on 8BitDo with three of their controllers and their C64 inspired keyboard.

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You are correct @tuubi - it's not a spiritual steamworld dig 3 ... more factory building and resource gathering. But it still is fun as you said! I've definitely wishlisted it and could be a really fun chill Deck game.

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Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: Petethegoat

Quoting: kuhpunktAnd they have RECENTLY begun refusing keys? That change happened almost 3 years ago. It just comes across as disingenuous.

wanting to put their previous game in a bundle does not seem disingenuous.

I didn't say anything about wanting to put their game in a bundle. I just talked about the change... 3 years ago isn't recent.

As noted in the article itself, it's the devs themselves that bemoan that this change prevents them from putting their older games in a bundle.

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: Petethegoatthey are not good for developers in the same way they are good for consumers - especially smaller developers who do not get to negotiate down the 30% cut.

Which developers get to negoatiate the cut?!

It's not a negotiation, but bigger devs suffer from a smaller cut.

Here's the breakdown I took from a Reddit thread, so I admit I haven't verified this, but I have no reason to doubt it.

Valve's revenue share ceased being a flat 30% revenue share arrangement in 2018. Valve's cut is now:
30% of the first $10million revenue.
25% after $10million of revenue until $50million revenue.
20% on all revenue above $50million.

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Censorship is censorship, no matter how some people think they have the high ground.
Disturbing content in fictional media should not be regulated the same way we protect actual people, because those "in power" that decides where the line lays will change, and their decision is extremely dubious. I'm more annoyed by extreme violence, gore, and torture than nudity, but it seems that only the later is deemed horrible enough to warrant censorship.

As long as it's all fictional content, let it exist. If it can't find its public, then it will fail. But I am the one making the decision, not some random bureaucrat/employee somewhere. This kind of issue keeps happening repeatedly, and keep coming from countries that are usually against "nanny states", but quick to accept it when a boob is visible. The hypocrisy of it is stupid.

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Quoting: Petethegoat

Quoting: kuhpunktAnd they have RECENTLY begun refusing keys? That change happened almost 3 years ago. It just comes across as disingenuous.

wanting to put their previous game in a bundle does not seem disingenuous.

I didn't say anything about wanting to put their game in a bundle. I just talked about the change... 3 years ago isn't recent. It's the same with their earliest statements where they feigned ignorance and people only got to hear their side. The banner on their website doesn't help them either - it's just antagonizing Valve - so why would they even consider changing their stance?

Quoting: Petethegoatsome developers can still get steam keys for other stores and bundle purposes, clearly, so when the language was changed doesn't seem super relevant.

It's not "some" - it's everybody who is in good standing, following the guidelines and not abusing the system.

Quoting: Petethegoatit provides SOME value to developers. does it provide enough for the 30% cut valve take? maybe, but i don't think it's at all unreasonable to criticise them.

Of course they can/should be criticized - when there's a good reason to. Just in this case here... what incentive would Valve have to NOT sell the game? Why would they care? It would make them money - so they must have had a pretty good reason to reject the game.

This is what Valve said:

"This happens sometimes if content on the store page causes concern that the game itself might not fall within our guidelines. After our team played through the build and reviewed the content, we gave the developer feedback about why we couldn’t ship the game on Steam, consistent with our onboarding rules and guidelines. A short while later the developer asked us to reconsider the review, and our internal content review team discussed that extensively and communicated to the developer our final decision that we were not going to ship the game on Steam."

Quoting: Petethegoatthey are not good for developers in the same way they are good for consumers - especially smaller developers who do not get to negotiate down the 30% cut.

Which developers get to negoatiate the cut?!

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Quoting: kuhpunktAnd they have RECENTLY begun refusing keys? That change happened almost 3 years ago. It just comes across as disingenuous.

wanting to put their previous game in a bundle does not seem disingenuous. some developers can still get steam keys for other stores and bundle purposes, clearly, so when the language was changed doesn't seem super relevant.

i think steam is incredibly good for consumers in many ways - refund policy, proton, steam input, recording. it's a really good platform and it's obvious why many people (including myself!) aren't overly upset about consolidating their entire library on it.

it provides SOME value to developers. does it provide enough for the 30% cut valve take? maybe, but i don't think it's at all unreasonable to criticise them. they are not good for developers in the same way they are good for consumers - especially smaller developers who do not get to negotiate down the 30% cut.

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Man alive. I built this pc I'm typing on like maybe 6 months ago, HOW LUCKY I FEEL RIGHT NOW ... !! Sure the gpu prices were/still are insane, but at least ram was still dirt cheap. WTF is this garbage I'm looking at right now ... $400 for a 32g kit? WHAT.

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Quoting: JarmerOMG could this possibly be the steamworld dig 3 we have never gotten? COULD IT BE? trying the demo now

Based on the trailer, I think the answer to that is probably "no". This is quite different. No platforming, no combat, no NPCs or story as far as I can see. Although the highlight list does hint at some lore to be found.

Still, could be fun.

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I don't think it's a problem, but what does it say about the developer? In a week this whole thing is forgotten... then what do they have left?

And their communication wasn't great either. Statement like this...

Steam has recently begun refusing to grant developers keys for their own games. In the absence of clear rules or guidance, Valve led developers for years to believe they could request keys as needed, building communities and businesses outside Steam while still creating value for Steam users. It now withholds keys from indie developers who do not meet undisclosed sales thresholds.

...don't help. Depicting Valve as the bad buys who don't let devs like them abuse the system. And they have RECENTLY begun refusing keys? That change happened almost 3 years ago. It just comes across as disingenuous.

https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/valves-new-stance-on-steam-keys-what

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OMG could this possibly be the steamworld dig 3 we have never gotten? COULD IT BE? trying the demo now

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It feels great when you get a mouse / keeb you really like and keep using it for years. I've been a huge fan of the pulsar xlite series for what feels like forever (ergo right hand shape) and I think I've been using this particular one for several years now.

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Well if developing games is your livelihood and your game gets banned, of course you are going to lean hard into it. You want the money to live.

So yes they're seeking attention, it's all marketing - but what else are they supposed to do? I really don't get the issue or why anyone sees it as a problem.

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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: kuhpunktThose devs sure love the attention.

What an odd thing to say. Of course they want attention, every developer wants attention. And they're drawing attention to a problem of the biggest PC store there is (and Epic...) refusing their game.

Sure, but I think there is attention and "attention" - and all of this (like the banner on their homepage) just looks like it's shock value for the sake of itself. It's like "Too hot for TV." Because that's all it has going for it. If they hadn't been refused by Valve, I doubt most people would ever care about it. That's something I don't like.

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Because I already have them, here's a key for Kathy Rain Directors Cut:

2RAWR-W7LZW-PDYGC

And for Regions of Ruin:

PZANR-EJ8BA-I0TWE

(With apologies to Liam if I'm not supposed to put these here)

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