Thanks for sharing!

It kinda makes me think of grants to develop games? Just with public input on the grant winners?

Quoting: Purple Library GuyAnd then once someone has some production under their belt, then maybe they just get paid to develop, or maybe they lose it if it leads to nothing for too long, or if nobody downloads any of their stuff, or if their reviews are too crappy, or some combination of that kind of stuff

If I were to quibble a bit, and granted I'm putting you under the spot so I mean no offense here, I don't see how the above part is much different than our current market system, just the source of the money had moved. If it's bad, or unpopular, they lose thier funding. In out current system, if it's bad or unpopular, they lose sale revenue.

I can see the possible argument that since it's a grant (or not sales dependant funding), the dev is not having to take out loans and put them in a precarious financial position to generate sales.

Although to get the potential votes to get "greenlighted", I imagine you'd have to do a pretty significant "media blitz", including tech demos, previews, maybe a real demo, etc, to rise above all the other candidates, which might already incur significant financial investments to get to that part. Though it would likely be much less than the full cost of development (I would hope, lol).

Do you worry the voting system could unintentionally consolidate genres? Ie, only big devs with huge PR would dominate, or only very popular genres with a big player base?
I wonder if Small devs or niche games would be left out. Or could we still buy games privately from these smaller devs that couldn't get public funding?

In my head, I'm trying to see how a popular game, like Valheim might have fared with a vote system. I think to get the votes, the devs would have needed to put in the same upfront cost and hours developing the game, so it could become popular enough to get the votes to get the funding. What do you think?

I do find your idea really interesting, it kinda reminds me of a grant or an endowment for the arts, but for games. Actually would that remove the national border problem? An international endowment? I think you could mix public and private funding for more stable revenue and it would eliminate some of the issues of who gets the money.

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Robinhood, the game!

Sorry, it's the first thing that popped into my head.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyIdeally, you'd want some kind of arrangement where proven game developers could be just paid a solid wage to develop games, and then everyone would have the right to download copies of the results for free or some minimal downloading charge.

I think we might be a bit of topic, but likely everyone's moved on to a more recent dumpster fire. I'm interested in how something like that would work in your opinion. I'm most curious about, what makes a proven developer? A license/certificate or something? And if the current can get it for free or very little, who or what is paying the developers wage?

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That's an interesting point, although I think looking at only the cost of duplication might be a little narrow. There's the cost of development. I think, to some extent, this isn't dissimilar to other industries like other media production (wasn't always digital), or R&D.

I would reckon there have always been some industries where production isn't nearly as expensive as the development. I think digital just exaggerates this ratio; although does not eliminate it.

Quoting: ProtektorI worked in the business and I can absolutely tell you that Steam sold ads on their home page because I have had developers tell me they did and ask if the gaming store I worked for did the same and we did not

Very interesting. Thank you for sharing. To be honest. I always assumed similar practice for the big online stores in general like Humble, Epic, and GOG (thier self promotion of CP2077 is bordering on ludicrous, lol)

Quoting: TheRiddickI find it hilarious people are comparing digital copies of games to physical goods in the retail markets like its Apples to Apples comparison. Its just not, too many people clueless about software development and cost/time associated.

That's a really good point. I'm definitely both a culprit and a victim of the "Hey. It should be easy to program ..." in my job and I'm not even a programmer! I can only imagine what real programmers have to put with.

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From my plays of Zeus, to me, it almost felt puzzle-like as creating a good layout is the main challenge to be solved.

It's a really cool idea. I hope the devs here keep up the good work.

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Quoting: BielFPsWould be nice if we could use Discord to in consoles too...

From my understanding from what I've read. I get the impression that's the point for Sony at least.

I honestly didn't know it was unavailable for consoles until I read a little on it yesterday. I kinda assumed it discord was everywhere

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I'm also a sucker for antquity, for me it's one of the more approachable historical eras because we learned about it in school growing up. Although, I'd be really interested in a non western setting, maybe ancient India or China, although i'd really have to invest in learning the game and the cultural terms and meanings. I struggled hard with that with CK2.

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Quoting: GuestFirst, the people who buy it from the start keep on losing their save games, mods, playstyles and have to re-learn how to play the game every few or so updates. It's frustrating even if the game gets somehow better.

This. I honestly avoid buying thier games at release because if this "inevitability".

Honestly, the business practice.... None of that should be happening for a full release; the broken save games, relearning how to play. That's something you'd expect from early access. Not a full release and years later. But then you can't really sell DLC and still claim to be early access with out getting push back from gamers.

It feels to me, I have to wait for patches and buy a bunch of DLC in order to get the "real" game and not something that's incomplete at launch, even if it is a good game at launch, because I know all these changes and DLC are inbound. And because of the inflated cost, I'm not looking to buy at full price, which is less money for them, if I even remember to make the purchase (backlog, etc).

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I'm a little confused on boxedwine? I don't think I understand the purpose. Is it like a container so a dev can bundle it and worry about conflicts from a different cpu/kernel?

The game I think makes me more confused. A windows game is using it to emulate a Linux environment to run on windows? What is the benefit? It's all the same package for distribution, so only version to deal with for support?

I'm not trying to sound mean, I'm just confused

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Quoting: Arten

Quoting: denyasis

Quoting: ArtenThere is one more think. 30% is a misleading. Valve has their cut only if they sell it. But if developer generate key and sell it elsewhere (humble bundle,...) key is free, game has full support of steam store but valve has 0 money from it. So in 30% is also calculated usage of infrastructure for "black passenger" whom did not payed it. Devs did note use this? How it is Valve fault? Devs have this option!

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/why-valve-actually-gets-less-than-30-percent-of-steam-game-sales/

I think that's really interesting. Thank you for sharing. I did not know that. Great engagement tool. I assume the idea is to re-capture the consumer once they get back to Steam for the next and subsequent purchases?

I assume it's a great lock-in tool on the sales side too since a key seller doesn't need thier own infastructure, there's no point in investing in a full store/client/distribution system. Hence no full on competition to Steam since they need Steam for thier store?

Edit. Sorry for the double post. Im honestly not sure what I did.

Probably. Or they just want expand comunity. Or Gaben see it as moral thing to do, Valve is not public traded company, so they can do what they want, even if that is clear loss for them, because the did not have shareholders from whole world who want only money (I don't think it is this case, but it is possibility)

That a good point, and a possibility. I'll admit I'm skeptical of that though. Customer Engagement through freebies is pretty common in a variety of tech industries (and others). In this particular arrangement, all roads lead to Steam and it's cheaper to keep a customer than attract a new one. It's likely considered an expenditure, not a loss, to get customers (new and repeat) to come to the store since the idea of to get a net gain with subsequent purchases.

I finally thought of a comparable example overnight. GOG's Connect. Where they'd give you the game if you had the Steam version. Same idea. Take a "loss", to get customers in the store. Again, once you get them engaged as a customer it's cheaper to keep them and is paid for by later purchases.

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