The obvious question is, how are you going to pay your internet bill and server costs, staff, I don't know where Valve host their Steam servers but they are going to at least need a small server farm, which means lot of servers, cooling and engineers and a dedicated fibre cable to the internet infrastructure then there is the humongous bandwidth bill. They could pay up to millions a year.
Own game distribution platform?
...but steam isn't exclusive, so it can worthwhile to set up your own storefront as well as being on Steam. That way, you don't pay the middleman-tax on (the small number of) customers who come directly to your site.
That's true -- I would encourage developers to offer their games in as many ways as reasonably possible. However, while there's not middle-man tax on each sale, you now have to deal with amortizing your own CapEx (The cost to acquire and deploy the middleware), and the OpEx (the costs for servers and bandwidth to keep it all running). It will depend entirely on your own costs, but its entirely likely that you'll need to sell and handful of copies per month in this way just to cover its OpEx, and you'll need to sell enough copies this way above and beyond that to start paying back the CapEx. If you can't do that at all, you might end up loosing money (sleep, sanity) on the venture -- Even if you sell enough to get a little past break-even, it might just not be worth the extra headaches. It could be, but I wouldn't assume so out of hand.
I'm with you on supporting your artists in the most direct way you can, though. Its the same reason I buy merchandise and albums (even if I listen to them on spotify -- actually, especially if I listen to them on spotify) from bands when I see them live. Kickstarters and such are even better, since you're actually giving directly to their means to keep producing. But totally, people, make sure you're putting your money into the hands of artists as directly as you can.
I'm a gamer and I know a lot of other gamers and all of us use steam quite heavily. A handful occasionally buy games on gog.com too. Most buy humble bundles. Very few use any of the other distribution platforms (desura, origin, impulse). Personally, I wouldn't install anything other than steam, so as a gamer, its highly highly unlikely that I or almost all of the gamers I know would install another distribution platform.
Unless it has something EXTREMELY compelling.
I mean, more compelling than Humble Bundle's pay what you want bundles (or, at least, a bigger/better library of HIGH QUALITY games in that model). Indie games are a dime a dozen - the greatest find their way into Humble Bundles or get onto Steam through the greenlight program anyway, so a large free-for-all in Indie games doesn't cut it IMHO. Too much noise. So unless your "official" catalog is really great or has some insanely good exclusives, I don't see how this can compete without something else that is extremely compelling (and the only thing I can think of is _maybe_ a hybrid mix between Humble Bundle and Kickstarter, but I'm not sure if it would work or if that's enough).
I'm not sure what you can offer developers (especially medium and bigger studios) to help make your catalog great.
Sorry to be so negative, but its a very tough space to break into IMHO.
Author
Sorry for no reply for a long time, but I hadn't access to high-speed internet.
I know that I can't compete with Steam etc. I'm not big company, I'm not extra-minded programmer, I want to help small developers with my modules, you know, achievments, friends, game licensing, dlcs, highscores etc. I want to make it very easy to integrate, to make sure that even beginners will be able to integrate it. Also, for small developers there's almost no chance to get into Steam even with Greenlight, so if they decide to use my systems, they will probably put their games in my platform because why not? It won't be complex, and for small developers all kind of free marketing is good. Slowly, I will get more developers, slowly I will make my platform better and maybe after some time I will bring some high developers. Also, I would like to find some people that want to help me with platform.
I'm not doing it for money, I'm doing it because it's interesting.
About your middleware discussion, I'm sure I will bring something like this in my platform as an option. You can put your game on my servers, but if you want you can do it on your own, and just use my modules to make your (dev) life easier. It's all about hobby, my friends :)
Maybe you will now ask me "if it's for hobby then why you are asking?" Because it would be nice to continue making it and be sure that someone will use it.
Hope we will see again some time in the future on my platform.
I would like to be a Developer for your Platform! I have only been doing Games for 9 Months but i am learning it quickly, Currently Developing a First Person Parkour game.
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