Avadon - Coming to Steam
 

After Steam previously refused to add Avadon to the service, it has suddenly popped up with a release date of August 18th, although the price will be interesting. Did Steam change their mind after seeing the success on the iPad?
More information.

On one hand, this is indeed a classic example of Valve's incomprehensible product evaluation process. It's becoming more and more evident that Valve is mainly looking for games that will sell great instead of actually great games.

On the other hand, this really is superb news. This might give Spiderweb some attention outside the usual circles. Moreover, maybe we'll finally be able to get some goddamn sales on these Spiderweb games. I think Jeff makes some very enjoyable games, but consistently selling his games (no matter how old they are) for 25$ still seems a little on the unreasonable side to me. He claims that this hasn't bothered his financial success at all, but it will be cool to see how a weekend sale on Steam is going to effect Avadon sales.

Also, here's to hoping that the Avernum/Geneforge series will be retroactively released on Steam if he manages to get Escape From The Pit on Steam as well!

(Now pick up Knight of the Chalice and Din's Curse, Valve!)

I'm not so sure that valve 'looks for games that will sell great'. They sold eschalon book as well as many other indie games.

I would be interested to know exactly what happened with avadon. Then again I sort of rather buy the version off spiderweb so I can run it on both linux and windows (this can be done with steam but steam's drm makes it harder).

Jeff hired an experienced marketing and biz dev guy with contacts to Valve. The only other known thing is the result, but it seems as if this man really had enough influence to convince them to have a second look at Avadon and take reviews and sales numbers on other platforms into consideration too.

This is a huge step for Jeff. It gives Valve the perfect tool to assess his future games though: They'll have Avadon's Steam sales numbers.

I think I would be more excited about this if it had Steamworks integration like cloud save and achievements and what not. Still, I'm sure he'll do really well with it. Almost anything on Steam if priced low enough and/or put on sale will do well.

Yes, but he'll lose direct business. For each direct sale he loses he'll have to make ca. 4 Steam sales @9.99$.

Great news for SpiderWeb.
Avadon is one of my top three RPG's I've played this year.

I think overall this has to be excellent news for Jeff, whatever he loses against direct sales from SpiderWeb's site has to be more than made up by the advertizing effect that comes with Steam.
Also Steam has a way of legitimizing a game, especially Indie's for lots of folks.

The fact Gemini Rue is not on Steam baffles the shit out of me. They have stuff like Ben There Dan That on there for God's sake. Really random.

I dislike random overlords basically deciding how successful your indie game can be.

According to IGN, Avadon will cost $8.99 on Steam for the first week, then switch to its regular price of $9.99.

Well, the developer in question actually has to approach Valve before they'll consider his game. At least in KotC's case this hasn't happened. There's a game I wish would get more exposure.

So Steam shouldn't be allowed to decide what they want to sell in their own store? If you ran a store would you like it if someone told you that you had to sell every item in your category or you were being an "overlord"?

They already sell more indie games than any other reseller that I am aware of by far. Before Steam, the concept of resellers selling indie games as far as I know didn't really even exist. Some of their competition have some indie games, but from what I have seen they don't have anywhere near as many as Steam and they don't do much at all to promote them whereas Steam does.

I don't think Steam, or any reseller for that matter, should be under any obligation to sell any game. It's up to the creators of that game to approach the resellers they want to sell their games and if necessary convince them their game is worth selling.

No, my problem is with the stupid amount of people who treat Steam like the end all be all of PC gaming. That basically gives Valve control over the entire platform.

Gamersgate.

I'm not sure who jumped in with greater enthusiasm, Steam or GG, but either way the best thing to do is buy directly from the developer.

That's not Valve's fault though. Saying they are overlords almost implies some sort of plot to control the indie scene on their part.

Steam is successful because they were one of the first, have a very extensive catalog and provide convenience features that no one else does like autopatching and cloud save. I imagine the achievements and social aspects are a draw for people too, though I've never much cared about those personally.

Other than the early advantage, there's nothing really stopping the competitors from doing the same.

They are pretty good about selling and promoting indie games, I will give you that. Beamdog too, but they are a small outfit. Direct2Drive and Impulse have some indie games but they never promote the damned things. Their front pages are always AAA sales and pre-orders. Origin wouldn't touch anything indie with a 10 foot pole, unless of course EA bought it out for a hefty sum.

In a perfect world I would love to do that but if you want to have more than a few games it's just way too much of a hassle to keep track of them all that way to remember what game you got where, who's got a patch etc.

I do think that alternative ways to promote indie games is a good thing. The Humble Bundles have been pretty successful in doing that I think. I don't know how much money the developers actually see from it, but it does get a lot of attention and generate money for charity so it can't be that bad.

I didn't really mean to imply it is Valve's fault. What I am saying is that Steam has so much market share and such a rabid fanbase that to be successful on the PC you almost have to get on there, especially for an indie. At the same time they have what are considered to be pretty random requirements for doing so. That leads to Valve having way too much say in what succeeds and thus releases on the PC for my comfort.

It is the people who give it that power who are at fault though, you're right.

Indie games are DRM free 99% of the time so I just buy them and then back them up. I never need to remember anything after that, though on the rare chance I would I am sure an email search of my inbox would solve the issue just fine.

I admit I basically use the cloud as my backup as I supspect many other people do these days. I should probably have backed up to discs anyway because anything can happen, but at this point I have so many games it would be a huge headache and very time consuming to do that. :-/

I just use hard drives actually. A TB HDD is like $50 now-a-days… I have one in my PC and an external. When one dies I replace it quickly before the other has a chance.

I was surprised to see Avadon at €7 on Steam today, this is actually lower than I expected it to be once it is on Steam. Still not interested personally, because I have way too many games in my library I still have to play, but for those who are interested in this game the price is pretty good I guess.

I'd have to disagree with that. Obviously Steam (and GG) expose developers to a much broader set of potential buyers than the various indi sites and reviews, which then can lead to sales of not just more copies of that game, but also more sales on previous games (whether direct or via the platform). But the only way the game will stay on the platform and future games will get there is for the platform to have very good sales numbers. So I think in the aggregate, the developer is better off if you buy via the platform.

Sounds right. The sales on the platform will decide if you (as a developer) have a chance to stay there.

Sounds right. The sales on the platform will decide if you (as a developer) have a chance to stay there.

Edit: But I am not sure if the number of people consciously deciding to buy this way or that way constitute a relevant percentage of the market share anyway.