Dungeons of Dredmor - On the Folly of Giving Money Directly to Developers

Gaslamp has a FAQ titled On the Folly of Giving Money Directly to Developers, which covers various question such as why the game is a Steam exclusive (it isn't - others are coming after the Steam release) and why they aren't distributing directly. In essence, they believe the safety of a good distribution deal outweighs losing a cut of the sales. A late snip:

The next best alternative is that we set ourselves up with a credit card processor and run our own storefront-based, money-taking web-solution. This assumes you have a credit card, which can also be a bit iffy in this day and age. It also exposes us to the problems associated with running an in-house electronic commerce system; we have to build a system that is secure enough that you feel comfortable giving us your credit card number, and we also have to ensure that it is secure enough from our end that the money ends up in our bank account and not sent to the First International Bank of Lulzsec. Again, if anything goes wrong, it could destroy Gaslamp. Writing your own software solutions for these things is dangerous; again, look at Project Zomboid, who built a clever cloud-based updater system only to realize that pirated copies were slowly bankrupting them. We don’t want to be in that situation, which is why we’re using third-party publishers and distributors.

A final option is something like BT Micro; a service that handles all the credit card processing and transactional downloading for you. This isn’t a bad idea, although it does leave the problem of providing you with updates.

Anyhow, that’s our thought process. For those of you who want to give us money directly – we love you, but we really, really can’t take it. I hate to say it, but waking up and knowing that you still have a company in the morning and that your accounts haven’t been frozen is worth a slice of your revenue stream.