I am extremely tempted to buy from Indievania in future instead. Depending on how the Humble Store turns out I may also buy there, but Steam is looking more and more like a distant memory that refuses to evolve for me.

I kinda wish they would have worked with Desura and/or the Humble store. All 3 of them offer only indie games and I don't think the market is so big that one of them can remain profitable unless the other ones fail, specially when Steam is around.

Well, it's not really an alternative to Steam because the choice of games is limited and understandably enough they don't offer much extra service. From my experience it can also take a while until the purchase is confirmed (not really long, but it isn't like GOG's "pay and download immediately after" either) and it doesn't seem to be a priority with devs who also sell their games elsewhere, so you might have to wait for teh release of updates longer than on the other sites.

Still, it's encouraging to see a store take this direction, and I quite like it.



I think the advantages they might have over Desura are
- from the perspective of the developers that they don't take any share of the profits, that they offer the Pay What You Want option and that they don't reject any games (not sure how Desura handles this).
- from the perspective of the customers that all games offer 100% DRM-free installers without any need for a client.

The disadvantages are lack of support and promotion, and that it's hard to tell the good from the bad.

Apparantly Desura is working on offering 100% DRM-free installers, too, and the Humble store might offer Pay What You Want, so that could reduce Indievania's unique selling points.

I guess most developers will now wait and see how it goes before committing any further. It is, as with many startup projects, a chicken and egg situation - were customers are waiting to see what products are coming and producers are waiting to see if it works. The word of today is Critical Mass.

Sure, but what I meant to say is that even the games that are already sold on Indievania might still get better support on the other sites. Like in the example of Beep I mentioned above, where the devs put it on Indievania but didn't care enough to update their website with this information (it only links to Steam, GamersGate etc.). Or in the case of Blocks That Matter, where the Chocolate update already available in the Humble Indie Bundle and most probably on Steam took some time to appear on Indievania, too.

My impression is that devs currently release their games on Indievania, too, because the cost is low, but they don't really care a lot about the site (and maybe that's understandable, too, but also a bit off-putting, and yeah, probably due to the chicken and egg situation you refer to).

Like thebum06, wrote, 30cent per transaction. It's not my necessary my problem, but I really would prefer they is an option that they got a bigger piece of the cake and not paypal. I bought last April the three Incognito episodes in one order (checked this) and the checkout window has a hinged games field for multiple entries, so I guess it's just a bug and they forgot to activate the basket.

Edit: Must correct myself, bought the Incognito games as one bundle. But I can't remember there was a checkout window and not a basket.

mm, and as far I can see, the games on there yet are those who already have build which is easily transferable. I mean, it will be interesting to see if indies, which are only distributed through only one retailer and therefore have a slightly specialised build (I think about Steam now off course), will be willing to use the time and resources to adopt their games to this. Depends on how successful it turns out to be, of course, which again depends on what is on offer.

(Then again, I am not a coder and do not know how much work it actually involve. As far as my knowledge goes, I know there is something called API and it stops there...)

I wouldn't count on it. If those developers are interested in selling their games DRM-free at all, I'd guess they'd probably choose the Humble Store over Indievania. Indievania really is more of a niche store and I can't see it become popular enough to be considered an alternative to Steam. But it's good that there actually is a store that allows all indie developers to try their luck and get a piece of the pie, especially with all those stories of other distribution sites rejecting games or devs complaining how hard it is for those who don't get included in the HIBs. So it wouldn't hurt if Indievania got a little more attention and managed to grow.

This seems like a really cool new site, obv. because it's drm-free, but they don't have any games I want to play yet.

I think they might have a hard time competing with the humble bundle, but I wish them all the best. The Internet could do with more drm-free game shops.

It depends on how much of their game uses the API. If they only use the API for achievements and leaderboards it wouldn't take too much effort to release a version without those features, but it it's a multiplayer game which relies on the API for matchmaking and such it would be way too much effort to make a version for different stores.

This is a pretty old article about Indievania but I think it's an interesting read. If I understand correctly, if you pay more than the asking price, the donation is split between the developer and Indievania, and they're hoping that will suffice to cover the bandwith costs (according to the founder so far their plans worked out).

Oh, and I found the answer to my own question. This specific sale is only running this week. Now the next question would be: Does that mean until Friday, until Saturday or until Sunday/Monday? :D (I hope I get my PayPal account restocked in time ...)

Do you get charged a fee for making a purchase? I guess Paypal works differently in different countries (I get charged a fee for receiving but not sending).

According to their faq only the seller is charged a fee.

Nah, he explained that he was looking at it from the developers' point of view. Apparantly each time you use PayPal to pay $1 for a game, 30 ct plus a percentage of the price go to PayPal. He'd rather that PayPal wouldn't get that much money and that the developers would keep more for themselves.

I recommend Pit: The Bite Sized Shooter. No idea who made it, but whoever they are, they have some major game design chops. Probably very good-looking, too...


<_<

>_>
Yeah, that was a little disappointing to me at first.