Coming in with the attitude that it's pointless to put one's games elsewhere, I assume they really don't give a rip. Pissing off a customer base they don't cater to in the first place isn't likely to cause much of a dip in sales.

Paralleling my thoughts posted in the Towns thread, these folks are coders, not business, marketing, accounting, or PR folks. Some of them are probably your everyday forum trolls but with programming skills. Nothing any of them put out there surprises me. For better or worse, that's the game industry.

Yeah, could be, it's never easy to communicate sarcasm in a purely written form after all. But, given the previous statements, can't quite rule out that this is his actual opinion. Re: the supportive response; every developer has (some) loyal, unquestioning fanboys, I guess...

True enough. I certainly wouldn't expect slick marketing talk from any indie dev (and in fact I'd be happy to see less of it in/from the industry altogether); but I also think it's basic common sense in any business where you're selling something to not intentionally antagonise (prospective) customers. But I may be thinking about it from a too traditional standpoint. The way in which the DRM-free version was dropped and platforms of sale limited once Hero Siege was greenlit has already shown that neither treating customers with respect nor maximising potential sales are priorities in this case.

There's one universal rule that he should consider though - not to burn your bridges. Phil Fish did, and Fez sold pretty poorly as a result on PC (across all PC platforms, before anyone starts making comments).

I'm sceptical of his claim about his success on Steam - according to Steam Charts, it's barely averaged out at 100 - it peaked at 500 in February, precisely at the time that he had the game in no less than three indie bundles and on IGS. That's not a great figure barely four months after release. In fact, it seems most of the traffic came post-bundle.

Even developers more reluctant to follow the DRM-free path have used it as a back-up revenue path later on - the non-Steam DRM-free market is not to be ignored, and a lot of devs are realising this (Harebrained, Humble Hearts etc.) There's an entire market out there that doesn't buy from Steam at all, and PanicArts has managed to isolate itself from that entire market.

But I'm just going to ascribe this to him and his ilk being spoilt little manchildren. The other Finnish guy he seems to be all buddy with ("Teroil Corporations") decided to put the wholly mature "GOG more like cock", to which Viglione responded in Finnish with a smiley (I don't speak Finnish so I can't tell what it was, but it's a safe bet that it was some kind of agreement).

You mean this?

"joo enpä oo gogista muuta ku hakenu ilmasia pelejä :D"

If so, that's looslely translated as "Yeah, I've only used gog to get the free games"

I think he means the freebies given by GOG when registering.

Always good to see devs making assholes of themselves in public. Makes it so much easier to avoid them.

If correct, that's some sweet irony.

If you're a small dev, you don't worry about legal costs. You either sign the distributor's boilerplate or leave it, because if you actually consult a lawyer and the lawyer tells you to make changes and whatnot, the distributor will decide selling your game and messing around with your custom contract is not worth the time of their lawyer.

3 games in fact: Blackthorne, Lost Vikings Rock n' Roll Racing. I hope Warcraft 1&2 and Diablo 1 come soon!!!

Here's a good example of why Steam makes money and other places don't.

I was interested in buying Project Zomboid, but when I started to look into it, it turns out the non-steam version was out of date by 6 months. It just so happened, that the last patch released the same time the game came out on Steam. Screams that they abandoned the non-steam version. Lost all interested in buying it. Might check it out a year after release, once it's done being patched and what not and if the DRM-free version is up to date, purchase it then. If I'm still interested in it at that point.

Now, shortly after this they did update the non-steam version, but most likely it'll be another 6 months before they update it again.


This is somewhat common too. Here on GOG there's Postal & Postal 2 (at least 6 months), Oddworld Stranger's Wrath (few months), Strike Suit Zero (still don't have all the DLC on GOG, patches always delayed by a few months). Wouldn't be surprised if there was more.

Shinyloot still doesn't have the newest DLC for Sword of the Stars: The Pit. Been out for about a month. Honestly, this one isn't AWFUL, but still bad.

Is it any surprise that most people buy Steam (or pirate, pirates seem to have no problem releasing patches for games, something the people who get PAID can't be assed to do) over the alternatives when the devs intentionally fuck over anyone who doesn't buy from Steam.


I'm weary of buying any game now because I don't want to be fucked over. Sucks for the devs that aren't assholes (though, once they get a good track record I'd be comfortable buying from them). Really wish that digital distributors would start enforcing this shit. Offer refunds if the dev refuses to release a patch/dlc for X months. Put it in the contracts. If they want to compete with Steam and piracy, they are going to have to.

Steam makes them money because is the first popular online game distribution service and the masses don't want alternatives. They picked Windows, Facebook, Google Search etc. and they'll die with them.

It might be worth mentioning that he's the developer of one of the most bundled games of the year. I'm not sure that anyone should be taking business advice from him.

He said Steam makes all the money and that is not true. How can GOG and Gamersgate make 0 money for people and still exist? Yes, it's true the sheep of the gaming world don't care about DRM and are loyal to Steam but not every gamer is sheep.

Bundling is not in and of itself necessarily a poor business tactic - and its often a necessary one for the indie market - but the fact that he bundled it so frequently so soon after release either indicates that (a) the game sold ridiculously poorly to begin with, (b) he was too impatient to get sales or (c) he was too lazy to do any proper marketing and just wanted everyone else to do everything for him.

In reality, it sounds like it was a combination of all three, but mostly (c).