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"It's extremely frustrating and also f*cked up" - one of the world's best indie studios is facing shock closure following confounding Steam ban
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>You might not immediately recognise the name Santa Ragione, but the independent Italian studio has been creating boundary pushing, award-winning games for over a decade and a half now. Award winning, best indie game studio yet the name is unrecognisable...? It's pretty fishy just from the beginning of the article. I checked their game, some are not well received, and their latest game have only 92 reviews on Steam. Not good, seems like the studio is already on their way out and he believe Horses gonna save the studio. But if you look at the game https://youtu.be/JYewjNYxV-8 It's an asset flip niche horror game, it's not gonna save the studio. So what left is the dev trying to spin a sob story to hopefully rile up the anti-steam crowd to get some pity sales.
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Exceptions mean there's no rule, yeah? Minecraft, therefore, 90% marketshare doesn't matter.> Exceptions mean there's no rule, yeah? 1) when you're arguing that it's impossible for a game to make a profit without Steam, yes 2) my post was in reply to you listing a single game that wasn't profitable for a year and blaming that on it not being on Steam. If my example is not a valid argument then you shouldn't have argued that way in the first place.
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Yeah, it's a monopoly. That's not a value judgement. It's not calling them evil or criminal or anything. It is a necessary recognition of their market position. I.e. - they have competitors, but those competitors *do not matter.*
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Absolute monopolies are fiction. Standard Oil only ever controlled 85% of America's oil. Monopoly is when your competition does not matter - not when it does not exist. There will always be *someone* competing with you. But if I open Mindbleach's Video Emporium and move six units per quarter, the impact on Steam is approximately dick. So is Epic's.
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> Exceptions mean there's no rule, yeah? 1) when you're arguing that it's impossible for a game to make a profit without Steam, yes 2) my post was in reply to you listing a single game that wasn't profitable for a year and blaming that on it not being on Steam. If my example is not a valid argument then you shouldn't have argued that way in the first place.> impossible Strawman. It is demonstrably much harder for games to profit, when they're not on Steam. Exceptions are rare viral hits. Alan Wake 2 was a popular and acclaimed game, and it did terribly on PC specifically, because it wasn't on the one storefront that handles an overwhelming majority of PC sales. The difference between PC games not on Steam and iOS games not on the App Store is *slim.* So yes, there *are* games exclusive to Epic that do just fine, *but not many.* Odds say, fucked. Being unavailable on Steam means most PC gamers will not consider buying it, and may never even be aware of it. We have a word for that.
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Absolute monopolies are fiction. Standard Oil only ever controlled 85% of America's oil. Monopoly is when your competition does not matter - not when it does not exist. There will always be *someone* competing with you. But if I open Mindbleach's Video Emporium and move six units per quarter, the impact on Steam is approximately dick. So is Epic's.[Monopoly: ](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monopoly) > 1: **exclusive** ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action >2: **exclusive** possession or control >3: a commodity controlled by **one party** >4: : **one** that has a monopoly
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> impossible Strawman. It is demonstrably much harder for games to profit, when they're not on Steam. Exceptions are rare viral hits. Alan Wake 2 was a popular and acclaimed game, and it did terribly on PC specifically, because it wasn't on the one storefront that handles an overwhelming majority of PC sales. The difference between PC games not on Steam and iOS games not on the App Store is *slim.* So yes, there *are* games exclusive to Epic that do just fine, *but not many.* Odds say, fucked. Being unavailable on Steam means most PC gamers will not consider buying it, and may never even be aware of it. We have a word for that.
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> Alan Wake 2 was a popular and acclaimed game, and it did terribly on PC specifically Exceptions mean there’s no rule, yeah?Struggling is the rule, not the exception. Most games do much worse when they're not on Steam. Most means more. Do you understand that?
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[Monopoly: ](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monopoly) > 1: **exclusive** ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action >2: **exclusive** possession or control >3: a commodity controlled by **one party** >4: : **one** that has a monopolyhttps://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined > Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power.
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Their previous game seems like a proper hand-drawn stuff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqDalFNDdAwSaturnalia also looks pretty good tbh. Maybe this is what they mean by having external party joining the porject instead of having people inhouse doing the work. >As Pietro puts it, Santa Ragione operates "more like a film production studio, where people kind of come together for a project rather than being there all the time", often from fields outside video games. Saturnalia's art director, Marta Gabas, for instance, is a film and theatre set designer who had never made a game before. The visual is significantly different between game, and this new one in particular feels like they run out of money and have to use bought asset to stitch together a game with no visual coherent. Gamedev is a very risky business and they seems to be on the way out anyway.
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i think we’re missing the forest for the trees here by arguing wether valve should’ve allowed the game or not. the fact that valve is in such a dominant position that them refusing to sell a game can mean not only the game’s failure, but the shutdown of the studio making it, is a big problem. and it’s not just this game, after the payment processor affair, [VILE: Exhumed](https://dreadxp.com/vile-is-banned/) (a game about sexual assault) was banned from steam (for being about sexual assault), before it could even release game devs shouldn’t have to rely on just one vendor’s approval to sell their stuff, it’s an unhealthy ecosystem.
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I have to disagree to be honest. Not because I think that they should allow a naked guy with a young girl(gross), but because in the time that it took for steam to review the game and give a verdict, they had already changed it on their own to be a different model. For them to refuse re-submission of the game is pretty dumb, considering that the offending content(if that is what it was) had already been fixed in the release build and steam was operating under old information. If they haden't already changed it for the release candidate I would be fully on board, but clearly they saw wrong in it as well which was why they had changed it prior to steams decision. Steam forced an early release build of the game way earlier than they normally asked for, which meant it was exactly that, a pre-release build, meaning it had not gone through the proper channels for vetting or checking to make sure that what they wanted to publish was a final product. Then when requested for a review of the actual final build, steam refused. This combined with the fact that the only storefront that blocked the release was steam, I definitely think steam is the bad guy here.It's also far from the first time Steam's content review process has stirred up controversy--even before Collective Shout--which is ultimately the reason why this is getting so much run in games media right now. At some point Steam has to get their shit together, start hiring people, and revamp their scattershot content review system before they get on the wrong side of an incident by either letting something through that stirs up a shitstorm and Congress gets involved, or pissing off the wrong publisher and having the ESA come down on them. That said, I don't think this particular game is the horse to back for this effort, so to speak.
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I have definitely noticed an uptick in the number of articles attacking Steam. I find all of them to be a little over blown.Gonna put my tinfoil hat on. Valve announced bunch of new hardware that, from the looks of it, will blew up the gaming market and make some major changes in how and on which OS games are going to be played. Microsoft, with dominant OS market and a long-run reputation of a gaming OS, going to suffer some losses(probably not so huge). They got money to burn and they begin to dig shit on Valve. First - research vessel for 500mil. Now completely bullshit article about a "GODLIKE INDIE DEV" that is so good that not many heard about it, suddenly getting their game banned for (imo) a reasonable thing. I legit expect more dirt to surface in near future. But so far *"the dirt"* is weak AF
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https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined > Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power.
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Struggling is the rule, not the exception. Most games do much worse when they're not on Steam. Most means more. Do you understand that?
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> that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. So again, not what we're seeing at all. Epic has little impact because Epic is shit at making a store people actually want to use.*Ability.* Not a history of doing anticompetitive behavior, just the *ability* to do it. Monopoly is a precondition to that abuse. From the same page: "Obtaining a monopoly by superior products, innovation, or business acumen is legal; however, the same result achieved by exclusionary or predatory acts may raise antitrust concerns." "Finally, the monopolist may have a legitimate business justification for behaving in a way that prevents other firms from succeeding in the marketplace. For instance, the monopolist may be competing on the merits in a way that benefits consumers through greater efficiency or a unique set of products or services." Is it a fnord? Is there some other word you would understand to mean, there's only one big-ass store people treat as the default, and if they start being dicks, we're all in deep shit?
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> If Steam not hosting your game causes your studio to shut down, it’s not because Steam is being some unreasonable gatekeeper. It’s because you’re making something that there isn’t any market for, or so little of a market that your only hope is to get it visible to as many people as possible so the tiny fraction of them that are interested can keep you afloat. You *know* being on Steam means crucial access to more customers. To most customers, in fact. The games that do well, despite being invisible to the supermajority of customers, are the exceptions. Nobody gets dropped from EGS or Itch and goes "oh no, we're ruined, we're only on Steam now." But the opposite happens repeatedly. The reason is not complicated.
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It's also far from the first time Steam's content review process has stirred up controversy--even before Collective Shout--which is ultimately the reason why this is getting so much run in games media right now. At some point Steam has to get their shit together, start hiring people, and revamp their scattershot content review system before they get on the wrong side of an incident by either letting something through that stirs up a shitstorm and Congress gets involved, or pissing off the wrong publisher and having the ESA come down on them. That said, I don't think this particular game is the horse to back for this effort, so to speak.Firmly agree, I think their primary issue is it's hard to find a game that they refuse that would be a decent game to back that type of cause. This is just due to the nature of the games that get rejected on Steam. They're the controversial leaning style games. This one in particular for sure isn't a good choice, because of the underage controversy but, all of these style games are also going to have a pretty vocal and not so small group against this type of effort.
