I disagree with a lot of the anonymouse takes in the article, though I think some of their ideas about building in bug reporting systems and such would be very valuable. Also most of the takes in this thread are bad/reductive but anyone expecting nuance from folks who can only see the systems from the opaque outside would be making a grave mistake, there are so many moving parts when it comes to finding success on Steam and much of how everything works is completely invisible to the outside world. It's not as simple as making a good game or as simple as 'doing marketing', the universal constant though is that as a developer you need to generate a bit of snowball effect and then Steam will help carry you from there because it becomes in their interest to do so (They make money when you make money, they make more money long term when their users are happy, promoting games that find some success and make users happy is their goal).
As usual Morgan Jaffit is very logical and thoughtful in his comments. That guy is an Australian treasure.
And people pining for the good old days of steam are just those who see themselves on the winning side of its winners/losers model, I'm reasonably sure if my game (decent metacritic, overwhelming positive user reviews) had ended up on old Steam I'd be a millionaire but at the same time it might not have ever even made it to the platform. I don't know if Valve really earn their industry standard % but if you're comparing them purely with the other alternative storefronts and platforms they certainly don't come off lacking, so if folks really believe they don't deserve their % then it's probably the industry standard that really needs to change in this new world of open markets.
