.bog.

I think valve is willing to take any game (within reason) on-board. They are much more about equal-opportunity than narrow-minded elitism, and ofcourse, by merit of being a privately owned corporation they also look at the profit-margins.

.bog.

1. Valve have previously had desperate companies because those are the only people who will take the risk.

   What risk? The only risk involved is that you might upset retailers, but as we’ve seen that is being negated by retail or near-retail prices. For Ubi in particular there are zero risks; they already have their games downloadable elsewhere.

2. The supporting the “little guy” is just their bit on the side that comes from being a privately-held business with a little guy culture.

   Removing the middle man is half of Steam’s reason for existence, and easily its most important function. It cannot be stressed enough how important it is that the industry breaks out of the publisher/retail cycle. Greg Costikyan wrote two articles loosely covering the industry issues Steam deals with a while back for The Escapist: Death to the Games Industry, Part I and Part II. Suffice to say, Valve are not building Steam purely as a gravy train.

3. “Deals with the devil”? For real?

   It’s just a headline. Don’t take it too close to heart.

4. Finally I don’t understand your second paragraph at all. Do you have details on the revenue breakdown for the contracts signed for Steam, or are you just assuming?

   The current publishers on Steam (discounting Activision, who arrived after the article was published) are all in financial trouble, so they are very unlikely to be reducing their profit share. It’s most likely that Valve’s cut is removed and the remaining profits are then split at the same ratio that they would be from a retail purchase.

You grossly underestimate the conservatism of most companies. Valve have previously had desperate companies because those are the only people who will take the risk. Ubisoft only putting Dark Messiah on Steam is because it’s easy money (as you yourself revealed, Steam+Source=100%), easy tech to deploy and so is a safe way of testing the waters. The fact that it went several weeks without a price being announced for the game suggests that there were fierce negotiations on that subject. (Which Valve appear to have come out worse on, given the absence of the previously-standard pre-order discount.) They haven’t decided *not* to put BG&E on it, I would be very certain, and if DM is successful I expect those games to show up sometime thereafter.

Valve are in the business of building a platform. That is their bread and butter with Steam. The supporting the “little guy” is just their bit on the side that comes from being a privately-held business with a little guy culture. Building a platform is about quantities - the size of your customer base, the breadth of your demographic, the size of your product portfolio, etc. They’d be mad to turn anyone away.

I also find your attitude to publishers to be bizarre. “Deals with the devil”? For real? There are bad eggs, but you can’t get around the fact that publishers provide the advances and publishers own the end products. The number of developers who own the publishing rights to their games are very very small.

Finally I don’t understand your second paragraph at all. Do you have details on the revenue breakdown for the contracts signed for Steam, or are you just assuming? It would be helpful if you could clarify this.