Depends on what is needed to get those 1000 extra sales. Lets say each game costs $7, and If he procured costs of $8000 getting those sales - then he lost $1000 getting them.... and yes, it is made up figures, but the point stand. And no, I have not calculated any actual costs, it is an academic point.

umm..... you missed a line there....
haha - touché!

Can't say I've ever heard of this developer or the game in question, however it does come across as being rather foolish to release on a single site when the fixed costs for distribution across other sites are minimal (the main cost of distribution would be the cut the sites in question take from each sale). That being said, I'm not sure if there is a fee for any quality testing from sites other than Steam prior to clearance for release.

On a slightly separate note, I've noticed over the past few months that Steam have started to match GOG in terms of pricing and some releases. This never used to happen, so perhaps Steam isn't quite the untouchable market player of old (though they are certainly still dominant) and are feeling the need to respond to competition. If Steam recognise the possible threat that a smaller site like GOG may present, then surely developers should recognise that perhaps GOG is a site that could be worth doing business with.

People are dumb.

If steam were the only way to make money no other distributor would exist. I cant see what simpler way there is to put it.

All these statements remind me of the situation a few years ago when gamedevelopers were saying PC was dead and devoloping games for consoles was the way to go (DICE in particular).

They're undercutting them too. I've noticed that with several of the older titles on Steam the last few months.

So what I'm taking from this is:

Some small publisher (found three published games, two look to be shit, only one on Steam) fucks over people who buy the non-steam copy of his game, then turns around and wonders why the Steam copies sell so much more than the non-steam copies. And they only have this one game to go on.
Plus, they seem to think if you go anywhere else you can't have your game on Steam.

This would be like someone selling a game on GOG, not on Steam (or selling a broken version on Steam) and then saying Steam has shit sales.

Maybe his game was rejected by GOG, which would effectively make him no money here. ;)

This is simply not a behaviour that is any suitable for an indie developer.
Such a person should listen to their community. If they demand a DRM-free version, deliver it!

Right and there's a lot of folks that refuse to buy games there unless they come at a megadiscount. I know the only games I have there were either conversions from Kickstarter Beta's or at crazy 80% discounts or outright free.

And at this point I'm not willing to pay any money for games on Steam.
As well they should, GOG has the better product here in most cases, so Steam should be forced to sell for less.

Yes, I know that's rather idealistic and in practice corporations don't actually compete.

OT
I just noticed Pharaoh has a GOG.com link on it's options menu. That's pretty cool because it's not like GOG created the game but those who did must think highly enough of them to do that.

You two simply got it!

I'd guess GOG takes care of marketing and other costs of publishing once the game is here. They take their share for something more than just hosting the files :)
It's dev's decision anyway. And customer's decision to buy or not.

I'm not gonna lie, if I were a developer I'd chose Steam over others, but only if I had to choose one. You can always sell your game on multiple platforms, I didn't understand why he sticks with Steam only. Must be a Steam fanboy, or too lazy :p

Pretty much, even GOG mother company sell The Witcher games on Steam.

Thanks for this thread OP. PanicArts will now never get a penny from me. Glad I hadn't yet sent them one, as I was considering Hero Siege.

PanicArts now moves up alongside Blizzard toward the top of this list.