A little over a week ago, Randy Pitchford, head of Gearbox Software, voiced concern in an interview with PC Magazine about indie developers using Steam for their game releases. Pitchford claimed that there may be a “conflict of interest” since Valve is in charge of Steam and it makes its own games as well. The interview caused quite a bit of a stir in the indie community, prompting John Gibson–president at Tripwire Interactive–to chime in and let us know his opinion on the matter. Tripwire’s successful Killing Floor and Red Orchestra are both Steam-based games; Gibson published a lengthy opinion piece on Gamasutra opposing Pitchford’s claim that Steam is “exploiting a lot of small guys.” Since we put up the Pitchford article, I feel it is only fair to address Gibson’s opinion piece.

“So, is Valve exploiting independent developers? In short: absolutely not. Without pulling any punches, I can say with certainty that if it weren’t for Steam, there would be no Tripwire Interactive right now.

In the early days, when we were shopping our first game Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 around to traditional brick-and-mortar publishers, we were shocked at how terrible their proposals were. We were getting pitched offers like, ‘We’ll give you a 15 percent royalty rate, take the IP rights to your game, and slap a $1.5 million administrative fee on top of your recoupment costs.’ And deals like this were being offered for a game we funded ourselves!”

Gibson affirms that there is no way Valve is exploiting small timers. Since you or I do not work with Valve, it is hard to tell whether Gibson’s words are true for everyone. Perhaps Tripwire’s games are more suited for the audience that Valve knows; even Gibson makes it known later in the article that Tripwire’s games are basically in competition with Valve’s Left 4 Dead and although there may be a “conflict of interest” the likelihood is lessened by the fact that all games have been successful.

“Randy also pointed out the conflict of interest present in Valve being both a game developer and a game distributor. I agree — there could be a potential conflict of interest here. But the reality of dealing with Valve just doesn’t bear it out to be a problem. Tripwire Interactive’s two titles on Steam, Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 and Killing Floor, are both direct competitors to Valve’s own games Day of Defeat: Source and Left 4 Dead, yet all of these titles have been very successful on Steam.

…

The reality is almost every publisher/distributor has some conflict of interest. Standard brick-and-mortar-driven publishers have their own first-party titles. If they are publishing a first-party title in the same genre as your third-party title, most will either refuse to work with you, or will give your game a much lower priority for funding, advertising, and marketing. With console digital distribution, Microsoft and Sony have a complete monopoly on their platforms, and both companies make first party games. At least Valve has competition on the PC.”

I suppose this addresses most concerns we would have about Steam exploiting indie developers. John Gibson sounds a little defensive in his opinion piece, but the bottom line is he makes a convincing argument. Steam truly has brought forth great coverage for the indie world and as long as they’re helping the developers rather than hurting them, there isn’t much left to criticize them over. On the other hand, I would like to know more about what Randy Pitchford was talking about, perhaps any specific titles or developers he would have mentioned… For now, the debate seems incomplete because of the limited amount of information Pitchford provided and the extensive yet biased information Gibson contributed. Having said that, we need more opinions from a larger number of indie developers that have used Steam in addition to other services to assess exactly how beneficial Valve’s Steam is to their subsidiaries.

[Gibson's Opinion Article on Gamasutra]