Ironman273 Posted August 24, 2010 Share Posted August 24, 2010 Steam Sale Saves Developer If ever proof was needed of how important Valve's Steam platform has become to many PC developers, look no further than the tale of Introversion, the developers of Defcon and Darwinia, whose company was saved by a Steam sale. Despite a string of cult successes like Uplink, Darwinia and Defcon (pictured), the British developers had run into some tough times recently, and had gone from being a "proper" studio, with an office and staff, to having to fire most of their workers, sell their furniture, move out of their office and code from their bedrooms. In desperation, one day they decided to add some Steam achivements to Defcon. Doing so meant Valve gave the team some promotion on Steam, and that promotion turned into sales. Valve okayed the promotion and even though it didn't focus on DEFCON we were happy that we had achieved our core objective. This was the game-changer. When we started Introversion we'd had a string of successes and believed we were undefeatable, but it was a long time since we'd had a victory and we really needed one. Right on cue, Valve delivered. The promo exceeded all of our expectations and when combined with our low burn rate (no office or staff now) we had gone from being fearful about paying our mortgages to having a year's operating capital in the bank. Great news for Introversion, as they thoroughly deserve it. It'll also hopefully give them the coin to continue development on Subversion. But for everyone else...Valve may be in most people's good books, but it's still a little frightening to think that a single company can play Kingmaker with the fortunes of developers across an entire platform, so dependant have so many PC publishers become on Steam for legitimate sales. Source: Kotaku Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+LogicalApex MVC Posted August 24, 2010 MVC Share Posted August 24, 2010 Nice news for the developer. Cautionary news for us consumers. Depending on how Valve wields their power. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrunknMunky Veteran Posted August 24, 2010 Veteran Share Posted August 24, 2010 I like news like this :) Good luck to them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MR_Candyman Posted August 24, 2010 Share Posted August 24, 2010 I admit I bought this game when it was on sale. I have yet to play it though Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macrosslover Posted August 24, 2010 Share Posted August 24, 2010 I just wonder when Microsoft is going to call it a day and just buy them. Steam is so much more advanced then Games for Windows, MS can just buy it and rebrand it Games for Windows+Mac lol. Then they could lay claim to have probably the best pc and console distribution system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reacon Posted August 24, 2010 Share Posted August 24, 2010 I bought the introversion pack for 5$. Glad I could help :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phixion Posted August 24, 2010 Share Posted August 24, 2010 I bought a few of their games before the sale, I think the primary reason people didn't buy their games was the price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McCordRm Posted August 24, 2010 Share Posted August 24, 2010 Price is still the BIG factor. Back when games were ALL physical products, I could see a higher price tag to recoup distribution and manufacturing costs. Hell, one of the reasons I absolutely loved the Ultima games was because they came with cool stuff like a real cloth map and extra goodies. And that was without having to pay $20-$40 more for the "Collector's Edition". But today? If the damn game companies would just switch to digital-only and cut the game cost in half, they'd probably see a LOT more sales. Look at how well Torchlight has done. It was really cheap to buy and people jumped all over it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treemonster Posted August 24, 2010 Share Posted August 24, 2010 i loved defcon back in the day in the demo, and uplink wasa pretty cool game. both had intersting and intuitive takes on graphics and ui. but i never bought them as i don't have a cc to just purchase any ol game off steam with. hopefully this company can come up with some new games on the level of these old favourites of mine from them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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