Question for Developers: What's stopping you from putting your game on Steam?

[MadDany]

For those of you who don't know: Steam Censorship is now gone!

There are already few adult games with sexual content in there. 100% not cut out or censored. And I think Steam is a great way for you to spread out your name game!

We've seen a lot of games here being posted here weekly but some are not on Steam. Perhaps some copyright issues and Patreon is the only way for them to bypass that, and I can understand that. But what about those who don't have that issue?

What is stopping you from putting it onto steam?

 

[Oiz]

If they do they can't claim patreon milk is only for "support" anymore. (Yes, I know a few people actually use patreon as a support platform and not to sell their stuff)

However that might just me being a dumbass and it might not be related at all. If they do however then they're selling a product, which probably has a lot of other things to be considered compared to just a project that's financed through "support".

 

[Palanto]

Hmmm we're already considering to do it when and only when the first game is completely finished (squashed all bugs found and so on). BUT before doing that we really have to make sure the product is 100% finished and bug free.... We're just 3 people in this "company" we can't ruin our name with a "supposedly" finished game on steam. Steam has other standards... I mean seriously patreon is a platform to get support so that we can do what we really love. Those people obviously already got the game. And they're giving good and bad feedback depending on the subject. That's great, but Steam is a whole other area. Those people don't even understand in the slightest possible way what an early access game is (which all indie game devs on patreon are doing in a way) and they won't give any good feedback if a game has a bug or isn't finished yet it's going to be shitstorms. So I won't EVER create an early access game "on" steam. If it's done, alright we might release it there, but until then I won't even consider it a possibility.

So yes I'm grateful for the opportunity steam is giving us all now. But seriously, small scale indie devs like us would get squashed right there if we'd release an 0.1 there and then go on until the game is finished We only do it on patreon and i.e. here because there's another athmosphere, most of you guys do understand how "early access" works in a way. You don't expect a perfect, bugfree and finished game by day 1.....

tldr: Later when the game is finished, completely bug free and other things (like translated and so on) we might consider releasing it there..... before that, no way!

 

[DarthSeduction]

For those of you who don't know: Steam Censorship is now gone!

There are already few adult games with sexual content in there. 100% not cut out or censored. And I think Steam is a great way for you to spread out your name game!

We've seen a lot of games here being posted here weekly but some are not on Steam. Perhaps some copyright issues and Patreon is the only way for them to bypass that, and I can understand that. But what about those who don't have that issue?

What is stopping you from putting it onto steam?

I wouldn't expect a, still in development, porn game to do well on Steam. We could get away with something like what Life is Strange does, and release "episodes" which we kinda already do, but the "episodes" we release through patreon are a lot shorter than what LiS does.

Also, even if we were going to do that, we'd still need crowdfunding to get the project off the ground. Making a game is incredibly time consuming. I have a first release for a project I started before Seraphim Academy, in January, that is only just coming together. I'm waiting on 3 more images and it's done. It's been nearly 10 months since I started writing it. Getting Seraphim off the ground took like 5 months to get the first release out, and there's an experienced coder on our team doing the heavy lifting for that, which is a great help, because that's days of work that I, as the writer, didn't have to do. Months of art and writing, drafts and completely reworked ideas went into it.

Now, imagine making the whole game with no income whatsoever? Put simply, not everyone has the time for even that initial setup, doing the whole thing without any financial support to justify your time is simply a luxury I don't have.

 

[Agent HK47]

Not a developer myself (not yet at least, but with a bit of luck that will change by next year) but I think the developers are hesitant to put their game onto steam, for a couple of reasons.
Most games on this website are "in development" so not finished products, and the developer might make more money from Patreon by charging people $5 every month for a year, rather than selling it on steam once for $20, especially considering how people on steam generally are less forgiving for "unfinished" games and WILL give negative reviews left and right, which can easily damage the game's (and thus the developer him/herself's) reputation beyond repair. It is probably safer to stick to Patreon in that regard.
As a result of this process, I believe that many developers have the idea to stick with Patreon during the development of the game, and then release the game on steam when it is fully done, which will give the best response on steam and hopefully give the developer a significant boost in both reputation and finances.

As a final note, I also think some developers are hesitating to trust that steam will actually keep their new "all content welcome here" policy for a longer time. When Patreon changed their adult content policy, many developers were hit hard finacially and thrown into weeks/months of turmoil. If they now bet hard on steam, and they end up reversing their new open platform idea, then the developers will face possibly weeks/months of issues again. The longer steam keeps sticking to their new policy, the less hesitant people will be to put their games onto steam.

This is just speculation on my part of course, and I could be completely wrong. I am just thinking about what my reasons would be, if I was in their shoes.

 

[Benn Swagger]

It's depend on the level of commitment of the creator for their games.

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And as I said in the first place ... It's depend on the level of commitment of the creator for their games.

 

[toolkitxx]

One obvious reason many will never appear on Steam is the question of assets used. Its not a secret for many here that a lot of games are build on top of pirated assets. You cannot publish anything like that on Steam unless you are suicidal.

 

[exer]

There's a few reasons.

It fairly recently has started relaxing the censorship. There hasn't really been enough time for anyone to put their games on the store. Also, a lot of games have content that still can't be put on there. Steam has said that anything is allowed unless it's illegal, but they also have taken upon themselves to decide what that means. From what I can tell, that includes games with a protagonist who looks like they're young, whether it be stated they're over 18 or not, and even incest, which is a very popular theme right now. Because of this, many game still can't be on steam. It's still fairly difficult to get an adult game onto steam. Some get accepted, others don't, and there's not a clear explanation why.

Plus, a lot of developers release their game for free during development. In order to release on steam, they'd have to completely develop the game without releasing any builds to the public, which means no funding through patreon. Which means it can really only be developed in their free time. Making people pay for the final version of a game on steam after getting supported through patreon would also just be an enormous dick move. People could very easily just find the free versions through sites like this, and not buy it too. Not to mention that a lot of developers use the builds to find bugs.

Some developers also use assets that they didn't acquire legally. Stuff like music, art, and DAZ assets. In order to release on steam, they'd have to acquire the rights to all of those assets. Anyone using something like Unity would also have to pay in order to release it.

Also, anyone who made a parody game could never release on steam. It would just be asking for the game to get removed and to be possibly sued. Companies generally don't care if something is released for free, but start making money off of it and they will take notice.

Lastly, the adult games community is used to getting things for free. Most people are just going to come to a site like this to get the game for free anyway, so it's just a better idea to just use patreon instead. People who want to support you will, those that don't, won't. And, to me, that's a way better way of going about adult games.

tl;dr making a game to release on Steam is just a bad idea. If the approval process were to be more transparent, and people would be willing to make full games in their free time/if it were possible to get investors to fund an adult game, then maybe it would be a good idea. But as it is now, it's too risky and you likely aren't going to make much money anyway.