You can't even guarantee coverage by the people you have "partnerships" with.
Who can? You mean to tell me that there are journalists out there who would cover a POC Flappy Bird clone just because it was published by someone they know? Find me these journalists. Find me these publishers. Nobody can guarantee coverage unless they are paying journalists, which is unethical and not what we do.
What strategy did you take to push your game out? Probably emailed a lot of journalists with download keys right? Same strategy that all developers are encouraged to follow themselves, right? How is that different to what we do apart from the fact that we do it almost every week? Did you end up getting covered by Rock Paper Shotgun, Destructoid, Kotaku, PC Gamer, IndieGames.com and more because of your outreach? We did.
Partnerships are bullshit.
Really? Being able to, in some cases, get games on Steam without needing Greenlight is bullshit? Being able to get free access to hardware to implement awesome game-enhancing effects into your game, and then promote the game and the effects to a community of millions of members, is bullshit? Getting discounts, information ahead of time and introductions to influencers is bullshit? You underestimate the importance of having a solid community and network in this industry. There's a lot of really cool stuff going on and we help our partners become a part of these events thanks to our partnerships. One of our games, Pongo, is working with Intel to integrate RealSense into their game--you can control the game just by waving your hands in front of your webcam. I don't know about you, but that's pretty cool to me.
Comparing us to Steam, really? How is that in any way significant? They are a storefront, a resource. We are a group of individuals actively doing things. You want to release a game on Steam and have Valve market it for you? Try it. You won't succeed. If you want to discuss marketing like you know what you're talking about, please use examples and arguments that actually make sense. You can't compare a storefront to a marketing company. It's apples to oranges. That's like saying Fox News is a better advertiser than Apple's ad agency because Fox News has millions of people watching their channel and when you put your ad out there, you're guaranteed success. Is Reddit an excellent marketing company because they allow people to post ads on there and share links? Steam is a resource. If you want to compare us to other publishers or marketers that take 30%--be my guest.
As for real financial impact, I can't share dollar amounts publicly for our games. I can tell you that 36.7% of our developers are doing game development full time, with the others working on smaller projects or having a part time job. I can tell you that the developer of Belladonna hired us as a consultant and ended up making so much money that he decided to publish with us to continue the momentum. I can tell you that games like The Adventures of Mr Bobley went from being invisible on Steam and having little traction and few sales to actually coming up on 200 reviews and making money for the developer.
I'm very aware of how I come across in my posts. I'm transparent and honest at every step. That's what I strive for. It just gets frustrating when people seem to be ignoring our side of the story completely. Where is it healthy to have a discussion with someone where you don't even hear out their side? Mindless hate accomplishes nothing. Again, I urge you to find me developers who partner with us who are very unhappy, or find me a significant amount of our consulting clients who were unhappy with working with us. Do you think I made up all of these testimonials?