Do you believe authentication is necessary for a multiplayer game?

Your first point was a vague statement that "known retailers" (correcting myself since I said Steam, apologies) give you exposure to a "much, muuuch larger userbase (as in probably like 1000:1 for most projects). And now you base this vague statement off people on Reddit stating that they have more customers on Itch than Steam.

This is completely nonsensical. Itch is a known retailer first of all. Second of all these statistics mean nothing because circumstances could make these people arrive to their figures in various ways, such as people largely assuming that Steam is the go-to place for games nowadays. You haven't made a single point in this massive bit of writing.

Also I told you that if I brought up a game with 8 reviews on Steam you'd think dead game. You say yes, but then you also say it is for sure a dead game. Do you think it is a dead game or is it factually a dead game? It's one or the other. Your thought is not a fact.

The point is pretty clear that reviews can only be perceived negative and here's a prime example. You "think" a game is "factually" dead because it has 8 reviews as a "fact". A game having 8 reviews does not mean it is dead and you already proved this to yourself by talking about a 24hr time frame.

Your question about knowing it's from an official site is ridiculous.

Your point about Fallout 76 is irrelevant, negativistic and authoritarian. You are basically stating that people won't trust me to allow refunds because of something some other company did with refunds.

"Apparently" you don't know or you don't know? It's one or the other, don't be annoying. I don't see how you believe the complex options of integrating payment processing or choosing to use Shopify are less effort than a Steam page because of forms. Seems ridiculous.

Then you bring up Steam's featureset which is entirely distinct from a website.

A fully fledged community center is not necessary or very beneficial as people can talk about your game anyway not just on the platform where you sell it.

Automated processing of refunds / (technical issues? Vague) can be done by payment provider as far as I'm aware.

I don't see why I should care about an age rating but maybe I should if the law is stupid.

Payment processor such as stripe can handle currency conversion.

VAT and tax laws should be handled by payment processors as far as I'm concerned and your emphasis on "you" is annoying.

Achievements and collectibles are easy to implement and I don't see how Steam even makes it any easier.

NAT punching might be useful but again seems easy to implement.

Cloud saves might be useful I suppose but not that useful.

Again multiplayer games do not inherently have more upkeep costs as you mistakenly try to say. I do not have to be the one hosting the servers, the players can do it themselves. You're bringing up very dumb factoids about server costs.

I don't understand your point about being authoritarian. Your argument is to literally hassle users and this is somehow a good thing? So stupid.

/r/gamedev Thread Parent