Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra :: Is Steam exploiting developers? Were we all played?

[quote name="VORPoster"]Randall S. Pitchford II is the CEO of Gearbox Software LLC. He recently spoke with Maximum Gamer about the role of Valve and Steam in the game industry. His comments, per <a href="http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/randy_pitchford_talks_borderlands_piracy_and_why_he_doesn%E2%80%99t_trust_valve?page=0,0">MaximumPC</a>: [quote]<b>MPC:</b> So you think Valve should spin off Steam? <b>RP:</b> They should! It would be much better if Steam was its own business. There’s so much conflict of interest there that it’s horrid. It’s actually really, really dangerous for the rest of the industry to allow Valve to win. I love Valve games, and I do business with the company. But, I’m just saying, Steam isn’t the answer. Steam helps us as customers, but it’s also a money grab, and Valve is exploiting a lot of people in a way that’s not totally fair. Valve is taking a larger share than it should for the service its providing. It’s exploiting a lot of small guys. For us big guys, we’re going to sell the units and it will be fine.[/quote] Prompted into action by these comments, several gaming news blog sites copied and pasted real work done by others who contacted other small developers selling content through Steam. None would go on record stating that Steam was in any way bad for their business. This can be partly viewed as a strike against the field of game journalism -- if you owned a company and <i>did</i> feel mistreated by Valve, would you trust anyone you've ever read that works on a gaming blog to keep their source confidential? But a larger issue remains: Mr Pitchford got everyone talking about his game <b>Borderlands</b> for a couple days. His comments will not hurt him at the market, and he has gained free publicity. Could Valve (far from perfect) actually be hurting small(er) game developers, or was this all carefully manufactured?[/quote]