Amazon does this for small sellers that lie outside of its supply chain (which is very vertically integrated). Part of the reason is so Amazon can retain its high standards for quality (in the Michael Porter sense) in packaging, delivery and so on. Any failures on the third party sellers’ part is not associated with Amazon. Plus, Amazon takes a cut from any sales made through its platform, while knowingly competing against them on its own turf. However, the nature of digital sales makes this proposition quite absurd.

Steam taking a smaller cut when the same games are sold through Steam’s itch.io? That’s such a ridiculous business proposition, no one in the right mind would accept a deal like that.

I can see why they’d deny it on those grounds, but realistically speaking Steam’s store does need better tools and categorization for ‘early access’ or smaller in-development indie games to get coverage outside of the main library which is getting a bit saturated at this point.

Itchio is pretty good in that regard, so it’s a bit of a shame it won’t get more coverage due to being available through Steam. Though at the same time, most of the people who’d look for something through it probably know what it is in the first place.

OH NO.

THEY COULDN’T PUT UP A STORE INSIDE STEAM, WHICH IS ALSO A STORE.

VALVE, YOU CENSORIOUS BASTARDS!

Going over to EB, gonna try to sell some old games to visitors.

Good, itch.io is full of really awful, toxic developers. Keep them confined in their unpopular platform.

yo dawg….

“I do think Steam needs more competition”

steam doesnt have competition, big names too, Ubisoft, Microsoft, EA, all have their own digital distribution platforms, and all are awfully incompetent at digital distribution

so far the only storefronts i feel offer a service almost as good as steam is the Humble Store and GoG

Well, to be fair. Valve didn’t really deny them, they more along the lines asked them to try again at a later date when they are capable of moderating such a thing.

So, people may not realize this, especially looking into the comments, but steam has already proposed and suggested other people have their own store front in steam.

This was mentioned in 2013, but hasn’t borne fruit yet. My guess is that it’s a tad more complicated than they were anticipating.

Yeah I remember, but Gabe’s idea seemed like he was giving people a glimpse into the stuff they’re brainstorming.
They might unveil the results of that at some point and it would be huge, like when they first unveiled the community site for steam games, or the workshop, or greenlight.

there needs to be more publicity for gog.

Those are actual physical-world retailers though, and Amazon has a clear policy in regards to where their responsibilities begin and end. Much of their ‘product’ is customer service, and if things go wrong they try to assist you.

In Steam’s case they’d basically be ‘selling’ the storefront in the form of an app, so how much of their business if any are they responsible for? If Itch screws up or has an “accident” do I get to complain to Valve?

Making competition for Steam is like making competition for Windows: mission impossible.

Gamers are on Steam now and they will never leave. Everyone has invested a LOT of money into their Steam accounts, too much to just move to another store.

also most recently all japanese pc ports were only released on steam.

its not really the same, buying from a different store is far easier than switching OS

not really true, some of the most popular PC games, such as world of tanks, league of legends, hearthstone, world of warcraft, etc are not on steam

Why would you use GOG when they refuse to let Japanese games on their site?

Pro-tip: beside Falcom games there are no other Japanese game. Also TITS 3rd will be Steam only since GOG get triggered by loli stuff.
Also a publisher has stated GOG refused some games they publish to be put on GOG, though I can’t say their name as they don’t want to be pulled into the anti-anime drama involving GOG.