Hello, I'm working on digital distribution platform, something like Steam, or Desura etc. I'm planning to create platform that is simply to integrate with your game. There will be few modules available, like authenticating games and DLC's, achievments including time achievments, updating your game, friends and messages (for example player will be able to invite other player to game, for you it's only few lines of code to add to your project), selling games and DLC's, open and closed beta, etc.

Developer will have a SDK and a devtool for uploading updates, creating achievments and many more. But I have one very important question for you. Would you be interested in using it? As a gamer or developer?

Developer will have a SDK and a devtool for uploading updates, creating achievments and many more. But I have one very important question for you. Would you be interested in using it? As a gamer or developer?

Would you be interested in using it? As a gamer or developer?

I would just sigh and wonder why efforts are being invested into creating yet another distribution platform rather than using an existing one.

Your platform would need to offer something existing ones do not. The things you've described are already done by Steam, Origin, Desura, etc.

I agree with the others' sentiments -- the only way you can crack this market is to bring a significant (distinct?) market of players with you, do something fundamentally different than existing solutions, or, perhaps by doing everything that existing solutions do but doing at least half those things significantly better than any of the competing solutions.

There certainly is room to innovate, but there are so many entrenched players with very, very deep pockets its a bit like trying to take the Maginot line -- best to go around it if you can.

If you had tens of millions of users on it then yes but, you arn't going to get tens of millions of users without games developers on board and you arn't going to get devs on board without tens of millions of users......

It would be nice to have something for PC that is open (i.e., anyone can release like mobile distribution platforms tend to be) rather than "gated" which seems to be the case with the aforementioned PC platforms.

Although there have of course been software distribution websites for years, and there's itch.io which is dedicated to games and supports payment options. The difficulty is getting users (not just developers) to your platform.

It would be nice to have something for PC that is open (i.e., anyone can release like mobile distribution platforms tend to be) rather than "gated" which seems to be the case with the aforementioned PC platforms.

Although there have of course been software distribution websites for years, and there's itch.io which is dedicated to games and supports payment options. The difficulty is getting users (not just developers) to your platform.

Steam is great, but they're a publisher -- they sell your game and pass on some of the money to you.

I imagine there would be a niche market for a steam-alternative solution that's self hosted.
Instead of you being a middle-man who takes a percentage of sales, instead, you sell the store itself to developers - like middleware. I pay you a lump sum *once* to license your platform for my game. I then integrate your storefront/distribution middleware into my game, upload my game to my own servers, and sell direct to customers.
I have to pay my own hosting/bandwidth bills, but no one takes a cut of my sales, and distributing to users is easy because your middleware makes all the hosting/patching/etc easy for me.

Steam is great, but they're a publisher -- they sell your game and pass on some of the money to you.

I imagine there would be a niche market for a steam-alternative solution that's self hosted.
Instead of you being a middle-man who takes a percentage of sales, instead, you sell the store itself to developers - like middleware. I pay you a lump sum *once* to license your platform for my game. I then integrate your storefront/distribution middleware into my game, upload my game to my own servers, and sell direct to customers.
I have to pay my own hosting/bandwidth bills, but no one takes a cut of my sales, and distributing to users is easy because your middleware makes all the hosting/patching/etc easy for me.

I have to disagree that this has much value -- Steam, as a storefront, isn't valuable because of what it offers in terms of technology so much as it is valuable because of what it offers in a market-place. It offers visibility into a market of people interested in buying computer games, through a brand that they've grown to trust and using a payment system they're already integrated in. Beyond that, they offer community of players, and trading of virtual goods and gifts, even across boundaries of a particular game or a particular publisher even. Steam is equivilent to the AppStore or Google Play -- without a significant built-in, relatively-captive audience, any competing store is doomed to become the Ouya ghetto, or worse.

To be a small developer that has a single game on their own platform that's every bit as good as steam doesn't offer them much, because it doesn't bring traffic to their door, it doesn't solve the trust issue, and presumably there's another payment system (or, e.g. Amazon Payments, et al, which are trusted but take a percentage for themselves). Solving the other problems that steam solves is nice, but they aren't the solutions that help you generate revenue.

For a small studio with a similarly small stable of games, it might start to gain traction, but I can't think of too many such studios that don't have a regular publisher affiliation.

Reading that back, it sounds like a harsher dismissal than I want it to. Selling something that simply solves "those other problems" certainly has value -- just be clear that you're not selling a "steam competitor" unless you have a steam-size user-base as part of the bundle. Since that's the part of the bundle that has disposable income, I happen to think that's what people who use steam or other distribution channels ultimately care about, when we get right down to it. I'm sure there are people who would be interesting in going it alone, I'm sure there are those who could find success (Mojang, for instance, basically solved many of the same problems on their own), but I'm also sure there are those who won't.

@Rav - I don't disagree with any of that, except comparing amazon payments to steam -- payment providers take about 3%, whereas storefronts like steam take 10x more than that.

...but steam isn't exclusive, so it can worthwhile to set up your own storefront as well as being on Steam. That way, you don't pay the middleman-tax on (the small number of) customers who come directly to your site. These self-run stores can even generate and sell keys for the steam copy of your game.

However, setting up your own storefront is a lot of work -- a turn-key middleware solution might find a niche market there.

As long as the cost of setting up your own store is less than the expenses of running/setting up your own store, then you may as well do it -- middleware here could help people set up their own stores at a low price-point, making it a no-brainer choice.

I work nearby an "indie publisher", Surprise Attack, who offer a service where they manage your game (and taxes) on all of the PC digital stores other than steam. Even though Steam dominates, there's still enough of a small trickle through the alternative stores that these guys can help out a lot of indies make a little bit more profit :)

P.S. When buying indie games from steam, I often check if they have their own store and then purchase direct if they do