The obvious question is, how are you going to pay your internet bill and server costs, staff, I don't know where Valve host their Steam servers but they are going to at least need a small server farm, which means lot of servers, cooling and engineers and a dedicated fibre cable to the internet infrastructure then there is the humongous bandwidth bill. They could pay up to millions a year.

...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.

That's true -- I would encourage developers to offer their games in as many ways as reasonably possible. However, while there's not middle-man tax on each sale, you now have to deal with amortizing your own CapEx (The cost to acquire and deploy the middleware), and the OpEx (the costs for servers and bandwidth to keep it all running). It will depend entirely on your own costs, but its entirely likely that you'll need to sell and handful of copies per month in this way just to cover its OpEx, and you'll need to sell enough copies this way above and beyond that to start paying back the CapEx. If you can't do that at all, you might end up loosing money (sleep, sanity) on the venture -- Even if you sell enough to get a little past break-even, it might just not be worth the extra headaches. It could be, but I wouldn't assume so out of hand.

I'm with you on supporting your artists in the most direct way you can, though. Its the same reason I buy merchandise and albums (even if I listen to them on spotify -- actually, especially if I listen to them on spotify) from bands when I see them live. Kickstarters and such are even better, since you're actually giving directly to their means to keep producing. But totally, people, make sure you're putting your money into the hands of artists as directly as you can.

I'm a gamer and I know a lot of other gamers and all of us use steam quite heavily. A handful occasionally buy games on gog.com too. Most buy humble bundles. Very few use any of the other distribution platforms (desura, origin, impulse). Personally, I wouldn't install anything other than steam, so as a gamer, its highly highly unlikely that I or almost all of the gamers I know would install another distribution platform.

Unless it has something EXTREMELY compelling.

I mean, more compelling than Humble Bundle's pay what you want bundles (or, at least, a bigger/better library of HIGH QUALITY games in that model). Indie games are a dime a dozen - the greatest find their way into Humble Bundles or get onto Steam through the greenlight program anyway, so a large free-for-all in Indie games doesn't cut it IMHO. Too much noise. So unless your "official" catalog is really great or has some insanely good exclusives, I don't see how this can compete without something else that is extremely compelling (and the only thing I can think of is _maybe_ a hybrid mix between Humble Bundle and Kickstarter, but I'm not sure if it would work or if that's enough).

I'm not sure what you can offer developers (especially medium and bigger studios) to help make your catalog great.

Sorry to be so negative, but its a very tough space to break into IMHO.

I would like to be a Developer for your Platform! I have only been doing Games for 9 Months but i am learning it quickly, Currently Developing a First Person Parkour game.