Indie publisher explosion!

[WizardStan]

So has anyone else noticed a few cheap game sites* are now offering publishing and monetization for indie developers as alternatives to Steam? I got notice of all three of these in the past 2 weeks. Not to deride increased competition, but did something major happen that this seems to be trending all of a sudden?

(*)I remember seeing a fourth but I don't remember where, and it wouldn't surprise me if there were more I wasn't aware of

 

[pmprog]

Humble's been doing it for a while, which I discovered when I was making a list of indie-friendly publishers... back in the day I thought I might get far enough into making a game that I could look at selling it.

itch.io has also had this support for a long time.

Edit: Thanks for the heads up on the other sites though... My dream isn't entirely dead yet ;-) Though far from likely

 

[levi]

Presumably if you accepted any of this dirty money, it would effectively result in a timed exclusive for whatever platform was paying, I assume. Or even an all-time exclusive?

 

[pmprog]

Dirty money? Why do you say that?
Why would you assume they'd force you to be exclusive? Itch.io certainly doesn't limit you, and plenty of games on there offer steam keys

 

[levi]

Calling it dirty money was a deliberate exaggeration on my part, I'm afraid. I don't quite understand what these alternative platforms gain from paying to put your game on there if you also put it on gog and steam anyway, unless they're really super desperate for indie content, and they don't think they'd get it otherwise.

 

[pmprog]

They get more games in their store, which attracts more customers.

I've seen several games on itch saying that the reason they are on both is that they get a better cut from itch.

That said, I don't think itch is technically a publisher, just a store that lets you self publish... I don't really know about these other stores and i didn't really dig too deep into humble because i was well off any hint of a game release