There are so few independent authors who make enough revenue to justify running a full-time studio that if I was self-publishing another game I would probably sell my game, never put it on sale, and try to publish anywhere where I didn't have to give up basically any percent outside of interchange fees to process credit cards.
I watched a talk on Steam and independent authors' revenue, and it's a tremendous tax on top of an environment where it's so difficult to build a good product, generate revenue, and grow to begin with. And your customers will happily buy and build $1,500 dollar systems to play $20-70 dollar games on sale for $10-50 dollars. And then complain about the price of games, too.
And predominantly my most vocal users are teenagers, and running communities where they want to interact with the developers is just such a tremendous liability because you almost have to parent their behavior.
I watched a talk on Steam and independent authors' revenue, and it's a tremendous tax on top of an environment where it's so difficult to build a good product, generate revenue, and grow to begin with. And your customers will happily buy and build $1,500 dollar systems to play $20-70 dollar games on sale for $10-50 dollars. And then complain about the price of games, too.
And predominantly my most vocal users are teenagers, and running communities where they want to interact with the developers is just such a tremendous liability because you almost have to parent their behavior.
It's just an awful environment.