Hello everyone, I have a question about a contradiction that is coming out of the Indie Game Market...at least as far as I see it.
I am hearing that it is suicide to release your game without any marketing and that’s fine, that makes perfect sense. However, I am also hearing people who have released games saying that their sales on Steam were much much better than Itch.io.
This doesn’t make much sense to me and it is a contradiction in terms of the necessity of Indie Game Marketing.
If my game will only go as far as my marketing efforts (assuming the game is worth buying) then why should I give 30% of my profits to Steam vs. Itch.io's 0% payment requirement? If Steam does, in fact, boost sales simply because it is Steam, then that implies that marketing is not 100% important. Yes, I understand that Steam has DRM, but piracy, from what I hear, is just something that all developers have to live with (or thwart it themselves by releasing crippled versions of the game on the piracy market.) If I am bringing the customers to my game's storefront....if I am the only one putting all the marketing effort and marketing work into selling my game, why should I give 30% away to Steam? If releasing a game on Steam, with no marketing at all, will result in $0 sales, why bother with Steam at all?
So which is true here? Releasing a game with no market is guaranteed to bring in $0 sales or does releasing a game on Steam mean that some sales will come in with no marketing effort at all, simply because you are on Steam? Could it be that once you get a certain amount of sales on Steam it will attract other Steam customers that your marketing couldn't reach?
Thanks for your input here.
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