Hooded Horse CEO Tim Bender believes that, while there are a lot of issues facing PC developers, discoverability on Steam is not one of them. "I've seen a lot of people argue that right now lack of discoverability is a fundamental problem for PC games, but I disagree," he writes on LinkedIn.
The publisher has become one of the most prolific—certainly within strategy and management games—with its recent releases including 9 Kings, Cataclismo, Endless Legend 2 and Manor Lords. It's also got good instincts: a significant number of its published games have gone on to be critical and commercial successes.
Bender says that as he's scrolling through Steam, "everything is designed to help me discover games". I can find it hard to sift through the vast number of games released every month, but to be honest I can't fault the Discovery system: it's always spitting out stuff that's in my wheelhouse. And, to be fair, a lot that isn't.
Instead, there's a problem with expectations, he reckons. "Some people complain about the number of games released or wish for some kind of guaranteed exposure, but store platforms should welcome all entrants and let player preferences guide visibility. Sustainability comes from taking hard, early looks at games and the reality of the market size they will reach compared to their costs, when viewed from likely scenarios rather than extreme optimism."
The trick to sustainability, he says, is being realistic. "If we want stability we have to make sure a given game's budget is such that 'success' in the sense of costs being covered and the team continuing on to the next game is achieved with moderate sales based on a cautious estimation of its likely reach with players. And that does mean that some games should not be made, at least at their planned budgets."
But publishers also need to do their part, and sometimes that means taking a few dings. Bender says that "publishers should not be taking 100% of the revenue of games under recoup terms that guarantee them break even at the expense of developers".
If a dev doesn't see money coming in from their new game, that simply means they won't be able to make another one. Publishers, however, are better able to spread the risk. They can take a loss "on this or that project" and make it back "on the ones that did better".
"Likewise, corporate owners need to not shut down studios because they didn't make the line go up to match expectations," he adds. "Indeed, large corporate entities that can absorb risk should expect some losses to be balanced out by other gains, and that the team that had a loss this time might generate tomorrow's hit."
Unfortunately, I doubt any of these "large corporate entities" are going to take a page out of Bender's book. This has been going on for as long as games have existed. The publishers most capable of absorbing risk are also the least likely to actually do that.
In some cases, this is down to shareholders. This is a tempestuous industry but so many of the people and groups funding it will only accept constant growth and a long list of unmitigated successes. And we're now in an era where the goal posts for success are completely out of whack, where even critical and commercial success isn't enough for publishers to keep studios alive.
And in other cases, it's simply down to greed. If the graph keeps going up, who cares how many developers end up falling by the wayside?
