devtrackers.gg
(just to clarify, I am in no way involved with Dead Matter, I am just a guy who has worked on and has multiple games on Steam)
This is probably a very dumb endeavor to go on since from what I have seen, everybody who has tried to go against some of these conspiracies is just pegged as a "white knight" for the devs.
But guess what, I can tell you your conspiracies are wrong and also be very against how the developers of Dead Matter have handled the situation thus far. Which I am. You guys have every right to be upset, but please it doesn't help your cause when the "reasons" you guys are coming up with for what they did are so wrong its actually kind of ridiculous.
Yes. Valve takes 30%. BUT Valve only takes 30% from sales on the Steam Store. Since you know, that is what you are paying for, using their store front to get access to their millions of customers.
Valve does not charge for keys. This is such a dumb thing that I keep seeing pop up everywhere and everyone is saying it like its fact. Its not, not even in the slightest. What are they charging 30% of? Why would they be charging 30%? To host the game files? That would be the worst deal in the history of online hosting.
If say I want to sell my game on the Humble Store, I literally generate keys, set up a deal with Humble and send them the keys.
If I want to sell keys on my own website, again I just generate X number of keys, set up my website and sell the keys.
And yes, there is a limit to the number of keys you can generate in a given timeframe, but I will not speak on it because off the top of my head, I am unsure of the exact numbers.
The rules against this are:
You can't sell things for cheaper (I believe just the base price and that short term sales aren't counted, but I may be slightly wrong on this, but the idea that I am saying is correct). Meaning I can't sell it on Steam for $30 but $20 on my website.
And then the rule that I believe they just ran into: You cannot sell keys for something that you cannot buy on steam ONCE ITS RELEASED.
Meaning what they have done up until this point was perfectly fine, but now that the game is an actual product that you can play, they have to stop all sales everywhere until the game is released on Early Access and purchaseable in the Steam Store. What they have been doing, selling keys for future access to the game falls under crowdfunding and is perfectly fine. I feel like so many of you forgot Dead Matter isn't the first game to crowdfund and then host a closed alpha on steam as one of the perks...
Again, I am not going to speculate on anything the developers have said. I am just going to say that I am personally frustrated with how the developers have handled the situation. They could have done this so much better.
And again, you guys have every right to be mad. But please be mad for the right reasons. It just does not look good and also invalidates all of your claims to people who know how Valve/Steam work.
I am in no way saying QI is right, or didn't lie about anything. There are some shady things that have happened, but its not even in the ballpark to the theories a lot of you are saying.
EDIT: Alright, I must head out for the day here, but I think I have pretty much answered everything I can in the comments. Maybe I will try and pop in if anything else comes up. Again, this is what I do for a living. I am pretty well versed on the subject. If you still don't believe it and want to think that what I am saying is false. I just ask you to remember this: Nobody has brought any proof forward that even makes a hint at Valve ever charging for keys. Do your own research, you will not find any proof of Valve ever charging for keys. Instead you will find 500 articles/forum posts of people saying they don't and nothing that says the contrary. You can be upset at QI for their handling. That is fine. But there is no need to continue a chain of misinformation on public knowledge.
And here, for the definitive proof literally right from Valve itself:
Steam keys are meant to be a convenient tool for game developers to sell their game on other stores and at retail. Steam keys are free and can be activated by customers on Steam to grant a license to a product.
Valve provides the same free bandwidth and services to customers activating a Steam key that it provides to customers buying a license on Steam. We ask you to treat Steam customers no worse than customers buying Steam keys outside of Steam. While there is no fee to generate keys on Steam, we ask that partners use the service judiciously.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
EDIT 2: Alright, and after a death threat and a suicide request, I think I am going to go ahead and close out my DMs and stop replies from coming in here. I know the majority of the community is rational, but I am not really up for dealing with the crazies just for posting facts from another perspective. Plus I don't think I have enough whiskey!
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