What other store front? Steam owns PC gaming. It's not like getting banned from Walmart where there are other large stores to sell on. If you're not on steam, and you're not Epic Games or The Witcher 3, you don't exist. Even EA relented and put their games on steam despite having a competing store

Itch comes to mind, Humble is another

Humble mostly sells cd keys to steam games and almost all itch games are free. How is somebody going to pay their bills with that as a marketplace? How easy and cheap do you think game dev is? Do you think that indie devs deserve to be able to pay their bills?

Its disingenuous to state cases which arn't applicable to this case (humble selling keys when they also sell full games without keys) (itch having free games when they also have paid games), and then using that as a strawman of what I'm suggesting

Is it Valve's responsibility to ensure they can pay their bills?

Its Valve's responsibility to make sure all dev's on their platform are treated fairly.

Do you think this would happen to a major publisher? That support agent would never pull this kind of thing with a major publisher as they would be afraid of losing their job.

They are picking on a no-name indie because they know we have no agency on their platform.

Yes, this is what I am on about. Game dev's need Steam to make a living. I don't think its right to allow steam support to arbitrarily "retire" games at any point in the games lifecycle for any reason of their choosing.

Also if you haven't been through the Steam submission process- you submit a build- they tell you what is wrong with it- you fix it and resubmit- and thats the normal loop.

This one was submit build- issue- fix issue - submit build - game "retired" - dev asks help for support- no answers- asks for more help- account censored.

The game not allowed to go through the submission process like normal.

Its an idealogical thing- we don't need steam for our livelihood but most game dev's do.

I'm assuming that indie dev's don't want to be treated like this but maybe most all of their backs are already broken and they just take being treated like that? 0_0

> but maybe most all of their backs are already broken and they just take being treated like that?

https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/negging

Linking to a mental health help article as a response is very bad taste. When you disagree on HN, it is supposed to lead to discussions, not this

I don't believe trying to shame or "neg" other developers is an appropriate thing, so I do not intend it to be a positive taste

If I see abusive approaches, I will call it out, this time I called it out with an article listing the ramifications on others, of such approaches

Are you a bot?

No

That's what a bot would print.

Why ask a question if you don't care about the answer.

Sorry- I was just trying to be funny- our studio also does comedy ^_^

> there is no rights that suggest you can force them to sell your product.

I must have missed where the poster said what Steam did was illegal - could you point it out to me?

I never said that the poster said that.

So why bring up rights?

So you think its ok for a support agent to essentially ban your game at any time for any reason with no recourse?

One support agent? eh maybe? Multiple support agents / Escalation? yes. I think that's okay.

At the point it was "retired" or banned essentially- there was no escalation, no warning and it was through a single agent.

Could you post all of your interactions with steam in regards to the build that got your game retired? That would probably help people to know what they are fighting for, if they choose to fight for you

I see two staff responses, and an escalation in progress, is that correct?

You got it- here you go the entire interaction that led to the game being removed https://imgur.com/a/F9jIsuJ

What makes this especially odd- I asked around other Steam dev's/forums etc and no one has ever heard of a game in the submission process being "retired" by a support agent like this. Game "retirement" is usually done by the dev when they no longer want to sell or support the game afaik. I don't know but the "game" is an interactive film and perhaps the agent watched the film and had some artistic issue with it? I don't know of course its just all so strange. You can see some of the content here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ9gY5SrCrU&lc=UgxZs7qsDVGaz...

Ok so what if they collude like humans do? Is that ok? Steam support agents are humans not smart contracts with immutable code.

yep thats okay, thats kinda how a business is ran. Most people call them "co-workers" not "colluders"