All of those sites have a huge barrier to entry. If you were an indie game dev and you wanted to start selling your game immediately it is not possible with those sites. There is an entire market of tiny game developers who never would dream of selling their game on something like steam. This gives them the opportunity to host their game, and set a minimum price of say 0. Now they have the potential to make money off of their side projects. I'd say that's a pretty empowering.

Smaller sites have a huge barrier to entry for consumers though. For a large percentage of gamers, myself included, if it's not on Steam, it might as well not exist. I'm far more hesitant to download/purchase from other services.

The nice thing about steam is that:

1: They're established, I don't have to worry about my CC security

2: I can re-download forever* on any computer. It is impossible to overstate how big of a deal this is.

3: Nothing to remember. No serials/keys to keep track of. No installers to back-up. IT JUST WORKS.

4: Auto-updates

1. itch.io uses PayPal. Assuming you trust them, there is nothing to worry about.

2. itch.io provides the same mechanism. You are paying for the game, not the single download.

3. As long as you can re-download the game, then there is no reason to save the installer. Serials/keys are up to the discretion of the game developer and I don't see why giving the game developers control is a bad thing. I think most indie games are against DRM anyway.

4. In order to support auto-updates, the game developer has to invest in the Steam APIs. There is nothing stopping games on itch.io to using out-of-band updates.

The developer doesn't need to do anything to enable steam updates. Steam just does a binary diff vs the master copy.

For 2 & 3, that's great, but to be honest there is a huge burden of proof - frankly, I don't really expect any random startup that doesn't even have a .com domain to be around in 5 years.

dotcom is so 90s yo.

I think you're right, there is a barrier for most consumers who love Steam. But for another percentage of gamers, like me, there's zero barrier to entry.

1: I like not having to launch Steam to play my games.

2: I know there are good games that exist that aren't on Steam and am more than willing to go through a CC form or PayPal.

3: I'm slowly getting irrated with games with DRM, online-only, DLC.

I think itch.io is a win for these niches of indie game developers and consumers who buy indie games.

I am far more likely to buy something on steam. However, you sometimes find motivated customers. I some how ended up watching a really long let's play of UnrealWorld at which point I really wanted to buy the game even though the registration process is a horrible the developer still got my money.

Desura has nearly zero barrier to entry, provided your game actually works: http://www.moddb.com/tutorials/publishing-on-desura

>off of

Another idiot...

Not sure about Desura/GOG, but Steam has a vetting process. If you're not a game developer with a following, or if your first game doesn't meet their standards, you can't get onto their marketplace.

You're also required to use their SDK and integrate some functionality into your game. Looks like with itch.io you can just upload your binaries.

Also DRM. Some (small percentage of?) players would love to play games without launching Steam. I love the no-DRM games on humble bundle.

Steam has Greenlight now, so you don't have to be "vetted" by Valve anymore.

There are many other services already though that provide similar functionality, such as indie game stand, desura, etc. that have none of the restrictions you've mentioned as being a reason to not use Steam.

So again, what makes this service compelling?

Greenlight is still a vetting process, just with a different mechanism. Suggesting that anyone can just get their game on Steam is flat out wrong. Really well made and polished games (see: Midnight Mansion from ActionSoft) fail to get noticed through either process all the time.

I have nothing to do with this service but I find it definitely compelling. Indie Game Stand only features one new game every four days (so even if you're accepted you likely have to wait to launch.) As for Desura, that looks like another good option, but is still quite a bit more involved.

If I made a game (a 48 Lundum Dare game like in the example page, for instance) and just wanted a way to put it out there immediately with little effort and no need to join a community or anything, itchio provides that option. That's what is compelling.

Those are things that might be compelling to the content creators, but I'm not seeing much that's compelling to consumers. (And I'm not convinced that there isn't already another similar service that also addresses those concerns.)

As the others pointed out, most of us don't want yet another game distribution service -- we already have a few.

From a consumer point of view it isn't a game distribution service (at least I don't think so.) I make a game and I tell some friends about it or post about it on my blog and link to a page where they can find out more info and "buy" it (or grab it free if they prefer.) From the consumer point of view it might as well be a page on my own website, they don't care. When I bought FTL I went to the FTL web page and paid them $10 and got the game. I didn't need to join any communities or discover the game through a community or anything. This seems similar to that. (FTL offers redemption of the game on Steam as well, but that doesn't matter to me.)

[ As an aside, FTL is apparently on sale for $5 for the next couple days. I recommend this game to anyone and everyone who ever enjoyed an episode of Star Trek or Firefly.

FTL: http://www.ftlgame.com

Day[9] Plays FTL: http://blip.tv/day9tv/day-9-s-day-off-p1-ftl-faster-than-lig... (how I discovered the game)

/aside ]

Agreed, to me it seems that something like this has the potential to become the "Bandcamp for games."

Steam, even with Greenlight, is intended to host a curated selection of games. That is part of (or at least it traditionally was) Steam's value to consumers, but it has the side-effect of introducing bias against small, rapidly-developed, prototypical or otherwise less-polished games.

Here's a niche: Some people make neat game prototypes for competitions like Ludum Dare with a surprising amount of potential. Not everyone can afford to quit their job to turn their prototype into a well-polished product that can succeed on a popular app store or be crowdfunded (nor is every idea mainstream or even good enough to warrant that), but they are probably capable of at least cleaning up their prototype a bit and adding a decent set of levels or other content.

If someone makes a generic but fun game for Ludum Dare (say, a pixelated-platformer with a gimmick), I'd probably be willing to toss them a few bucks, mostly out of good will, for a more-polished but still quickly and cheaply developed successor. Whether they use that money towards developing an iteration that can succeed on a popular crowdfunding site (which are being quickly taken over by marketing experts) or as pocket change is fine with me.

This use case could be even more well supported by a Bandcamp-like donation system (which is what "pay what you like, or nothing at all if you are aware that you are allowed to enter $0" effectively is).

I'll end my reply by wondering aloud if a new generation of freeware games would ever be viable -- high-quality niche games released for free (and possibly open-sourced), and supported by a no-strings-attached donation scheme.

I attended a talk given by Gabe Newell at my university back in January, and in it he mentioned that he wasn't satisfied with it and they might phase it out. So Greenlight may not always be there.

Did you listen to his other talk where he mentioned that he felt like anyone should be able just publish a game on Steam using their APIs without approval?

You don't have to use the SDK and you don't have to use DRM