FSX-SE 3rd party vendors - please put your wares on Steam

[OmniAtlas 93]

Steam should act as a central software depository. 

 

It would help with finding software compatible with FSX:SE, assist with your distribution, and help you find new customers. 

 

 

[Milviz 919]

We can't. We have to be chosen by you.

[joandreas 3]

publishers got control over dlc. limit steam have made.

x-plane have a few from aerosoft. but they release it much later on steam.

[Jordi Blumberg 34]

Also you guys do realize if you publish DLC via DTG/Steam, for each sale the dev only get 25%* of the revenue? Steam take 50%, DTG take another 25%, so for it to be worth it the dev has to sell over 4x more copies than elsewhere!

 

(*Going off what other Devs have said, and the fact its an identical setup to how their 3rd Party 'Partner Program' was set-up for Train Sim).

[OmniAtlas 93]

We can't. We have to be chosen by you.

 

Does it have to be in a 'greenlight' zone?

 

I would gladly vote -- the steam customer base is huge and it would be great if the software could easily be available on the platform.  

[liketofly1 11]

Does it have to be in a 'greenlight' zone?

 

I would gladly vote -- the steam customer base is huge and it would be great if the software could easily be available on the platform.  

 

It would be nice to have all the Developers Products in one Place, however - If the dev only get's 25% - then either their products have to be a lot more expensive on steam (normal price +50% for steam + 25% for publisher) or the developer, who has the most work developing the product- only gets a small portion of the cake. Now I personally would prefer the devs to make the money instead of Steam or DT..... I think in the long run its better invested money..... Guy's keep the dev's alive!!!

 

And how many kiddies do you think would buy a quality product like PMDG 737 for 130€ on steam instead of the 69,99€ on PMDG's website when they only paid 5$ for the Simulator itself?

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

I don't believe that Steam charges that much overhead to developers. Here's a quote from Wikipedia :

 

" In early 2011, Forbes reported that Steam sales constituted 50–70% of the US$4 billion market for downloaded PC games and that Steam offered game producers gross margins of 70% of purchase price, compared with 30% at retail."

 

On the other hand what Dovetail might be doing could be totally different.

[WfordJr 1]

 As a business owner I have some philosophies.#1. If I m getting paid nothing I'll do nothing.  #2. SOME is better than none!

[joandreas 3]

Well dovetail will certanly wants their bit off cake.

But margins is pretty important in flight simulator business

[zmak 331]

End of the day a dev could get sell 10x more on steam making it well worth while. But Im just guessing of course

[airernie 263]

End of the day a dev could get sell 10x more on steam making it well worth while. But Im just guessing of course

 

 

But probably not at the prices developers need to sell new releases at.

 

I do see a renewed market for their older products. Those could be heavily discounted because development costs have likely been recouped.

[Jordi Blumberg 34]

I don't believe that Steam charges that much overhead to developers.

 

If I recall correctly, DLC sales are different to main-game sales. 

 

@Zoran, there's no way we'd sell 10x more copies of $50-$90 DLC for a 10 year old game. It takes many months to years for the average Flight Simulator user to become 'invested' enough to spend more than $20 on an add-on. So even if there is some hidden FS market ten times the size of the current market, it will take years before those users become invested enough to spend that sort of money on 'just a plane'.

 

I also doubt many of my fellow developers would want to deal with Dovetail Games when it comes to publishing, seeing as how they've done business in the Train Simulator world for the last 5 years. Just go have a look at the list for in-house produced DLC for Train Simulator 2015:

 

Class 66 EWS £11.99

Class 66 Freightliner £11.99

Class 66 Freightliner Special £11.99

Class 66 DRS (Unreleased ATOW due to licensing) £11.99

 

In case you're wondering, the above products are IDENTICAL apart from the livery. Yup, you're paying for the whole product over just to get another livery. I could just be being overly pessimistic, but having developed for their TS platform for nearly 5 years, I'm all too familiar with how they do business, and unless they show a change of heart I really can't see many top-tier developers pushing to work with them.

[PIC007 82]

The problem is that the quality addon developers are a product of their own success. MS saw the revenue potential from addons, tried to stick it to devs, launched Flight, and failed. Looks to me like Dovetail has the same idea, stick it to the devs, I see the same results coming.

 

Outside of the multiplayer option, which is a non issue for 90% of us, I dont see any reason to move to Steam