– Beamdog CEO Trent Oster (Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear)
A number of independent PC game developers share their thoughts on the question “Is Steam too powerful?” and the interesting thing is that, essentially, while the answer might be “yes,” they’re happy with Valve being the one in that position.
Oster, above, is of course referring to Valve co-founder Gabe Newell, whose hands-on approach makes his name nearly synonymous with how the company is run.
In fact, the take of Paul Kilduff-Taylor of Frozen Synapse developer Mode 7 Games is, “if I was to pick companies in the world that I would be happy to be in a position of that power, one of them would be Valve.”
His reasoning: “they are developers and they come from that background,” which leads to a greater understanding of the pains of game developers and, thus, a better platform for them.
“Monopolies are never good but they’re better guys than most,” says Bolverk Games CEO Bo Bennekov, which basically sums up the argument. There’s more detail, of course, and if you want it, you should read the full article over at PCGamesN.
Classic Gabe Newell fanart by Saejin Oh.