I remember checking Steam's twitter on June 1st, the day that everyone was showing solidarity for BLM, and it was extremely telling that their only post to their 5.4 million followers was about a sale on a game called Gunsmith.
If we've learned anything from video games over the last decade it's that there's an extremely toxic community out there, which seems to be fostering the conversion of the average edge lord into literal nazis. More than ever, our industry needs to be vigil and combat this behaviour, ensuring they don't have a voice in any of our spaces. For Steam to ignore that is the ultimate banal evil.
I'm in the privileged position of being able to survive the hit financially, and I realize it's not necessarily something every studio can afford to do right now, but it's my hope that more developers will voice their concerns to Steam, while either withdrawing existing games, or simply choosing not to publish new games on the platform.
Before launching my latest game near the start of the year, I had reached out to Steam asking whether there was a way to just donate all revenue from the game towards charities, because I'd be willing to give up my 70% if they'd throw in their 30% too. They replied to say no, they didn't have anything set up for that kind of thing. Now look at what itch.io is doing with their charity bundle. Steam clearly has the ability to make a positive difference in the world and they do absolutely nothing. Developers and gamers both deserve better.
