In a world where PC and mobile gaming is dominated by the Play Store, App Store, and Steam - it's a great time to have other options to increase competition. While web technologies were much more limited when Flash was sunsetted, they are now more than capable of supporting many compelling games.
Platforms & Trust
This is not to say these platforms do not provide value - they provide a significant amount of value by:
- Hosting the scalable always-on infrastructure
- Being a (fairly) neutral third-party to make reviews trustworthy
- Acting as the Merchant of Record to greatly simplify international sales (e.g. international sales tax, international corporate income tax)
- Providing a discovery channel for new games (e.g. the list of games on the homepage, festivals, or curated recommendations)
- Encoding a social graph across multiple games, rather than per publisher
- Being a trusted merchant with your credit card details that you can easily get a refund from (e.g. in the case of Steam within 2 hours of gameplay)
- Customer service for billing issues
But of course this comes at the cost of a cut of the proceeds (a 15-30% cut, though this includes credit card fees) and their terms of services - often including anti-steering provisions.
For instance, Valve does not allow games on Steam to use in-game advertising other than product placements. And I'll be clear, it's entirely reasonable for a platform to decide that - the issue is when that platform has too much power compared to its competitors.
Alternatives
While there are a few alternatives, more diverse competition is welcome.
Epic Game Store has a smaller revenue cut (0% on the first $1M, 12% after), but shockingly has failed to support proper game reviews - which is a huge moat that Steam has.
itch.io is often used for demos and smaller games, but seems to be primarily a place to get feedback before posting on Steam. It does support web games (nice!) and even supports not being the Merchant of Record.
GOG prides itself on not having DRM.
Poki, CrazyGames and such also provide a split of ad-revenue on their platform, though they are quite heavy on the ads (often having pre-roll video ads and more than one companion ad).
Benefits of the Web
While platforms provide significant value and have significant momentum, using the web (vs. a direct competitor that installs games) allows players to play your games with lower levels of trust.
Web games are sandboxed
Users have been taught to not fear visiting unknown websites, until they ask for payment or sensitive information. This is in contrast to downloading and installing programs - and for good reason - the browser sandbox is quite restrictive. Thus with a web as your platform, players are much more likely to try your game if it is a web game (which anecdotally, seems to match the developer experience on itch which supports both web games and downloadable executables).
Players can start a new web game within a couple seconds
Unlike with PC games, Android games or iOS games, players can start playing a game after following a link within seconds - and even better they could join a party a friend had created. I've never seen anything remotely close outside of the web. Of course, this requires intelligent game architecture to make the time-to-play low, like only loading what the player needs immediately.
A direct connection with your users
When you own the website, there is no other corporation that owns the direct connection with your users - especially if you are also the Merchant of Record. This gives you the flexibility to build opt-in email lists during sign-up - assuming your users see value in it. Or even, if you really build trust and use them judiciously, sending notifications. That's the difference - there is no platform protecting the users, it's just you and the user.
Business model flexibility
On your website, you can choose your payment model - from upfront purchase (though that is unlikely to work without existing user trust), additional gameplay/levels/features/cosmetics for a cost, advertising - or a combination thereof. And you keep everything other than the credit card fees.
Of course, if you are the Merchant of Record, that's a lot to take on - so there are middle options like Paddle or Stripe Managed Payments - where they act as the Merchant of Record for a higher fee.
Our Plan
At Whyle Labs, we have launched Klimb as "Very Early Access" using our own rented dedicated machines. We may also end up selling through the platforms, but for now, we are seeing how far we can go self-hosting.
If you listen to most gamedev discourse, a lot of it is about how to live in Steam's world - gathering wishlists, demos, festivals and early access. But on the web, it's a totally different situation - which allows you to iterate a bit more in public without being worried about Steam reviews.