You can get the same number of games through the Indie Gala and Indie Royale for as equally a cheap price, yet the Indie Gala - a Steam-only bundle - has barely taken in $100,000 per bundle. While concrete figures are not available for Indie Royale, the Valentine's bundle has only sold around 24,000 bundles à $4-5, so a generous estimate would be $120,000 there as well.

The HIBs take in between $1 million and $2 million. Go figure.

HIBs are a success because of many factors, and DRM-free is one of them.

Other bundles (like Indie Gala, and even Indie Royal) sell only up to 30k of games, while HIBs up to over 400k, no less than 130k.

And if you think DRM-free factor is not important, then you are clearly wrong. I'd not even look at those if they were Steam-only games. And I'm not the only one.

Heck, I don't even have time to play HIB games, I buy them just to give some money to the developers who went with DRM-free.
Well, this IndieRoyal is also the first one which has two Steam only games (not counting Serious Sam Bundle, because it was something extra).

And as it's less than hout to the end, this is the worst selling (again, except Serious Sam Bundle) Indie Royale Bundle. It won't cross 24k, while with onlt one Steam-only game they always crossed over 27k, and with better bundles they crossed 30k (twice).

(I think this one would count as 'better' too).

Maybe it's not that big difference, but it's still 5k less bundles sold.

I've bought every Indie Royale till now, but I decided not to buy this one.

And again we're talking about steam and not drm-free releases ;-) Ok, let's get it on.

The problem for most developers is to estimate their demand. They know for a big success they need to be on steam or in a Humble Indie Bundle, everything else is in the first place not really important today. For me it seems most of the developers are programers and fear the business part and being on steam they don't need to take care about it. And here it shows why open letters with some feedback are so important - they show that it can be worth to offer their games besides on steam.

Valve had the right product (half-life 2) at the right time with it's framework (growing broadband connections and internet users) to do this, exactly like like Apples iPod and iTunes. Everything was perfect and well played and they still utilize their first-mover advantages, so congratulations for this. But personally I don't see the point not to use another service, especially when the developers can also target another customer base?

The problem here is that at some points these "phobics" are right and it's legit to express their displease and showing the demand for another type of service. In your eyes these people are a minority, but also they can generate some profits and it's the developers decision if he will try to catch or leave it. Thanks to such feedback it will help him to better value the demand and maybe doing an extrastep beside releasing only on steam.

You made my day.

PWYW -> both Indie Galas are PWYW but they don't sell as much as the HIB
extra goodies -> second Indie Gala has a shit ton of music as part of the bundle but it has been selling way slower than HIB. Indie Royale also has added OSTs and even DLC as surprises but sales are still lower.
whole games added to existing bundles as surprises -> Both Indie Gala and Indie Royale did that. Indie Royale even brings games that weren't available for PC before like Super Crossfire and Soulcaster, even DLC that HIB has never had (Gratuitous and Jamestown don't have any DLC on HIB) but still HIB sells more.
first ever bundle launched -> no it wasn't, it was the first successful bundle launched and may I remind you that HIB1 didn't have Steam codes added until months after tha bundle had ended but it still earned more than 1 million dollars even though most people haven't even heard about Wolfire before.

I think it's safe to say that cross-platform, DRM-free, and charity is what really makes HIB successful rather than Steam. If anything Steam codes mostly brings the people that payed a penny for the bundle until they restricted the price for Steam keys.

Hmm, I can hardly disagree with this. I just get the feeling (maybe a wrong impression) that those "steam phobics" look down on the Steam users as uneducated sheep. That just rubs me wrong and makes me lose my otherwise shiny disposition.

The point that big publishers could also use my arguments has it's merrits. But I certainly hope that indie devs are more "in tune" with gamers today. They accept the DRM part of Steam for the other benefits it offers, but they don't want the DRM per se. Big publishers have to justify their financial backers, and DRM seems to be a good way to soothe them. Therefore they still use them, not because they actually think it improves their sales.

I took "offense" in the original letter because I'm very, very happy that indies are finally earning money for their efforts in a hassle free way. The thinking "I deserve a DRM free copy" is, imo, the same "out of touch" thinking many gamers charge big publishers with.
You made some good points, but we already have at least Desura and GG as good alternatives for indies. Still devs don't go there. I can't look in there heads, my points are based on the fact that I assume most of those devs come from a gamer background and they know how some feel about Steam. A simple look at the kickstarter comment fee makes it obvious that there are people who seem to have a problem with steam, but appearently those aren't enough to warrant the extra work and financial risk.

Btw, as mentioned before by others, I would guess that a good portion of the Steam indie games don't even need Steam to run (like all those dosbox games). So I don't really see the problem with Steam in those cases.

Then I invite you to read the letter again because I don't know how could I be most respectful to indies than what I wrote and I also don't know how I could be more clear that this is not an anti-Steam letter. I think your Steam-phobic-phobia has tricked you.

I have tried with Binding of Isaac and it works, but I do not think this solves the problem. You have to actually cheat to bypass the DRM, like in the case of GG. And it definitely do not solve the concern that Valve is becoming too powerful. However, from now on I will directly ask developers if I can use that trick with their games.

I've had to use offline mode quite a few times in the past. Here's my experiences:

Internet went down for several days (lightning strike) and I turned on offline mode on Steam to play some more HL2 Ep1. I click the game in Steam, Steam wants to check for an update and demands to go online, turns off offline mode and impossible to turn it back on. Yay *rolls eyes*

Another time, I log in on my laptop while on the train and ... it asks to go online. Nothing I could do to make it go offline.

Another time, power goes down for half a day - idiot drove into a fuse box somewhere. I'm sitting at home bored so think "hey my laptop is charged and has two hours of power, let's play Bookworm Adventures". I open my laptop, start up Steam and it mentions an update and then refuses to go to offline mode.

The ONLY time it worked, was when I took my laptop to work during a night shift and had no spare ethernet cable (I brought it to play TV series while I was working) so when I had my break, Steam worked fine. That ONCE. So that's 1 out of 4.

You may be right that they have improved it but if it took them over 8 years, it better f**king work. That's nothing to pat them on the back for.

Yep, if there's some queued update , steam won't go to offline mode in most cases. Happened to me few times. But most of the time runs perfectly fine.

I also had a poor experience with Steam offline mode. Besides the fact that you have to activate the offline mode while being online (which, in case you didn't expected the connection loss makes the whole offline mode basically useless...) I also had the occasion to see that the games begin to deactivate themselves while being in offline mode. I had a 1month+ connection loss while moving to a new home, I had activated offline mode before moving out and most games worked fine in the beginning. But then after a few weeks some games simply refused to run anymore. Not cool.

In regard to OP - http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02/15/dear-esther-we-sold-16000-copies-in-24-hours-shepherds/

"Dear Esther, the minimalist first-person explorer, made its costs back in the first five and a half hours on sale" - hmmmmmm


Edit:
http://indie-fund.com/2012/02/dear-esther-has-reached-profitability-it-took-5-hours-30-minutes/

http://www.edge-online.com/news/dear-esther-recoups-investment-within-six-hours

And proof that the general paying customer do not care about DRM, which is why developers uses platforms like steam.

The customer have voted with their moneys, and like it or not, this was the vote.

Economy for retards, yet a large majority of the steam only indie games tend to be among the most successful indie games as well. Doing what the customer wants, more or less these days, is a steam release. The economics of hosting your own downloads and updates and setting up a purchase infrastructure is likely not viable for a lot of these developers. They might not get your money, but they tend to make headway in this economy for retards just fine.

All it proves is that people are willing to pay for good games in spite of there being pirated versions about. It also proves that Steam's DRM is fucking useless. Any of those people could easily have pirated the game, but they chose to donate their money to a good game.

On the other hand, 16,000 copies is not exactly a ringing endorsement of DRM, especially given the heavy marketing and widespread praise the game has received. I'll bet my bottom dollar that the number would have been a lot higher if Steam had not been required.

Sadly I'm not among those 16,000, as I do not pay more than €5 for a game over Steam on principle, but I will certainly pick it up when it goes on offer.