It a bit surprised me, I thought you just dropped the idea of releasing GD on Steam and you won’t do it.
I do agree on that sometime people buy things on Steam for convenience but I’m not sure if you would/could ask any money for GD. The main competitors on Steam are CF and C2 as both works (using events) very similar way to GD.
But both has something to offer for it price. By using CF you can develop not only Games, but just about any application. It has extensive amount of events focusing not only on pure game development.
C2 can export games, just about for any existing platform/market for a very low price.
Imo GM is not a competitor as it works completely different way, if someone prefer the way as GM works, I doubt that would bother with GD or CF and C2 in any case. But if we consider it as a competitor simply because it about making games, I would say GM offer more flexibility and more traditional way of development for it price thanks to it GML scripting language. For example, a guy made an FPS game maker (Silent Walk FPS Creator 1) in GM. Just made a game maker in a game maker. Ant the Studio version has even more features.
GD is a great tool, I love it, even if it very similar to C2 and CF I prefer GD because it really easy and fast to make just about anything. Any time I’m using a different tool, the only thing I can think of “how easy would be this and that with GD” because of the events available, because of the way the variables handled, because of the way the animations and points handled, because of for each object event, because of the linked object extension, the way text is handled…etc…etc. GD has many really useful features and the way it handle things is very smart and flexible but to experience it, people need to use it, but people use things if it has something extra, something plus to offer. So the point I want to get in to, is that, I would buy GD on steam because I know it and love it and simply to have it in my library but other people who just don’t know it, need something to offer to convince them to give it a try and especially to convince people to pay for it. Number of platforms, already taken by competitors. Events, feature set is already taken by competitors, would not make sense to try to catch up with them on this. Price, 10 euro is nice, free is even better, but need something else.
In my opinion you should integrate the Steam API in to GD Steam version, so GD would be able to export a game, ready to release on Steam easily so users of GD don’t have to worry about integrating Steam API, it would be already integrated in to their game made in GD Steam version. Workshop integration would be nice too. For example GD users could share events in the Workshop, similar to GDevApp, could share projects, assets too and even complete games. For example in Leadwerks Game Engine, you can share complete games not only assets and projects so Leadwerks users can share their games on Steam without need Greenlight and without sharing the actual source and assets. Of course to play games you need Leadwerks but in theory you could release a “player” for free, that Steam users could download , and play games on Steam made in GD and shared in the Workshop. Imo, such API integration and Workshop features could be something that would motivate people to try it, use it, buy it on Steam.
I would like to have GD on steam, but honestly, I don’t recommend to spend money on registration if you won’t add extra features to Steam version. People interested in game development and have been on the search what tools are available, probably already know about GD, if they are not convinced to give it a try, a doubt it Steam it self and a low or free price could convince anybody. Sure, a Steam release could help with recognition, but actually how many people would actually stay with GD? Just take a look at the indegogo campaign. Some new faces did show up on the forum, maybe with some % the number of people visited the website is also grown at the time of the campaign, but how many of them are still here? On the english forum the number is 0 I don’t know about the french forum. and how about the visitor statistics? Is the number of visitors is still that high or at least higher a bit since the campaign?
To get recognition is one thing, to convince people to give it a try and to keep them interested the real challenge imo.
