Not at all! It seems like most of the reasons why people love Steam are reasons why I don’t. Everyone’s preferences are different :)

• I’m a solo offline gamer. I prefer to avoid online achievements, leaderboards, co-op, multiplayer, etc.

• I love weird games. Steam loves popular games. Rarely do the two intersect. I only find stuff I like on Steam after I’ve searched for related games here, only to discover that the “real” game for what was apparently just a really great demo is on Steam. And even the free games on Steam (that look like they belong on here tbh) come with the “install Steam launcher to download” string attached. I’m not doing that.

• I like having physical or digital copies of purchased games on my own redundant media storage so I can play them for as long as possible. Pre-Silicon, I used VMware Fusion to play my old Windows 98/XP/7 games. I still use CrossOver for older Windows games, and SheepShaver for Mac OS9 games.

My more Mac-specific gripes:

• Most of the games I want to play have no Mac version, and I need to be able to purchase a DRM- or launcher-free Windows version to run it on a translation layer like GPTK, Wine, etc. in CrossOver or Heroic. Trying to deal with Steam on top of this is too much hassle.

• Steam doesn’t care about labeling Mac games properly. There are many that are still incorrectly labeled as pre-Catalina or Intel-only, so Mac players never get the memo and purchase what could be a playable version. Devs lose out on sales. Devs don’t see the point in making future Mac ports or Mac-native games because Apple hates them (it’s a long story) and Steam ignores them. The cycle continues. At least on itch, I can easily see when the game file was last updated and correctly guess if my machine can run it.

I understand that everyone uses Steam, so everyone continues to only put full games Steam. It means I can’t buy a game I want to play. That’s a missed sale for the dev.

Interesting how you talk about toxicity while making toxic comments yourself.

I just want to buy and play full games on here without being shunted over to Steam. That’s it.

Exactly !

Yeah, it really sucks. I’ve been in game Discord servers where I specifically ask when/if they will release the full version on Itch, and the answer is like “no, but we will release on [insert any other platform here]” in that giving-me-the-side-eye kind of way. Why is it such a weird thing to ask if the place I played the demo will also have the full game?

Actually, why do I have to ask that at all? That’s the weird part imo

This is 100% a service issue that Itch could solve. Do they not know where to start? Do they choose not to care because that’s the “indie” thing to do? I’ve noticed the toxic indie hubris sort of stuff in other niche communities, but I don’t know that much about their behind the scenes stuff, so I’m just guessing.

Also, there aren’t many paid games here in general because they’re on Steam…which has a shopping cart so we can buy multiple games at once instead of individually (that’s a barrier to sales, idc what anyone says). Even GOG managed this, so what’s going on?

I think that if Itch implemented a much lower percentage than Steam’s - like 5% - that’s more than reasonable. Kinda like that Cost Plus Drugs thing, where they only charge the cost of the drug plus a markup to keep the lights on? Nobody’s making kajillions of dollars off grandma’s cancer treatment, you know?

Anyway, I’m ranting lol

Yeah, I don’t mind if devs spread their game across as many platforms as possible - I just want Itch to be one of them.

I foolishly bought a game on Steam once. I really wanted to play it, but the dev did the demo-here-full-game-Steam thing. I’d remembered seeing somewhere that after creating an account, I should be able to easily download and play free games, demos, and DRM-free games I purchased without using Steam’s client. That’s no big deal; I create accounts everywhere else.

After buying, I figured out that what I thought I read was impossible. Even though there was a giant green button that misleadingly said “Download” on the page, it still forced me to install the client first.

I repeat: For free games. And demos. And DRM-free games purchased on Steam.

What absolute nonsense.

Anyway, I thought it wouldn’t be such a big deal to install it just to get my game and then uninstall, right?

Omg. The amount of crap lodged deep within my computer that I had to remove…big antivirus software/malware vibes. I bought an app called Hazel just to make sure I got it all.

Never again.

Edits: typos and a missing sentence sigh