Hi everyone. Many of you have been asking, “Why Steam?” I thought I’d address this here to shed some light on the thought process that went into our decision.
We’re certainly not ruling out any platforms at this point. I hope 1-6 does well enough on Steam for PC that we can bring it to PSN and as many other platforms as is technically possible! Our expected spec requirements for PixelJunk 1-6 are fairly low, so even people without a “gaming PC” will be able to throw down.
Steam gives us the freedom to open up our development process and be completely transparent approaching release. 1-6 started like a gamejam with just a few of us, so a frank and honest dev blog is something we really wanted to carry through. We also want to rapidly iterate on the game following release, and Steam is probably the best platform around for this at the moment. Steam also has some interesting features we want to explore like the new ‘big picture mode’. I’m also particularly interested to hear how their recent Linux Beta is going.
In a perfect world I think most game devs would love for every decision they ever make to be simply because, “this will make the game more fun!”. Being an indie studio in control of our own destiny at the moment, we’re in the fortunate position of being able to do just that.
It’s exciting times for us!
Thanks for the explanation Rowan. can’t wait to check it out :)
The better question is: Why not Steam?
That’s like having the opportunity to sell your chair at Ikea, but selling it from home instead.
Thanks for the explanation, but why no OS X compatibility?
OS X is something we might consider later on for sure. We don’t have the manpower at the moment though to focus on multiple platforms, so we’re sticking with PC just to start.
The game looks absolutely funky fresh! Amazing job on the art direction! Are you guys also considering any PS platforms? *Cross my fingers hope to smash evil robots*, I think that’s how the saying goes.