The Steam gaming storefront now offers bundles as Valve started letting developers team-up. Valve outlined the new DIY collaborative bundles in a blog post on June 2, describing the new feature as a way to collect titles with common themes.
Steaming Gaming Bundles
Steam had already offered multi-developer bundles, but only those specially curated on the platform.
Any developer on the platform can create a gaming bundle and send an invitation link to other creators, who can then choose to add their own projects.
The bundle owner then locks the bundle, and participants agree to a name, discount amount, royalty split, and other details.
All of the participants have to approve later game additions. Still, someone can remove their game from the bundle unilaterally, and the bundle owner can change the description and art without approval.
Valve notes that creators need to be sure that they trust the owner of the bundle.
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Valve describes DIY bundles as a co-marketing option for their related games and an option for splitting the royalties, especially on soundtracks.
This means that instead of the publisher selling the video game’s soundtrack and passing along the funds, the publisher can collaborate on a bundle with the musicians.
The themed bundles were available on other platforms, including the Humble Bundle storefront, which helped popularize the feature, according to Tech Raptors.
The developers on the smaller platform Itch.io have used the collaborative gaming bundles for activism and commentary, supporting human rights causes or indie alternatives to big-budget releases like Cyberpunk 2077.
Valve’s new system could help facilitate something similar. Also, it will make it easier for developers to market games together.
Humble Bundle’s Accusations Against Valve
Valve may have introduced a new bundle feature, but another platform, Humble Bundle, has accused Valve of controlling game prices on non-Steam stores, as reported by Games Industry.
According to creator Wolfire, Valve warns the developers that it will remove the games from the Steam platform if the developers charge less for the games on other platforms than they do on Valve’s store. However, it is not clear if this accusation will affect Valves DIY Collaborative Bundle features.
Wolfire announced that it would be suing Valve over what it considers an unfair monopoly on PC gaming.
The studio has also released a blog post detailing more of its reasons for bringing that lawsuit.
In the post, Wolfire’s David Rosen details his experiences releasing his game “Overgrowth” on stores with lower commission rates than Valve, which usually takes 30% of a developer’s profits on Steam, even though the number changes depending on the overall sales figures.
Rosen stated that he told Valve he would be launching his game at a lower price on those stores, and Valve told him it would remove Overgrowth from Steam if he allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere.
Valve’s Upcoming Games
According to Esports Insiders, the announcement of the DIY Collaborative Bundle feature came right after Valve officially confirmed the schedule of the much-anticipated upcoming annual “Dota 2” tournament.
The tournament has a prize pool of over $40 million, and it is something that “Dota 2” fans were looking forward to for more than a year now, especially since the tournament was postponed last year due to the pandemic.
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Written by Sophie Webster
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