Can you explain your reasoning why you think steam is gouging devs? While you think it may not be fair valve has offered a lot to devs. If it wasn’t for steam, we probably wouldn’t have as many indie games as we do now and it wouldn’t be feasible for some developers to even dream of creating their own game.

Steam does the marketing, they have a way for devs to interact with players, they store and distribute their game to include updates, they have a store page for every game, they have a payment system, they have drm and anti cheat if you want, they have analytics tools.

You can even sell your game elsewhere with steam keys and they won’t take a cut. If devs were that worried about it, they could do that themselves and market it themselves.

Just because a business is a business and trying to make money, doesn’t mean they are gouging people.

This is why I can’t stand Kickstarter and why I won’t ever use it again. It’s no risk to the people asking for handouts and it’s the people giving their money away that take on all the risks.

You pay for something, but you may never actually see it. The product fails and you get nothing. The product succeeds and you get the product you were hoping for, but it may not be 100% what you expected. Also, it’s not like you would get anything more than that, you are not an investor.

If I’m an investor, I take a risk and I could possibly lose all my money that I put into it, but at the tail end of that, if it’s successful, I will get my money back, plus more. Same risk, but better outcome.