Steam Scandal: If it’s Not Your Platform, It’s Not Your Audience
Democratized platforms have their dark side.
PC Gamer recently reported on the sad fate of Planet Centauri, a 2D sandbox game that should have been a modest indie success story.
After over a decade in early access, the game had built a strong following: more than 130,000 Steam wishlists, over 100,000 copies sold, and half a million trailer views. By all appearances, its 1.0 launch was primed for whirlwind success.
Screen Cap: Permadeath
Instead, launch day came and went like a whisper in a hurricane.
In the first five days, developer Permadeath sold just 581 units. A project ten years in the making, with an eager player base already flagged in the system, faceplanted into obscurity.
The culprit wasn’t poor design, lack of polish, or bad timing. It was Steam itself.
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Months later, Valve admitted the truth: Due to a bug affecting “fewer than 100” titles since 2015, the platform never sent wishlist notification emails to Planet Centauri’s fans. All the careful audience-building, goodwill, and momentum a decade in the making was vaporized by a silent glitch in the the discovery algorithm.
Valve’s make-good offer? A slot in the Daily Deals section: The textbook definition of slapping a band-aid on a broken leg.
Permadeath couldn’t recover. YouTubers didn’t pick it up. The algorithm never noticed. Having lost their crucial launch window, the studio is moving on to a new project because supporting Planet Centauri has become financially impossible.
Their misfortune should be a flashing red warning sign for indie creators.
Too many indies still operate under the illusion that platforms like Steam, Amazon, or YouTube exist to connect their work with customers.
They don’t. Platforms exist to harvest rent from attention. When their systems fail, so can your livelihood. And all too often, there’s no recourse.
This example hits home because as some readers may be aware, a different but no less severe tech glitch cost Kairos Publications’ recent Nethereal 10th Anniversary campaign close to half its backers. The takeaway: It can happen to you.
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Permadeath spent ten years cultivating an audience inside Valve’s walled garden. They went by the book every step of the way: updates, wishlists, trailer views, engagement. But in the end, it wasn’t their work, or their players, that mattered. It was the black box of an algorithm running inside a faceless machine.
When that system glitched, ten years of labor went up in smoke.
This is why I’ve said that if you go inside someone else’s building to find an audience, you shouldn’t expect unfettered, perpetual access. Because when you’re renting, the landlord can jack up the price or evict you without warning.
Valve says fewer than 100 games have been affected since 2015. That number is supposed to reassure us. It shouldn’t.
For one, we only know about those games because their developers had the fortitude to complain publicly. For another, when “rare” glitches do happen, the platform’s monopoly magnifies the damage.
On Steam, if you miss the algorithmic window, you’re done. No second chances. Visibility is frontloaded and virality drives the snowball effect. Miss the first 48 hours, and your chance to hit the trending charts evaporates. You’re exiled to page 20 of the search results.
Worse, there is no competition. Steam controls 99% of the PC storefront market. In practice, that means Valve holds the livelihoods of thousands of small studios hostage. Even a fluke bug can have catastrophic effects.
And the kicker is, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a glitch, a policy change, or deliberate suppression. If you depend on Steam alone, you’re at their mercy.
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Permadeath’s story proves the same lesson authors should have learned when Amazon deleted purchased Kindle eBooks. Or when YouTube demonetized creators overnight:
If you don’t own your distribution, you don’t own access to your audience.
It doesn’t matter how many wishlists you rack up, how many subscribers you pull in, or how many likes you get. If those people only know you through Steam, Amazon, or YouTube, they aren’t your customers. They’re the platform’s.
Silicon Valley will always care more about their shareholders than customers or creators. They’ll gladly crush ten indie studios if it means their algorithms keep seeking rents.
If you’re an indie developer, writer, or musician, here’s the bitter medicine you need to take:
Stop mistaking rented visibility for ownership.
Steam wishlists are not your mailing list. Amazon is not your web site’s storefront.
So build direct lines to your audience. Your email list is the one audience you actually own. If Permadeath had 130,000 real email subscribers instead of Steam wishlists, we’d be celebrating Planet Centauri as another indie win.
Diversify distribution. Alternate platforms like GOG, or even direct sales from your own site, may lack Steam’s reach, but they give you control. If one channel fails, you’re not wiped out. Don’t count on one basket to hold your eggs.
View platforms as tools instead of homes. Use Steam, Amazon, and YouTube to find people, then funnel them onto your territory: mailing lists, private forums, and proprietary stores.
The stakes are high. Every indie creator is one glitch, one policy update, or one rogue admin away from major loss.
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Permadeath’s developer shared his story “as a way of expressing my anger” and to highlight “the problems that a platform holding 99% of the PC gaming market can cause when the cogs don’t work as they should.”
He’s right. But the lesson isn’t just to get angry. The answer is to avoid the trap in the first place. Creators who pour their lives into their work deserve more than throttling by bugs, shadow banning by algorithms, or cancellation at management’s whims. And customers who want to support them deserve better than a system designed to treat them like products.
Indie creators shouldn’t have to beg Valve to fix its bugs. They need to cut out the middleman wherever possible. Not because it guarantees success, or even because it’s easy, but because it’s the only way to maintain integrity and preserve their dignity.
The more you rely on platforms, the more you serve them.
The more you rely on yourself, the more you serve your audience.
For a authentic action-adventure that breaks through the dead end of twentieth-century mecha by merging the best of East and West, read my military SF epic Combat Frame XSeed!
Brian Niemeier is a best-selling novelist, editor, and Dragon Award winner with over a decade in newpub. For direct, in-person writing and editing insights, join his Patreon.