Transparency About Steam and Patron Tiers
UPDATE: Following feedback on this post, I took the matter to a dev-only Discord for discussion, and did some research, and I am glad I did. I couldn't find any documented cases where an indie dev ran afoul of Steam with Patreon or Subscribestar. I did find conflicts with the Epic Games Store and Itch.io, but to my mind, those are platforms that directly compete with Steam for the sale of a product. With that in mind, Kentyrr and I have decided to make no changes unless Steam forces us to.
It is our hope that Steam will respect the distinction between supporting a developer and purchasing a product. As always, we will be forthcoming and open about the process as we navigate it. Thanks everybody for your comments and votes. Here's hoping this is the last we hear of it!
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This post is only visible to potentially-impacted tiers.
Let my start by explaining the issue, and then we'll lean on you to help us find the best answer.
Steam requires when you sell a game on their platform that you do not "undersell" them anywhere else. While we have fundamental differences with Steam on the distinction between what supporting an artist on Patreon and purchasing a product means, history has shown Steam does view Patreon as a "sale."
Our plan was to go to market on Steam in November at $8.99, which means Steam would view the Deckhand and Engineer tiers as a violation of their Terms of Service.
That said, the backbone of our support really is at the $1 and $5 Tier. Kentyrr and I don't think it's fair to allow a platform to force us to move the goalposts on people who have in many cases been supporting us from the beginning. As such, we have a few proposals to work around this issue. Please vote for the one you think is most reasonable/fair.
Here are explanations of each option we've considered:
Grandfathering: This means that anyone who is an Engineer or Deckhand as of Nov 1 will get a special Discord role, and there will be a Discord channel from which you will be able to continue to download each update on release day, same as before. Deckhands and Engineers onboarded after that would be able to download an "update" patch to the main game, but not the full game. The downside to this approach is that it means your method of getting the game requires you to join our Discord, or message us directly on Pateon.
Update-Only: This is a similar approach to Grandfathering, only we would release new content to Deckhands and Engineers as a patch to their current game only, and they would lose access to the full game. This is the method a lot of other developers choose, but we think Grandfathering is more fair to our longtime $1 and $5 patrons.
Steam Exclusive Version: We could add a few minor features or expanded scenes to a Steam version so it's technically a different product. This would allow us to continue the Tier system the way it is. We have two worries with this approach: The first is that patrons would feel like they weren't getting "the full game," even if the additional content was cosmetic, and it would force us to maintain two code bases. But it IS a solution.
Lastly, we have considered that some of you may have ideas we haven't considered, so we invite you to comment below. In the end, we want to do right by the people who've been along for the ride with us, so please take a moment to cast a vote and/or comment below. We'll take your feedback onboard and make the best decision we can.
Thanks for reading!