Based on his company's experience with its digital distribution platform, Stardock's CEO Brad Wardell believes that Steam's success has affected its games development and slowed it down.
Wardell's comments come right after Stardock sold its digital distribution platform, Impulse, to GameStop.
"Yeah, we could have become a retailer and tried to compete in that space long-term, but there were two possibilities. One is that we'd lose out and become a permanent minor player - Impulse relative to Steam today I would argue is a minor player. Or two, we'd be successful and we're basically just a 600-person retail digital distribution company where three-quarters of the staff are sales people and account managers. And when the winning scenario is not what your objective in life is, then it's time to re-evaluate what you want to do," he explained.
"Even though Valve is in Seattle, where you can get developers everywhere, [Steam's] had an effect on their own development schedule. There's not been a new Half-Life in a long time; a lot of people have complained about that. They've had their own challenges getting new titles out the door, and a big part of that I'm sure is the same problems we've had. When one of your groups is so ridiculously profitable, every business instinct you have is to throw all your best people at it, because that's what's making the money. That's just sound business. At the end of the day, again you have to decide if that's what you want to do.
"Steam and Valve, internally speaking, of the companies out there I would say we're the most similar. Obviously they're bigger and far more successful than our games unit is, but culturally they're pretty similar. If you were to look at a timeline of games developed in-house by Valve - not developed externally and then acquired - and you look at before Steam and after Steam, it's definitely had an effect. I don't argue that that's a good thing or bad thing, but I do know the effect that's had on us, where I've had to put some of my top developers over the years onto Impulse to make sure it was getting better and better."
