i don't know if its weird but i like my stuffs in one place as long as possible
and in terms of game dev i like stuffs i can open from steam,
if you know krita its an open source app but in steam you need to buy
i still bought the app to also support the devs,
godot engine is there blender is there krita is there aseprite also
too many reason to put the app there
you'll get an auto update you can also turn it off too
bigger community bigger forum bigger audience
steamworkshop but then again its up to the dev if theyll implement this

i like the concept of this and i hope ill see it on steam
endorse this to people make this game engine popular

I know it's not quite the same, but if you just want to have it in your Steam library, you can actually add a non-Steam game to your Steam library. Just go to the bottom-left corner of Steam and click "ADD A GAME" and then choose "Add a Non-Steam Game". Then just click "Browse" and locate your copy of pico8.exe wherever you installed it. You can even add your own custom artwork for its listing in your library.

yeah i know about that and thats not what i want sorry
and also you'll get a track record for how long you've been with the opened application you can showcase the app in your profile too so many thing i like about steam
i hope i'll see pico-8 there someday

This would actually be pretty nice for no other reason than auto-update.

It could also open up the console to a wider audience.

But, Steam does take a non-negotiable 30% cut of all profits. So it's perfectly understandable if Zep doesn't want to put up with that, when there's already a thriving community here and on Itch.io.

Oh, also it costs $100 to put something on Steam and there are some other hoops you have to jump through, so it's not as easy as something like Itch.

But still, if there are enough people that'll buy PICO8 on Steam, these would compensate that Extra-Cost.

The Question is: Would enough people buy it on Steam? honestly, I really don't know^^...

well like in my story krita is a free software yet i still buy the paid version krita on steam, because im a steam boi lol

well if the creator wants more community than money, its a good decision to put it on steam
but if he wants whole money no cuts then it will stay like this

Hi @siryo

A Steam release of PICO-8 (and other stores) is pencilled in for close to v1.0, and I realize there are a bunch of users who would appreciate it being available in other places. But there are a few reasons I've put it off until later:

• It will likely generate an influx of new users, and Steam is definitely a different kind of crowd which is more player-centric. I don't think it will be an Eternal September, but we certainly have a nice thing going at the moment in terms of high-quality posts and close-knit community, so I'm not in a hurry to mess with that.

• It adds a lot of extra ongoing complexity that multiplies with the process of updates, managing accounts, online functionality etc. I'd rather focus on (mostly) finishing PICO-8 first and make sure the foundations are solid. Although, that's fairly close now on the large scale of things.

• I haven't figured out how I'll handle Steam Workshop yet. Create a separate collection of carts? (authors need to cross-post / fragmented community could be good or bad / need to implement inside PICO-8 in a natural way) Or try to consolidate Steam users on the Lexaloffle BBS? (more eggs in one basket, infrastructure and culture needs to adapt/scale, need to do account integration well).

• Ideally Voxatron beta (still in development -- is a much larger project) will be available on Steam at the same time as PICO-8; I think in the long term both consoles will benefit from having a larger shared userbase.

• Steam's cut -- meh. I think that releasing on Steam would bring more than enough exposure to justify that, and I certainly have to acknowledge the value of having a unified store experience that likely increases global indie software sales by much more than the 30% they take. But I'm saying that as a grumpy old idealist who started out before online stores were a thing, and everyone made nice weird things and sold them directly to customers. So yes -- it is kind of nice to hold on to that torch a little while longer.

To address some misinformation here: it costs $100 to post a game on Steam, but you recoup that $100 when you make at least $1000 in sales. You will also get much, much larger sales there than somewhere like Itch, unfortunately, so it is almost always worth it financially.

With that being said, I personally kind of hate the Steam community, and I'd prefer that Pico8 never be released there. Some of the most ignorant, entitled, immature, stubborn, frustrating people play games exclusively on Steam, and I think the demographic of people that never learned how to download and install a game on their own is largely made up of 13 year olds that play Call of Duty and call you racial slurs. Any time someone politely asks me for a Steam release, it kind of has the opposite effect on my motivation to release there, by reminding me of the toxic community that exists on Steam at large.

My recommendation to zep is to keep the two communities completely separate. Don't do Steam Workshop in the Steam release at all, since it's not possible to access that content with any other build of the game anyway, as you need to be logged into a Steam account. Also, flag any cart (in the cartridge data of the Steam build's exporter) as coming from Steam users, and track that flag when carts are uploaded. In the long run you may want to default to hiding that content entirely from any searches in all other versions of Pico8, and also here on the BBS.

I guess it's clear that I have zero confidence in that community, and I don't want this smaller corner of the internet to be affected by them at all. I like this cozy development environment (including the fantastic community that is a major part of that cozy vibe), and I don't want that to be destroyed by the Steamers.

I can imagine having so much fun with steam achievements tho, imagine some achievements for hitting the token limit, running 100 unique carts or finishing jelpi demo :D

I understand stand @shy's concerns but jesus, I'd rather not see a steam release at all than such an insultingly crippled one they described.

Is there anything to gain from a Steam release other than $$$? Only thing I could think of is that I vaguely know Steamworks offers a bunch of networking stuff - could be of use if you wanted to implement proper networked realtime multiplayer, I guess (please investigate that possibility btw, there's nothing impossible about it and I believe it could be awesome if done right)

So I've been a Steam user for a long time.

The main draw to Steam is that it makes it incredibly easy to take your library with you through the years. I frequently will buy a game on Steam over something like the Nintendo Switch eShop because I know that I won't be forced to buy the game again in the future if I want to play it on another system.

Tracking lots of different sites or digital store fronts to manage game downloads is kind of a chore and you can forget where you downloaded something over the years. Steam unifies all of this.

@zep, one suggestion would be to segment PICO-8 into something like a $5 player and a $10 DLC for the editor support. The player would essentially start you into something like Splore and the editor would start with the terminal. I suggest this because I imagine a large portion of the potential Steam user-base would be more interested in playing than creating. In addition, someone who has never used a terminal or command prompt would be confused by being dumped into one when launching the program.

For the player, I would probably get permission to pre-bundle some higher profile PICO-8 titles (e.g., Celeste).

I imagine this segmentation would also help with the quality level of user-content. There would probably be far less Hello World carts.

Good luck on the road to 1.0!

I counter your request with a request of my own:

Release Pico8 in a box and manual I can put on my shelf. :D

What a great idea! Would love an old-school manual and box, even if I have to print on paper and carboard myself.

I counter your requests with a request of my own: @zep, please do not release on Steam until you have released v1 of both pico-8, and Voxatron. :)

hi y'all! i made a account just to point out some things, but first things first.
this site has the best "prove you are human" thing! lol!

a steam release is a good thing for some players, in a way that might not be relevant for the dev at all, but sure is for those players!

steam makes games affordable in developing countries, to understand how important this is for some of us, here in Brazil a game cost 6 times its price in dollar, if is physical that can go up to 12 times! or more (T-T), if we need to use something like pay pal, we need to pay currency conversion and international transaction taxes.

steam as middleman make the game cost 3 time its value in dollar, and makes possible to buy without paying currency conversion and international transaction taxes.

that makes possible for a lot of players to legitimate buy their games, and believe me that's a big deal for a lot of us.

although it is a fact that the money acquired will be so little that it is understandable to not make this move.

EDIT: i would love to play chocolate castle and zen puzzle garden on steam, @zep put them on steam! please! pretty please!