Recently, American indie game designer Jason Rohrer shared precious memories about Valve's early Steam platform review policies and the digital marketplace ecosystem. Around 2010, Steam officials proactively contacted Rohrer, inviting him to add his experimental narrative simulation game Sleep Is Death to the platform's catalog. In those days, developers could only join the store if they received a personal invitation from Steam management—and getting listed meant massive exposure.
However, this collaboration came to an abrupt halt due to personnel changes within Valve. After the project manager handling the matter left the company, the developer lost contact with officials for several months. When Rohrer finally found a new point of contact, the Steam team remained silent for another three months before ultimately informing him that they had decided against publishing the game. As a result, Sleep Is Death never appeared on the Steam store and was only available for download on the developer's personal website.
Later, in 2011, Rohrer finally broke into Steam with his new title Inside a Star-filled Sky. This time, he relied on recommendations from industry peers and lengthy negotiations. Even after passing the review, Valve still retained absolute control over page design—artists at the company rejected all of Rohrer's provided ad images and promotional materials, citing "insufficient quality," and subsequently had official designers redraw the game's store page.
In addition to forcing visual design changes, Valve would also manually adjust the release dates of indie games. The launch date for Inside a Star-filled Sky was temporarily postponed to avoid competing with other new releases during the same period. However, this restriction came with the reward of "exclusive exposure": on its launch day, the game was the only new release on the entire platform and occupied a prime spot on the homepage for a full week.
The development of this shooter took about six to seven months and ultimately generated considerable income for Rohrer at the time: approximately $40,000 from direct sales on his personal website and another $80,000 from Steam sales, totaling $120,000—equivalent to roughly $250,000 today when adjusted for inflation and exchange rate changes. This income was enough to support him comfortably for several years and fund his subsequent creative projects.
Rohrer specifically highlighted the stark contrast between the closed market of the early 2010s and today's digital storefront landscape. Back then, Steam's manual curation and extremely low competition ensured that selected indie projects could achieve very high sales from just one week of homepage exposure. In today's ecosystem, where hundreds of new titles launch daily, indie developers can no longer access such promotional resources, making it difficult to expect comparable revenue without substantial marketing budgets.