I agree with this entire article, with the exception of Steam being the hero.
Sure, I can understand from the perspective of the few developers that have seen success on Steam that Valve is the best thing since sliced bread, but there are countless developers who have not seen such success and have most likely been under a gag order through their NDA with Valve regarding their sales failure.
Valve and Steam have essentially created this bubble on their own. They've created the illusion of easy money, the false belief that you can create a game, no matter how crap, and as long as it gets onto Steam, it will be a sales success nonetheless. They established themselves as the de facto PC gaming digital storefront, and then opened the floodgates so that nobody had a chance.
And with the indie bubble bursting, we have other problems, namely that the Steam sale and indie bundle culture has scared away a lot of AAA developers, so that most releases now are either delayed, digital-only, end-of-the-long-tail last-ditch money grabs, or simply just don't appear. GTA 5 and RDR anyone?
If anyone thinks that mainstream interest was bad ten years ago, it's worse now, and it's debatable as to whether it will recover.
