Most gamers who download from and keep up to date with Steam know that Valve’s digital distribution service has a 30% revenue share from software sales. So whatever a developer manages to sell, Valve gets a 30% cut. Well, an up-and-coming digital distribution outlet for indie titles has a slightly more variable approach to the revenue share percentage.

GamesIndustry.biz spotted a blog post over on Tumblr by the site owner Leaf, where it’s explained that the new change will help developers share a percentage of their revenue with Itch.io that they feel is necessary for the platform to receive. As noted in the post…

“I’m really inspired by the community that has formed around itch.io. It’s a generous group giving money to creators to support their work. I want to encourage this kind of community from every angle, and I decided that how I handle the fee would be the perfect opportunity to do that. “itch.io has always been pay-what-you-want for buyers, it will soon be pay-what-you-want for sellers. I’m calling it open revenue sharing.”

It’s interesting approach to the digital distribution platform. It’s almost like a distributor’s version of what Humble Bundle offers for consumers, where gamers can pay what they want for various bundles. Only this time, developers can set the revenue share for what the distributor receives.

It’s kind of tough to see where this will take Itch.io at this point, but it seems to be setting itself up as an alternative competitor to places like Desura. I’ve only briefly seen the site mentioned across some social media sites when indie devs promote the availability of their games, but it’s not quite a prime-time player like Good Old Games or Steam… or to a lesser extent, Origin and Uplay. However, another digital competitor offering competitive prices on a wide variety of games is only good for the gaming industry. More options are always good options.

You can check out the full range of Itch.io’s software catalog by paying a visit to the official website.