Steam's summer sale—with many games marked down 50 percent—is officially over. Valve does a great job of getting the word out, and the company has done a lot to bring exposure to smaller games, but we were curious: how do these sales look from the point of view of the developer? We spoke with the developer of Jamestown, a 2D sh'mup we really enjoyed. The game was discounted 50 percent for a limited time during the sale, even though it's still a relatively new release.

The problem is that smaller developers rarely enjoy talking about sales; in the past the topic has been called classless when I've brought it up. For many teams the payoff is the game, not the money... although the extensive Steam sales offer both exposure and commercial success.

"While I wouldn't say it's classless, it certainly is a very personal question," Tim Ambrogi, cofounder of Final Form Games, told Ars when I asked how comfortable he would be talking about Jamestown's success. He brought up the fact that many independent developers pour their own money into their games, and no one wants to measure success by dollars, but rather the quality of the game they create. "I think a large part of why indies don't discuss their sales publicly is that many of us are idealists and artists, and we believe that games should be made for the love of the games themselves; the question of how the money works behind the scenes is meant to be abstracted away."

Simply being a part of these sales is a big deal, but Ambrogi wasn't willing to go into detail about how the deals are put together. "Obviously, Steam likes to keep the details of how it runs its sales private, so we won't be able to talk about that much," he explained. "From our side of things, working with Steam has been an absolute joy, and we haven't had a single negative interaction with them. They've worked incredibly hard to make Jamestown as big of a hit as it can be, and we owe a lot of our success to their efforts."

While the games may sell for drastically reduced prices, the sale is written up on gaming blogs, and Valve gives heavy promotion to the games on the front page of Steam. The exposure is huge for the smaller titles. "I remember there was a single hour of the sale where we sold more units than we usually sell in an entire day. As a result, the increase in volume vastly overshadowed the reduction in price, and the overall revenue increase was well worth it," Ambrogi said. "If we were given the chance to work with Steam again, or to participate in another promotion with them, we would be extremely unlikely to pass up the opportunity. They really know what they're doing."

This isn't the first time smaller developers have sung Valve's praises. "The amazing thing is how cool Valve was about this. With most publishers, you have to sign ten pages of paperwork just to sit down and have a drink with them," Leo Jaitley from Dejobaan Games told Ars when we discussed the Potato Sack, a bundle of indie games that was offered before the release of Portal 2 and included new content. "Valve sat us down, pointed out the fact that there were no hidden cameras, lawyers, or NDAs, and showed us what they were thinking. They had us play through what existed of Portal 2, and then just had us go crazy."

Even at the reduced price, the number of games people buy make this a great deal for everyone involved. There is nothing but upside for the participating companies: they sell more games, see more revenue, and get their game into the hands of many more gamers. All these things working together make it easier to make the next game.

Ambrogi pointed out that the profits from the sale have helped them move on to their next project. "Sales have been pretty good. We were the top-selling indie game on Steam at one point, and at the same time we broke into the top 10 sellers overall," he said. "In terms of our future prospects, things are looking up! Thanks to word-of-mouth from our fans, the Steam sale, and our PAX 10 nomination, the question has gone from 'can we afford to do anything after this'; to 'how much can we afford to do after this.'"