When comparing Steam vs itch.io, the Slant community recommends Steam for most people. In the question“What are the best online stores to purchase PC games cheaply?” Steam is ranked 1st while itch.io is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose Steam is:
Over 125 million users actively use Steam, with over 15,000 games to choose from.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Biggest digital distribution platform for games
Over 125 million users actively use Steam, with over 15,000 games to choose from.
Pro Steam sales
Steam has daily and weekend sales as well as publisher sales, though their biggest sales are their winter and summer sales. Steam is known for their deep discounts (discounts on games range from 10% to 95%) on games and has pushed many other stores to do the same seeing Amazon and other storefronts match their pricings when sales go up as well as hold their own seasonal sales.
Pro Cloud save games
Sharing save games between Mac and Windows machine is pretty nice though the game has to be a Steamworks game in order to have this feature.
Pro Support for cross-platform games
Most games that have a Mac and Linux version available can be found on Steam.
Pro Wide selection
There are a variety of games from indie to AAA. There is a curated list and even classic games.
Pro Gift games
Users can gift games to their friends, which is great for when there are sales as one friend can pick up games for the rest of his friends cheaply. There is often 4 packs of a single game that can be picked up to easily gift to 3 other friends as well.
Pro Offers refunds for games that haven't been played for more than 2 hours
If you stop playing a game within the first 2 hours, you can ask for a refund.
Pro Fast downloads
Steam has excellent servers and their download speeds tend to be the best out of any digital store online.
Pro Steam achievements
Most games on Steam have achievements. It's also nice that you can see how many people who own/play the game finished a particular achievement.
Pro Steam Workshop
Steam Workshop makes it easy to create and/or find mods and extra content for games that support it.
Pro Active community
The community frequently helps solve questions, review games, and make great content via Workshop.
Pro Integrated VoIP client
Text based chat and VoIP chat are both included with your client. Of course this only works with people on the stream platform.
Pro Everyone can release a game on itch.io
Everyone is free to use itch.io for the distrubution of their game, free or paid.
Pro No accounts required for buyers
It allows linking an itch.io page where the customer can just click to buy.
Pro Allows sellers to set their own revenue share
Makes it one of the best places to support your favorite creators as there is no limit as to what you want to set for the platform fee since it can be set all the way down to 0% or set as high as 100%. It is up to the developer to pick what they would like.
Pro Pay-what-you-want model with optional enforced minimums
Users can pay any amount they want to for a game, down to a minimum specified by the uploader. The minimum can be zero. A user can go back and pay more later if they want.
Pro Mostly self-service
Change prices or the design of your page at will. No need to give lead time if you want to offer a sale.
Pro Best discoverability out there
It's where unknown indies find and buy games from other unknown indies.
Pro Cross-platform desktop client
Desktop client available for downloading games and auto-updating.
Pro Offer preorders
You can start selling your game before it's finished.
Cons
Con Lots of DRM
Many games are not only Steam DRM protected but by another DRM system. It just cries for something to go wrong.
Con Little support for older titles
Many older titles (10-15 years or more) are no longer supported and thus require much manual tinkering to run properly on windows 10, requiring digging though forums and trying many things. Compare that to GoG where these titles often run out-of-the-box.
Con Lots of junky games and violated content
They never clean up their store and they post nudity content on their store.
Con Company actively self-sabotaging
Valve have ripped off bad launcher design from competing stores instead of sticking with the better design they already had. Strong negative response including multiple customers suffering medical issues is being ignored instead of taken on board.
Con Support is an epic fail
EA Help has more positive feedback regarding their support than Steam.
Con Buggy client on Linux with little customer support
Linux support is generally overlooked. It is recommended to disable in-game overlay and to use a real browser to interact with steampowered's website. Basic library access works usually without a hitch.
Also do not expect real tech support on Linux. Forum questions of bugs often go unattended and unanswered.
Con Pricey
AAA titles are very pricey, very often more expensive than at other online stores and sometimes brick & mortar ones.
Con Games cost a fortune on the official Steam store
Buy keys from other shops, never on the official store.
Con Requires to log into Steam every 2 weeks
Steam forces you to periodically log into Steam Store every two weeks, or your games will stop working. They will force you to keep adding the API number, which is a pain. There is an Offline Mode, but you still have to log in at least once every two weeks.
Con No DRM Service and itch customers can just share your games and apps
They say they do, but you actually need a server to achieve it. They make things over complicated on purpose, because they hate DRM in nature. That's why they cannot be a popular game platform. They don't protect indie developer's game at all.
Con Very very indie
If production values and braod appeal are a thing you cherish, pass your way. Curation standards aren't mainstream at all there.
Con No quality control
You can upload and release almost anything in any state on itch.io