Gearbox recently made headlines by criticizing Valve’s Steam for not only giving developers a bad deal, but also for being in a conflict of interest between Valve and its Steam content delivery platform. Now Tripwire — developers of the Red Orchestra series — boss John Gibson thinks otherwise, saying that the company wouldn’t exist without Steam. Gibson said, “…Is Valve exploiting independent developers? In short: absolutely not. Without pulling any punches, I can say with certainty that if it weren’t for Steam, there would be no Tripwire Interactive right now.”

Gibson goes on to further praise Steam contract, saying “the first one we had seen that didn’t have any land mines in it”. He did mention the conflict of interest, but noted that Valve does a good job handling it.