Comment by leafo

All of those sites have a huge barrier to entry. If you were an indie game dev and you wanted to start selling your game immediately it is not possible with those sites. There is an entire market of tiny game developers who never would dream of selling their game on something like steam. This gives them the opportunity to host their game, and set a minimum price of say 0. Now they have the potential to make money off of their side projects. I'd say that's a pretty empowering.