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[funkystudent]

The valve money making statagy is as followed.

- Make steam awesome.

- Take a 33% of the money for every game sold on steam.

- Hats.

- Dont release a new half life


The main reason Valve can afforded giving away free games and free DLC is because they are making money from everyone elses games being sold on steam.

The free stuff keeps people coming back to steam which means more people buying stuff on steam which means more money for hats and not making a new half life.

I am sure any of the devs of the free 3rd party games from the steam sale got money from valve for allowing it.



I wounder... do Valve get a cut of retail steamworks games? Like if I buy Duke Nukem Forever at gamestop do Valve get a cut because I have to activate it on steam?

 

[Broder Salsa]

I wonder why some games aren't on Steam. I just played thru To The Moon today, I can't believe that's not on Steam, it's crazy to me.

Was submitted 4th November

But they do reject quite a lot of indie games, it's pretty hard to get in.

 

[bigdaddygamebot]

I want to make a game now just to experience it.

Me too!

Okay, I'll be the idea guy.

We'll call it...

Have-Lives Free tm.

Alright...I'm spent. You there...build a game! They're "built" right?

 

[The Technomancer]

i do give them credit. Just not much. Certainly nowhere near whats given to them by most people.

I still don't understand this. So if a person has an idea while they work for a studio and the studio produces it, the studio gets credit (like the vast majority of game development), but if a person has an idea and the studio hires them to produce it, then the studio doesn't get credit?

 

[butter_stick]

It's pretty simple. Make Steam an attractive service for users, and profit through its popularity. Keeping people using your product results in a more constant stream of income.

 

[Darryl]

1. get customers willing to pay for something that all other companies are having trouble with (and having people actually value their collection of games)

2. create games that promote their platform

3. become the worlds greatest video game platform and be featured in every household right next to netflix, soon start selling movies, pizza deliveries

it's not as far off as you think

 

[water_wendi]

I still don't understand this. So if a person has an idea while they work for a studio and the studio produces it, the studio gets credit (like the vast majority of game development), but if a person has an idea and the studio hires them to produce it, then the studio doesn't get credit?

i dont like companies that have little to do with the artistic creation of something getting credit. At least with music the recording artist gets headline. In gaming, the artists are nothing more than some small letters on a screen most players wont even see.

 

[PairOfFilthySocks]

im sorry but i dont give old record producers much credit for the work of artists either.

Then luckily for you Valve is incredibly more transparent about the origins for their game concepts than other devs, or did you somehow manage to miss all the interviews about where the ideas for Portal, Left 4 Dead, etc came from?

 

[bigdaddygamebot]

1. get customers willing to pay for something that all other companies are having trouble with (and having people actually value their collection of games)

2. create games that promote their platform

3. become the worlds greatest video game platform and be featured in every household right next to netflix, soon start selling movies, pizza deliveries

it's not as far off as you think

Gabe Newell approved pizza.

Day one.

 

[Mrbob]

The business side of the whole gift pile campaign seems pretty obvious to me: the idea is to make people buy new games (to complete objectives) in exchange for getting (mostly) old games for free. Or coupons that will be used to buy even more games.

It's basic marketing.

If it is so basic why doesn't everyone else follow what Valve is accomplishing? Every other gaming company not named Nintendo and Blizzard would kill for the success Valve is achieving. Setting up a big event is anything but basic.

The main reason Valve can afforded giving away free games and free DLC is because they are making money from everyone elses games being sold on steam.

The free stuff keeps people coming back to steam which means more people buying stuff on steam which means more money for hats and not making a new half life.

I am sure any of the devs of the free 3rd party games from the steam sale got money from valve for allowing it.



I wounder... do Valve get a cut of retail steamworks games? Like if I buy Duke Nukem Forever at gamestop do Valve get a cut because I have to activate it on steam?

I agree one of the reasons for FREE DLC is to keep people interested in Steam, however Valve has kept this policy before Steam blew up. As for Steamworks games, Valve does not get a cut of retail sales.

 

[StuBurns]

i do give them credit. Just not much. Certainly nowhere near whats given to them by most people.

This is something about Valve I feel pretty divided on. For example I was pretty irritated to hear Gabe put the kibosh on Swift's Portal 2 prototype and gave the game to another group, because I felt the Portal people had proved themselves and deserved to do what they wanted with the Portal name. I was talking to a friend about this and he had a great counter argument, I wanted creative control to be with the creator, not the curator, but it was Gabe who decided that team could make Portal. It was his taste and HR skill set that allowed the creators to make it to begin with, and in that sense, it should be him who gets to do the same again with Portal 2, as much as it irritated me.

Every community mod team Valve have taken on has been a result of their work, and Valve's taste, that taste is important, being able to target and hire talented people is a great skill worthy of praise.

I think Valve are the best developer in the West, and ultimately it is the profound ability to find and hire amazing staff that makes them that.

Was submitted 4th November

But they do reject quite a lot of indie games, it's pretty hard to get in.

I've played lots of pretty assy games from Steam this week, To The Moon is incredible, Valve should straighten up and fly right.

 

[WanderingWind]

i do give them credit. Just not much. Certainly nowhere near whats given to them by most people.

Then you're unfamiliar with the history of PC gaming (in NA, at least). The platform was dying, financially, and they filled a void that nobody else was interested in filling because of the ease of piracy and the rise of more powerful consoles. You refuse to believe it (yeah, we've had this discussion before) but without Valve promoting the PC as a viable gaming platform, we wouldn't have half of the games that we have today on it.

 

[speedpop]

Are they the only gaming company to actually want an economist on their team? And I don't mean basic local economics or a few accountants, they seemed to be looking for someone with global knowledge in regards to foreign exchange and financial formulas. I believe there was an interview where Gabe wanted to nab someone who had worked at the World Bank previously.

 

[Ty4on]

They make customers happy and they aren't obsessed with everything having to be payed for. They have also studied the 75% off deals to see if people who got it at full price got angry etc... they do anything to make sure the customers are happy and if 75% off for a week increases profits, why not?

Hat Fortress 2 is easy, some people pay a lot for the bundles (all weapons and hats from an update) and some/many pay a little bit for keys to open crates. If that is profitable enough to keep the game running, why not make it free? HF2 is also one big ad now for steam and games you can pre-order, that is probably enough to pay for the 10 people (think it still is like that) updating TF2 and the hundreds of fans making models for free.

If it makes customers happy and makes money, why not?

Edit:

Are they the only gaming company to actually want an economist on their team? And I don't mean basic local economics or a few accountants, they seemed to be looking for someone with global knowledge in regards to foreign exchange and financial formulas. I believe there was an interview where Gabe wanted to nab someone who had worked at the World Bank previously.

All I could think about was this:

Mike Ambinder
Mike has a B.A. in Computer Science and Psychology from Yale and a PhD in Psychology from the University of Illinois. His job description is vague, but he thinks it probably has something to do with applying both psychological knowledge and methodologies to game design. Essentially this means he gets to play with data, perform research, and act as an in-house consultant of sorts. He is really happy that you took the time to read his paragraph.

 

[silvon]

I used to be a console fanboy but I now buy my games exclusively from Steam and find console games too expensive.

 

[Cartman86]

Valve may be making money off of other peoples games (like every other distributor), but the low prices, deals, and ease of use make them quite different. If Steam wasn't free, games weren't cheap, and Valve didn't give away games we would be having a different conversation. Probably the same one people have about Xbox Live.

 

[boutrosinit]

 

[water_wendi]

Then you're unfamiliar with the history of PC gaming (in NA, at least). The platform was dying, financially, and they filled a void that nobody else was interested in filling because of the ease of piracy and the rise of more powerful consoles. You refuse to believe it (yeah, we've had this discussion before) but without Valve promoting the PC as a viable gaming platform, we wouldn't have half of the games that we have today on it.

i absolutely refuse to believe this. That PC gaming was dying is and was absurd. Of course there were dinosaurs too stupid to find their way to the nearest tarpit but the platform was fine. Having a single entity control huge amounts of internet sales of almost all developers of every stripe using a trojan horse service that, like Xbox Live and all other walled gardens, only strengthens the consumers dependence on its own platform, was not the future i had hoped for.

 

[MRORANGE]

Being better in general, most other DD companies could catch up to steam if they wanted, but they just don't even try, here are a few things steam does best:

- cloud saves
- Snapshot Library
- Game/Item Trading
- F2P market
- Mega sales
- modding support
- dedicated server support for some games
- game forums
-achievements
- community section with profile
- a working friends system
- game stats
- comfy couch mode (coming soon)
- comics, media, artwork for games
- message system
- anti cheat system
- developer tools - steamworks
- Steam Cafe
- groups with clan support for matchmaking

Now you tell me any other PC DD service that can offer the same kind of service that valve can offer?

in other news, I bought this:

valve are now slowy taking my money in the non DD realm :|

 

[Durante]

If it is so basic why doesn't everyone else follow what Valve is accomplishing? Every other gaming company not named Nintendo and Blizzard would kill for the success Valve is achieving. Setting up a big event is anything but basic.

I'm not saying it's simple to implement, or implement well. I'm saying it's very easy to understand what it's trying to accomplish (spread Steam, strengthen existing customers dependence on Steam, and make people buy more games), and how it goes about it.

As for other gaming companies doing the same thing, outside of MS, Sony and Nintendo no one is really in the position to even try.

 

[Hylian7]

Being better in general, most other DD companies could catch up to steam if they wanted, but they just don't even try, here are a few things steam does best:

- cloud saves
- Snapshot Library
- Game/Item Trading
- F2P market
- Mega sales
- modding support
- dedicated server support for some games
- game forums
-achievements
- community section with profile
- a working friends system
- game stats
- comfy couch mode (coming soon)
- comics, media, artwork for games
- message system
- anti cheat system
- developer tools - steamworks
- Steam Cafe

Now you tell me any other PC DD service that can offer the same kind of service that valve can offer?

in other news I bought this:



valve are now slowy taking my money in the non DD realm :|

I just bought that too, and that giant Dota 2 mousepad!

 

[StuBurns]

i absolutely refuse to believe this. That PC gaming was dying is and was absurd. Of course there were dinosaurs too stupid to find their way to the nearest tarpit but the platform was fine. Having a single entity control huge amounts of internet sales of almost all developers of every stripe using a trojan horse service that, like Xbox Live and all other walled gardens, only strengthens the consumers dependence on its own platform, was not the future i had hoped for.

People have other options, they don't want them though. The consumer made the decision. Steam's 'monopoly' came about honestly. Valve approached other companies and tried to get them to make something like Steam, no one cared, they had to make it themselves.

 

[Thoraxes]

They want you to play games and have fun, just like they like making games and playing them.

 

[hamchan]

(1) In the recent past, was Half-Life 2 and Steam's development entirely funded by sales of Half-Life 1? Did that single game provide enough profit to fuel such colossal development?

(2) What do we think Valve's reasoning is for the "Great Gift Pile", giving away hundreds of thousands of games for achievements? Is it to encourage the fanbase to actually play their games, or to set up a model of Steam achievements establishing rewards of substance? Something else entirely, perhaps?

(3) Can someone explain to me how on earth the Team Fortress hats translate into a profit, I've read interviews but still feel none-the-wiser.

(4) Is this understanding of the situation accurate or a misconception: Valve take a portion of the cash spent on every game on Steam. This constant supply flow of cash gives them a stability and freedom that other developers lack, and all of their free games and sales and DLC and such are simply the consequence of passionate game developers that don't need to chase traditional profits and audiences - is this accurate or am I being naive?

1) Half-Life 1 was a huge game back in the day so I'm sure it made Valve a nice chunk of change. Plus Gabe was already very rich due to working for Microsoft in the early days.

2) It's to gain goodwill with their userbase and get even more sales. You'd notice that a lot of the games required for a gift are lower profile games that probably need a boost in sales. So Valve makes more money for the smaller developers (which is a good thing) and themselves. Also I don't know the ratio of coupons:games in the gift pile but I'd imagine that the ratio is heavily in favor of the coupons. The coupons are pretty much the same discounts we're having in the sale now, but it might encourage people to use up their coupons before they expire in march, resulting in even more sales for Valve. The chances of getting a more expensive, new release game like Skyrim are much much lower too, so Valve still profits in the end if they give out a lot of free $5 or $10 games here and there if people spend more then that in the end.

3) I don't understand the confusion here? The hats are virtual items with the only cost being the manhours it took to make and the bandwidth it takes to send a few megabytes over to the user. If people want to buy the hats for a few dollars that's really easy money for Valve.

4) Their success in development and their domination of the digital market does give them a huge amount of freedom and stability yes. In both their game development and the way they run Steam, they've been extremely good at knowing what the people want and giving it to them or knowing what to hold back to build up hype (Half Life 3 damn you Valve). All their free games and DLC are a consequence of them being on top, them knowing they can stay on top with continued goodwill, and them knowing that being on top leads to a lot of money made. Even with all their giveaways they're still making huge amounts of money and gaining huge audiences. It's a very admirable way of doing business that seems to benefit both the consumer and the corporation. Also, knowing Valve behind the scenes they seem like a large group of extremely passionate people and I couldn't be happier that they're number 1.

 

[PairOfFilthySocks]

i absolutely refuse to believe this. That PC gaming was dying is and was absurd. Of course there were dinosaurs too stupid to find their way to the nearest tarpit but the platform was fine. Having a single entity control huge amounts of internet sales of almost all developers of every stripe using a trojan horse service that, like Xbox Live and all other walled gardens, only strengthens the consumers dependence on its own platform, was not the future i had hoped for.

'Trojan horse service' aside, if you honestly believe the PC gaming realm would be anywhere as healthy as it is today, then there are, quite simply, not enough facepalm.gifs...

 

[Jintor]

I don't dispute that centralisation is both a good and a bad thing. But in this case it's definitely been far more good than bad.

 

[LeleSocho]

A lot of it is just trying to get people on steam. Give stuff away, folks sign up, folks spend money in the future.

That's how i'm in... something like 2 years ago i heard the news "free portal on steam" i thought "ok, no biggie, sign up, play portal, never use steam again"
the resulting? today i'm going to buy Deus Ex3 and Super Meat Boy, yesterday i bought Machinarium and time before i bought CitiesXL and so on

oh and aside from the Portal franchise i don't even like Valve games

 

[water_wendi]

'Trojan horse service' aside, if you honestly believe the PC gaming realm would be anywhere as healthy as it is today, then there are, quite simply, not enough facepalm.gifs...

Actually i think the hardcore PC gaming aspect was healthier back then. The indie and casual games have always held sway over a huge chunk of the gaming done (sure it wasnt Facebook games back then but people on Yahoo games or playing flash games or whatever) but the "hardcore" games differentiated themselves from consoles. If you call the shitastic ports of stuff based on 2005 hardware trying to pass themselves off as high-end PC gaming "healthy", thats your opinion.

 

[Alphahawk]

Hearts and minds.

Also look around Neogaf and you'll see plenty of posts where people double dip on games because of the Steam sales...

 

[WanderingWind]

i absolutely refuse to believe this. That PC gaming was dying is and was absurd. Of course there were dinosaurs too stupid to find their way to the nearest tarpit but the platform was fine. Having a single entity control huge amounts of internet sales of almost all developers of every stripe using a trojan horse service that, like Xbox Live and all other walled gardens, only strengthens the consumers dependence on its own platform, was not the future i had hoped for.

Well, you can accept reality or not. I really don't know what to tell you. I know you're not in NA, so maybe it was different where you live, but there was a time between every game store carrying every PC release and Steam's rise in which you couldn't find PC games in great abundance. Game developers were, and still are, moving largely to console development.

This isn't a case of them moving into the tarpit, as much as them seeing the easy of piracy, relatively low sales and no unified way to get their product known the PC platform offered as the tarpit they were moving away from.

Even today game developers are hesitant to put their products on the PC, but are more willing to do so because they have a built-in audience. There are thousands of indie games produced every year, but with the outliers like Minecraft, they get little to no exposure, thus little to no success. Unless they release their games on Steam. Games like Bit.Trip, Recettear and King's Bounty (among many, many others) have been successful because of Steam.

 

[StuBurns]

Actually i think the hardcore PC gaming aspect was healthier back then. The indie and casual games have always held sway over a huge chunk of the gaming done (sure it wasnt Facebook games back then but people on Yahoo games or playing flash games or whatever) but the "hardcore" games differentiated themselves from consoles. If you call the shitastic ports of stuff based on 2005 hardware trying to pass themselves off as high-end PC gaming "healthy", thats your opinion.

That is nothing to do with Steam. It's to do with thirty million dollar game budgets making very few exclusives viable for any platform.

 

[water_wendi]

That is nothing to do with Steam.

That was kind of my point. Steam as the savior of PC gaming is nothing more than a fantasy.

 

[MRORANGE]

 

[balladofwindfishes]

Just thought I'd expand a bit more on the TF2 Hat model

80% of TF2 items cost Valve 0 dollars to implement. They are made by the community and submitted to Valve. In return, Valve gives them 25% of the sales. Some of these contributors are making 50,000 dollars a payment statement for making 4 or 5 items.

Bundle that with keys where they don't have to do anything, the community drives the sales of that with the trading meta-game.

Adding hats and new crate items takes about 10 minutes of copy and pasting code that is sent to clients automatically via patches. New crates don't even require a patch to be implemented, they are stored on Valve's server that the client chimes into to use the item system.

And note, 99% of these hats can be obtained in the game normally, or be traded for using regular items anyone can get for just being patient.



TF2 is also a powerful advertising tool. Much to the despair of a handful of the fanbase, Valve adds new cross-promotional content on an almost weekly basis, usually for owning or pre-order a specific game from Steam. These items tend to be very high quality, sometimes having unique animations or some sort special effect on the player (new sound effects, a new taunt, something like that). To top is off, Valve created a culture of traders where these pre-order items sometimes become worth more than the game that was pre-ordered over time, so you have tons of speculators buying these games just for the TF2 item, when they wouldn't have if there wasn't an item.



Maps are slightly... different. Valve pays mapmakers a lump sum upfront (usually 2000-5000 dollars), and then they sell "stamps" which give a special particle effect on that mapmaker's map. 100% of the money made from the map stamp is given to the map maker, and going by some of the stamp ownership numbers, some of the more popular maps are making tens of thousands of dollars. I'm not sure where Valve makes their money on maps, but I'm sure they wouldn't do it if they didn't have a profit angle from it.

 

[StuBurns]

That was kind of my point. Steam as the savior of PC gaming is nothing more than a fantasy.

Well I don't think people are suggesting Valve have made the PC king of the AAA market, it's not. But they have provided a platform for people like Feep to make a cool little game and earn respectable amounts of money without huge contracts with publishers and things. Those games had no real way of getting to market before Steam. You had shareware on discs with big releases and things, but they still needed publishers.

 

[Sblargh]

The über-magical thing steam does for me, other than magical prices, is that they *install the game*.
When I bought my first game on Steam (Civilization 5, I think), I just would not believe that I could just press a button and play a PC game. That heavenly moment in time is when I began to doubt if I'll even bother buying a PS4 when it comes out.

 

[Grayman]

Are they the only gaming company to actually want an economist on their team? And I don't mean basic local economics or a few accountants, they seemed to be looking for someone with global knowledge in regards to foreign exchange and financial formulas. I believe there was an interview where Gabe wanted to nab someone who had worked at the World Bank previously.

CCP has or had one who studied the in game economy of Eve Online. They probably looked at the relationship between ISK and real money too as there was some official conversion between the two.

 

[I H8 Memes]

It can't be that they are just nice, can it? There's got to be a complexity that I'm not seeing here. I'm not trying to allude to conspiracy or suggest there are sinister motivations behind their benevolent choices, because that doesn't appear to be the case, I'm just trying to work out the reasoning (and long term goals, if any) behind their fun choices.

Other people will answer the rest of your questions for both of us. Although I do see a tremendous benefit to the gift giveaways. Exposure for peoples games. Drawing people to the gift pile daily also helps to make sure people see the daily deals page everyday.

But yes, they are nice. Privately owned companies in general are much better to do business with. Gabe seems like a heck of a nice guy and the whole company seems to target great people as potential hires over pure accomplishments. Must be a great place to work.

 

[water_wendi]

Well I don't think people are suggesting Valve have made the PC king of the AAA market, it's not. But they have provided a platform for people like Feep to make a cool little game and earn respectable amounts of money without huge contracts with publishers and things. Those games had no real way of getting to market before Steam. You had shareware on discs with big releases and things, but they still needed publishers.

There were companies selling online long before Steam came around. My issue with Valve on this is that i believe that such a thing should not be at the benefit of a company not involved in the process of making the game. And with how Steam has its tendrils in everything PC gaming now it will be near impossible to dislodge without crashing the entire market. If thats what it takes to ensure a not-for-profit consortium online distribution network takes off that gives the actual creators maximum profit for their endeavors then i hope it comes soon.

 

[Somnid]

I think it's easy to mix up past development with what Valve actually does, content distribution. It's like Apple, it doesn't matter who wins or loses, if 1 million devs sell a single copy or 1 dev sells a million, in the end they get their cut. So long as the ecosystem is good they can afford to make high quality advertisements. Being privately owned and having execs who care about the product more than the money probably helps.

 

[balladofwindfishes]

There were companies selling online long before Steam came around. My issue with Valve on this is that i believe that such a thing should not be at the benefit of a company not involved in the process of making the game. And with how Steam has its tendrils in everything PC gaming now it will be near impossible to dislodge without crashing the entire market. If thats what it takes to ensure a not-for-profit consortium online distribution network takes off that gives the actual creators maximum profit for their endeavors then i hope it comes soon.

why does it have to be dislodged in the first place?

And obviously the creators don't want your scenario because they make more money then they ever have, especially with indie games. There's no guarantees what you want would ever actually happen, so having Steam being the next best option is a lot better than having no market at all for these creators.

 

[JudgeN]

They been using the same game engine for what 10 years? I'm sure that helps alot, don't most developers create new ones every 4-5 years?

Would love for Valve to make a new engine.

 

[neoism]

1. Make awesomeness...


2. Take forever


3. Release ...swim in monies.

 

[WanderingWind]

That was kind of my point. Steam as the savior of PC gaming is nothing more than a fantasy.

No, it's not.

http://gamebanshee.com/news/103912-indie-rpgs-conquer-steam-sales-figures.html

For a great many PC developer it is literally the savior of their business.

In early 2011, Forbes reported that Steam sales constituted 50 to 70% of the $4 billion market for downloaded PC games and that Steam offered game producers gross margins of 70% of purchase price, compared with 30% at retail.[68]

Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale sold more than 140,000 units, which its localization distributor, Carpe Fulgur, attribute in part to Steam and its sales.[69] Magicka sold 30,000 copies on its day of release in January 2011,[70] and went on to sell 200,000 in 17 days.[71] Garry's Mod sold 312,541 in its first two years[72] and reached 1,000,000 after five years[73] with yearly sales growth of 33%.[74]

In November 2011, it was revealed by the developer of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings that Steam was responsible for 80% of the online sales of the game.

EDIT:

My issue with Valve on this is that i believe that such a thing should not be at the benefit of a company not involved in the process of making the game. And with how Steam has its tendrils in everything PC gaming now it will be near impossible to dislodge without crashing the entire market. If thats what it takes to ensure a not-for-profit consortium online distribution network takes off that gives the actual creators maximum profit for their endeavors then i hope it comes soon.

This is an insane point of view. You hope a crash comes soon so that...what replaces Steam exactly? A more expensive option for developers that would ensure that less games are released on PC? You think individual companies couldn't do that already? You know why they don't? Because it's far, far more expensive than the alternative. You've passed beyond thinking of this in any logical context when you are actively hoping for something to crash, simply because you do not like it. That is people's lives you're talking about. Developers like Feep and hundreds other eat because of them having a stable, market visible platform to release their games.

 

[Sober]

No, it's not.

http://gamebanshee.com/news/103912-indie-rpgs-conquer-steam-sales-figures.html

For a great many PC developer it is literally the savior of their business.

In early 2011, Forbes reported that Steam sales constituted 50 to 70% of the $4 billion market for downloaded PC games and that Steam offered game producers gross margins of 70% of purchase price, compared with 30% at retail.[68]

Wasn't there also that story of an Introversion (I think?) game or something that saved the creators when it got put on sale on Steam?

 

[butter_stick]

The über-magical thing steam does for me, other than magical prices, is that they *install the game*.
When I bought my first game on Steam (Civilization 5, I think), I just would not believe that I could just press a button and play a PC game. That heavenly moment in time is when I began to doubt if I'll even bother buying a PS4 when it comes out.

Doesn't stop random games making you stare at them installing DirectX and C# Redistributable or whatever time after time after time

 

[StuBurns]

There were companies selling online long before Steam came around. My issue with Valve on this is that i believe that such a thing should not be at the benefit of a company not involved in the process of making the game. And with how Steam has its tendrils in everything PC gaming now it will be near impossible to dislodge without crashing the entire market. If thats what it takes to ensure a not-for-profit consortium online distribution network takes off that gives the actual creators maximum profit for their endeavors then i hope it comes soon.

I do think the fate of PC gaming is completely linked to the fate of Steam. Valve could devastate the industry over night if they cared to, but they have no motive to do it. Per employee they're one of the wealthiest companies in the world, they're not publicly traded, they're Marty with the almanac and they practically can't fuck it up at this point.

While they did force Steam on people with HL2 as a trojan horse, I do think they're in the position they are honestly, they didn't plot to rule the PC landscape.

 

[Sblargh]

There were companies selling online long before Steam came around. My issue with Valve on this is that i believe that such a thing should not be at the benefit of a company not involved in the process of making the game. And with how Steam has its tendrils in everything PC gaming now it will be near impossible to dislodge without crashing the entire market. If thats what it takes to ensure a not-for-profit consortium online distribution network takes off that gives the actual creators maximum profit for their endeavors then i hope it comes soon.

Do you want the UN to distribute games?

 

[Feep]

Steam certainly is *my* company's savior, but I am not "PC Gaming", so take that with a grain of salt.

 

[Jintor]

There were companies selling online long before Steam came around. My issue with Valve on this is that i believe that such a thing should not be at the benefit of a company not involved in the process of making the game. And with how Steam has its tendrils in everything PC gaming now it will be near impossible to dislodge without crashing the entire market. If thats what it takes to ensure a not-for-profit consortium online distribution network takes off that gives the actual creators maximum profit for their endeavors then i hope it comes soon.

They may not be involved in the process of making the game, but they are the owners of the distribution system involved. They're effectively a publishing arm at this point.