By Kieron Gillen on February 19th, 2009 at 7:44 pm.
Well, that’s what you get reading between the lines of Gabe Newell’s keynote at this year’s DICE Summit, which featured the Valve boss speaking about his company’s experience with Steam and how digital-download direct sales are an enormous success. G4 liveblogged the event in loving detail while Gamasutra did an overview of the whole thing. I’d read the whole G4 thing if I were you, if only to have a chuckle at the comment thread at the bottom full of PS3 owners who just won’t let go. However, I’ll pick out the key points – and some exciting percentages – beneath the cut.
The top level trends will be familiar to RPS readers. Direct Download closes the distance between the creators and the audience. Plain DRM actually seems to encourage piracy. (Though Steam is a DRM system – just one which offers a enough bonuses which makes the pill easier to swallow for the customer) Pirates are actually customers who aren’t being served – and arguably the pirates are actually providing a better, more convenient service than actual retailers.
Some fun facts? Well, try these:
- There’s twenty million people on Steam now. That’s 100% year on year growth since 2004. Which sounds like some good year on year growth to me.
- The TF2 updates really pay off, with sale spikes after every update. 106% increase in sales. The ability to gift accounts has lead to a 71% increase in sales. It also helped retail, with revenue increase 28%. Also, a 75% increase in new users of Steam generally. The point I’d take from that is that Valve’s policy of offering more to consumers is actually the smart commerical thing to do, assuming the increase in revenue is enough.
- The sales are having an enormous effect. The recent Left 4 Dead sale lead to a 3000% increase over the previous numbers. That is, more than in the weekend it was released. Plus, another 1600% in new customers to Steam. None of this effected retail numbers.
- One third party game – annoyingly, they don’t say which one – saw increases of 36,000% in a weekend sale.
- The holiday sales lead to interesting numbers. A 10% reduction lead to 35% increase in amount of money which came in (i.e. Not just sales). 25% lead to a 245% increase. 50% lead to 320% increase. And 75% lead to 1470%. Which is an interesting one to interpret in a few ways.
- The people who made the TF2 videos are going to make TF2 comics. Interestink!
- And bloggers are important, apparently. Thanks, Gabe! We think you’re pretty important too.
As I said, it’s worth reading the whole liveblog but lots to think about, if only it’s “I wish I had a lot of money”.
Man, I wish I had a lot of money.
:(
:(
:(
Yes.
19/02/2009 at 19:52 Retro says:
“One third party game – annoyingly, they don’t say which one – saw increases of 36,000% in a weekend sale.”
Bioshock, what else?
19/02/2009 at 19:53 Retro says:
Err, except that it was not a weekend but a holiday sale.. nevermind me
19/02/2009 at 19:54 yxxxx says:
sigh the comments make me weep.
Mind you why he seems to dislike the ps3 is a little strange.
19/02/2009 at 19:56 fulis says:
boo I tipped you off on this morning! but yay for steam
19/02/2009 at 20:00 nakke says:
The holiday sales numbers are really interesting. Yay for companies discovering price elasticity (hopefully)!
19/02/2009 at 20:01 nabeel says:
It was pretty cool to see the numbers finally, I have always been very curious about how sales have been affected by their various deals. Also nice to see confirmation of my suspicion that they have a psychologist on hand for sale strategies.
19/02/2009 at 20:01 Zed says:
I reckon Audiosurf was the game with the 36,000% increase. Whoever made it must be pretty chuffed.
19/02/2009 at 20:04 viper34j says:
Mount & Blade had a pretty good weekend sale a while back. I doubt it’s had a large amount of sales since release due to an absence of PR. Since that time I’ve seen increased love being given to it by the reviewing community (and RPS). I bet the advertisement from Steam and the price tag of only $10 had it flying off the digital shelf.
19/02/2009 at 20:11 Theory says:
That has to be Prey’s $5 sale.
19/02/2009 at 20:11 Muzman says:
Do they talk a bit about the way they broker sales and deal with royalties and such?
I’d be curious to know how that works compared to regular retail (suppliers and producers basically have to ‘buy’ a ‘sale’ as well as discount their stuff usually. But there’s various sorts of deals retailers have set up. Valve’s policies are probably out there if I just went and looked I guess) .
19/02/2009 at 20:14 Doc MacRae says:
6:01 PM – The keynote is officially one minute late. Jeez. Valve can’t even ship a keynote on time!
6:04 PM – I just got word that Gabe’s beta speech was stolen from the green room and it wasn’t very polished. He’s hard at work refining his speech and we expect to kick off “when it’s done.”
Snicker.
And suck, PS3 kids with sour grapes.
19/02/2009 at 20:15 Doc MacRae says:
Suck *it*, that is. If I register and/or subscribe, do I get to edit my posts?
19/02/2009 at 20:18 noexes says:
I <3 Gabe, but yea, the PS3 boys have reason to be a bit angry. He is taking full credit for this free updates business plan and saying that it is impossible on the consoles but at the moment it is only impossible on the 360. Games like the PS3 versions of Unreal Tournament 3 and Burnout: Paradise have gained a lot of goodwill by releasing free updates. If they fully supported the PS3 version of TF2 there is no reason it couldn’t reach near parity with the PC version feature wise the way UT3 has.
And that is all that needs to be said on the topic.
19/02/2009 at 20:21 aiusepsi says:
I think this is interesting juxtaposed against the Pirate Bay trial going on in Sweden.
The fact of the matter is that the Internet and technology is fundamentally transforming the way that entertainment is distributed and consumed, and the attempts of the big companies to shut down places like the Pirate Bay just seem to me like King Canute telling the tide not to come in.
On the other hand, Valve are proving how damned smart they are. Again.
19/02/2009 at 20:21 cyrenic says:
I agree with viper, I would bet money that 3rd party game mentioned was Mount and Blade. The decrease was from $30 to $7.50, which is huge, and it’s an obscure enough game that the normal sales would have been low enough to see such a huge % increase after a sale like that.
19/02/2009 at 20:22 Nighthood says:
The comments thread has made me lose all faith in humanity. One thing that can be said for PC Gaming is that, in the most part, the people on it are mature and intelligent. It’s easy for anybody to put in a disc and play, but harder to install a game.
Ah, I don’t know. Sometimes I think that Console players are the Trendy kids in school and PC Gamers are the nerdier, clever ones. The trendy kids might walk around with a swagger and make jokes about the nerdy ones, but in the long run, you know which one comes out top.
This post is also entirely irrelevant to the Valve thing. Oh well. VALVE FTW!!!!1!1
19/02/2009 at 20:23 Jim Rossignol says:
Doc: I think being logged into the forum provides some degree of editing on comment thread post.
19/02/2009 at 20:23 redrain85 says:
The comments on that G4 Feed article are just atrocious. :p
Blimey. Steam has 20 million users now? And it seems like only yesterday that it had 15 million users. That’s some enormous growth.
So let me get this straight. The secret to Valve’s success is:
- Keep updating your games, either by patching bugs or introducing new content.
- Release said new content for free whenever possible, instead of nickel and diming customers to death.
- Have sales on your titles that make them very reasonably priced.
- Don’t treat all your customers like potential criminals.
- Word of mouth is far more important (and cheaper) than any PR campaign.
- Provide the necessary tools and encourage players to create new content, instead of intentionally withholding them due to (baseless) fear that free content will eliminate the demand for high-quality paid content. (And the key words there are “high-quality”, not cheap map packs knocked out over a week or two.)
Really? Using common sense works? Who woulda thunk it.
19/02/2009 at 20:24 Nighthood says:
The comments thread on the G4 site that is. RPS is all goooood.
19/02/2009 at 20:25 subedii says:
I suspect that the 36,000% figure might have been from when they dropped Half-Life 1 to a dollar to celebrate the 10th year anniversary. Heck, anyone on Steam who didn’t own it by then probably bought it at that point.
19/02/2009 at 20:26 l1ddl3monkey says:
Y DUZ GAB NOT LIEK PS3??? PS3 IS TEH AWSOMIST GAME MACHENE WAT HAS BIN MADE EVAR. GABE IS A FAG. LOL 1111!!!!!ONEELEVEN!!!!111 HURRRRRRRRRR.
This is what is wrong with the PS3.
19/02/2009 at 20:26 Nighthood says:
Half Life isn’t third party afaik.
19/02/2009 at 20:37 Max says:
@Muzman
I think that Steam deals with royalties on a case-by-case basis depending on what the developer wants out of the service.
For example, I know that Garry (of GMod fame) agreed to getting 50% of the profit in return for full access to the HL2 source code.
19/02/2009 at 20:39 Tworak says:
Gabe Newell is awesome. The fact that he hates 33% of the consoles makes him even awesome-r.
19/02/2009 at 20:41 shon says:
I bought TF2 after the Heavy Update. The free weekend hooked me but I was willing to pay for it just because I was impressed by how they kept updating it. Outside of MMO’s, I don’t know of a company that keeps trying to make their game fun.
19/02/2009 at 20:44 Arnulf says:
If they find a way to implement an age verification system, or label some game as imports for customers, I’d be very happy!
I bought Bioshock and The Orange Box recently over Steam and got treated to the cut/censored versions. I was very annoyed over the changes they made to HL2:Ep2. Especially since Ep1 wasn’t cut at all.
Verdammt nochmal!
19/02/2009 at 20:50 The_B says:
Mentioning Killzone 2 – The Internet’s new DRM.
19/02/2009 at 20:54 Rich_P says:
What an awesome sales pitch: Steam is the future. Your retail model is old and clunky. Join us.
Valve’s essentially built a gaming platform for nothing. Sony and Microsoft spend billions of dollars designing and producing consoles, hoping that royalties from new game sales make the endeavor profitable. (Steam essentially gets a royalty for every game sold.)
So in terms of return-on-investment, Steam (and WoW for that matter) make the consoles look like a joke.
What’s to stop Valve from selling movies, TV shows, apps, and other services? That’s Bill Gates’ dream for the Xbox: an all-in-one entertainment platform where Microsoft gets a cut of every transaction.
Once Steam reaches critical mass, publishers could be rendered obsolete. Have a good game? Just send it to Valve and negotiate distribution fees, no publisher required.
19/02/2009 at 20:57 Wazzle says:
Oh ho ho, that comment thread on G4 is a laugh and one half. Make sure to read “taarec10″‘s comments, those are especially tummy-tickling.
…
Or depressing.
19/02/2009 at 20:59 Mike says:
My money goes on Mount and Blade for the “Mystery 36000% game”. Either that or possibly Red Orchestra. Interesting that the L4D sale led to a high increase of new Steam accounts. My guess is converted 360 owners with too few people to play with? No idea.
19/02/2009 at 21:03 unclelou says:
If they find a way to implement an age verification system, or label some game as imports for customers, I’d be very happy!
I bought Bioshock and The Orange Box recently over Steam and got treated to the cut/censored versions. I was very annoyed over the changes they made to HL2:Ep2. Especially since Ep1 wasn’t cut at all.
Verdammt nochmal!
This – it’s really, really annoying. It’s perfectly legal for any German over 18 to buy import versions (or even “banned” games), but Steam won’t let me unless I import a boxed copy or let someone from the UK make me a gift. :-/
As much as I like Steam, the amount of control they have over what you can play and what not is a bit tterrifying for someone from a country with stricter age rating laws.
19/02/2009 at 21:03 Fatbubba says:
I’m not surprised about the holiday and weekend sales numbers. I usually instantly buy a weekend deal if I don’t already have it and the Christmas sale was great again this year. Plenty of people who instantly buy the weekend deals
19/02/2009 at 21:03 subedii says:
Now now, you leave those PS3 fanboys alone. They’ve been treated harshly by the internet, as evidenced by the lack of universal 10′s on Killzone 2.
@ Nighthood: You’re right. My next guess would be maybe Mount and Blade.
19/02/2009 at 21:07 Heliocentric says:
You know 36000% of not very much, remains not very much. 1 sale to 361 sales. For example. Probably a sign the game was overpriced in the first place.
19/02/2009 at 21:08 ascagnel says:
@Retro:
Could also be STALKER SoC. BioShock was more popular on 360 than PC (not sayin, but just sayin), while STALKER got a good amount of word-of-mouth that more than justified a $2US or so purchase that it was on sale for one weekend.
And yes, it was for a weekend sale.
19/02/2009 at 21:09 jalf says:
Cue comment about ridiculous Euro prices… Of course that’s one way to make your weekend deal sales look impressive. Price the game 50% above everyone else the rest of the time, and the percentage increase in sales on a weekend deal will look pretty damn good.
Oh well, thank god for Play.com :)
19/02/2009 at 21:09 James G says:
@unclelou
The most recent client update claimed: “Added ability to specify content download region (in Settings->downloads)”
I’m assuming that will let you download the international versions.
19/02/2009 at 21:12 clive dunn says:
I wonder how many people have purchased a game in one of the sales and never played it. I know i have.
19/02/2009 at 21:20 Okami says:
Why did you have to tell us to look at the comments under the g4tv article? I did and now I’m incredibly sad. Humans suck.
19/02/2009 at 21:26 Alex says:
James, that just tells your client which content servers to use, not what content you actually get.
Like in ye olden times, before Steame, when one would have to scoure a list of mirrores to get the latest Half-Life patch.
19/02/2009 at 21:38 shon says:
As I do not own a PS3 or have any idea what Killzone 2 is, I really wish there was a FAQ to explain why Killzone 2 is funny/horrific to mention.
19/02/2009 at 21:40 DERP says:
on L4D:
“There are other ways to excite customers with things like commentaries and comics that take less effort than new maps.”
NO
BAD GABE
BAD
19/02/2009 at 21:45 Wedge says:
I do love how they always speak of things in percentages when talking about Steam. While you know damn well it’s because the numbers wouldn’t look impressive compared to retail console games, it’s also probably not a big deal with how much more revenue you generate selling games this way. And then when you realize how small a company Valve is relative to larger publishing/development entities their income over operating costs must be doing pretty well.
19/02/2009 at 21:47 unclelou says:
Cheers, James G, though I am afraid Okami is right.
BioShock was more popular on 360 than PC (not sayin, but just sayin)
I thought Bioshock was the rare exception where the PC version sold better than the 360 one? I could be wrong though.
When I read the article, I immediately thought “Bioshock” as well. Iirc, it was offered for a ridiculously low price (€ 3 or something?)
19/02/2009 at 21:51 Markoff Chaney says:
Information like this really makes me want to ask that we have to reconsider the concept of Value and Volume in a commerce where the actual product is one that can be perfectly replicated and distributed for pennies. It’s an arrangement of 0s and 1s, rather complex and ever increasing in size, but just that and it can be delivered on media that’s physical, whether it’s copper via downloading it or on a disc that spins around in a drive while a laser scans across it.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that we have an entire concept of Value in our mind which is based on production of physical, tangible goods (food, clothing, desks, mice, etc) where a significant cost of the product is based in the materials used to produce the good. In this, there are also significant recurring logistical concerns such as transportation of said good, continual payment of laborers to put widget a into woggle c and so forth.
In a new paradigm where infinite, flawless, copies of a string of 0s and 1s can be downloaded and can, quite literally, be produced for only the cost of bandwidth and server storage space we have to understand that the name of this game will be one of volume and consistent quality. Valve gets this. This data shows just how well they do get it.
Some of the statistics, I’m sure, are much like Heliocentric said. Take an older, low seller that’s way over priced considering it’s age, and reduce the price. You will sell significantly more and the cost of “creation” of your good is pennies. Sensationalist numbers, but the overlying trend is consistently improving for Valve and the distribution method is significantly better (for them, due to cost) than printing code on discs of plastic and putting them in a plastic sleeve with a manual and sometimes another box with more artwork around that.
Providing a good game and having a 0 day tax where it costs more upon release for those of us that MUST have it as soon as it’s commercially available mixed with a reduction of price, while actually offering an increased value with added content and updates all while distributing the content for pennies is a sure way to fully maximize profits. It’s any distributor/publisher’s wet dream. Amazing work, Gabe.
19/02/2009 at 22:03 Dain says:
All this is very lovely, but we can also provide economic statistics on how things like say sustainable development get you more money and more karma in the long run. It doesn’t matter, people will keep on doing whatever gets them the most money fastest.
19/02/2009 at 22:04 Oak says:
I wonder how many people have purchased a game in one of the sales and never played it. I know i have.
I can understand doing this with boxed games, but something about the you-have-it-forever quality of Steam games and the public nature of the games list makes me far more careful in my choices. I know this isn’t wholly rational.
19/02/2009 at 22:06 Rudolfo says:
it’s not a wet dream, it’s reality
gonna be reading those comments now :)
19/02/2009 at 22:07 sbs says:
Arnulf: I feel your pain. I wish there was a reliable way to get the uncut versions via steam, as a german. If anyone knows one, feel free to tell me.
As far as I know, the episode 2 thing was because they tried to get a 16 rating, which they didn’t, and since it costs money to get it rated they wouldn’t bother to give them the uncensored version to rate it again, so they released the cut anyway.
Luckily, there are bloodpatches for both episode 2 and bioshock(the latter one weighing about 2 GB, oh what a pain in the ass that was…).
19/02/2009 at 22:11 caesarbear says:
I’m going to side with Mount and Blade as the “36000%” game. It’s more recent than Bioshock. It changed from being the same price as a digital download from Taleworlds to being a measly $8. Plus it’s indie, so 10 sales at most X 36000% = 3,600 sales.
19/02/2009 at 22:28 Biz says:
outside of weekend deals, steam is almost always more expensive than boxed goods. valve just pockets a huge chunk of money because they have no real competition.
19/02/2009 at 22:30 Sagan says:
I hate their weekend deals. It seems like the more deals I buy, the less money I save. Since they started their weekend deals, I have been spending more money on games than ever before… Oh btw it’s almost Friday. I wonder what will be the deal this weekend? CS maybe? That’s still mysteriously absent from my collection…
Also I don’t believe the whole “DRM increases piracy” shtick. He just says that because that’s the popular thing to say. I simply refuse to believe, that the business people at every single PC publisher are so stupid, that they don’t realize, that they are diminishing their own sales… That’s just too unlikely.
Btw can he really claim “All major PC publishers on board” when Blizzard is not on board?
19/02/2009 at 22:34 SuperNashwan says:
The holiday sales lead to interesting numbers. A 10% reduction lead to 35% increase in amount of money which came in (i.e. Not just sales). 25% lead to a 245% increase. 50% lead to 320% increase. And 75% lead to 1470%.
Somewhere in the internet, a Stuart Campbell might be quietly thinking ‘Told you so’.
19/02/2009 at 23:46 Robin says:
It’s a shame that Newell still has the arse about the PS3. Valve have done important, progressive things for PC gaming, and have seemingly managed to force Microsoft’s hand regarding free updates on the 360. They could put their substantial clout behind fixing cross-platform gaming between PC, PS3 and 360. But for some bizarre, presumably political reason they’d rather ignore 18m+ PS3 users. It seems particularly incongruous when you look at the huge strides that all the other major publishers have made in the their PS3 support in the last year.
20/02/2009 at 00:03 Gott says:
@Sagan
Given the nature of the problem they can be. Or rather the nature of the problem facing them (falling sales in many areas of PC gaming) they face a number of possible problems, but they can’t actually identify what they are as a) they can’t read our minds yet and b) Games aren’t a heterogenous good. At the developer level in particular, its easy to blame pirates for falling sales (since your game is certainly being pirated) and take the logical step of acting to reduce piracy. Trouble is that DRM adds to the real cost of purchase, the cost that includes the value that you place on your time and your frustration at getting the damned system to recognise you, so keeping quality constant you’ll probably buy fewer games. So sales fall and the whole cycle continues.
I do agree with the poster above stating that games seem price elastic on the whole, but information has the greatest effect on determining sales IMO. The more familiar you are with a game the more copies its likely to sell, coverage begets sales begets coverage.
20/02/2009 at 00:06 Davik says:
The 3rd party game could have been Trials 2′s sale price of something like $2. I know a ton of people who bought that then, myself included.
20/02/2009 at 00:08 Kadayi says:
Like a few others I’m guessing Mount & Blade was probably the game that got the boost. Its had a good deal of positive word of mouth put out about it from sites like this and across game forums by existing players (I can’t think of anyone whose played it, who hasn’t vouched for it ) . The price point during the 75% off weekend was at that sweet spot where it was too good an opportunity for people who’d heard it’s praises sung to pass up tbh.
Good to know that all is going well at Valve Towers, but enough already with the lack of EP3 news. Combine Overseers need dying after that shit they pulled at the end of EP2.
Also that G4 comments thread needs a health warning over the level of toxic stupidity emanating from it…
20/02/2009 at 00:08 Daniel Puzey says:
You have to remember that the XBox is basically a PC under the covers; PS3 hardware is not. For a company whose focus has been the PC, the XBox is an economical way to expand, but my guess is that PS3 ports would be more costly. Valve seem pretty savvy – who’s to say it’s not better ROI pumping new content to PC (especially with those figures!) compared to porting the same content to PS3?
20/02/2009 at 00:09 Frank says:
I’m also thinking the mystery game is Prey @ $5. I tend to wait until a game is very cheap (or I get very impatient) before buying it. If the rest of the sale-responders do the same, those big numbers 1470% might be sales forgone at higher prices. Then again, if Valve are less patient than us (if they get high returns on their investments, for example), it may be worth it to get us buying sooner rather than later…anyway, just thinking aloud…err, thinking atype.
20/02/2009 at 00:15 Sev3rity says:
The 36,000% game was Probably DoW: SoulStorm, it went down to 7 bucks for a weekend for access to the DoW2 beta.
20/02/2009 at 00:22 Kadayi says:
On the subject of Valve not developing on the PS3 here’s the interview Gabe gave about Next Gen tech to 1UP back in 2006, where he discusses Longhorn (Vista), the 360 & the PS3:-
http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/1063
He’s pretty damning about all of them tbh, and pretty much states why the PS3 isn’t worth Valves time. Worth watching to appreciate his perspective on these things in full, and with articulate arguments.
Popular games such as DOW are always going to sell well regardless of price point, it’s the more offbeat games that likely get the big spikes from the weekend deals.
@Robin
EA Ported The Orange Box to PS3, clearly it didn’t sell enough in Valves view for them to justify pouring a bucketload of money into recoding all of L4D to run on the Cell processor. If the OB had sold great guns I’m sure they’d have looked at doing it (they are a business after all). There are also plenty of console games that don’t ever come to the PC it should be noted as well, so it shouldn’t be a shock that the reverse is also true.
20/02/2009 at 00:35 Deuteronomy says:
Bought Left 4 dead during the 25% off weekend. Goddamn that game’s awesome. I was a little wary after Valve’s last craptastic effort in TF2 and the tendency for me to recoil with revulsion from every game the RPS staff likes.
20/02/2009 at 00:37 Andrew says:
Just goes to show a little discount can go a looooooooong way.
20/02/2009 at 01:36 Lukasz says:
their comment section is adorable. thank god rpsers are more civilized (most of the time :) )
interesting article. so when they lowered the price they got more money? that’s awesome. but why then increase the price in EURO zone?
20/02/2009 at 01:38 Nick says:
“Valve’s last craptastic effort in TF2″
The hell?
20/02/2009 at 01:47 A-Scale says:
I love Valve so much. I hope they never turn on us. As to the third party game that jumped 3600%, I’m betting it was WoG. The drop to 15 bucks for that title was able to wrangle cash from even my cold dead hands.
20/02/2009 at 03:21 Ginger Yellow says:
I third the Prey suggestions. That game’s sales were so low before, and the price cut was so deep, I can easily imagine they grew that much.
20/02/2009 at 03:46 Thiefsie says:
Why don’t numbers like this get shown from retail reductions?
20/02/2009 at 03:47 Thiefsie says:
And along from that, is it possibly that perceived ‘value’ of a product is important, whereas raised above… a digital product has no inherant ‘unreproduceable’ value to it, thus no one cares if it is cheap – knowing that it is still probably good.
Not a ‘you get what you pay for’ slant.
20/02/2009 at 04:01 Anthony Damiani says:
I think we need to pay less attention to the “36,000%” number, and more to the “20 million.”
The PS3 has an install-base of 21.3 million as of Dec. 31st, and the 360 has 27 million and change. Given the rate of growth Steam has enjoyed, I think this seems vaguely portentous for how the PC stacks up to consoles in terms of sales.
20/02/2009 at 04:37 Rich_P says:
What’s even more impressive: Valve didn’t spend billions of dollars to reach those 20 million users.
Steam is basically a console that was made for nothing. So even if Steam’s annual revenue is less than the Xbox’s, the return-on-investment must staggering. And Steam will always be Steam; Sony and Microsoft have to spend billions of dollars every few years designing new consoles.
Like I said earlier, it makes you completely reevaluate the sustainability of the console model as practiced by Sony and Microsoft.
20/02/2009 at 05:07 tssk says:
I’m a rabid console player. I detest setting up PC games. I loathe the idea of paying for digital downloads.
So how did I become a Steam user?
The trojan horse was the Orange Box. At the time the Aussie dollar was pretty good and it was selling for half retail. I really wanted to play Portal and for a price for each individual title that was so low it was almost rental price i was prepared to take the plunge.
And….Steam really impressed me. Seamless install experiences, drm which was invisible and didn’t make me feel I had to prove I was a legitimate user and a load of free demos. Throw in some weekend and package sales and a year later my poor consoles are gathering dust while I try to play through all the games I bought over Steam.
Four years ago I was totally anti Steam. Now I’m pro Steam…just as long as they don’t go bust.
As for the PS3 talk…I love Sony’s past consoles. But I wouldn’t touch a PS3 with a very very long stick. After evaluating both the big consoles I bought a new graphics card and monitor instead and used the change to buy a Wii.
20/02/2009 at 06:07 MeestaNob says:
I’m pretty sure the 3600% game was Bioshock. It was $5 or $10 during the holiday sale, but had the stigma of only being a above average game in awesome games clothing. At this new price point it suddenly became utterly unmissable.
20/02/2009 at 07:19 Spaceman-Spiff says:
For the 36,000% increase, I’m also guessing Audiosurf. It’s such a small, independent game. The baseline sales must’ve been low before the sale. Say it was selling around 50 copies per month, a 36,000% increase becomes nearly 2M copies. More well-known games like Bioshock or Prey must’ve had much higher baseline sales.
20/02/2009 at 07:39 Tei says:
This gravatar thing… it suppose use the md5 of your email to ‘calculate’ what avatar to use. Since gabe email is gabe@valvesoftware.com, and md5(“gabe@valvesoftware.com”) = 174277301f948e3dca7dd0dc9d5db7a2, the gravatar of gabe using gravatars would be
http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=174277301f948e3dca7dd0dc9d5db7a2&rating=PG&size=50&default=http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/generic2.jpg
That result on the generic (he has not gravatar)
And If you google for that string on normal google, or google images, theres not hit.
All this proff that you can test if some poster here is person Y with email X. Searching for the md5(X) in the source code of the page.
20/02/2009 at 08:14 cliffski says:
“Once Steam reaches critical mass, publishers could be rendered obsolete.”
what?
what do you think valve are?
They are publishers who take a cut. If you want to xut out publishers you buy direct. I don’t see how valve are painted as the guys who have cut out the publisher. They are the publisher here. They may not fund the up-front money, but they are still taking a cut, and still retaining the customer, rather than the developer.
20/02/2009 at 08:42 Dan Milburn says:
cliffski, I believe the word you’re looking for is ‘distributors’ or possibly ‘retailers’, in the same way that someone buying a game from HMV or Amazon would not make them the publisher. Valve do of course publish their own games, but not anyone elses.
20/02/2009 at 09:22 Ian says:
“As I said, it’s worth reading the whole liveblog but lots to think about, if only it’s “I wish I had a lot of money”.
Man, I wish I had a lot of money.”
So what have you been doing with all the bribes you get from Evil Devs to say their rubbish games are good then, eh?
20/02/2009 at 09:37 QuantumGravitas says:
Thanks, G4, for the best comment thread I’ve read in a long time. Never ceases to amaze how the Internet is both the best invention humanity has ever invented…and the worst, for allowing such retarded commentary!
I’m not a fan of Valve per se (even less so of Steam), but I do acknowledge the importance they play in the PC world. Also, I’d have given good money to watch other publishers & dev houses going green at the sales numbers Gabe casually pulled out. Newell may as well have come dressed in a suit made of $1000 bills carefully stitched together…:D
20/02/2009 at 09:45 Malagate says:
To quote Anthony: “The PS3 has an install-base of 21.3 million as of Dec. 31st, and the 360 has 27 million and change. Given the rate of growth Steam has enjoyed, I think this seems vaguely portentous for how the PC stacks up to consoles in terms of sales.”
I’d say in terms of game sales this stacks up even better for Steam than it does for consoles, mainly because the only reason to get steam is to play games, but those consoles could be bought for other functions (a cheap blu ray player in the case of the PS3, at least when blu ray was still very new) or as gifts that aren’t necessarily used. Being that most of the revenue by consoles is from the software, the fact that not all of the console users will necessarily be purchasing games will cut into their profits (selling each console at a loss apparantly, at least at the beginning), whereas having steam but not buying anything through it has no effect on valve profits (‘cept bandwidth for downloading the client maybe?).
Of course those steam accounts aren’t necessarily all active accounts, are they? Some could just be opened by people who want demos I suppose.
20/02/2009 at 10:19 AbyssUK says:
Valve have so much money eh!… well buy some decent application programmers to fix steam.. it still takes for no good reason far too long to start up!
Most of the games start up faster than the program..
20/02/2009 at 10:59 Bhazor says:
About console fanboyism in the G4 comments
“Posted by pcpwnsconsoles – Thursday, February 19, 2009 9:20 AM
taarec
go f*&# yourself you sonytard
the reason why gabe doesnt want to make games for the bs3 is because he knows its a piece of garbage, thats why he makes pc games because pc is more superior than your overhyped bluray player
hell half life alone rapes anything your bs3 can bring out, and what does the bs3 have thats any good?
oh yeah some gay mario ripoff with teddybears (littlebigplanet)
2 mediocore fps resistance and killzone2
and a 3 hour glitch fest heavenly sword
pc pwns consoles”
“Posted by pcpwnsconsoles – Thursday, February 19, 2009 11:31 AM
all the games you named sucked
heavenly sword is a 3 hour hack n slash that glitches like crazy
fps suck on consoles
warhawk has horrible controlls
lbp is good for a girl
socom lags like crazy
uncharted is tomb raider with a guy
all your exclusives are epic failures”
Glass houses. Stones everywhere.
20/02/2009 at 11:13 Dr_demento says:
The 360 does have free updates, in my experience between a half and a third of all DLC is free – sometimes not until the next pack comes out (Halo 3 map packs for example) but it’s still eventually free. Valve aren’t the first company to manage it.
Yay for Steam, saviour of the PC! If only you could play PC games without Windows…. (nudge nudge Gabe)
20/02/2009 at 11:27 Kommissar Nicko says:
I think it’s all well and good to poo-poo PS3 and Xbox360 fanboyism, but we all know what happens when you insult a proper chap’s MMO-of-choice: Interweb Fisticuffs.
20/02/2009 at 11:36 Bobsy says:
@Cliffski Regarding the publishers/distributors point, for the majority of the titles on Steam Valve are acting as the latter – even giving into other publishers’ demands on matters like DRM more often than they need to – but depending on what Valve offer as publishers they could well sway devs into signing onto them instead. I would guess it’s probably a better deal to have your publisher and developer be the same person?
20/02/2009 at 11:45 megaman says:
Regarding the Bioshock-on-Steam thingy: I was pretty pissed that when I bought it using Steam, I got a german language version (and presumably censored, too). I checked the configuration files on the disk, switched german to “universal” or something in one place, started the game again, and voila – completely english menus, subtitles, voices, everything.
And about the nerfing I am not so sure either, I read the German version of Bioshock didn’t feature ragdoll physics. I am pretty sure I had ragdoll physics, but can’t compare since I switched from German before starting the game.
20/02/2009 at 11:47 MacBeth says:
clive dunn says:
I wonder how many people have purchased a game in one of the sales and never played it. I know i have.
Erm…
Bioshock
Mount & Blade
Gun
The entire Rockstar pack (though I completed Liberty & Vice Cities on PS2 back in the day…)
Nearly all of the ID complete pack (I’ve only played Quake ‘again’ on the Steam installation)
I’m sure I’ll get stuck in to them just as soon as I get bored with L4D…
20/02/2009 at 13:01 Arnulf says:
German version of Bioshock. Found the INI files with some help of Google. The quirk here is that almost all sound files are there, bar some. For instance the very first dive with the Batysphere where Ryan explain his rationale is missing.
Also the very last scene where The Villain explains everything to you is missing. You can only helplessly watch his lips moving while no sound comes out. Anyway, the german dub is not bad. Also the censoring is minor. Mostly all dynamic blood splatter was removed. While the decorative blood smears remain. And then some minor details. For explicit details see this site. (Everything in German, though.)
The censoring in Episode 2 is more drastic and the whole time I’ve got the nagging feeling I’m missing something. Especially since my original, years-old HL2 version and Episode 1 aren’t cut at all. I’m thinking about importing the boxed UK version.
About the whole Steam deal. Overall I’m pretty pleased with Steam as a customer. I like that I can take my games with me to a new computer, which I did once already.
20/02/2009 at 13:20 Mac says:
Hopefully, they follow their own stats and lower teh price of games in increase sales/profit.
Current pricing is a joke and only weekend sales are worth getting.
e.g. DoW2 = £35 on Steam, £23 Play.com
20/02/2009 at 13:47 BargainBinLaden says:
An interesting thing to note about Steam’s discount sales tactic is that in retail stores, the same tactic is only used for games that don’t sell otherwise, i.e: poor quality, bad word-of-mouth, critical panning…etc. Lower prices – ‘Bargain Bin’ prices – are a shorthand for ‘not quite good enough to sell at full price’. Just yesterday I was in PC World looking at Maelstrom for £2.88 and stood looking at it for a while thinking “I’m tempted…but what’s wrong with it?” (Apparently a deeply flawed and turgid single-player campaign, Eurogamer tells me; the multiplayer is where all the fun is hidden. At that price, and being a fan of KD Labs’ Perimeter, I might just nip back for it).
I wonder if anyone in retail would be brave enough to reduce a top-tier title in the same fashion as Valve?
20/02/2009 at 14:19 kadayi says:
@Mac
You’ll find the Play are undercutting pretty much everyone by a massive margin even other online retailers tbh.
20/02/2009 at 14:35 zndkwin says:
If steam is so great then why are several of its games priced much higher than their retail counterparts?? cod4 is still too expensive and cheaper to get from retail.
- Why can Valve shutdown your account and take your games away from you if they want to?
- Why are you not allowed to trade or re-sell your account?
- Why is $1 = €1 in steam’s land? An unpopular conversion which is getting many people in europe angry at steam.
- Why are your games all enclosed in a .gcf file?
- Why do you need online connection to play a singleplayer game, if only one time? (shouldnt be needed at all.)
The list goes on and on. Steam cannot be turned into a monopoly of digital media. It will become fat and arrogant like microsoft or sony are.
20/02/2009 at 14:55 Robin says:
@Kadayi
EA ported the Orange Box to PS3 because Valve refused to. There’s an argument that Valve (and Blizzard of course) don’t need to ever support the consoles, so it’s puzzling that Valve have made these half-cocked efforts. Compared to how Infinity Ward, Ubisoft, Capcom(!), Bethesda and even Monolith are able to develop games concurrently across all three formats (and with Epic and Id both working on even more platform-agnostic engines), it really looks like Valve dropped the ball tech-wise.
…
As for Steam’s 20m users – how many of those users spend as much through Steam as they would to buy games for a console? I reinstalled Windows a few weeks ago and I’ve not reinstalled Steam yet, as the client software is so painful to use that I’d only put up with it if there’s something I desperately want to play.
20/02/2009 at 15:07 Tei says:
@Robin: make multisystem games need to change the focus, and since a console gameplay style != a pc gameplay style, the games need to catter to the lower denominator, something that is not popular on the PC area and is nicknamed “dumbed down games”. Anyway, lets way, and maybe Valve will change and become all like the other studios you comment. Only, I don’t llike the games of these studios, and I will probably not buy the games of Valve, if the focus is modified to something i activatelly hate.
20/02/2009 at 15:19 frymaster says:
“If steam is so great then why are several of its games priced much higher than their retail counterparts”
because many publishers on steam fail to realise lower costs mean more money.
“- Why is $1 = €1 in steam’s land? An unpopular conversion which is getting many people in europe angry at steam.”
It really doesn’t. At the moment of flipping the great big “here’s regional currencies” switch it did, but it really doesn’t now. In cases where it still does, see above.
“- Why are your games all enclosed in a .gcf file?”
They aren’t?
“- Why do you need online connection to play a singleplayer game, if only one time?”
For non-physically-bought games: so you can download them :P For physically-bought ones: the discs are encrypted to prevent pre-0-day piracy, the decryption key needs to be downloaded
“The list goes on and on. Steam cannot be turned into a monopoly of digital media. It will become fat and arrogant like microsoft or sony are.”
this is the great dilemma… steam becomes more useful the more it supports, but the less competition there is, the less innovation there will be. Notice that if you spend any amount of time reading MS’s technical bloggers, you realise they really aren’t arrogant – [b]yet the problems still exist[/b]. That’s what makes it worse (“don’t be evil” isn’t enough). Solution? No idea… unless we get a competitor that interoperates with steam… yeah right :D
20/02/2009 at 15:21 Gap Gen says:
kadayi: While Play.com is undercutting people, surely Steam removes most of the distribution costs of games, so potentially it could be much cheaper than even Play? Or is your point that Steam is trying *not* to undercut other retailers?
20/02/2009 at 15:22 frymaster says:
In other news, I fail for looking down, noting that I can use bold tags, and yet failing to note the type of bracket required. I fear my commenting licence may be revoked
20/02/2009 at 16:15 Erlam says:
To all those talking about the PS3 I will say this: It sucks. A lot. In fact, having worked on the XBox, PS2, Wii, 360, PS3, PC, I can tell you that, by far, the PS3 is the worst of the whole bunch.
The fact I would rather use the 360 devkits (which at my last job failed once a month, every month, for three in a row — the length of my contract there) over the PS3 says a lot.
20/02/2009 at 16:20 redrain85 says:
@Malagate:
Well, the same could be said of Xbox Live and PSN. Picking Live as an example, I have no doubt that a significant percentage of Live account holders rarely use the service on a regular basis. Micosoft and Sony can just as easily play the numbers game, inflating the success of their services.
Considering that Valve hasn’t had to sink billions of lost dollars to gain that kind of user base – that easily rivals each console – they have completely trounced both Microsoft and Sony on ROI. Valve is making almost pure profit by comparison.
That’s why I think it was insane for Microsoft to shift so much of their focus to the Xbox, and virtually abandon PC Gaming. Microsoft could have owned the market that Valve has now.
Now it’s probably too late. Games for Windows Live is a pathetic, inconsequential shadow of Steam. They allowed a competitor completely shame and embarrass them, and the damage to their reputation will be difficult to overcome at this point.
20/02/2009 at 16:41 Chaz says:
All your digital downloads are belong to me.
- Gabe Newell
20/02/2009 at 17:19 Jeremy says:
I didn’t realize Gabe was so ugly and just ugly. But he is rich. I’d rather be not ugly.
20/02/2009 at 17:43 kadayi says:
@Robin
I’d say that Valve develop for the PC firstly and consoles secondly (other developers choose the reverse) because the PC as platform offers them the widest scope for making the innovative games they want to make without having to curb their ambitions over technical constraints early in the process. The 360 is not a distant leap from the PC in terms of development, so porting is relatively straight forward, where as the PS3 is a completely different architecture, and that requires code to be rewritten. I’m sure Valve could do it, but clearly they’d rather devote their internal resources to developing new content instead.
Feel free to carry on hating on Steam, but be aware that given this is a PC gaming enthusiasts site PS3 fanboy rage tends to fall on unsympathetic ears for the most part.
@Gap Gen
Valve don’t set the price of third party games on Steam, the games respective publishers do (Steam is a game store). Publishers face a challenge over what they can set their prices at that won’t necessarily upset their high street retailers. If there is an issue over their Steam pricing, it’s something you need to bring up with them. Personally I go where the best price is, whether that’s Steam, Play or GAME.
20/02/2009 at 18:24 Rich_P says:
@redrain: Indeed. MS’s consolation prize is that Steam (and its associated games) keeps people tethered to Windows. If the client and all of the games could magically run in Linux, Windows would never again grace my HD.
“As for Steam’s 20m users – how many of those users spend as much through Steam as they would to buy games for a console?”
I conceded that the Xbox’s revenue probably exceeds Steam’s by an oder of magnitude. What’s significant is that Steam accomplishes the same thing as the Xbox but for a fraction of the cost.
20/02/2009 at 19:43 eyemessiah says:
Ooooh. Trials2 + Multiwinia+Eeets+Ifluid+Gravitron for £6 something. Good old weekend deals.
20/02/2009 at 19:51 SteveHatesYou says:
To all those talking about the PS3 I will say this: It sucks. A lot. In fact, having worked on the XBox, PS2, Wii, 360, PS3, PC, I can tell you that, by far, the PS3 is the worst of the whole bunch.
The fact I would rather use the 360 devkits (which at my last job failed once a month, every month, for three in a row — the length of my contract there) over the PS3 says a lot.
Come on now, that’s an exaggeration. Yeah, the 360 is a lot easier to develop for, but Nintendo’s tools for the Wii are absolutely horrid. Even hooking up the dev kit is pain in the ass.
Personally, I think people are just too resistant to learning how the PS3 works. Yeah, it’s a very different architecture from previous systems, and using it well requires abandoning some commonly-used programming conventions, but it has a ton of potential when used correctly.
Unfortunately, nearly everything is developed cross-platform nowadays, and the PS3 has the weakest user base. Which means it often ends up not being the lead console, and ends up getting the shaft.
20/02/2009 at 23:35 PeeEssAssburger says:
“and the PS3 has the weakest user base. Which means it often ends up not being the lead console, and ends up getting the shaft.”
Good. That’s justice for Sony being massive c*cks about it: “It’s not too expensive – you will want to work more hours to earn one”
C*CKS, I tell you.
21/02/2009 at 00:49 Kadayi says:
Agreed on the Sony are dicks front. The only reason we had the whole Blu-ray Vs HD-DVD format war was because Sony weren’t prepared to play ball with the rest of the electronic manufacturers and agree a common strategy as occurred with DVD. The PS3 was far more valuable to Sony as a means of market leverage (look at our user base) when it came to convincing the film studios to abandon HD-DVD for Blu-ray than anything else at the time of it’s release.
21/02/2009 at 01:38 SteveHatesYou says:
Good. That’s justice for Sony being massive c*cks about it: “It’s not too expensive – you will want to work more hours to earn one”
Trying to ascribe a singular personality to a company as huge as Sony just doesn’t make sense. Hell, one of their major flaws is their inability to have their many divisions work together effectively. Yeah, the system costs too much right now, and that’s definitely part of the reason for their lackluster sales, but saying that they deserve to fail because of one exec’s stupid comment is silly.
21/02/2009 at 14:10 hishadow says:
Before anyone gets too giddy, just remember that Gabe Newell have been hinting to sell his business to the likes of EA.
21/02/2009 at 14:27 Jante says:
@hishadow: [citation needed]
21/02/2009 at 15:14 YBFELIX says:
@redrain85
Those numbers are PHYSICAL consoles sold, and not counting wii.
“Feature-length” console games are still sold on discs, and they sells A LOT. It’s more like the traditional PC game sales mode. LIVE provides multiplayer experience (and other things), it does not generated major profits per se, but serves as an incentive to persuade people buy the games. (Actually LIVE does this well, dare I say- even more steamlined than Steam. It’s a major reason why 360 is doing better than PS3). A PC analog would be Blizzard’s Battle.net
LIVE does require US$50 a year if you want to do anything useful with it, which I assume is not too expensive since I’m a 20ish ordinary guy from China and i can afford it
And there is no online DRM on console, you can play a console for its lifetime without connect to ‘net once. Though I worry this may not be the case for future consoles… seen that everything goes online now.
I believe that as long as the business can break even, PC (or console, as it matters..) gaming won’t die, because people do not do everything for EPIC Moneyz, people do things for love, and people love games.
21/02/2009 at 15:14 YBFELIX says:
@redrain85
Those numbers are PHYSICAL consoles sold, and not counting wii.
“Feature-length” console games are still sold on discs, and they sells A LOT. It’s more like the traditional PC game sales mode. LIVE provides multiplayer experience (and other things), it does not generated major profits per se, but serves as an incentive to persuade people buy the games. (Actually LIVE does this well, dare I say- even more steamlined than Steam. It’s a major reason why 360 is doing better than PS3). A PC analog would be Blizzard’s Battle.net
LIVE does require US$50 a year if you want to do anything useful with it, which I assume is not too expensive since I’m a 20ish ordinary guy from China and i can afford it
And there is no online DRM on console, you can play a console for its lifetime without connect to ‘net once. Though I worry this may not be the case for future consoles… seen that everything goes online now.
I believe that as long as the business can break even, PC (or console, as it matters..) gaming won’t die, because people do not do everything for EPIC Moneyz, people do things for love, and people love games.
21/02/2009 at 15:41 hishadow says:
@Gravatar Jante:
http://www.vg247.com/2008/08/21/gc08-one-on-one-with-valves-gabe-newell/
He’s not dismissive of the idea of selling, stating that as long as he is happy they won’t sell. I read that as saying the company has not reached it’s true potential (moneywize).
21/02/2009 at 16:20 redrain85 says:
@YBFELIX
I know. I was considering the fact that every one of those consoles sold is now online capable. Which is precisely why, if Microsoft and Sony wanted to, they could play the numbers games with that. Making the claims that there are 27 million active Live accounts and 21 million active PSN accounts. When we know that’s not going to be the case.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter. My main point still stands. Even if not everyone uses Steam on a regular basis: Valve’s user base rivals each console, easily.
And they probably haven’t even begun to tap their full market potential, yet. Even if a measly 1% of PCs in the entire world are up-to-date and capable enough to play Valve’s latest games, that’s 1% of billions.
21/02/2009 at 17:09 terry says:
Glad to see the return of scary eyes for this article.
24/02/2009 at 17:26 catska says:
20 million steam users is hardly impressive when you realize that anyone can have an account for free and most people have multiple accounts. The reason Valve talks in percentages and vague marketing jargon is to distract people from the fact that they have never released steam sales statistics. And there is a reason for that: they are not good.
People bringing up the consoles are missing an important fact, Steam from the beginning has been playing catchup to Xbox live. Both as a distribution channel (games, patches, etc) and as a community software (friends lists, achivements). It probably never will though because the nature of pc games being open and not standardized means it’ll never have full integration into every piece of software on the system the way xbox live does.
04/03/2009 at 04:27 Winterborn says:
@catska
Most people have multiple Steam accounts? what on earth do you base that on? I don’t know anyone with multiple Steam accounts and I highly doubt most people have them.
24/06/2010 at 21:22 JaMeS says:
“Most people have multiple Steam accounts? what on earth do you base that on? I don’t know anyone with multiple Steam accounts and I highly doubt most people have them”
well i have exactly 6 accounts so there now you know
24/06/2010 at 21:20 JaMeS says:
the only real reason steam is getting tons and tons of money is cause they are taking games that companies like capcom or ubisoft is making and selling them which i kinda find unfair for those companies
23/09/2010 at 05:33 Dr. Pancake says:
Gabe doesn’t hate PS3 anymore. Now he hates Xbox 360 and loves PS3, shown by his speech about Portal 2 going on PS3, and no more future VALVe games will be on Xbox 360 after Portal 2.