Valve: Steam Is Really Good For Retail Sector!

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Well it's almost impossible to buy PC game locally here (they don't sell them anymore), glad that Steam, d2d, impulse and gwl exist..
 
[citation][nom]cburke82[/nom]Also love not having to change disks to change games .[/citation]
Steam! Brings to honest folks what pirates had for years! :)
 
[citation][nom]SteamIsBullcrap[/nom]Bull, STEAM is the worst thing to happen to games since the beginning. I will never ever ever ever buy any game that uses STEAM, which includes Duke Nukem Forever.[/citation]

And why is that?
 
I think the retail market is just crying because they see the future and it does not include them. Face it technology is changing the industry, it happens all the time. To survive they have to be smarter and change their business model not try to force the market back to the old way of doing things.

Maybe the retail shops should work with step and put game cards in all the stores, then when someone is shopping through Target for stuff they can buy Diablo III when it comes out as a card. Go home, sit at the PC and punch a code in and download the game. Steam then becomes the distributor for the Retail environment.

Or Gamestop could setup a Steam Kiosk that has many of the games installed on it and let customers who walk in play any game they are interested in. They find one they like and buy it at the kiosk and the retailer gets a % of the sale.

At the end of the day Steam is going to sell games, if the Retail market plays it right they can help Valve sell more games via their platform and make money doing it rather than watch their profits slowly vanish.

If they should be afraid of anything it should be the console makers moving their products into all online markets ... buy/download/play business model. If this ever happens the retail market will be in more trouble than what they are seeing with the PC/Mac gaming market now. The only thing saving them from this is that games are growing in size for content, if a game is 10GB in size people don't want to wait for it to download. They would rather buy a disc and play it with little to no delay. If the download speeds increase to a point that 50GB can be downloaded in 10 minutes at a persons home kiss the retail game market good bye.
 
Brick and Mortar stores will soon be a thing of the past, this is the digital age.
Also, DVDs and Blu-Rays will eventually go away as well in the distant future with services like Netflix, Google TV, Hulu etc... Why pay $20 for a movie when you can pay $8 a month and watch almost anything you want?
 
[citation][nom]upgrade_1977[/nom]And why is that?[/citation]

I like steam, but in all due respect if you buy a game with steam activation such as Fallout:NV, you should be able to remove your key from the steam network and sell the game as you wish . The developers got their paycheck so why shouldn't you be able to do what you want with the game? I personally have bought most of my PC games used before steam came around, now I am forced to buy games new for highly inflated prices that make no sense. I love steam, I use it everyday, and it is convenient. Though in no way should I be restricted from participating in a free market and reselling the game I bought key and all.
 
I like steam,but i think it sucks that my kid cant play a game on his pc while i play one one mine. I think they need to be more like netflix where you can have 2 or 3 pcs running yoru account at a time.
 
[citation][nom]Proxy711[/nom]i went to go buy portal 2 today and it was $49.99 on steam, i looked around and found it cheaper in a retail store.[/citation]

I picked it up for 30 bucks a couple weeks ago on Amazon, MK dropped in price a bit too, no clue why but i hope this is a new trend in retailers that deal boxed editions.

Aside the point, i use steam because i like to, searches for games are fast and easy, i get feedback about the games from my freinds right there on the net, there's ALWAYS a deal, and i don't have to deal with some guy i don't know getting up in my face about how "Kinect is the next big thing in gaming" while i'm trying to look for DS games at gamestop.
 
[citation][nom]brianfulcher15[/nom]I like steam,but i think it sucks that my kid cant play a game on his pc while i play one one mine. I think they need to be more like netflix where you can have 2 or 3 pcs running yoru account at a time.[/citation]
If its the same game, that will be a no go anyway.

If it is an offline game, you can just save your pass in steam and disconnect the network(maybe even block steam, never tried it to be honest.), this allows steam to go to offline mode and log in on both computers. Kind of a cheat, but works. You will need to stay offline tho once you get steam online, the other computer that is online will get kicked.
 
I think retail can survive steam easy. Steam doesn't always offer the best deals. For sure older games and such are heavily discounted, but, new games cost just as much, you get no physical disc, book or any other packaging.

I wanted to pick up Portal 2 on steam, not for $50 when I can get it for 29.99 at BestBuy. Somewhere in there is an awfully high markup on price, and there are typicall 2 ways to gain marketshare, better product or cheaper price... take your pick.
 
i suppose i must be a minority in my opinion but steam actually turns me away from whole game titles and developers. what is even worse is that it is forced upon people and might not even be stated on the box.

i don't mind steam as a service but it should be optional. if i buy retail, i should have the option of linking the game with steam or activating through the developer. this would please everyone. its sad that i now have to research a game to see if steam is mandatory before i even look at it in store.

why you say?

-i do not want to pair a game i bought in a b&m with any sort of online service. once you register it on steam you're pretty much linked to it for good. i don't mind registering keys in-game but steam is too far.

-if i buy a retail disk why must i download over 2gb of data from steam. thats like buying a half tank of gas and having to go to another station to get the rest. if i buy retail its because i want the whole package.

-i've tried to use offline mode, never worked right, it always wanted me to log in. even a simple login is horrible if you don't have highspeed. i bought the games for offline play only, i wasn't expecting to download 2gb or have to use an internet connection just to play.

 
[citation][nom]jasonpwns[/nom]I like steam, but in all due respect if you buy a game with steam activation such as Fallout:NV, you should be able to remove your key from the steam network and sell the game as you wish . The developers got their paycheck so why shouldn't you be able to do what you want with the game? I personally have bought most of my PC games used before steam came around, now I am forced to buy games new for highly inflated prices that make no sense. I love steam, I use it everyday, and it is convenient. Though in no way should I be restricted from participating in a free market and reselling the game I bought key and all.[/citation]
Thing is, i wait for Steam to come down on prices, which almost always happen within a year of a game's release. If you buy used games, the same thing applies, but you run the risk of having the MP key used up and therefore you have to purchase another one.
Also, Steam allows me to make a back-up of the game files on my HDD for subsequent installs, so if I want to re-install a game that I played before I can just do it from my digital copy. the game will update itself with the latest patches and if so, I can do another back-up so next time the patch will be there too. This gives the same advantage as owning a physical copy, but without the degradation of the media that happens after a few years. Not a lot of people use this feature, but they miss out.
 
What steam really needs to do is knock a few bucks off the price of every game for digital downloads. Then offer the option to pay the regular price and you can download digitally AND they'll mail you a copy of the game.
 

They under cut them ALLL the time LMAO. Any game that goes on sale on steam is automatically way lower than retail. Then alot of the older games (6 months to a year or more) are cheeper as well. Now the new release games are the same all the time and Im sure you could find some that are more expensive on steam BUT... I just purchased Borderlands Game of the year full set off DLC and original game for $7.50. That would be about $30 in store. I purchsed Stronghold pack ( all Stronghold gams up to Stronghold 2) For $19.99, its $29.99 in stores. Total War Rome GOLD plus Rome Alexander $19.99 in store at least $29.99.
 

Have you tried contacting Steam? I ask because for some reason it takes a wile for my PC to register a online connection. So on startup almost every time Steam will pop up and say I have no connection and it has two buttons, [try again] and [play offline]. I hit play offline almost every time and it has worked every time I hit the button. So there must be someway for you to get offline mode to work for you. As long as offline mode is working Steam is all pluses. I dont have to change disks, I dont have to worry about loosing keys. I resently found the 10year anniversary edition of Command and Conquer disk. BUT I cant play it because I lost the key....So I payed for it and have the disk but cant play it because I lost the Manuel I think that garbage as can be.
 
[citation][nom]jasonpwns[/nom]I like steam, but in all due respect if you buy a game with steam activation such as Fallout:NV, you should be able to remove your key from the steam network and sell the game as you wish . The developers got their paycheck so why shouldn't you be able to do what you want with the game? I personally have bought most of my PC games used before steam came around, now I am forced to buy games new for highly inflated prices that make no sense. I love steam, I use it everyday, and it is convenient. Though in no way should I be restricted from participating in a free market and reselling the game I bought key and all.[/citation]
You don't buy the software, you buy a license to use/play the software. To buy the game you have to actually buy the IP rights from the company, THEN you can do what you want with it.

Also, to all those people that complain about digital downloads not including manuals/packaging as a detriment. Personally, I consider it a plus, less useless garbage taking up space in my computer room.
 

you should be able to sell your used games though
 
Yes, steam is good for sales, it's especially nice from a consumers standpoint around the Christmas sale or the weekly/monthly sales where games are more than 75% discounted. Thats nice.

The problem as I see it is that, while steam handles it's market well, it is a market that just doesn't make sense. Why, for example, are games even remotely similar in price on steam as in retail, when there's zero (or nearly so) cost required in distribution? More relevantly, why aren't games free on steam. Yes, the devs need paid, I'll get to that later. Simple game distribution, taken that it has already been developed and completed, costs nothing digitally. So steam is selling nothing for something. That doesn't make sense, and it isn't going to work in the long term. The nasty side effect of this is piracy, and that has its own issues.

As mentioned, it costs nothing to distribute a given game on steam (next to nothing, more accurately, valve has employees working on steam and it has nasty utility bills and expensive servers. But at-cost, this would probably amount to around a dollar or less a sale.) Besides distributing games, however, developers need to be funded. This is the question digital distribution really raises. Not piracy or DRM or retail vs the cloud, these are symptoms of the core issue. "How do we fund developers without using a broken business model? I don't claim to know the answer, but selling something for nothing isn't sustainable, no matter what companies will try to tell you. We need to find a way to fund development while still taking advantage of the massively lower distribution costs in the cloud, and it needs done before digital distribution gets any more prevalent. No one should settle for paying for nothing. Even at a discount.

(Piracy isn't the answer, I don't do it myself and don't condone it. It's outside the system. The system needs fixed, not circumvented.)
 

How much do you think a DVD and packaging cost? The COST is in development of the game. They spend millions of dollars making games these days. So they start out with a budget and an expected ammout of sales. You do some math and get an estimated cost. If I made a simple game and it cost me $100 and I only expected to sell 10 copies the cost is $10 if its in a store maybe $12. So even though there is no hard cost in a digital download all the people downloading the game are not buying it in store as well so the total amount of sales stays the same. And by the time the game goes on sale they only know one thing for sure and thats how much it cost to make.

I have seen estimates of anywhere between 15-25 million to make COD: Black Ops. So lets say its 20 mill.... And lets say they plan on selling 7 mill at full price thats about $3.00 cost and lets add 3 more for packaging/server and utility cost. So $6. They sell it to retailers or steam for say $20 make a nice profit. Thats the cost to make the game then they have to advertise it and some if not all of that comes form the distributors. So best buy, game stop and what not buy it for the $20 but they have to add the cost of the advertising and utilities and employee salery to the game as well. So not it costs them about $30-40 they sell it for $60 and make there profit. Then as sales start to drop off and the developer sees a healthy profit the developer will lower the cost to the store as any sales after this point are 100% profit and now they are just tring to sell to the people who wont pay high prices. But its a business so they have to make a profit and they are going to make as much as they can. In store or downloadable one way or the other they will charge what we will pay thats it.

It will never be free because it does not have to be because they are selling these games at that price like crazy. In economics or anything else for that mater there is a law of diminishing returns. They pay people lots of cash to figure out how high they can price games and still sell the maximum ammount. So it seems that they have found a price of $50-60 is the sweet spot, much lower and you dont increase numbers in amounts that make up for loss of profit and much higher and you loose sales faster that the higher profit can make up for.
 
You didn't seem to get my point... I know development is expensive, and I tried to address that. Development costs need to be covered. I am just of the opinion that selling nothing for something is not an intelligent way to do this, and that we need something better.

Long story short, Devs need funding, but selling nothing for something is still nonsensical.
 

Um they are selling you the game. You can play it and re download it anytime you wish. So they are selling you the rights to the game. My point was download or box the cost is still there. Steam sells you a few things mostly service related. 1: No need to change disks 2: Auto Updates 3: No need to keep all those cases around 4: Never lose your games or key code. I think the way they are doing it makes perfect sense and Im just glad they arnt trying to charge some sort of wacked out account service fee lol. Technicly by your thinking cell phone companys dont sell you anything. After you buy the phone they are not selling you any "product" but you still pay. Same thing.
 
This isn't the place to debate the point, as it's just like politics in that I don't understand where you are coming from and you can't follow my idea either. So I'll end on this.

I think that the game, as a product, is one thing, and copies of a finished product are another thing entirely (obviously this can apply, to a lesser extent, to many other things, such as books). Distributing the copies costs nearly nothing, while development costs a lot. Why then do we charge for copies but develop for free, when in actuality the money needs to go to the reverse? I don't like "we don't have any other option" or "thats how it has always been done" as an answer, thats no reason to stop considering that one may exist. What we are doing now functions, but so does driving a lawnmower to work. There are better options out there. (Please don't dig into cost effctiveness of cars vs lawnmowers, its just an example)

Cell phone service isn't the same thing as a digital product. They are selling you a service. With digital goods, it's just a product. Once it's been developed, there's no more effort required by the developer (and many charge for whatever later effort they choose to put in, ala Activision). Steam does offer services, and it charges for them in the same way as retailers, because it costs them equal or less than it does retailers to staff stores, ship products, and produce boxes.

My issue isn't with them charging for their service. Its in *not* charging for development, and instead charging for copies and funneling that money to development (most of the cost of a game isn't raw materials or bandwidth, after all. You're paying for the copy.). It's backward to what would make sense, i.e. charge for development directly and not for copies. Again, I don't know how to do this.

(A bad idea would be a tax on "digital development", coupled with free access to all digital goods by everyone, and then distributing the tax to devs somehow. I know it's a bad idea, just trying to show that alternatives exist that don't require charging for nothing.)

There's obviously uncertainty in only receiving funding *after* you are done, and this uncertainty is likely a key component in why publishers, rather than designers, drive the trends in the gaming world. It should be obvious the same can be said for other industries.

Essentially, it's basically a matter of principle, as no one is ever going to change the system. I'd prefer that I paid for development, and not for copies. It's not my concern that the money paid for the copy goes to the developers in a roundabout way. It would just make more sense to pay the developers directly, and not have to pay for what we all know costs next to nothing to distribute.

(Tom's, while I apologize for wasting so much space in the comments section, it would be nice if I didn't have to retype things if I wasn't logged in the first time I tried to post it.)
 
Alright, I get what everyone is trying to say, but you have to remember that the money isn't in producing the disc's, the disc's are cheap to make, it's the software you are paying for. But, on steam, you are getting a free service with the game. You get free unlimited downloads, free chat, free patching services, saves your information (serials, save games) ect. ect. ect., "AND" the games go on sale so most of the time you get the games much cheaper on steam. When I bought GTAIV for $14.00 when it was still going for 40+ in the stores. So not only do you save a lot of money, you get free services with it. And i'm sure it cost's a lot to have all the steam servers running for people to download and all that other stuff. I'd much rather have all that stuff then to be able to sell all my stuff later. Cuz really, who is gonna buy a used pc game anyways? And, if someone does buy it by the time i'm done with it, the price would have already come down and it's a used game, so I wouldn't make much back anyways.

I used to have so much trouble patching Battlefield 2, I stopped playing it. Just couldn't get it to patch. But then I bought the full series on steam for like $15.00 and they patch it for me and it works flawlessly. I'd say I buy about 90% of my games on steam on sale. So, i'm saving a lot more then I would if I sold all my copies of my retail games.

 
Brick/mortar stores currently suck for all software sales, not just games. For tax season, I had to hit several stores to find tax software. No, the problem wasn't shelves that had been emptied, it was even finding the shelves. Can't blame non-game issues on steam. This is a similar issue to the music industry...unless some corporation is shoveling tons of money thru the system, no one stocks the titles.
 
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