Valve's Steam appears to be really taking off

Cafe Society
1

At first, I grudgingly accepted Steam - wasn’t a big fan of the idea of accounts-based, phone home authentication, and there were early technical problems.

But over the last 2 years, they’ve done a great job in solving them, and making it a hassle free platform.

Over the last year or so, they’ve started to publish quite a few non-valve games. I’ve decided that this is probably a really good thing.

The traditional developer/publisher model stifles video game development. Publishers decide to green light programs only if they expect big results - they’re usually unwilling to take risks on new ideas, and would much rather approve Formulaic Game Part 6 than anything new and innovative and risky.

Plus, just by virtue of fronting some of the costs, and physically publishing the game, much like the music industry, they take most of the money that should go to the developers.

So, when you have an independent, low-cost publisher like steam, you gave independent publishers the chance to shine. Games like The Ship and Darwinia and Defcon would never make it in the traditional developer/publisher world. They’re unique and quirky and wouldn’t take in a big profit. And not many people are interesting in publishing a game with a $15 price tag. But the way steam reduces production costs to pretty cheap bandwidth, and gives most of the money to the developer, niche games can thrive.

And even more mainstream games can show a much better profit, with more money going to the developer.

I’m starting to really resent the sort of stuff that the giants like EA are doing to the gaming world, so I’m hoping the trend of Steam publishing more and more stuff continues. It seems like it’s the best thing for the gamers, and the developers.

2

I kind of resent that a steam game costs as much as a boxed game you get in the store. Maybe I’m strange but I like to have a printed manual at my fingertips as opposed to some PDF monstrosity.

That said now that I’m living in England the exchange rate really pays off for me.

The really interesting thing I think Steam is introducing is Episodic content. It’s a good idea (IMO) to have a tighter smarter expansion instead of a more bloated expansion that has a lot of filler content just to make it worth the price of putting it on the shelves and compared to Oblivion’s weird down-loadable table scraps it makes much more sense to have a solid episode as opposed to bits and pieces of additions. I imagine a future where certain games have proper story arcs and seasons based on development cycles. Could be a great way to lure developers back to the PC.

3

I’ve heard with HL2, they couldn’t undercut the price of the retail boxed version because of their publishing agreement - maybe other games are the same?

I agree that mainstream stuff that’s also getting a retail release (like medieval II) should have a steam discount. You could heavily discount the game and still have more profits than you would from the sales of a retail copy.