Wednesday, January 30th 2019
Steam Desertions Bode Well for Half Life 3 Prospects
When Steam hit critical mass in the mid 2000s, digital distribution of games was close to non-existent, Internet speeds were too low to transmit 8-10 GB games that would ship in DVDs, and game patching was a mess. Steam solved many of these problems by offering distribution, DRM, aftersales support (automatic updates), and even multiplayer services across its network. Steam didn't become popular on its own, though. Valve Software was mainly a game developer, and it marketed Steam by making its AAA smash-hits "Half Life 2" (and its episodes), "Counter Strike," and "Left 4 Dead," exclusive to the DRM platform. Even if you bought those games on DVDs, they would have to be installed and supported through a Steam account. Those games served as tech-demonstrators for Steam, and how efficient an all-encompassing DRM platform can work.
Steam maintained its dominance for a good 8-odd years until big game publishers such as EA and Ubisoft wised up to the concept of multi-brand distribution platforms Steam mastered. Steam operates on a revenue-sharing model. For every Dollar spent on a game, a percentage of the money is retained by Steam toward its services. EA and Ubisoft figured it wasn't rocket-science to copy Steam, and came up with their own platforms, EA Origin, and Ubisoft UPlay, both of which are multi-brand. They figured their capital-expenditure toward running these platforms was less than what they'd pay Steam at scale. EA restricted all its titles to Origin, while Ubisoft made some of its games available on Steam, even though UPlay would remain a concentric DRM layer to those games. Then something changed in 2018.
Epic Games, which was a fence-sitter that stuck to Steam for distributing its wares, took a plunge into this business and served up a disruptive revenue-sharing offer that beat the other platforms. Smaller studios who could use a greater share of revenue than what Steam was offering, made a beeline for Epic Games Store. The latest big deserter is 4A Games, which is releasing "Metro: Exodus" as an Epic Games Store exclusive.
Losses from these desertions will hit Valve's bottom-line, and the company will no doubt undertake a slew of measures, such as improving their revenue-sharing deals, and making its platform "glamorous" again. People recognize Origin as "something you need for playing Battlefield and FIFA" rather than "the largest selection of PC games on the planet." Steam runs the risk of being reduced to "a place to go for indie games," with indie developers drawn to Steam for its captive audience. One way Valve can change that perception is by becoming a major game developer again.
Valve does not make its financials public, but in whatever few glimpses the game business industry got, it's a multi-billion Dollar company, which can afford to develop AAA games, or at least contract a lesser known game developer by licensing its IP to make games (a la Sledgehammer Games developing id Software titles). Additions to key Valve franchises such as "Half Life," "Portal," and "Left 4 Dead" could add value to the Steam platform, and increase its captive base. "Half Life 3" is a meme today, and each year gamers expect an announcement on that game. It remains to be seen if Gabe Newell wants to pick up the gauntlet one more time.
Steam maintained its dominance for a good 8-odd years until big game publishers such as EA and Ubisoft wised up to the concept of multi-brand distribution platforms Steam mastered. Steam operates on a revenue-sharing model. For every Dollar spent on a game, a percentage of the money is retained by Steam toward its services. EA and Ubisoft figured it wasn't rocket-science to copy Steam, and came up with their own platforms, EA Origin, and Ubisoft UPlay, both of which are multi-brand. They figured their capital-expenditure toward running these platforms was less than what they'd pay Steam at scale. EA restricted all its titles to Origin, while Ubisoft made some of its games available on Steam, even though UPlay would remain a concentric DRM layer to those games. Then something changed in 2018.
Losses from these desertions will hit Valve's bottom-line, and the company will no doubt undertake a slew of measures, such as improving their revenue-sharing deals, and making its platform "glamorous" again. People recognize Origin as "something you need for playing Battlefield and FIFA" rather than "the largest selection of PC games on the planet." Steam runs the risk of being reduced to "a place to go for indie games," with indie developers drawn to Steam for its captive audience. One way Valve can change that perception is by becoming a major game developer again.
Valve does not make its financials public, but in whatever few glimpses the game business industry got, it's a multi-billion Dollar company, which can afford to develop AAA games, or at least contract a lesser known game developer by licensing its IP to make games (a la Sledgehammer Games developing id Software titles). Additions to key Valve franchises such as "Half Life," "Portal," and "Left 4 Dead" could add value to the Steam platform, and increase its captive base. "Half Life 3" is a meme today, and each year gamers expect an announcement on that game. It remains to be seen if Gabe Newell wants to pick up the gauntlet one more time.
61 Comments on Steam Desertions Bode Well for Half Life 3 Prospects
For everybody saying cloud saves is a must, good luck with actually picking up the game where you left off when the internet is down. That’s why when given a choice in some games I always will opt for local saves.
profiles ?
reviews ?
forums ?
Mods ?
Groups ?
Item trading? Items stupidity should be banned!
Sorting?
Sharing account? it's cool, yes
Streaming?
Broadcasting? come on...
Screenshots? pleaseeee
User guides?
Wishlists? Mamma look!
Back in the day, most of above things were done in any of the many Game Fan and Clan Forums, not The Shop Forums...
Face facts people - Origin worked better by 2017. I am not saying it had more features or better prices, but it just WORKED. None of these ridiculous constant 120MB updates and constant crashing.
I mean Steam's interface hasn't really changed.... ever?
I was using EA's Link store before it was even public. I have been using it since before EA ever sold any games at all online. I have almost every EA title in my library because I do pre-alpha testing with the EA storefronts often. You are right, Steam's interface has barely changed, but that said, neither has origin, really. At least on STEAM, I still have all the games I bought in my library, but on Origin, I have had many titles jsut simply disappear becuase EA decided tehy didn't want me to have these *singleplayer* titles (harry potter, SIMs, plus several others)
Neither side is perfect, really is what I'm trying to say.
Square Enix could have easily made their own launcher easily but decided to go with steam.
With regards to developers leaving, Its difficult to explain. Epic take a smaller cut of the profits but at the same time sales could be bad because people dont like the launcher or want another launcher installed on their PC. Steam has a few hundred million (or billion) users. Epic wont have that many on launch and will take maybe a decade or so to build up the same kind of user numbers so Epic taking a smaller cut of profits does not hold any weight.
Publishers leave because maybe they have enough games in their own catalogue to make making their own launcher a worthwhile risk and investment.
While on the side this practise also opens up for a lot of trash indie games to be sold on Epic games because there currently isnt a way to review or rate games and there are so many 'one-man-in-his-bedroom' asset flippers that exist on steam that call themselves 'real developers' who release 5 games in one day on steam that each took one or two hours to make before paying someone with a hundreds of fake steam accounts to green light their games so it hits the frontpage and gets released. Go watch a youtuber called Jim Sterling and he will show you how much bullshit and the quality of this bullshit that is uploaded onto steam. Some games are uploaded without .exe files so there is no way to play them if you buy the game and guy who made the game doesnt answer emails and will sue you for a few million if you give his game negative reviews on steam and in a youtube video.
Until Epic do away with their launcher being just a store front then there is no way they will grow... EA & Ubisoft grow because they dont allow indie games on their platform. and they have a lot of their own IP thats available on their launcher and nowhere else...
Ubisoft have decided to make The Division 2 a ubilauncher exclusive therefore the only way to get the game is through ubilauncher and not steam. That will help ubilauncher grow/thrive to a certain extent.::EDIT::
My bad - actually The Division 2 will be a Epic launcher exclusive. Epic just payed Ubisoft an boat tonne of money for that exclusivity
Or at worst a mobile version of HL3 made with whatever content made by the original people they have left sitting on a hard drive somewhere. :roll::roll:
Do you not have phones?? :laugh::laugh:
While you are correct disparaging the vast majority of Indie games, if you are willing to wad e through them, there are some truly god, even great ones. I have a number of them that are well done and very fun and engaging.
I think there is plenty of room for improvement for origin, and more than there is for Valve. I agree with you that Steam's interface is old and outdated, but for me, it does offer the same thing you say Origin does.
Now, I can safely say that the way that Origin has developed has been directly due to user feedback, but at the same time, what EA's Origin is trying to do is far different than what Steam is offering. Yeah, it's a similar kind of service, but the grand idea behind it all is quite a different animal. So, with that said, I do expect MORE out of STEAM. Origin just needs to sell me a couple of games, offer me a way to store my digital purchases from EA, and that it does do well for sure, when it doesn't steal my games. :p I'm sure that there are similar stories for STEAM titles, but generally when that has happened, there has been some sort of reason given, not a title jsut randomly disappearing and there being no notification at all other than the game no longer listed in your library... when something goes missing on steam, the internet erupts! LOL.
If they sold the game on epic for $10 off and steam at full price they would have been praised, but the exclusive deal is why I'm not buying it until it's offered everywhere.
www.pcgamer.com/thq-nordic-isnt-ruling-out-more-timed-exclusives-like-metro-exodus/
I hate seeing this becoming the trend.
Steam have tried multiple times to fix the issue with green light and crappy asset flips but they have always gone half way, dropped the ball then forgotten about it all together.
As for Steam - I would argue they may have been attempting to be "a different animal", but they have completely failed to succeed at anything that isn't just gaming and a community around it (So they haven't succeeded at anything new since Steam's inception). I also agree that a lot of this is me having "higher standards" when it comes to Valve, but so what? - I have higher standards for Valve, and they aren't meeting them.
If valve really wanted to punch Origin and Epic in the gut, they could release HL3 on every platform, and sell it cheaper on Steam.
Nintendo are in a weird position because they only work on their own I.P and they dont allow their I.P to be used outside of their platforms... However, they have been slowly opening up to the mobile market over the years.
Sega on the other hand are in an entirely different boat. because they dont have or make their own consoles so They develop games for a wide range of platforms and im sure they get paid for having some games made exclusively for a platform.
1) Lower the fee they charge major publishers down to 10% (or less if possible). It needs to happen. They can keep charging Indie's 20-50% since they are basically the only way Indie's will profit (unless a revolutionary game like Minecraft), but they need to accept that no one will publish through them if Valve is taking a cut that's larger than just building your own store. That's how crazy high Valve's cut is - it's cheaper to just make your own servers and store!!!
2) Make sure that in return for that fee, Steam provides the best and most secure gaming servers available; and also the largest reach. People who work with Steam need to know their game cannot run better than what Valve provides them. Otherwise again - they will just make their own store!
3) Make some more bloody good Valve games, and ideally also make Steam OS a real thing. Steam's entire advantage was that everyone had Steam, and everyone needed to download steam first. That's just not that true anymore.
Especially the move into Linux support with Steam Play or Steam VR, I don't think Epic is going to have an answer to those for a while and it is a slow movement towards Valve trying again with a Steam console. They badly want more lock in, and I don't think a handful of Valve sequels will have the same effect to lock people into using only Steam. If anything, this Epic competition is going to push them to get the hardware lock in models up faster than before.