Steam is on a roll

GrrImAFridge · Jun 21, 2020

NinjaBoiX said:
Cheers Jase.

So yeah, it's great that more games are becoming available on steam, but it's not like "wow, they're on a roll, look at them go!" and more "the inevitable has happened, cool." The business has just rolled their way naturally as often happens with market leaders, it's not like they're "smashing it" as such.

Which was kind of my point.

I think all the OP is saying is that Steam is in a position that would've been viewed as a pipe dream even just a year ago, as between Acti, Bethesda, EA, and Microsoft being content with releasing games exclusively on their own services, and Ubi jumping into bed with Epic and joining in on the PR chest-beating about how 70/30 is the worst thing ever*, the wind was very much blowing in the other direction. Indeed, at the end of 2018, Valve felt compelled to adjust its revenue cut for high-earning titles, a move aimed squarely at publishers of AAA games.

* I do think there's a "golden ratio" that puts more money in devs' pockets without adversely impacting Valve's ability to freely and non-committally explore tangential areas, like VR.

Late edit: Err, somehow forgot to include in EA in that publisher list, haha. Fixed.

NinjaBoiX · Jun 21, 2020

I never doubted this would happen, they're too big to fail.

But yeah, I see your point, and it is good that it happened.

RAWRferal · Jun 21, 2020

K.Jack said:
Yeah, there you go, great example even though it wasn't an actual purchase.

I do believe a lot of new purchases are laptop users. I've been in the gaming laptop scene for 15 years (bought my first machine with a dedicated GPU in '05-ish), and it's incredible to see how decently powered dedicated GPUs have trickled down to relatively inexpensive laptops now, opening up the PC gaming scene for so many more millions of people. Access "back in the day" was an $1100 USD plus hurdle, but now it's down near $650. Not for the high-end mind, but just to get in the door at 1080p/medium settings.

Definitely! Mid-range GPUs on laptops used to offer poor performance for the money. Nowadays it's a much different story. There's plenty of power to be found in the mid range now. You can often find it at a good price, in a nice form factor.

XSX · Jun 21, 2020

PC Gaming is in a great place.

liquidmetal14 · Jun 21, 2020

Proud to be a part of the effort.

GrrImAFridge · Jun 21, 2020

NinjaBoiX said:
I never doubted this would happen, they're too big to fail.

But yeah, I see your point, and it is good that it happened.

Oh, ditto. The scepticism was understandable, though, and arguably the logical position to take, given the landscape of the time.

eonden · Jun 21, 2020

JaseC said:
I think all the OP is saying is that Steam is in a position that would've been viewed as a pipe dream even just a year ago, as between Acti, Bethesda and Microsoft being content with releasing games exclusively on their own services, and Ubi jumping into bed with Epic and joining in on the PR chest-beating about how 70/30 is the worst thing ever*, the wind was very much blowing in the other direction. Indeed, at the end of 2018, Valve felt compelled to adjust its revenue cut for high-earning titles, a move aimed squarely at publishers of AAA titles.

* I do think there's a "golden ratio" that puts more money in the devs' pockets without adversely impacting Valve's ability to freely and non-committally explore tangential areas like VR.

I think it was also part of a change of how AAA companies see ways to increase revenue. From optimizing the current revenue by removing "agents" that syphon from it (aka, creating your own store to get all the possible money) to a more service side approach, where you are interested in reducing the walls between your product and the users by being anywhere possible and offering extra services. That also helps increase the general value and mainstream perception of your IPs.
Basically, they are nowadays interested in having a bigger userbase that can be monetized in different ways and can give them more info about what the general audience wants (and can be easier to target with services such as Gamepass, EA Access, or uPlay+). (But yes, the small cut also helps).

GrrImAFridge · Jun 21, 2020

eonden said:
I think it was also part of a change of how AAA companies see ways to increase revenue. From optimizing the current revenue by removing "agents" that syphon from it (aka, creating your own store to get all the possible money) to a more service side approach, where you are interested in reducing the walls between your product and the users by being anywhere possible and offering extra services. That also helps increase the general value and mainstream perception of your IPs.
Basically, they are nowadays interested in having a bigger userbase that can be monetized in different ways and can give them more info about what the general audience wants (and can be easier to target with services such as Gamepass, EA Access, or uPlay+). (But yes, the small cut also helps).

Yeah, that's most definitely the big reason. As Take-Two's CEO said early last year, it makes the most sense to serve consumers where they are rather than (or more accurately, in addition to) where you want them to be, and I can't imagine a conditional +5%/10% really moved the needle for the likes of Microsoft and EA.

psynergyadept · Jun 21, 2020

Strafer said:
What kind of currency is Ass?

Zombine said:
This is how I pay for most things

Akiller said:

I'm dying here!!!

MRORANGE · Jun 21, 2020

Ubisoft left?

LOL

good luck to them.

denx · Jun 21, 2020

That's an awesome top 10

SleepSmasher said:
By the way, look at those Titanfall 2 user reviews.

Lobster Roll · Jun 21, 2020

Rosenkrantz said:
At least it shows that there's enough people who aren't easily persuaded to buy from Epic, no matter how good your game is, but ready to give you money on Steam. If their games are going to fail on Steam (some do, just look at Hello Neighbor and Ashen) after the end of exclusivity, devs are going to continue to take these deals even more eagerly.

It really speaks to both the strength of Steam and the weakness of Epic where people can be excited to play a game and just toss it on the backburner for a year instead. It really does highlight the undesirability of EGS that people would rather put the game on pause for a full year than pay normal retail price from Epic's store.

Vexed · Jun 21, 2020

I still just can't believe how consistent Sea of Thieve's sales performance is. Didn't see that game having those kind of legs.

arcadepc · Jun 21, 2020

If you add games like Koikatsu and Evenicle, the others would foam out of their mouths

Zeneric · Jun 21, 2020

We entered the golden era of PC gaming a long time ago and still no end in sight.

Stalwart · Jun 21, 2020

Cecil said:
Steam works the same. Each dev/publisher decides themselves if the game should require the client to run. Skyrim was even launched without the launcher requirement by accident.

There's a list of Steam games that don't require the client available through quick googling.

The vast majority of games require it, even the one's that don't have no installer.

Lightjolly · Jun 21, 2020

Good time for pc gaming in general, im through with the store wars, I just buy where its cheaper or available.

mrpookles · Jun 21, 2020

I didn't realise Ubi left. I want Valhalla on Steam.

However, it ties into the OP. Plenty to play on Steam.

Jaded Alyx · Jun 21, 2020

romey said:
Titanfall 2 was $2.99 a month ago on Origin.

Someone said to me yesterday:

"never noticed how much EA games I forgot about because they werent on steam"

Looking at the huge spike in player numbers, it seems he wasn't the only one. Some people really only know/care about Steam.

Herne · Jun 21, 2020

Kolx said:
Skyrim is never gonna die until VI is released, is it?

Oblivion didn't until Skyrim came along, and Morrowind didn't until Oblivion came along, so... no.

Fishsnot · Jun 21, 2020

Bought and played through Titanfall 2 over the weekend with my son.
Wow, what an amazing game.
Masterpiece for sure!

BeI · Jun 21, 2020

JaseC said:
I think all the OP is saying is that Steam is in a position that would've been viewed as a pipe dream even just a year ago, as between Acti, Bethesda and Microsoft being content with releasing games exclusively on their own services, and Ubi jumping into bed with Epic and joining in on the PR chest-beating about how 70/30 is the worst thing ever*, the wind was very much blowing in the other direction. Indeed, at the end of 2018, Valve felt compelled to adjust its revenue cut for high-earning titles, a move aimed squarely at publishers of AAA titles.

* I do think there's a "golden ratio" that puts more money in devs' pockets without adversely impacting Valve's ability to freely and non-committally explore tangential areas like VR.

Perhaps Valve could look into a way of reducing their effective cut for games where certain aspects of it (like server costs /management) are taken care of by a third party? Provided that things are setup in a way that they can be transferred to Valve in the event of no longer continuing third party support. Like if EA handled all the server related stuff for BF5 and got an 80% default cut, but in a few years time if they went bust or wanted to focus support towards new games, they could pass off the handling of servers to Steam and take less of a cut.

BeI · Jun 21, 2020

Lobster Roll said:
It really speaks to both the strength of Steam and the weakness of Epic where people can be excited to play a game and just toss it on the backburner for a year instead. It really does highlight the undesirability of EGS that people would rather put the game on pause for a full year than pay normal retail price from Epic's store.

It's quite impressive to watch Epic's Steamspy performance of games that got a delayed Steam release too. Comparing Detroit, a top Steam seller atm, to the sales estimates for highest selling EGS games last year (Detroit didn't make the list, putting it under 150k sales), it looks like within a week, Detroit might have sold at least around half as much as on EGS in 6 months.

skeezx · Jun 21, 2020

i think Epic is actually gucci with staggered steam launches doing way better than EGS as it solidifies them as an "early access" gatekeeper... $60 play now, 6 months later you get it discounted with all the client bells and whistles

imo according to keikaku but see where it goes

TioChuck · Jun 21, 2020

Arklite said:
The message seems to be to take Epic's money and then release elsewhere a year later to great success. Wish the whole ordeal wasn't so obnoxious for the end user.

I used to think this way also, but there is a argument to be made that, seeing how well ex egs exclusives are doing on Steam, for the most part, we can agree that most exclusives are not doing so great on egs, therefore, never reaching the threshold of the sales guarantee that Epic pays up, so pubs/devs are only making bank with the single bag of money for the entirety of the exclusivity period, for some this may be just fine, for some to wait for a year to have a steady cash flow might be to risk.

Now, this is how I see: big pubs making the deal are wanting to make a quick buck, smaller pubs/devs don't have faith in the game so it's easier to just off load to Epic and hope that game is good enough so people will want it after the exclusivity period ends, and there's the case for something like what happened to Rune 2, just grab the money and run, in all cases, the people accepting the deal, just doesn't care, nothing will dissued them.

In conclusion, Epic is paying a lot of money for those exclusivity deals, and getting little to nothing from it, they are trying hard to remove options from people, expecting fomo to kick in, just like they do with Fortnite in game store, but at least with egs, everything points that they are failing.

Delusibeta · Jun 21, 2020

Fadewise said:
Here's the thing though: in most cases, those moneyhats from Epic were NOT just straight up cash payments on top of full revenue they would would the earn on the storefront. Several indie developers have confirmed that the deals with Epic were sales guarantees up to whatever the terms of the deal were. So if Epic offered a dev $1M in guaranteed revenue it just comes down to whether or not they think they would make that anyway. At some point there's a calculus to how much MORE a game would have made if available on Steam at launch window price versus what they make a year later when it's released at a steep discount and all those people who were patient snap it up. It's likely that not all of them would have bought it at full price at launch, but I'd be willing to be a significant portion would, and there's definitely a curve to that where taking the money from Epic could actually lower their overall revenue.

I'm going to play devil's advocate here: businesses universally value guaranteed money higher than non-guaranteed money, even if the latter amount is potentially higher.

Atarax · Jun 21, 2020

Strafer said:
What kind of currency is Ass?

The best kind

Icemonk191 · Jun 21, 2020

Man, y'all are embarrassing when it comes to steam hahaha

sheaaaa · Jun 21, 2020

Delusibeta said:
I'm going to play devil's advocate here: businesses universally value guaranteed money higher than non-guaranteed money, even if the latter amount is potentially higher.

Yeah this is why I find it hard to begrudge any developer, especially indie ones for whom their livelihoods are at stake, for taking the Epic money up front. The bag of cash is there to be taken, so go on - I'll happily buy your game a year later on Steam like I did with Outer Wilds.

Custódio · Jun 21, 2020

This thread makes me fell warm and fuzzy somehow.

Imperfected · Jun 21, 2020

The best part of that list is when you hit the bottom with Mount & Blade just Ralph Wiggum-ing it up as the official rep for entertaining Steam jank.

Geode · Jun 21, 2020

Htown said:
Steam is an incredible platform, but I'm currently a little pissed at Valve for remaining utterly silent in the middle of all the protests against police brutality and white supremacy. And they're based in the Seattle area so it's not like they could miss what's going on.

If itch.io could get devs together to raise 8 million dollars for relevant causes, Valve could damn sure be doing something.

I agree. People on ERA were losing their shit when Nintendo wasn't saying anything about BLM, but when it comes Steam, not a peep.

Until they make a statement I'm not buying shit on Steam. I'll keep downloading the free games though.

GrrImAFridge · Jun 22, 2020

BeImonkey said:
Perhaps Valve could look into a way of reducing their effective cut for games where certain aspects of it (like server costs /management) are taken care of by a third party? Provided that things are setup in a way that they can be transferred to Valve in the event of no longer continuing third party support. Like if EA handled all the server related stuff for BF5 and got an 80% default cut, but in a few years time if they went bust or wanted to focus support towards new games, they could pass off the handling of servers to Steam and take less of a cut.

Most of Steam's content servers are actually hosted by third parties, such as ISPs, and customer support is largely outsourced these days, so I don't think there's much publishers could do to make Valve's life a little easier.

Htown said:
Steam is an incredible platform, but I'm currently a little pissed at Valve for remaining utterly silent in the middle of all the protests against police brutality and white supremacy. And they're based in the Seattle area so it's not like they could miss what's going on.

If itch.io could get devs together to raise 8 million dollars for relevant causes, Valve could damn sure be doing something.

iGeodude said:
I agree. People on ERA were losing their shit when Nintendo wasn't saying anything about BLM, but when it comes Steam, not a peep.

Until they make a statement I'm not buying shit on Steam. I'll keep downloading the free games though.

Although Valve hasn't put out a statement, and likely won't, it has done a couple of things:

Shawn Alexander Allen | @aNuChallenger said:
Valve has pledged to be a big sponsor of the @GDoCExpo (There will be a cool side effect to this we will announce soon)

They also supported the Black Voices in gaming event hosted by @icjman

Decent 1st steps. Definitely better than the performances other companies have done. https://twitter.com/glanderco/status/1271290270441598982

Alexandros · Jun 22, 2020

MRORANGE said:
Ubisoft left?

LOL

good luck to them.

Ubisoft is basically the Blitz from How I Met Your Mother.

Deleted member 2809 · Jun 22, 2020

Detroit shouldn't be there. Pure sewage.

Gelf · Jun 22, 2020

Jaded Alyx said:
Someone said to me yesterday:

"never noticed how much EA games I forgot about because they werent on steam"

Looking at the huge spike in player numbers, it seems he wasn't the only one. Some people really only know/care about Steam.

This is absolutely the case with me. It's not that I completely ignored other stores it's just I didn't keep track of what was available outside of Steam anywhere near as well. I do have Titanfall 2 on Origin but that came years later when someone on this forum mentioned it was on sale there so I remembered it existed. There's actually a few games I forgot where even published by EA like Unravel.

I think a lot of PC users can be pretty pacient as well, they're used to being forced to wait for things for whatever arbitrary reason so why not wait longer for a game to be available where we prefer it, it's not like there isn't plenty more to play in the meantime.

dex3108 · Jun 22, 2020

Shugga said:
Detroit shouldn't be there. Pure sewage.

Well it has 91% positive reviews on Steam...

crazillo · Jun 22, 2020

With Steam's growing catalogue, I feel next gen might be easier than ever to just go for one console between Xbox and Playstation. You'll get all Microsoft games on Steam or Game Pass for PC, but not console Game Pass, of course. You'll get many previously exclusive games on PlayStation systems on Steam, especially Japanese content and some console-exclusive stuff where Sony publishes, while more ports from their internal studios like Horizon: Zero Dawn are a bit unclear for the future.

marcbret87 · Jun 22, 2020

NinjaBoiX said:
I genuinely don't understand what you mean. Steam is on a roll because you like the top ten games that people are buying on the service?

I don't get the correlation...

The point from the OP is that you have more publishers in Steam than ever before: Microsoft releasing (some of) their first party games, EA is back after many years supporting their own client, games that were formerly exclusive to Playstation systems, even a Sony first party game is expected soon...

Arthands · Jun 22, 2020

Bjones said:
yeah I have a bs in computer science and have worked as a programmer/ server admin for over 20 years now.. it's me.

forced windows update Have been a constant issue breaking things like RDP which killed my steam streaming for about 2 months because I didn't want to deal with it.

one day my 2080 would just throttle to 4000 rpms after a windows update and didn't get fixed till another update months later.

mk-11 constantly has corrupted files after game updates.

I mean it's not hard to find something recently

Microsoft confirms latest Windows 10 update causes issues with certain games

Earlier this month, Microsoft released Windows 10 KB4482887 to fix Action Center bug, improve performance by enabling Retpoline on certain machines and address other problems. Yesterday, we discovered this Windows 10 cumulative update breaks down some games such as Destiny 2. Today, Microsoft...

www.google.com

I don't know, still sounds like user problem to me though. Me and my girlfriend has been gaming on PC for years but rarely encounter constant issues.

Mifec · Jun 22, 2020

Icemonk191 said:
Man, y'all are embarrassing when it comes to steam hahaha

Idk who the embarrassing one here is tbh.

Arthands · Jun 22, 2020

Icemonk191 said:
Man, y'all are embarrassing when it comes to steam hahaha

I don't know man.

Icemonk191 said:
Remember when everyone here were all "WELL WELL WELL! LOOKS LIKE EA'S CRAWLING BACK TO VALVE!!!"

Lashley · Jun 22, 2020

Thought ya'll were talking to yourself, then realized I had that person on ignore.

dex3108 · Jun 22, 2020

Interesting thing I noticed is that publishers and developers tend to switch to Steam keys at 3rd party stores when exclusivity ends.

DaciaJC · Jun 22, 2020

Mifec said:
Idk who the embarrassing one here is tbh.

Arthands said:
I don't know man.

How curious.

Lightjolly · Jun 22, 2020

Delusibeta said:
I'm going to play devil's advocate here: businesses universally value guaranteed money higher than non-guaranteed money, even if the latter amount is potentially higher.

Exactly, especially the niche indie games that more than likely werent going to see a lot on steam anyways. Sometimes I wait a year like Outer Wilds, sometimes I just buy it on epic because I want to support the devs and play it now, snowrunner etc.

reminiscingLemon · Jun 22, 2020

Pheace said:
Fire Emblem comes to mind

Dream big kid

Kyougar · Jun 22, 2020

Lightjolly said:
Exactly, especially the niche indie games that more than likely werent going to see a lot on steam anyways. Sometimes I wait a year like Outer Wilds, sometimes I just buy it on epic because I want to support the devs and play it now, snowrunner etc.

You are actually NOT supporting the dev (financially) by buying the game on EGS. Well, unless the dev sold out their sales guarantee, which is questionable.
Every copy sold on EGS within the sales guarantee goes 100% to Epic. the Dev won't see any money until the sales guarantee is over (so not even after the exclusivity is over). The first time the dev is seeing money from a copy sold is when the game appears on another Platform like GoG or Steam.

That's why devs are switching to Steam keys on third-party sellers and advertise heavily the Steam (and other non-EGS) versions.

Although, a case can be made giving moral support by buying on EGS, or for Multiplayer/GaaS games on EGS.

Lightjolly · Jun 22, 2020

Kyougar said:
You are actually NOT supporting the dev (financially) by buying the game on EGS. Well, unless the dev sold out their sales guarantee, which is questionable.
Every copy sold on EGS within the sales guarantee goes 100% to Epic. the Dev won't see any money until the sales guarantee is over (so not even after the exclusivity is over). The first time the dev is seeing money from a copy sold is when the game appears on another Platform like GoG or Steam.

That's why devs are switching to Steam keys on third-party sellers and advertise heavily the Steam (and other non-EGS) versions.

Although, a case can be made giving moral support by buying on EGS, or for Multiplayer/GaaS games on EGS.

Well yeah that makes sense, they're already got the upfront cash from epic, so the logical thing is to make the extra cash through the other stores by pushing them more. Plus in a way the more people buy on the epic store the sooner the sales guarantee could be fulfilled and the devs start making extra on that store as well, so in a way you are still supporting the devs financially even if they don't see the money right away

SapientWolf · Jun 22, 2020

Mifec said:
Idk who the embarrassing one here is tbh.

I could understand dunking on BFV (and I actually like BFV) but Titanfall 2 deserved a second chance on a platform with more visibility.

Steam is on a roll

ONE THOUSAND DOLLARYDOOS

ONE THOUSAND DOLLARYDOOS

ONE THOUSAND DOLLARYDOOS

Nice thread btw :)

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