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The Valve and Steam Platform Discussion Thread

kazgar

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From the west of loathing/kingdom of loathing dev's podcast (asked about price points, and I underlined the bit that was interesting for me)

Q: Why $11 as the price point? Do any of you find shorts to be easy or comfortable to wear?
A: (laughing) Riff, I don't think I've ever seen you in shorts.
R: I had a raggedy pair of cutoff jeans. But now I just don't leave the house in the summer.
J: I used to more or less exclusively wear cargo shorts in Arizona. It was just as stylish in the summer as in the winter! Now I just wear jeans everyday. And so do you HotStuff.
HS: I wear shorts about 20% of the time.
J: And that's why WOL is $11! HS: The price point was a big point of contention for a while. At first, we were at $10, but we thought it would cost us way too much for that, thinking we were going to sell 5,000 or 10,000 copies. Then we thought $20. That's a "Firewatch" or a "Gone Home".
J: Or a lap dance. A discount lap dance. But you don't want the high-end stuff -- it's not relatable.
HS: Then we got some good advice: that the game doesn't look like anything at all to someone who is not familiar with KOL, and they're not going to pay $20 for it.
J: And we started to learn how to make the top-seller chart on Steam, how few sales you need to do that.
HS: And we avoided things other companies don't realize: every SKU competes separately. So we didn't do bundles. We didn't do presales.
J: We know a lot of people who have been successful on Steam, we got a lot of good advice.
HS: We would have fucked this whole thing up.
J: If we didn't live in San Francsico, this wouldn't have been possible to do. The thing that gives me such a profound feeling of relief that this has gone well is not only that we get to keep the band together and keep making games, but that the last three or four years worth of decisions we made were not stupid failure decisions.
HS: It was super-unclear up until Thursday morning.
R: I was confident that everyone who played the game would like it, I just wasn't sure if we would be able to get the word out.
J: We did a bunch of work promoting it. The biggest part of it was hiring Emily Morganti. She usually only works with adventure games, but this was enough of an adventure game for her to do it. Also she had worked with Campo Santo to do PR work for Firewatch. She did not know anything about KOL, so she stopped us from having messaging that made no sense if you didn't know that. She was a great early sieve for a bunch of things that we didn't know we didn't know.
HS: She would say "are you sure you want the game to be $11?" And we'd say "Yes, it's dumb, but it will resonate with our fans and make them laugh." And the 10% off for launch week would put it under $10 which is really critical.
J: The idea is that if you can chart and you're under $10, people will just buy it because it's not much of a risk. We also got really lucky with early good press. We didn't think this was streamable at all, but every YouTube streamer I'm familiar with did a really warm and really positive stream. I think we made the right choice pricing it here. We talked to the Campo guys and said "if we're only going to sell 5,000 copies at $20, we'll make twice as much." And that's like saying "we'll fail twice as fast."
 
Self-Ejected

Drog Black Tooth

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Feb 20, 2008
Messages
2,636
I still have no idea why buying and selling steam trading cards is a thing...
Steam trading cards are used for two things:

1. Crafting badges to increase your autism Steam level, which does absolutely nothing apart from giving you some profile page customization options. Basically, spend money for e-penis reasons, which is retarded.

2. Making money. Basically you accumulate a lot of bundle trash games, run Steam Idle Master to get the card drops without playing or even installing the games, and then automatically sell hundreds of cards via Steam Inventory Helper during a Steam summer/winter sale when all the retards are crafting badges. You'll get enough money for several AAA games, some people even make so much that they cash it out and go buy an iPhone or something. It's exactly like a stock market, or loot farming in Diablo like games, or both. Could be addicting. Personally, I just idle once a few months and auto-sell whenever I feel like it.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Last week's top sellers (by revenues, not counting microtransactions), featuring some new and returning entries, not #1 of course:

#10 - Foxhole
#9 - H1Z1: King of the Kill
#8 - theHunter: Call of the Wild
#7 - Grand Theft Auto V
#6 - No Man's Sky
#5 - LawBreakers
#4 - Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
#3 - Total War: WARHAMMER II
#2 - Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
#1 - PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS

See who is de facto #1:

#10 - LawBreakers
#9 - Football Manager 2017
#8 - H1Z1: King of the Kill
#7 - Grand Theft Auto V
#6 - Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice
#5 - Total War: WARHAMMER II
#4 - Prey
#3 - Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
#2 - No Man's Sky
#1 - PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS

According to StemSpy data, No Man's Sky has sold over 120K copies after 1.3 update and during the sale.
 
Last edited:

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
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Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
So you quote a poll where several Codexers (including you yourself) express their contempt for the "positive" support a constrained question gets, that by definition has very few examples to go by?

Well, looks like gamers are getting dumber by the day.
 

Latelistener

Arcane
Joined
May 25, 2016
Messages
2,579
I have no idea though, didn't play 1.0, didn't play 1.3.
It will never be good. It's broken fundamentally.
If they'll replace procedural generation with random generation (like FTL or Space Rangers), where all of the content is actually hand made (and randomized), and not just a mishmash of different parts (like with creatures), it may have a chance, but it will be a different game then.
Funny enough, on presentations they actually showed only beautiful variations of planets. How they can not understood back then that this is exactly what player would want to see?
With random generation, it will be a shorter game, with less unique content to see, but right now no one will play that shit for long anyway, and their "unique" content suck complete dick.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
https://www.pcgamesn.com/steam-revenue-cut-tim-sweeney

Steam could be profitable with an 8% cut rather than 30%, says Tim Sweeney

Would you say digital distribution has been a good or a bad thing for the games industry? Compared to going to a brick-and-mortar shop, it offers customer convenience and - supposedly - greatly reduced costs for developers.

But Tim Sweeney, the co-founder of Epic Games and the man behind the Unreal engines, says the system still has serious problems - to the point of being “broken.”

“The game market system is pretty unfair,” Sweeney explained at a keynote address as part of Gamescom’s Devcom. “All of the app stores take 30% [of revenue per transaction]. That’s strange, because Mastercard and Visa can do a transfer for three dollars.” Sweeney also gives the example of a hundred million dollar transaction that just took place with Bitcoin, with a total transaction cost of just a couple of cents.

To name names, both Steam and GOG take 30% of your money when you buy a game on their platforms. Given the minimal costs to them, Sweeney reckons there’s no reason for such a high cut - even if it is a better deal than devs would get at a physical store.

“CDN [Content Distribution Network] Value is one percent of your revenue,” Sweeney says. Given this, “it’s very difficult to see that app stores need more than seven to eight percent of revenue. I think you could quite easily run an app store on [a cut of that size] and still make a significant profit. They’re not really helping any more.”

Sweeney also says that, because the most marketed games get the most sales, developers still need to spend big to turn a profit, irrespective of the advantages of digital distribution.

“Top charts are dominated by games that are spending huge amounts on marketing. So we have to spend on user acquisition, we can spend on ads - companies are paying approximately three dollars per install. We have to acknowledge this as a market failure. Most of the money made goes to middlemen: app stores, social networks. This is broken. I don’t know how we can solve this.

“We should not accept this as a status quo,” Sweeney continues. “We should constantly be on lookout for better solutions. We should look for ways to cut past the middle men.”

I guess journalists really like Tim. Cause he gives them a catchy headline every time.
 

vonAchdorf

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Sep 20, 2014
Messages
13,465
Wouldn't that be a big business opportunity for, let's say Epic, to open an own app store, which just takes an 8%-10% cut? Games could be cheaper there than on steam, publishers could just charge their own price and add the store fees like tax for full transparency and putting pressure on Steam.

Neither Origin or UPlay were willing to compete with Steam on price (cut) - at least not publicly and therefore lure 3rd party developers and their marking power to them.

So maybe the business opportunity just isn't there (at the moment).
 

Spectacle

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Wouldn't that be a big business opportunity for, let's say Epic, to open an own app store, which just takes an 8%-10% cut? Games could be cheaper there than on steam, publishers could just charge their own price and add the store fees like tax for full transparency and putting pressure on Steam.

Neither Origin or UPlay were willing to compete with Steam on price (cut) - at least not publicly and therefore lure 3rd party developers and their marking power to them.

So maybe the business opportunity just isn't there (at the moment).
There's no point in trying to compete on price when you know that your competition can easily cut prices to your level and still remain profitable. The moment you start taking market share from them they will lower their prices, now you have no advantage while they still have the benefit of a massive established market presence. Even if you do manage do grab a decent piece of the market your margins will be low. Much better to keep prices high and instead try to lure in customers in other ways. The stuff you learned about supply and demand and pricing in Economy 101 really only applies to a regulated commodities market, not so much to real world business.
 

gaussgunner

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There's no point in trying to compete on price when you know that your competition can easily cut prices to your level and still remain profitable. The moment you start taking market share from them they will lower their prices, now you have no advantage while they still have the benefit of a massive established market presence. Even if you do manage do grab a decent piece of the market your margins will be low. Much better to keep prices high and instead try to lure in customers in other ways. The stuff you learned about supply and demand and pricing in Economy 101 really only applies to a regulated commodities market, not so much to real world business.

If CDPR can build an online store, any AAA developer can do it. I don't see why they all whore out to Steam for 30%. They must not care about money that much.

They don't have to compete against Steam as a marketplace, just cut them out as a middleman.
 

Latelistener

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Wouldn't that be a big business opportunity for, let's say Epic, to open an own app store, which just takes an 8%-10% cut? Games could be cheaper there than on steam, publishers could just charge their own price and add the store fees like tax for full transparency and putting pressure on Steam.
Games won't be cheaper. Just more money for devs, and less for store owner.
Although if Valve had lowered the cut, maybe we wouldn't have to deal with shit like Uplay and Origin.

There's no point in trying to compete on price when you know that your competition can easily cut prices to your level and still remain profitable. The moment you start taking market share from them they will lower their prices, now you have no advantage while they still have the benefit of a massive established market presence.
Are you aware that Valve does not set prices, and thus cannot change them? The only thing they can is lower the cut, and this is exactly what is needed.
 

J_C

One Bit Studio
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Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
I don't see why they all whore out to Steam for 30%. They must not care about money that much.
Why do they choose Steam despite the 30% cut? I dunno, maybe because having your game on a marketplace which is visited and used by 12 million gamers every day is better than having it on a marketplace which has a few thousand visitors and 90% of people don't even know it exists?
 

Jigawatt

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in a desert, walking along in the sand
I guess journalists really like Tim. Cause he gives them a catchy headline every time.
He's got a point, if you make a AAA game on Unreal Engine and sell it on Steam for $60, you pay $3 to Epic and $18 to Valve. Is this really a relative representation of the value provided by the 2 companies? (semi-rhetorical, I don't know the answer, but it's probably not 6:1)

Wouldn't that be a big business opportunity for, let's say Epic, to open an own app store, which just takes an 8%-10% cut? Games could be cheaper there than on steam, publishers could just charge their own price and add the store fees like tax for full transparency and putting pressure on Steam.

Neither Origin or UPlay were willing to compete with Steam on price (cut) - at least not publicly and therefore lure 3rd party developers and their marking power to them.

So maybe the business opportunity just isn't there (at the moment).
There's no point in trying to compete on price when you know that your competition can easily cut prices to your level and still remain profitable. The moment you start taking market share from them they will lower their prices, now you have no advantage while they still have the benefit of a massive established market presence. Even if you do manage do grab a decent piece of the market your margins will be low. Much better to keep prices high and instead try to lure in customers in other ways. The stuff you learned about supply and demand and pricing in Economy 101 really only applies to a regulated commodities market, not so much to real world business.

This analysis is almost correct, except you really can apply your first-year microeconomics knowledge to determine why the price won't change: supply stays the same (essentially infinite), demand stays the same, ergo price stays the same.
 

Spectacle

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There's no point in trying to compete on price when you know that your competition can easily cut prices to your level and still remain profitable. The moment you start taking market share from them they will lower their prices, now you have no advantage while they still have the benefit of a massive established market presence.
Are you aware that Valve does not set prices, and thus cannot change them? The only thing they can is lower the cut, and this is exactly what is needed.
The "price" in this case is not the price charged to the end user, but the "fee" charged to the developers to sell games on the store, i.e. the 30% cut. Neither Valve nor any other digital vendor has any incentive to try to compete for developers by taking a smaller cut.
 

stony3k

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Strap Yourselves In
I guess journalists really like Tim. Cause he gives them a catchy headline every time.
He's got a point, if you make a AAA game on Unreal Engine and sell it on Steam for $60, you pay $3 to Epic and $18 to Valve. Is this really a relative representation of the value provided by the 2 companies? (semi-rhetorical, I don't know the answer, but it's probably not 6:1)
The cut is not set by value, but by market forces. If Unreal Engine raises their cut to 30%, developers will move to cheaper (and perhaps inferior) toolsets. But there are barely any alternatives to Steam, and so they get to set whatever margin they want.
 

Thane Solus

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Before the retardo steam became popular, there were services that provided hosting, payment processing and what not that toke 10%. In the first popular years, Steam justified their cut by giving high visibility so 30% was fine. In the last 3 years tho, that is not the case anymore, due to the market and steam being a shit company.

Smart devs try to build a direct dialog with their players and start selling from their sites, with Steam being treated as secondary at best. That is the future for small indie devs if they want to survive in my opinion... For example these days i would say GOG is more important than steam. You get better niches, smarter players and a "guaranteed number of sales because its a closed platform, while on steam if you didn't do your PR very well, your game might sell 1000 copies (best case) in the first months...

Steam might work when you make a hipster game, meme game, or somehow you manage to build some hype behind it, otherwise its hard.

There are still services that provide this like Humble Bundle Widget and Itcho (10% cut).
 

Thane Solus

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There are still services that provide this like Humble Bundle Widget and Itcho (10% cut).
Yeah, unfortunately Humble is super-SJW so that's a turnoff to many gamers, while Itchio is full of free browser games and has a clunky payment system for the few decent commercial indie games.

Its payment system to get a free drm game, it doesnt matter their political agenda or social, for now.
 

Thane Solus

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Do you think Cleve would've sold 5k units in first month without Incloosive Codex base? No. Maybe 1k at best. Thats a kinda of PR and trolling/talking with your players. It worked!

Its not a bad game, but i rather play some Might and Magic tbh...or Dagger Fall (oh dat fucking Tod Howard)
 

gaussgunner

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Here's an option: Shopify. They support digital download products and they handle all the payment & tax bullshit, web hosting, https. As for politics they've resisted a massive SJW campaign ongoing since February to kick Breitbart off their service. I presume they'd ignore the petty controversy that some games generate, which is unfortunately a real concern these days.
 

gaussgunner

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Do you think Cleve would've sold 5k units in first month without Incloosive Codex base? No. Maybe 1k at best. Thats a kinda of PR and trolling/talking with your players. It worked!

Its not a bad game, but i rather play some Might and Magic tbh...or Dagger Fall (oh dat fucking Tod Howard)

Imagine how many millions he could've sold if he'd released it 20 years ago and kept making new games....
 

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