Is Steam good for dev profitability *spawn

[Billy Idol]

I do wonder if Steam sales helped them to finally profit. Those games have been on sale often and frequently in the top sellers lists on Steam, so while the $60 console model failed to make them any profit I wonder if pc side picked up the slack. It wouldn't be surprising since a $60 console sale is really 10+ sales of each disc after you factor in how many times it gets sold as used, whereas a purchase on Steam is a true single purchase, along with less overhead costs like not having to grease the palms of Gamestop, shipping costs, storage, etc... I wish we had data on that because that article is from 2013 so it probably didn't include the Steam side of sales.

Why do you think that Steam sales generate money for devs?? I just read this from an indie dev:

http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1574

It is a bit lengthy, but a good read as it shows that Steam et al and their brutal sales can be a real problem in the gaming industry and that as a consequence, devs think that a customer as yourself, only paying <5$ for a game....are worthless

I really do wonder why people think that Steam sales, Humble Bundle, PS+ etc etc are good for the dev?!?

 

[eastmen]

Why do you think that Steam sales generate money for devs?? I just read this from an indie dev:

http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1574

It is a bit lengthy, but a good read as it shows that Steam et al and their brutal sales can be a real problem in the gaming industry and that as a consequence, devs think that a customer as yourself, only paying <5$ for a game....are worthless

I really do wonder why people think that Steam sales, Humble Bundle, PS+ etc etc are good for the dev?!?

I think they are great for the developer. The only problem is a lot of the indie devs race to that bottom pricing.

If you want to sell your game at $20 then sell it at that price for 6 months to a year. Then drop to $15 during a sale and then $10 and so . When I see a title drop in price to quickly then I figure something is wrong with it and I can get it even cheaper .

 

[Billy Idol]

I think they are great for the developer. The only problem is a lot of the indie devs race to that bottom pricing. If you want to sell your game at $20 then sell it at that price for 6 months to a year. Then drop to $15 during a sale and then $10 and so . When I see a title drop in price to quickly then I figure something is wrong with it and I can get it even cheaper .

He states that (in)directly Steam forces the prices. Which I don't know if true or not?!? But it is clear for me that when you play inly a handful of dollars for a game...their is not that much money to make. It is a quite interesting phenomenon in recent years: people spend hundreds(thousands?) of dollars for a gaming PC...but when a game costs more than 20$, they don't buy it. Same as for the Smartphone market...hundreds of dollars for a phone...but when the app costs more than 0.99 cents...skrew it! Just one of many discussions out there:
http://daveaddey.com/?p=1084

 

[joker454]

Why do you think that Steam sales generate money for devs?? I just read this from an indie dev:

http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1574

It is a bit lengthy, but a good read as it shows that Steam et al and their brutal sales can be a real problem in the gaming industry and that as a consequence, devs think that a customer as yourself, only paying <5$ for a game....are worthless

I really do wonder why people think that Steam sales, Humble Bundle, PS+ etc etc are good for the dev?!?

You can find articles that quite literally say the exact opposite. Here's one:

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/01/02/pixel-junk-edens-flash-sale-doubled-its-income/

Of note:

In other words, with front page placement and the deeply discounted $1 price tag, PixelJunk Eden earned in just 8 hours what it previously earned over a little under a year. Q-Games and Cuthbert have not shared specific figures, but needless to say they seem enthused.

This impressive tidbit reiterates what we already know about Steam and its seasonal sales: they help developers sell a ton of copies of their games. Phil Fish said that the last Steam Summer Sale moved 105,000 copies of Fez in just 48 hours.

I'd also add that the dude that wrote the article you linked maybe doesn't understand the concept of supply and demand. Back in the 70s the release of a new game was an event that you waited for. Now you get a shit ton of new games every single day. As such even if GTA 5 were released today on pc for $30 I wouldn't buy it not because of price, but because there's another 66 games still in my wishlist let alone another pile of games in my library I haven't been able to get around do. There's simply too many games out there. Yet I still buy an order of magnitude more games now than I used to because in the < $5 range I figure why not, at that price who cares even if I don't play it for a year. For example I just bought The Bureau for $4 but I likely won't play it until next year but I figured at that price why not. Would I buy 50+ games per year as I do now if they were $60 a pop just to maybe get around to them in a year? Heck no. Even with that there's just so many games that it's impossible for me to get around to even a fraction of them. Think of a gamer new to Steam, they are presented with literally thousands upon thousands of games going back decades, there's simply no way they can all make money. As such there will always be financial losers including some awesome games that just fall through the cracks. That's more of a fault of an extreme amount of games combined with interfaces like Steam that don't exactly make it easy enough to discover them all.

 

[Billy Idol]

It is true that more games are sold. I have the same behavior as you...heck I even buy PC versions of games, although I have them on consoles because they are so cheap due to sales. But, in stark contrast to you, I also buy 90% of my games day one. I can't wait for certain games to get cheap...even with an super large backlog of games, there are certain games I need asap!!

But I still do wonder: you have an example where it works well, the dev I posted sounds exactly the opposite way. Both are small games. What about AAA games??

I wonder the following: without console gaming and the potential day one 60$ customers...would a publisher even take the risk in producing an AAA game anymore? Because they know that e.g. a Steam only release have to compete with thousands of 1$ games and that customers typically wait for game prices to drop on that platform...it seems to me that this makes things way harder to predict and calculate.

 

[joker454]

It is true that more games are sold. I have the same behavior as you...heck I even buy PC versions of games, although I have them on consoles because they are so cheap due to sales. But, in stark contrast to you, I also buy 90% of my games day one. I can't wait for certain games to get cheap...even with an super large backlog of games, there are certain games I need asap!!

Elder Scrolls and Fallout games I would pay full price for because the release of one instantly goes to the front of my gaming queue (especially Fallout). That's about it though, other games can wait. For the most part I just don't feel that need to play games at launch, maybe the marketing and hype doesn't work on me anymore.

But I still do wonder: you have an example where it works well, the dev I posted sounds exactly the opposite way. Both are small games. What about AAA games??

You can look at a game like Tomb Raider, a AAA game, sold on multiple platforms, sold millions of copies and apparently still not financially viable at console price points. You can look at the vast trail of destruction of AAA companies that didn't make it trying to sell games at console price points. You can look at how just about all AAA console launch titles were financial failures. You can look at "successful" AAA games like God Of War, Infamous, etc that still get hit with studio layoffs. AAA games with console pricing doesn't protect any of them from obliteration or even remotely guarantee profit. I suppose they should all go write articles on how their fans paying $60 per Gow/Infamous game are worthless

I wonder the following: without console gaming and the potential day one 60$ customers...would a publisher even take the risk in producing an AAA game anymore? Because they know that e.g. a Steam only release have to compete with thousands of 1$ games and that customers typically wait for game prices to drop on that platform...it seems to me that this makes things way harder to predict and calculate.

Well not that I want to be controversial (ok maybe just a little) but are the new consoles really giving people AAA games, or are they giving them rehashes of old games with new visuals at $60? Maybe a new gaming model would finally bring us new AAA games for a change. I mean think of any new xb1/ps4 game you played and now imagine it with 360/ps3 visuals. Would people still consider them new AAA games? It seems like the current accepted AAA gaming model has caused stagnation in gaming, to me anyways. Maybe it's time things got shaken up a bit. Perhaps if AAA games launched on pc instead and had to compete with the existing vast gaming library, maybe that would force companies to actually come up with new ideas rather than release old games with new visuals.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

He states that (in)directly Steam forces the prices.

Yep. Price competition. Who's going to buy a $15 game when there are $5 games available? Especially when that $15 game is going to drop to $5 before too long.

You can find articles that quite literally say the exact opposite.

There are many articles, all with their own bias. eg. Your Pixel Junk article is talking relative sales, not profits. Doubled its income from what? What did it cost to make? How did they fair on PS3 by comparison? Most importantly, if games never dropped below $5 instead of $1, would they have tripled or quadrupled their income? Is price competition from an oversupplied market forcing pricing to where its unsustainable?

As such there will always be financial losers including some awesome games that just fall through the cracks. That's more of a fault of an extreme amount of games combined with interfaces like Steam that don't exactly make it easy enough to discover them all.

Now compare that to a curated download library on the consoles where there aren't millions and millions of games, and a console game can be viable at a much higher price. I wonder which is most profitable?

I don't think anyone has ever given a decent breakdown of platform sales and earnings to provide a reasonable insight. As such, the question "is Steam good for dev profitability" is likely unanswerable.

 

[orangpelupa]

isnt this should go to the pc forum?

btw steam sale do increase awereness. there so many games that i will never notice if there were no humble bundle or steam sale.

i think "visibility problem" is more problematic... there just too many video games that did not have AAAA marketing budget.

 

[Zaphod]

A flip side of the devaluation is that I mostly consider bundle purchases and high discount steam buys as charity or patronage. I know when buying that it is very unlikely that I'll ever even play these games.

There must be at least 50 indie game developers that have gotten a couple of bucks from me that way. Would they all rather wish I had taken that $200 or so and split it five ways?

Would that have caused 45 less games to me made? Five new better games?

 

[Pixel]

I in brick morter retail assume for older games the retailer puts the title in a less prime reestate location inside the store and thus charges less, and royalty demands also drop allowing the publisher to make a bit of money on a $30 title. And perhaps all a publisher makes on a $30 title is $5-10

While through steam on a $15 title they'd make 70% of that $15.

even if its $5 on steam they still make $3.5 but they sell in volume because that quarter they sold 10x as many copies as they'd have sold otherwise.

 

[orangpelupa]

yup. discounts and bundle really add volume. if we remember the case with too much sold on Humble Bundle, then they decided to limit 1 credit card max buy 2 or 3 of the same bundle.

 

[MfA]

"We barely scratch a living"

Cry me a river.

I think his attitude is bad, once you start thinking about your customers like that you're just going to hate yourself. Only a socio-path can enjoy doing a job for long without having pride in his work and client satisfaction. Not providing one on one support is one thing, completely ignoring the customers is another ... only the most massive games have forums so busy it's impossible to get much data from it without full time employees to do so.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

isnt this should go to the pc forum?

I considered that, but the Pc forum is pretty quiet, and Steam is covering Steam boxes plus deals with multiplatform titles that also get, or have the option of, console releases. So I think people would prefer the discussion here (though it can be moved if that's not the case).

 

[steveOrino]

Why do you think that Steam sales generate money for devs?? I just read this from an indie dev:

http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1574

It is a bit lengthy, but a good read as it shows that Steam et al and their brutal sales can be a real problem in the gaming industry and that as a consequence, devs think that a customer as yourself, only paying <5$ for a game....are worthless

I really do wonder why people think that Steam sales, Humble Bundle, PS+ etc etc are good for the dev?!?

Yeah, brutal for him. Same piss an moan I heard from the fallout of the mobile game gold rush. Everyone thinks they can dump resources, make a game and become successful or at least recoup losses.

I mean complaining about price competition is a pretty lame argument. Games are a considerable time commitment (some more than others) so competition for peoples interest, time and money is going to be rough just like every other industry. Just because the barriers to entry are smaller doesn't mean consumers are going to think your product is worth much. Hell, if humble bundles didn't exist I doubt many would play a fraction of the games at all.

IF you have a good idea, and market it well then you can make money at it with or without steam. Just ask notch when he is taking a break from swimming in cash.

Anyway, tears from the new age "Indy Dev" are really getting stale. They don't know how good they have it now compared to guys in their basement/garages just hoping that people will play their games via shareware floppies and (if they are lucky) magazine cd-roms.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I mean complaining about price competition is a pretty lame argument.

Not entirely. It's one of the issues with free-market economics. There are spells of competitive self-destruction a la gold rushes. It's a legitimate complaint, but one in which there's no perfect solution and whatever methods are in effect, there'll be cause for complaint. eg. What if the platform is moderated and only a small set of titles are allowed keeping the average price higher? That's great for those who's games are accepted, but we'd hear lots of complaints from those who can't get in.

 

[sebbbi]

The problem for indie developers is that there's always big older (last year) AAA games for sale in Steam. Compared to the dirt cheap ~5$ sale prices of these old AAA games, a brand new ~10$ indie game feels expensive.

But the business models are slowly changing towards digitally sold projects that have long tails. Teams update their projects for several years after the initial launch. Games like these are often online oriented and because of the continuous update cycle these games do not drop in value as fast as traditional single player games that are not updated much.

 

[trinibwoy]

I'm pretty sure there are lots of people who still buy PC games at full price on day one. If you want a game badly enough you'll pay the asking price.

The majority of discounted Steam games in my library were bought because they were cheap and I'm holding on to the impossible dream of maybe someday getting around to playing them. If I only bought games I had the time to play I would spend much less money overall.

 

[Billy Idol]

Do we really have a breakdown of the money a game generates across different platforms in their different live times?

I mean, a 70&euro; day one console game sold, must be the main proportion of the total revenue...right?

Maybe publisher don't reach their very high expectations with consoles only...but I think that this must be the main part of the income. Hence, my opinion, that without those day one customers, we wouldn't have AAA games anymore.

I am also interested in the success of the new strategy UbiSoft tried out the last years: their Gunslinger game and their FarCry spin off were SP games with really high quality, but reduced size at quite low money...were they successful? Is this maybe the new strategy?

 

[Billy Idol]

I'm pretty sure there are lots of people who still buy PC games at full price on day one. If you want a game badly enough you'll pay the asking price. The majority of discounted Steam games in my library were bought because they were cheap and I'm holding on to the impossible dream of maybe someday getting around to playing them. If I only bought games I had the time to play I would spend much less money overall.

This might be true for traditional PC games, like Diablo 3, Sims, MMOs, RTS...but what about the console AAA games such as COD, FarCry etal etc etc?

 

[trinibwoy]

This might be true for traditional PC games, like Diablo 3, Sims, MMOs, RTS...but what about the console AAA games such as COD, FarCry etal etc etc?

I'm not sure what you mean. COD and Far Cry were AAA PC games long before they showed up on consoles.

If you're referring to the recent COD success on consoles I don't think Steam discounts affect those purchases at all. If you want to play COD on Xbox with your Xbox buddies Steam isn't really a factor.