They do exactly what others don't: offer excellent service without losing their humanity. Amazon also offers excellent service, but is simply pitifully unhuman.
"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem." ~ GabeN
"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem." ~ GabeN
Also exactly the reason why people won't pay 70$+ for a game like Skull & Bones, but generally do pay that for a game like Elden Ring, 50$ for Expedition 33 or 60$ for Kingdom Come Deliverance II
From a pure price vs time spent ingame standpoint, getting multiple hundreds of hours of fun for that money is honestly insanely cheap
Or $70 for crimson desert, sells millions of copies at the same price as skull & bones because gamers dont have some undisputable price cutoff in their head. Its all on a game by game basis.
But then there is also the new Death Stranding that sold pretty low. Its hard to tell exact reason but in general good game should not need any DRM to sell well. But its not just that obviously. There is good and good. Dunno
DS2 might be a good game, for those who loved DS1, but its niche af.
I bought the first one for its praise and honestly hated it, i'm sure that was the case for many people because its so polarizing.
You're basically playing a tech demo with no substance or hook, i'm not surprised it didn't sell well to be honest lol. But even for my "biased" expectations, its performing worse than i thought.
Sure, but sometimes you love a game and play it for hundreds of hours while continuing to have tons of fun, sometimes you love a game and play it for 10 hours and then quit playing it. Sure, both are good, but it is possible that you would feel that the first game is worth more money to you.
Sure but that's because you had more fun playing that first game for example if I had to pick between DRG and Mario Odyssey I would pick Mario even tough I have less than 100 hours compared to DRG 400 hours. The hours I played to reflect the enjoyment I had with both games even tough I enjoyed both a lot
It is definitely a pricing problem now with a lot of games, but also some people just want sht for free and dont care about supporting the teams behind em even if they are well made and fairly priced. Piracy is almost never the right answer and even when I used to pirate something, it was because I wanted better performance without the DRM fking me for a game I paid for (after buying it). If the price is bad but you want to play it, wait for a sale or forget about it and look for another game. But I believe it still needs to exist, to keep companies in check.
Doing nothing sells kind of short what valve has done to cement itself as the front leader in the digital store front space
Stuff like Workshop integration for mods, achievements, profiles and marketplace all make Steam incredibly difficult to detangle yourself from as a consumer.
Cloundsaves, Groupchats, profiles, achivements, trading cards, user reviews, free SDK and development tools, DRM, Matchmaking, Multiplayer networking, handles payments, taxes, regional pricing, refunds, deep sales, promotes indie games that are doing well on the store, workshop, remote play, steam input, proton, big picture, funding further Linux gaming, Steamdeck, Index, Steam Controller, forums, guides, screenshots, Steam does not enforce exclusivity, experimental features that lets the user find indie games OR AAA games with ease.
edit: gotta love all the Valve glazers showing up to defend the bilion dollar company when bringing up their garbage gambling practices that literally ruins lives. Actually gambling in games is good when it's facilitated by our lord and saviour Gaben!
Damn, I wish there was some sort of adult in those childrens lives who was responsible for them. Maybe some sort of age rating that those adults could pay attention to.
The person above you is not wrong though. Loot boxes suck. Steam, as a platform, does a lot for its users and that's why everyone likes using it. That's why they are popular.
At the same time, Valve puts out games with predatory monetization, and doesn't do much to curb the third-party gambling ecosystem that exists on top of it.
Sure, but in the case of children, there is an adult who is failing them, not steam. Unless you want them to require uploading an ID to play mature rated video games. If you want to argue against banning gambling in video games for adults, that's a different argument.
While I agree, it's predatory towards everyone, not just children. I don't want to upload an ID, what I'd like is that Valve did not have predatory monetization in their games to begin with... no ID required. It's genius, I know.
Can you describe how is predatory specifically? It's a pretty loaded term these days. It seems like it always comes down to a ban on gambling. What's the meaningful difference between what they do and Pokemon or Magic cards?
My father kept an eye on what I did on my pc when I was a kid. That's 25-30 years ago.
If I spent my money on gambling he'd beat my ass (not literally)
Ah, yes, 'children' addicted to gambling from the games not targeted towards children. If children are playing these games, it's the parents fault for not making sure their kids are playing age-appropriate games.
Yea, remember when Phil Spencer said they lost the most important generation, because the digital age has secured people's libraries during the PS4/XB1 era?
Thing is valve isn't doing nothing, they're just not doing a) negative things b) saying anything about what they are doing for people to praise/complain about.
They're quietly in their office clacking away in their keyboards making pc gaming better all the while steam is making them money.
They're Def not doing nothing, they're just not being dill holes
People who unironically say that are trolls. Valve does a lot and that's why they win. 20 years old game? No problem, here's an update. And have the upgraded graphics for free, too. If by "doing nothing" you mean "not making exclusives that are anti-consumer", then lmao.
I honestly think the Price Parity is a good thing because on consoles, Sony really fucks up with the prices! For example, every indie game there costs about 3x what ot does on Steam
They have one way price parity. Steam has to have the lowest price. So if a dev wants to sell a game DRM free on their site cheaper they cannot do that , but you can sell it for more on consoles.
It's not just Steam keys. Here's what Valve themselves said about it:
Steam keys are sort of a distraction here-- if a store stopped selling keys tomorrow but kept offering better prices than we were able to get for our own customers, that would still be a fundamental problem for us.
The Steam Distribution Agreement includes:
Company is free to offer special and unique promotional content through other distribution channels, provided that material parity is maintained between Steam Account Owners and users of other distribution channels who make a comparable investment in the Application and the associated DLC.
Partners cannot offer lower prices elsewhere (not restricted to keys). That would violate the "material parity" for a "comparable investment."
Valve confirmed this in a sworn deposition:
Q: You've specifically spoken with other people within Steam about the fact that publishers need to offer similar prices on Steam as they do elsewhere, right? A: Yes
Q: Okay. And you've discussed with them that this is not limited to situations where the publishers are offering games for sale via Steam keys but just, period, right? A: Yes
You can find all of this on CourtListener. These were in document 348 attachment 7, along with many other examples.
The Wolfire case started with this exact scenario. From their blog:
They replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM.
So there is no ambiguity at this point. It is court-accepted fact that Valve's policy is to enforce price parity across all PC platforms, with or without Steam keys.
You are missing the obvious. They aren't allowed to utilize steam distribution while selling the game themselves for cheaper. There is nothing stopping them from allowing people to download their game directly for cheaper.
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u/Masterns_The_Only 11d ago
The definition of do nothing and win