Valve / Steam Dominance Over Digital Distribution

Klo said:
I would love to know how rich Valve actually is. They aren't a publicly traded company, so all their profit belong to them.
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Buy a company report on them http://www.google.co.uk/finance?cid=3784325


Price is what people are willing to pay. It'll be assets tangible and intangible, earnings and forecast earnings which must be quite considerable for them I imagine.

10bn seems conservative enough? EA is half that, but were 20bn 4 years ago. Keep an eye on facebook or groupon even, general tech valuations bare a relation
 
Steam is great, and I have much respect for Valve. However it does concern me that they're going to gain something of a monopoly and what happens when the current management team want to do something else and sell up? What's to stop a Bobby Kotick (and there are plenty of them) from taking over? I agree with the poster who said that the biggest advantage is keeping all your games in one place, what you don't want is to think "oh I wouldn't mind playing GameX that I bought ages ago but never completed, but did I purchase it from Steam, Direct2Drive or something else?"

You almost need to separate the DRM mechanisms from the front end, so I could for example buy a game on Direct2Drive, then use my Steam front end to launch it. Something Microsoft could do with Games for Windows maybe?
 
I for one hope Steam becomes the "standard" in PC gaming, and I hope it reaches the same monopoly heights as windows from 20 years ago.

Its such a great convenient way to browse, buy, and play games with friends.

What annoys me is that with some steam games I still have to install alternate pieces of garbage like games for windows etc. That actually puts me off installing the game.

So if anything they need to force whoever uses steam to sell games to remove said garbage.
 
xiphrex said:
So if anything they need to force whoever uses steam to sell games to remove said garbage.
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I couldn't agree more. PC gaming would benefit if Valve would start insisting that games on Steam don't use anything other than Steam DRM.

They make a big thing of Steam that the games are tied to your account and not a computer, and that you can download and install without penalty, then they allow limited activations and other restrictive DRM which totally negate those benefits. :rolleyes:
 
I don't really have the option to buy through steam, it would probably take 7 days of 24/7 pc uptime to download a 10gb game here, retail packaging all the way... my 850w psu isn't staying on for a week

As for the concept, although monopoly is dangerous they just can't get slack as there would be an alternative platform emerge, its better than say sc2 having a login and f1 2010 with another etc etc.. that I hate
 
I read something on Impulse years ago about forced exclusively if wanted game hosted by Steam.

As a consumer that's bad news, as apart from retail there is no chance for competition to lower price. And as people keep saying retail is meant to getting phased out then you're stuck with one option only.

I can understand why developer would use Steam, as it's been around for years so has a large share of the market in comparison to newer services.
 
Ravenger said:
I loved that quote from the marketing director of 1c games when he was told that a retailer had only ordered 30 copies of his latest game (one for each flagship store). He opened his laptop, checked the instant Steam sales figure and said 'In the time it’s taken you to tell me that there is no demand, Steam has sold 45 units'

http://www.mcvuk.com/features/808/OPINION-Retail-vs-Steam
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The other interesting bit from that article is it essentially describes how PC developers survive when so many console developers are struggling. Retail just absorbs far too much of the cash.
 
Valve are worth billions its estimated they have 70% of the total digital distribution market!!!

Sooner or later they will be sold its inevitable that anytime a private company makes massive profits sooner or later some hedge fund will come along & make them an offer they cannot refuse.

I just hope when this happens it does not change much but the danger of any monopoly is that if they wanted to charge you to re-download old games what choice do you have....little or none!!!!
 
I don't think a buyout would change much TBH. There's nothing locking us in to Steam, the reason for it's market dominance is because it's the best PC gaming platform. If that ever changes I wouldn't bet on it keeping that position. Competition will hot up over the next few years and the only way for Valve to keep Steam ahead of the game is by remaining the gamer's choice.
 
AWPC said:
I just hope when this happens it does not change much but the danger of any monopoly is that if they wanted to charge you to re-download old games what choice do you have....little or none!!!!
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If they did that Steam would crash and burn and most likely everyone knows it.
 
My account was banned, as my grandson mistakenly logged on to it from his house, while i was on it. It took 2 months & a visit to the bank to discover the very old credit card number it was bought with before i got back. Its just too easy for them to ban ppl ( imho )
 
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