Why do Steam charge so much more for games?

ray liotta

ray liotta

ray liotta

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Joined
25 Jun 2009
Posts
276
Location
England
They seem to be between £5-£15 more than at other online gaming sotres or even shops. You don't even get a disk do you?

Any reason they charge so much more, are people that stupid to buy them off Steam:confused:
 
Hello Ray.

Steam is popular because you don't need the disc's, you don't need the fuss about installing disc's. You can login, download your game and play it anywhere. If you want a disc, you can copy them on to a disc.

Steam's prices are often, not fixed by Steam themselves, but the publishers of the game. Why don't you go ask them ? Online retailers can offer discounts because of the way shopping works.

Steam have weekend deals, which are brilliant most weekends. They offer a good game, with a massive discount, or they offer groups of old / indie games for sale.
 
Hi Tummy.

I use steam myself(have to with Football manager 2009) and was handy when downloading AMERICAS ARMY 3.

I would actually use them to buy games, but not with prices so much more. I like Steam though, updating games without having to download patches myself is very good.

Thanks Skullman.
 
This is a 'discussion' that comes up a lot on here and it always tends to go the same way. Some people will agree with you that Steam's pricing is a bit ridiculous, others will justify it because there's no disc to deal with, no waiting for the item to arrive etc.

This isn't really just a fault of Steam though, it's a trait of digital distribution in general. The DD advocates don't seem to realise that if companies are allowed to push DD in the direction that they are now, it's the entire consumer base that's going to suffer as a result. No re-selling of games, and a distinct lack of competitive pricing.

DD has huge benefits, it's allowing smaller game studios to get their games out there and get noticed. There's plenty of small, cheap games on Steam and PSN (the PS3 equivalent) that are fantastic, fairly cheap and would probably never have seen the light of day if they were forced to go through the usual retail channels.

In my opinion, there's no good reason for the higher DD pricing, and I don't particularly think that users should try to justify it either. By using digital distribution, you're avoiding virtually all the costs associated with physical media, packaging, distribution and retail channels, and so on. With DD, there's bandwidth and however much the DD platform charges for hosting the game. The only reason the games are priced at RRP is because the developer/publisher has the final say. It's simply a way to get more money out of people than they usually would, which doesn't seem fair.

Until they decide to be more competitive with their pricing, I'll keep using GamesTracker to find the cheapest retail versions.
 
I don't begrudge them the extra money because of the amount of bargains and older games that are available for very little. That and the system is so easy to use; I mean, Stardock's Impulse is a blatant rip off, but they still failed to get some basic things right, such as backups.
 
ray liotta said:
Hi Tummy.

I use steam myself(have to with Football manager 2009) and was handy when downloading AMERICAS ARMY 3.

I would actually use them to buy games, but not with prices so much more. I like Steam though, updating games without having to download patches myself is very good.

Thanks Skullman.
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Hi :)

I also have Football Manager 2009 on Steam.
Do you not find, that not having to fuss about with downloading patches, sorting DRM out and trying to keep disc's together. Not to mention putting disc's in and out of the PC depending what you want to play a bit... erm last century ?

Steam, you buy a game (nobody is forcing you to pay the steam price, I bought Dawn of War II online, you can in fact register steam games on steam, or you can wait for a reduction in price, or a weekend deal, which often happens with big games that have just come out) then you can download that game in a couple of hours or over night. Have it working, and ready updated for you to play. Is that a bit too easy ?

Playing online, with the steam community has never been better, no more fussing and trying to get ip's for servers to connect to, or following people through Xfire. Start Left 4 Dead, see a friend playing, click join.
 
Tummy said:
Do you not find, that not having to fuss about with downloading patches, sorting DRM out and trying to keep disc's together. Not to mention putting disc's in and out of the PC depending what you want to play a bit... erm last century ?
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Not if it saves me £10 or more, no. Removing a disc from its case and inserting it into the drive is hardly an effort. Certainly not worth paying any sort of premium for, anyway.
 
TheVoice said:
Not if it saves me £10 or more, no. Removing a disc from its case and inserting it into the drive is hardly an effort. Certainly not worth paying any sort of premium for, anyway.
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Paying for a game upon release will always cost you more. In the same way, you can wait for a online retailer to have a sale, or cut the price you can wait for Steam to do the same. Steam will offer sales, and lower prices as time goes on, newer games come out, older games will lower their prices.

You happy carrying all those discs around with you if you want to install them on a friends computer, updating them ?

You happy reinstalling them, and updating them one at a time on a fresh install because you saved a fiver ?
 
ray liotta said:
They seem to be between £5-£15 more than at other online gaming sotres or even shops. You don't even get a disk do you?

Any reason they charge so much more, are people that stupid to buy them off Steam:confused:
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its a choice , not an indication of intelligence therefore calling people stupid for purchasing via the Steam platform is some what ignorant.

some people dont want a dvd or box that ends up gathering dust,some dont want to wait on the postman , some impulse buy , some just prefer the convenience and some can afford too ...
 
Just like why dominos pizza charge 10 million times more for a pizza. It's pure convinence. You can get it there and then. Always worth checking impulse and d2d as well.
 
Tummy said:
Paying for a game upon release will always cost you more. In the same way, you can wait for a online retailer to have a sale, or cut the price you can wait for Steam to do the same. Steam will offer sales, and lower prices as time goes on, newer games come out, older games will lower their prices.
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But the fact is that even on release, Steam tends to be more expensive than retailers. Look at Arma II for example, Amazon were doing it for £18 and yet it's £30 on Steam.


Tummy said:
You happy reinstalling them, and updating them one at a time on a fresh install because you saved a fiver ?
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I install my games to a separate partition, so I never need to re-install them if I format my OS partition. Even if the game doesn't work on the new OS (which is rare, but does happen), re-install takes a matter of seconds because most of the files are already there. Usually all that's missing are some registry entries or a system file or something.

So yes, if that saves me £5-10 that I can put towards another game, I'm happy to do that. It's not like Steam is fault-free; in fact, when I re-installed my OS earlier this year, Steam was one of the few things that kicked up a fuss and wouldn't initially work.

Don't get me wrong, people are free to do with their money as they wish. If they want to pay more for a game because they feel it's more convenient for them, that's fine. The point that always seems to become lost though, is that the people running these digital distribution platforms cannot be allowed to think that that supposed convenience means they're justified in keeping prices high. Otherwise, the situation I made earlier will happen; DD will take over and we'll all be paying more for our games than we used to. Can't imagine anyone would want that to happen (other than the people who profit from it, of course).
 
It's generally more expensive for big, mainstream, high budget new titles. Although not always. They had a really good price on grid when it came out.
It really excels for slightly older games, indie titles, classics, packs and the weekend deals.
I honestly think you're missing out on a lot of the fun of PC gaming if you only buy big budget new releases.
I buy a mix of steam and boxed games, and will probably continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
 
TheVoice said:
But the fact is that even on release, Steam tends to be more expensive than retailers. Look at Arma II for example, Amazon were doing it for £18 and yet it's £30 on Steam.
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See my first post, it been the publishers that set the Steam price, and not Steam themselves. It isn't Steam's fault for the pricing of games. Go fire your hate at Activision, Id, ect ect

Amazon is a shop, an online retailer. They can afford to offer savings on new titles, because of the way shopping works. They make money in other way, through the shop, they base on you picking up a cheap offer, you'll still spend money on other things.

TheVoice said:
I install my games to a separate partition, so I never need to re-install them if I format my OS partition. Even if the game doesn't work on the new OS (which is rare, but does happen), re-install takes a matter of seconds because most of the files are already there. Usually all that's missing are some registry entries or a system file or something.

So yes, if that saves me £5-10 that I can put towards another game, I'm happy to do that. It's not like Steam is fault-free; in fact, when I re-installed my OS earlier this year, Steam was one of the few things that kicked up a fuss and wouldn't initially work.

Don't get me wrong, people are free to do with their money as they wish. If they want to pay more for a game because they feel it's more convenient for them, that's fine. The point that always seems to become lost though, is that the people running these digital distribution platforms cannot be allowed to think that that supposed convenience means they're justified in keeping prices high. Otherwise, the situation I made earlier will happen; DD will take over and we'll all be paying more for our games than we used to. Can't imagine anyone would want that to happen (other than the people who profit from it, of course).
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You my friend may well do that, I also presume that you have an above average knowledge of PC software ?
Compared to a fair amount of casual gamers, first time gamers or gamers that simply just game. Steam offers them a hassle free, almost instant way of receiving their game.

I have a hard drive just for steam. Whenever I had reformatted my computer, I've simple just reinstalled steam, and downloaded my most played games, almost over night. I've never had a problem with Steam either, Steam wouldn't be so popular if it had problems. The multiplayer and community aspect of Steam is also fantastic, you don't get that with the box and CD.
 
Tummy said:
You my friend may well do that, I also presume that you have an above average knowledge of PC software ?
Compared to a fair amount of casual gamers, first time gamers or gamers that simply just game. Steam offers them a hassle free, almost instant way of receiving their game.
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I would say it's the other way around. The enthusiasts who know and use steam,d2d, impulse. It's still new and not that well known. I compare it a bit to early mp3 downloads. Expensive and not in the common market. Once it hit's a threshold and general public start embracing it, then the price of mp3 free falled. Game downloading is still a niche market.
 
I find steam useful for not just not needing to have the disk in the drive but say you go and do a reformat. All you have to do is download steam, login, and you can set all your games to download again and just leave your computer on for like a day or so. Rather than having attend the installation of game after game at your computer via the normal way.

Also if Steam release that new thing that saves your save games online so they are linked to your account means that you dont have to back up those. (Cloud?) etc.

True, not all my games, that i have brought are through steam but a good handful are.

Oh and Valve games are brilliant and are pretty cheap so i wouldn't rule them out. :D
 
i usually don't mind paying a bit extra (even if it isn't really fair) because i like to have all my games in one place and instantly accessible, however i really can't justify the pricing on call of juarez... £35 for a game you can pick up for £20-22 eslewhere is just ridiculous. I really want that game and they are making it totally unreasonable for me to get it!
 
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