This isn't anyone playing anything. This is a story about how people bought $19 billion worth of games and then never played them (which would suggest they likely never downloaded them either). Valve made over $6 billion and used no more resources than serving up the store page and the payment processing.
and this is why Valve is in no rush to pump out games like they used to. Why they have no real burning desire to continue half life. They made enough money to keep the lights on indefinitely by doing no more than simply letting an automatic process run that any first year web developer could set up.
It's not insinuating anything like that. It's stating a simple fact that they got 6 Billion dollars for basically zero effort and resources. All of the things you've described are to allow people to buy more games. They cement valve simply as a store front and platform but not a game developer.
This is the point as to why Half life and most other games were basically dropped. Valve made 6 billion in passive income while trying to build a game selling and delivery platform. Even the best game in the world isn't going to make that kind of income and it's likely to take more effort than what they've done already.
I saw this and thought, well yeah that VP is right, cold calls are annoying spam. However, based on the insane comments by all the salespeople, you’d be wrong. Like, are salespeople that out of touch with normal people?
B2B contact is generally fine, unless you're going to be a stalker about it. Had one the other day who messaged me on linkedin with her pitch and included the standard 'If you have time and this is interesting feel free to reach out' I saw the e-mail pop up just as I was stepping away to have lunch, as it was the standard lunch time. Before I even got downstairs (work from home) my company's calling me out of the blue to tell me they have a call for me from this person. I declined the call, as we both agreed it was just business spam and after lunch responded and let them know we'd never be interested in their services. 'Feel free to get in touch if you're interested' and 'I'm going to track down your company's phone number and call you 30 seconds after I send this' just don't vibe for me.
They do prevent you from linking to your own store within your Steam game though. Even though they don't provide a complete solution for things like microtransactions and DLC.
How it works on Steam:
User makes an in-app purchase using the steam wallet integration
Steam processes the payment taking 30% and gives you a reference number for that transaction
You query that transaction every time the player logs in to see if they've refunded it or not. That transaction doesn't actually contain any information about what they bought though.
You then maintain a separate purchasing server whose whole job it is is to keep a record of what the player purchased in reference to that transaction number.
For that Valve wants 30% of in-app/DLC purchases. At that point it's stripe and nothing more. Unlike standalone DLC Or expansions, these unlock purchases don't come with serving any additional content in the form of downloads.
If you make your own service to handle these transactions (with only a 3-4% transaction rate) Valve will prevent you from linking to it, or mentioning it anywhere on your page, forums or within the game itself. You need to direct players elsewhere and then mention it. Even for cross-platform games where having Steam maintain a transaction list for a portion of the users is just a needless additional layer.
For the base game, which I think 30% is still more, I think it certainly makes sense.
Because they're providing a complete solution.
For in-app purchases or unlock purchases, whether or not the purchase is in-app, the solution isn't complete, and not worth the 30% they charge on those transactions. It would be trivial for every transaction to have a custom field where you could store an array of what was purchased in in that purchase and have it returned when the transaction was checked. Boom, complete solution. Specifically for in-app purchases if they wanted to take 5% since all they're doing is the job of Stripe and nothing more, then I'd consider that fair.
I know older titles are usually the topic in this community but a lot of the popular f2p games are getting pretty old now too, and if you’re like me you’ve been curious about some of them and even pleasantly surprised now and again....
Free Infantry. I wouldn't say I'm hooked, but it would be great if this really took off again. Was a great game back in the day. I've completely forgotten how to play it or do anything and mostly fumble around.
Steam users have spent $19 billion on games they have never played. (www.pcgamesn.com)
Cold calls aren't spam! (sopuli.xyz)
I saw this and thought, well yeah that VP is right, cold calls are annoying spam. However, based on the insane comments by all the salespeople, you’d be wrong. Like, are salespeople that out of touch with normal people?
Slander, extortion and doxxing - beneath the surface of TF2’s bot crisis (www.videogamer.com)
$843 million lawsuit against Valve already has its own website: "The Steam Claim" accuses the biggest store in PC gaming of "overcharging" players (www.gamesradar.com)
What free2play game are you currently hooked on?
I know older titles are usually the topic in this community but a lot of the popular f2p games are getting pretty old now too, and if you’re like me you’ve been curious about some of them and even pleasantly surprised now and again....