Valve doesn't sell ad space on Steam so it can make room for surprise hits: 'We don't think Steam should be pay-to-win'
Valve doesn't sell ad space on Steam so it can make room for surprise hits: 'We don't think Steam should be pay-to-win'
"We're surprised all the time" by which games take off, says Steam's Erik Peterson.
Valve seems to be the only company on this capitalist world that actually understands that company profits cannot and should not grow exponentially forever without eventually destroying itself. All other companies don't know or want to stop the greed ad are constantly pushing for more profits to see until where they can push the greed and milking without losing "too much" costumers. They even weight the amount of costumers lost vs the extra profits to see if its viable to lose those costumers and still profit, like Netflix. Valve does not work like this. Valve grew to a size, and that size is giving them stable and steady profit. And they are holding that size, slowly growing more here and there but nothing big. The biggest thing they did in like 10 years was the Steam Deck and they will not update it with a Deck 2 anytime soon. Valve plays the very slow, but steady profits game. This is how you win as a company. You try to keep yourself on a balance between good profits and good public perspective.
Being privately held helps a ton. Gabe is his own boss. Once a company's public they're beholden to the investors, and investors want big short term returns so they can dump their stock and move onto the next one.
I truly fear the day Gabe passes on. Do we know who would own Valve if Gabe were to pass on today?
I think it is a little more complicated than that. You go to public markets to raise cash. Sometimes you can get the cash you want, sometimes not. The issue is when you are incentivized to make the stock price go up at all costs. If you don't need the cash, there is no point to having a higher stock price - lower is somewhat better.
Now, if you are a CEO, and you are paid in stock options, you are going to do whatever you can to maximize the stock price. Even if it is bad for thebling term health of the company. I don't think the public markets care either way.
Valve able to do that because they are private company, the exponential growth is only made mandatory because of the stakeholder. if the growth is stagnant(even with healthy profit), it's very unattractive to investor, hence growth is needed to keep the cog running.
Mark my word, once Gabe pass it's gonna be very very different. We have very different things to worried about, like climate change, but on software side and tech we shouldn't rely on monopolies. Valve was kept in that state because all the competition didn't actually put up a fight worth extra investment. The windows store pushed valve to develop SteamOS and Proton, they also back off on some revenue split policy because of EGS's deals. (Let's be honest, not all players care about which launcher they use, as long as they get better deals and can play the game they want.)
And to my experience, Steam's recent years' updates to store/client are not something I like as well.
- I don't like the gamification of sales event etc.
- I don't like the new unlimited scroll type, they backed off a bit and become like 3 pages long until you hit the top/popular/sales part.
- I also don't like some of the UI changes(ie the downloads/library mixed together and not separate item)
- I hated the auto start live streaming thing, if there is option to turn off that please let me know.
For EGS,
- their search sucks
- library page sucks, you can't really organize your free games/purchased games etc.
- auto updates are pretty on par so that's okay.
- their friends/etc also sucks.(not that I care much but at least it's far worse than steam one.)
- I like that they adopted Nintendo's gold coin reward type to encourage consumer to purchase there.
- games from other big publisher usually do require install their clients as well, which sucks. (it's similar on steam as well.)
I was actually thinking about this the other day, will be a very sad day. Valve is the only company I genuinely can say I'm a fan of.
Valve seems to be the only company on this capitalist world that actually understands that company profits cannot and should not grow exponentially forever without eventually destroying itself.
Nah, they are many of them, maybe even the majority of companies are like that (think SMBs). The peculiarity of Valve is that it also managed to become and stay the world leader in its domain, so every nerd knows about it.
Tons of SMEs are world leaders in their domain, you just never heard of them because they produce giant ship propellers, fire hose couplings, surgical instruments, whatnot, not exactly things people not using them ever think about. And of course you don't have to be a hidden champion to be a SME that owns their market, say, Herrenknecht. Who would be unknown if tunnel boring wasn't so cool and impactful that there's tons of documentaries about them doing it.
Coincidentally, I was just reading a news article about Chipotle doing exactly that - raising prices while losing customers.
Even companies that have seen customers pull back due to the higher prices reported higher sales, because those higher prices offset volume declines.
PepsiCo, for example, reported ... sales rose nearly 7% to $23.45 billion. The ... company said it increased prices globally by 11% on average... In that time, PepsiCo’s volume fell 2.5%.
If you wonder why public companies with billions in revenue can't make a Steam competitor is because they can't think long term, being a private company allows Valve to just work on what they want and grow If they need to
they can't think long term
Well they can, but only in one way: Grow by selling at a loss to outcompete other and then make a profit.
Even if Valve was public, Steam makes so much goddamn money that putting ads on the platform would only cheapen it.
Good joke. Investors will see wasted financial potential and make valve do it.
When you have external money you now also have away part of a platform. And the investors don't care. Make number big fast. Nobody there is caring about long term
Thank you armchair analyst
I'm not one that usually calls for the "Hail Corporate" BS where people lick the boots of big companies. In fact, I typically am very anti-corporate in every way, but Valve is one company I honestly have very little problem giving my money to. They very rarely have any anti-consumer things that crop up and every one to memory they've taken feedback and course corrected very rapidly. I'm afraid for the day Gabe Newell dies or retires, though. Whoever takes over Valve is going to have some big shoes to fill.
Honestly, when I think of the word "corporate" with its negative baggage, the last entity I will think of is Valve. They've been consistent and good for the past decades thanks to Gabe Newell. If there is any rich tech mogul who should be celebrated more than Elon Musk or Bill Gates, it's Gabe.
Not in the least because Elon Musk is a complete idiot that has only managed to whittle literal billions of dollars just by being himself.
Every good company he has touched was either built from the ground up by someone else, like Tesla & PayPal and remains profitable in spite of his existence, or was built from the ground up by someone else and was subsequently ran into the ground - See Twitter.
All hail Gabe
About the worst criticism I've heard is around policies involving refunds (very short but charming games can be played quickly and then refunded) and shitware games clogging up search results (often Unity/Unreal Engine skeleton games with a new logo slapped on).
The first one discourages a subset of indy games, but ones that should be taken seriously.
The second, I think, is more of a problem for reviewers hunting for hidden gems than the public at large. Steam decided long ago to lean into Sturgeon's Law of letting almost everything go through and let the good stuff rise to the top. The other way to go is a curated list where you've already cleared out the garbage, but with the understanding that some hidden gems might be caught, too. If you go for letting through everything, then you should have mechanisms for highlighting quality. Steam is pretty good at that overall, but I see how it could be a problem for reviewers. After all, they're exactly the people who need to be trolling the depths and finding those hidden gems.
I don't think most people even notice those skeleton games all over Steam. I would never have seen them if not for J Steph Sterling pointing them out.
Suffice it to say that if these are the biggest problems, they're doing pretty well.
There is the unregulated gambling market running off Counterstrike and Dota etc items that valve technically doesn't run, but does facilitate through its community market and does profit from. Probably the biggest problem I have with how the company operates.
That being said, generally I do agree.
Google started out the same way. Hopefully this sticks
The advantage atm is that valves privately owned. The moment they go public, be very wary.
Valve opened in the late 90s and is privately owned. Never say never where corporations and capitalism are concerned... But hopefully they wont take the evil google approach this late in the game. I think good will from their customers really sets them apart from competitors like Epic.
Valve didn't suddenly get big, they've been dominating the PC space for many, many years.
And damn near every single Google effort into the games space has failed except for android games, which ride on the enormous platform install. Their latest effort was a joke - stadia was DOA.
I respect valve because they've provided indie game devs with the same distribution AAA studios get, they've never asked for exclusivity and did tons of uncompensated VR pioneering (remember Abrash and co were Valve before Oculus) and never once tried to 'own' vr. And they're a private company, so that means the decisions - and investments - they've made worked out enough to free them of a board dicking shit up.
Keep going, Valve. I don't like everything they do, but overall they're a gem in value added.
I really hope that Gabe has future-proofed valve. It really is a remarkable treasure and one of the most user-friendly platforms of all time. Especially in these days when we are seeing a corporate takeover of the internet, or realizing that we lost a long time ago when we put all of our eggs in the Google basket.
I could see so much potential for fuckery happening, can you imagine if steam was as fond of kicking people off the platform as Reddit is? Or if games were constantly being curated to make sure they check all the boxes like the YouTube algorithm does? Five Nights at Freddy's would have never existed if steam played by those rules, same for every other surprise Indie hit
It's private at least, a good first step
Not a guarantee, but apparently a necessary condition for consumer friendly practices.
Aren't Google/YouTube, Amazon, Facebook/Meta also all private?
Edit: just realized you probably meant privately owned and also not publicly traded on a stock exchange
A successful gaming company going public ultimately leads to their IPs dying off thanks to executive meddling and the developers being sent to the mines to work on whatever is popular.
Thank God that the Sims appeals to such a wide casual audience and is one of the rare franchises in gaming with a higher female fanbase than a male one.
So much so that when the Sims 2 didn't have a breast size slider for fear that perverts would take advantage of it, the decision proved to be unpopular because too many of the fan base was unable to make Sims that accurately looked like themselves.
Because if that wasn't the case the life simulator genre would be pretty much dead, outside of promising looking indie games that try to replicate the experience, remain with a Steam page that says "Early Access" and a kickstarter that is ignoring all emails.
Even if every game after the Sims 2 was turned into a nickel and dime machine, and I say this as someone who not only has all of the DLC for The Sims 4, but also, remember the old days when people joked about The Sims 1 having an expansion pack for everything.
Incidentally I don't think downloadable content and micro transactions are necessarily a bad thing, it's certainly beats the alternative of going to the store and buying a new edition of the game that has like a couple of bug fixes and maybe one bonus dungeon at the end...
I just wish they were reigned in.
I'm all for private Enterprise being able to call its own shots as long as it isn't price gouging and hoarding Necessities like medicine, food, or housing.
That said if legislation came out and penalized companies for openly basing their business model on FOMO it would be one of the first times I actually wanted the video game industry to come under Fire by the government.
Gabes replacement will be the tell all. and as much as i want steam to exist over multiple generations..i dont think it can survive turnover, greed, opportunistic bastards.
I think this is the difference between private/public companies. They don't have to deal with the "growth at all costs" mindset that plague public companies.
I really hope that he is planned out his successor meticulously,
Imagine if it was as Ban Happy as Reddit, Corporate as Youtube, or... owned by Elon Musk
I think it would be awesome if he turned it into a nonprofit with a healthy endowment. The charter could say that any profits above $X that can't be invested into improving PC gaming must go to charities that promote indie dev. So the main goal would be to do things like the Steam Deck or build innovative games, and there would be little incentive to screw over customers. It could also be structured like a coop, so if employees didn't like the CEO's direction, they could vote to remove them.
That's what I would do, but I'm obviously not GabeN.
It's kind of odd, because it feels like they do sell promotion at the very least. For instance, Immortals of Aveum (the new EA game) is constantly shown on my store homepage, despite it being more or less a commercial flop. I know that page is customized, but I would have figured that game would be replaced by others now if the selection was fully organic. I had just assumed EA paid for some agreement that would promote the game on the main page for a set amount of time.
I'm sure it's just coincidence, but their statement just surprised me since the store feels like it promotes specific games already.
Never seen that game in my homepage... You may have played similar games
Yeah, meanwhile the front page often shows me the forest, and have so for like the last few years lmao
Mostly because it's similar to other games I've played and is good, I'm sure. I just never bothered to really interact with the game in either direction.
It could be that part of their algorithm involves significantly weighting past sales by a publisher/development studio, especially early in the life cycle.
They definitely give curated preference to companies that have had successful games on steam. I wouldn't be surprised if they have something worked out with EA.
Honestly, I wouldn't try to gotcha Valve on anything. They are a games distributor, and they will do and say anything to promote games that are selling well, and the developers and publishers behind them. They don't give a crap about games or devs that aren't selling. Nor would/should they.
It's actually quite good, IMO, and I am doing a melee/bash run at the moment at the higher difficulty. That's from a player haven't re-run a game in almost a decade.(Last game I did a rerun is Zelda:The Wind Waker HD.) And the devs said they are going to release NG+ later.
Why am I considering it good?
- no mtx at all
- very light to no grinding mechanism(unless you are like me doing specialty runs at high difficulty, you don't have to grind at all)
- the control is pretty tight, reminds me Q3A era control. You can't go crazy speed but you can do that initial strafe run jump thing to speed up quickly.
- some late game enemy/encounter design is actually not bad. It's annoying/boring if you do the regular FPS peeking/kiting and beat them, but it's actually satisfying if you use the provided mechanisms to do beat the same encounter but more involved.
- skill tree customization is actually quite interesting when combined with gear selection.
- enemies design are actually quite fair, there are no "this is BS" enemy types, and the enemy progression is actually pretty gradual no sudden difficulty spikes here and there.
Any cons?
- some mechanism aren't explained properly in game.
- if anything I think they are tuned still a bit toward the easier end even on high difficulty. Might be too easy/boring for season FPS player.
- some spells aren't really that useful to your play style, or have some design oddity that I don't really know it's "true" purpose. ie there is a spell that slows both you and enemy, I felt like wtf when I first acquired that and used it in a group fight.
- default KBM bind are pretty bad, it's control is more focused for controller/console.
- back tracking to open chest locked behind ability seems a bit boring
- there could be maybe a couple more enemy types, I wish there are another 2 creature type enemy and maybe 3 more humanoid types to mix up the battle even more.
- edit: forgot to mention Denuvo and EA account required.
Now graphics and system requirement. I have a 6800XT and mid range CPU 3900X, I pretty much run the default at 1440p upscale to 2160p and average around 75~85 fps for most part of the game. There are reports and whatever says "this game doesn't look that good compare to other non-UE5 games", why the spec requirement? Well, I guess that's very player specific judgement but unfortunately most people care about the fps number and be able to run all "ultra" with native pixels, instead of actually checking what's the core difference between UE5 vs older gen DX11 game engine results. Games developed with UE5 or modern tech will suffer from initial high spec requirement, but will age much much better later down the road. Some of the in game asset details are really unmatched by whatever I've seen so far even up close.
And, at recent sale price I think it's worth buying if you don't have a side game to play with. edit: I just checked my steam store page, this game isn't even showing.(I purchased on EGS) So probably your game selection matches their suggestion algorithms. I checked:
- landing page all the feature/recommended "slides"
- recommended for you
- top seller
Yeah, I thought the homepage and pop up every time you open it were ads
I hope Gaben outlives me.
Ok, get in — ⚰️.
Steam is a store.
Why would they try and sell you someone else's goods?
LMAO.
Amazon is also a store, but they have sponsored listings that get preferential placement. Not technically ads, but very similar idea...
Yeah, isn't literally everything they have on steam and advertisement?
Only if companies are paying more for what you're seeing.
The classic example would be loosely related games showing at the top of search results because some paid for them to be sponsored posts. Or something like that
all hail Lord GabeN
SideQuest VR went the exact opposite direction.
Giga chads
Based
It's not a principled stance, it's simple economics.
They already take 30 percent of sales.
It is a benefit to them to put whatever will guarantee more sales, and a couple cents from an ad impression is just going to get in the way of that goal.
You're not thinking like a capitalist. That 30% of sales they're going to get anyway because the games that will pop up at the storefront are games that are, relatively speaking, successful. What they're not getting is the money other companies would pay them to advertise games nobody wants to see. From a capitalist point of view Valve is leaving money on the table by not selling ad space.
If Steam isn't pay to win, how do I earn the points used to buy the profile doodads (avatars, avatar bezels, backgrounds, banners, etc) without purchasing games? 🤔
I purchased enough stuff in past sales that when that feature released, which I ignored until I saw one of my rocket league friend do something fancy on their profile icon, I had all the credits to buy all the top animated ones. But being stingy with the virtual coins, I still only pick the one I want to use and only buy those. one boarder and one background to match. What about my other credits? well they can rot or whatever I don't care.
I bought my index the day they implemented that stuff.
I was so confused as to how I got so many… thing… points?
I’ve never done anything with them and that was many years ago. Maybe I should? I dunno.
Lol. This is a cute idea but we all know it will go through enshittification with time. You are naive if you believe otherwise.
I thought it was due to their poor grasp on mathematics and inability to count beyond two.
...Granted you can turn this off, but by default every time you start Steam an ad for a game flies up in your face.
I would also call every single store page on Steam a "sold ad." Again, granted that it doesn't seem you can pay to promote your game above anyone else's and the search seems to be fairly straightforward and functional.
While I do feel there is definitely advertising that happens on Steam, I'm okay with the level of it. I can find products I want, and products I do not want are not mercilessly crammed down my throat.