News Valve releases Half-Life sales figures

[CardJoe]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/12...ales-figures/1

Valve has released sales figures for the earlier Half-Life games, revealing that the original has sold almost ten million copies.

[p3n]

Garry's Mod is one of the best LAN party mods; that and sourceforts!

[phuzz]

To be fair, I think I've bought HL at least three times now before loosing the disks again.

[airchie]

Hehe, goes to show if a game is good enough, it will sell.

CoD4, though it was one of the most pirated games ever apparently, I bet still sold a phenominal number of copies.

[liratheal]

Man oh man.

HL is what, ten years old now? A million copies a year isn't a bad sales trip.

That said, I don't see why they feel the need to tell everyone it's popular, when in most cases people are already aware of this?

Seems like Valve are just trying to inflate their testicle size.

[steveo_mcg]

I wish valve would release even indicative (since they wont release actual figures) steam sales figures it would very interesting.

[Nictron]

I think Valve is doing so well that they do not want to tell everyone about steams effectiveness. That might just cause competition for them in the marketplace.

While all the other publishers are thinking console only, valve and Blizzard are sitting back and develops for the PC communily and keeps that slice of the pie all to them selves.

Great sales tactic if you ask me.

GO VALVE!

[perplekks45]

Wasn't CoD 4 most sold game last year.
And I agree with above. Good game = good sales figures.

[CardJoe]

I still can't use my original copy of Half-Life on Steam, not since I leant it to a mate and he registered it on Steam...

[[USRF]Obiwan]

So basically all the whiners (EA and such) about PC sales are losers and morons at the same time. Here is the proof they are wrong. I wonder if they will get the message that a GOOD game will sell for years. And BAD games will sell a few weeks and then the whole internet family finds out the game is bad and sales drop like a stone. Then they blame piracy, get some government money for this. And try again with part 7 of bad game.

[impar]

Greetings!

Well, in PC gaming, if Valve wasnt being successful, no one else would.

[Tyrmot]

Originally Posted by CardJoe

I still can't use my original copy of Half-Life on Steam, not since I leant it to a mate and he registered it on Steam...

And they were selling it for 99c the other day... If that's still going on it might be worth it, I bought it just because... well why not? I do have a box copy as well somewhere but for 60p you may as well have a nice shiny steam version too...

[Paradigm Shifter]

Originally Posted by liratheal

That said, I don't see why they feel the need to tell everyone it's popular, when in most cases people are already aware of this?

Seems like Valve are just trying to inflate their testicle size.

Nah - more likely they're trying to present a different side of the story to the whining devs/pubs who say that PC gaming is dying, piracy is the cause, yadda yadda... when in reality, at least half the reason why the games made by those developers and publishers are doing so badly is because they're not very good games. They can be technically good in one area or another (usually graphics) but unless they hit the right balance of everything... they don't do too well in gamers mindsets.

Piracy is bad, no doubt about that... but devs don't help their own case when they release sub-standard rubbish then complain that it didn't sell well.

To be honest, I didn't really like Half-Life all that much at the time. It was made, later, by a great SDK and awesome mods. But even vanilla it's way better than some of the dross I've seen in recent years.

[DragunovHUN]

Originally Posted by Tyrmot

And they were selling it for 99c the other day

98 cents actually, to celebrate its 1998 release. I bought a copy for everyone on my Steam friends list who didn't already have it.

[Lilliput King]

Originally Posted by Paradigm Shifter

when in reality, at least half the reason why the games made by those developers and publishers are doing so badly is because they're not very good games. They can be technically good in one area or another (usually graphics)

Crysis much?

But agreed. Its become something of a scapegoat for poor sales figures generally.

[Bauul]

Originally Posted by CardJoe

I still can't use my original copy of Half-Life on Steam, not since I leant it to a mate and he registered it on Steam...

...

who was that again?

[Teq]

Unfortunately the weak pound means I'm waiting for weekend deals to purchase things from Steam or go for the retail version instead Steam needs regional pricing imo, anyhoo, its nice to see such sales from Valve

[Veles]

Originally Posted by liratheal

HL is what, ten years old now? A million copies a year isn't a bad sales trip.

A lot of game companies would be happy with a million sales total

[chimaera]

Originally Posted by Teq

Unfortunately the weak pound means I'm waiting for weekend deals to purchase things from Steam or go for the retail version instead Steam needs regional pricing imo, anyhoo, its nice to see such sales from Valve

Agreed - it was great while the dollar was in the toilet, but now that its a bit more on an even keel the price of new games on Steam is a bit of a rip-off - Left 4 Dead for example at release was $49.99 + VAT - which worked out at about £40. Doesn't really match up against the £20 I paid for it from Amazon and the only cost to me was waiting a couple of extra days to play the game (which since it was during the working week wasn't exactly a problem for me). In saying that though, Steam is still great for older games, especially with the weekly offers

[Teq]

Yep, I still get the bundles, old games and weekend deals, but its sad that I have to wait for retail because of silly prices