News Valve has 70 percent of digi distribution market

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2009/11/23/valve-has-70-percent-of-digi-distribution-m/1

Stardock reckons that Valve has at least 70 percent of the digital distribution market cornered.

 

um... maybe there's a reason that developers use Steamworks?

It's like people who complain that Google has a monopoly over internet services without actually considering WHY it does (Google.com being good and simple, GMail being fantastic etc)

 

"Impulse by comparison has it's own Sins of a Solar Empire and Demigod games and has, along with other companies, moved to boycott Modern Warfare 2 and other Steamworks titles."

Erm ... seeing as Impulse can't even serve Steamworks games why does Brad bother mentioning a boycott of Steamworks?! Thats like me saying "I aint EVER buying one of dem Ferraris because I don't like them" ... and never being able to afford one anyway.

Nice PR/Marketing here for Brad, he got some publicity for Impulse. Not sure his market share is 10%, would love to see the official figures done by an independent

 

TBH, I'm unwilling to clog up my machine with more than one copy of digital distribution software. Steam just works, so I use that.

Installing five or six different game management systems because everybody wants to do it differently is not something I'm willing to do.

 

This guy needs a slap

 

That is my main reason too... I have steam, and had EADM (for C&C3)... It's clunking the pc, i want to play a game, I'll go to just one place (not 2-3 different icons in the taskbar)

 

If Steam has a 70% market share and Impulse only has 10%, why should we risk our purchases with a system that may go bust in just a few years? Valve on the other hand is nearly guaranteed to last for years and possibly decades so long that they don't get greedy and cash in with EA or MS.

 

This isn't a good thing in the long term, as we move closer and closer to full scale digital distribution.

Valve have defended its ludicrous steam prices stating that people are prepared to pay for the convenience, do you really think they will charge you less when it's the only option?

We need competition the digital distribution market or we'll all end up paying whatever the developer sets the "RRP" at

 

but at the same time, Valve have showed time and time again that if they reduce a price in a "sale" then the sales go through the roof and make more profit in that sale period than the total game sales to date.

Put simply, their own data and their own press release of their own data shows that lower prices (if only for a limited period) makes more money than high retail costs...

I'm just waiting until distributors realise that the supply and demand loop results in high price -> low volume -> low profit whilst on the other end you have low price -> very high volume -> high profit. Something Infinity Ward completely missed with Modern Warware 2's RRP. Granted this was undercut by everywhere because even the shops realised that £55 for a game was a huge commercial suicide!

I still maintain that £25 is the sweet spot for new games

 

You can understand the sour grapes from this guy but Steam does work and it works pretty damn well.

 

It does definitely sound like sour grapes. Not only are they beaten on the digital distribution front but they lose on copy protection as well. Steam provides both far more effectively. OK, a monopoly is not a good thing but basically if others could provide the same combination of functionality and simplicity (i.e. it just works in 99.9% of all cases, minimal overheads and no fiddling required) then they'd be in a position to comment and be taken seriously. At present they don't even appear on the radar (I'd never even heard of Impulse until about 6 months ago, I've been using Steam for over a decade).

 

Steam controls 70% of online distribution.
In other news the sky is blue.

/me facepalm

 

Valve have L4D n HL series to help with the success of Steam, just as Stardock have their own games on Impulse. And also complains at Steamworks being tied with games, but they are working on a similar service. And they sold Demigod as a GFW title, so really it's hypocrisy all around.
I still find the boycott on MW2 odd, considering I picked up Defence Grid in the 5-year sale on D2D and it was a Steam game.
Make a comparable service, (cos Impulse is as useful as EADM really) and maybe more folks will use you.

 

Steam was released in September 2003. That is 6 years ago.

ON TOPIC: I can only echo what everyone else has said. If you put up a peice of software that works as well as Steam and then work your arse off to get companies to throw their chips in with you then all the best. Otherwise this is akin to being a corporate cry-baby.

 

I live in the US, so I only have US prices to go by. But they have always been the same as retail here.

Should Valve be punished for having the best product?

 

Well here in Ireland Steam is more then retail. For example Left 4 Dead 2 is €49.99 on Steam. In my local Gamestop it was €35.

That being said sometimes the weekend or midweek offers are great value, but depending on what I want I go Steam, Impulse, or for old stuff, Gog.com

 

steam is a good product, I have been using it since it started and have gone through the troubles it has had in the past, they have worked hard to get steam where it is now. It is at the point now where it is popular enough that alot of my friends use it, and that I can chat to them while ingame and also join their game.
Stardock though, never heard of them..

 

I smell an anti-competitive law suit

 

See, this is what happens when you get older! I'm probably confusing it with CS. However, it does give a good indication of the effect that Steam has on many of us in that we wouldn't be able to say when they started using it.

Stardock I remember for entirely different reasons, those being primarily to do with their copy protection and how it was occasionally a serious PITA.

 

Valve don't force people to use Steamworks, however it will not work with another companies system. That is not anti-competitive.