News Valve more profitable per head than Google or Apple

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2011/02/14/valve-more-profitable-per-head-than-google/1

 

only 250 people? no wonder there's normal time and there's valve time.

 

Steam sales Cheesecake

 

wow, ripping us off big time then....

 

Huh?

 

I don't see how L4D2 at 3.5€ (when I bought it) is a rip off? If anything, it's an insane bargain!

 

The funny thing is, I still feel faintly protective of Steam, like it's still a tiny digital upstart facing off against the retail giants - like it was when I opened my account. Today, I suppose, although it's still a small headcount Steam is now a gargantuan corporate monstrosity and if I was interested in helping the beleaguered little guy I should be back shopping at HMV...

 

it's insane for the normal retailers where even "Bargain" nice-price-Games cost 10 euro's

 

I kind of feel the same way

 

Steam is just about the only thing keeping PC gaming alive at the moment, its absolutely brilliant and the sales offer genuinely good value for big games and the chance for me to buy a lot of games I wouldn't have bought at full price. Though the publisher might be making less from me, less is better than none.

 

@ smiffydude: Yup, me too. I think we get that feeling because Valve and Steam are considered the "champions" of PC gaming nowadays, so it's still a case of "us vs them", ie PC gaming vs console gaming and retailers. It's the same way I feel about all the digital distribution sites and I do my best to support all of them.

 

Ha ha, oops, just quoted myself.

 

I bet this really pisses off Steve Jobs.

 

I'm waiting for steam to start distributing movies. I HATE itunes for not allowing you to freely re-download items you legitimately bought just because you forgot to backup.

Steam > all

 

The benefits of using Steam are hugely against any negatives I hear. Especially when reformatting drives and reinstalls being so easy with Steam. As to the profit margins of developers who use steam, if that goes back into developing new PC material then so be it.

The perfect example of digital distribution done properly.

 

Not sure why you're confused. IF retailers take 30% of a new released game, but steam offer the same price for the game digital download only with a 70% margin, what's to be confused about?

All too often I find the media version of a game cheaper on Amazon or even on the shelf at Tesco than I find from Steam.

As for the " Valve doesn't release financial reports publicly either" statement, do the US government not require financial figures to corroborate tax returns on all companies? these are public records, I can't imagine disclosure laws are much different to the UK, my little private contracting company still had to submit year end figures, and those are requestable (at a fee) from the revenue by any interested party.

Just because they don't post group financial statements on their corporate website doesn't mean their profitability cannot be accurately determined.

 

Don't worry, if you're anything like me, they make much more off of you from your spending on those sale pages than they would have if you were buying a tenth as many games at full price.

 

Enough said really. Steam does everything right, and even without the holiday sales it whips the pants off any other medium. Admittedly it's initial success may have largely been driven by the release of Half Life 2, however back then many of us would have wondered why they wanted a digital release and of course now we can see why!

It's difficult to imagine how there can be more competition in the market as the barriers to entry seem fairly high now that Steam is so well established. I wonder if Steam should be some form of 'cooperative' platform between the current stable of developers and distributors but I'm sure it wont go that way considering the profits Valve must be making.

There's very little in the way of public anger towards Valve and Steam, we could be shouting about how much profit they make and how their prices are too high for a digital platform but we're not. We're happy with the service and Valve know how to make their customers happy, end of. Well maybe part from episode 3...

 

Steam is awesome and I love it.
But now this has been brought to the attention of "corporate" types, just wait for the slew of badly thought out and badly implemented digital download platforms.