gaming
Valve "cracked the problem that Netflix was struggling with" using diehard gamers and their backlogs, Steam expert says: "You get access to a bunch of drunken sailors who spend money irresponsibly. The amazing thing about Steam and its player base is that they buy games they aren’t going to play"
Discussion
The difference is when I stop paying Netflix I don't own anything. A Netflix subscription is €180 a year to have the ability to access movies or series.
Last year I spend about €200 on gaming and I got a bunch of games. I can not buy any game for 5 years and I can still play my entire library.
They look similar, but they really aren't.
Edit*
Thanks for the many upvotes! Many good arguments are being made in the comments.
If you are in the EU remember to sign the stop killing games initiative as it will help us protect our game libraries in the future.
Not to mention compared to consoles I can still pretty much play any game I've bought in the last 15 years of pc gaming, except for xcom 1, not sure what that launcher is doing besides not launching the game.
PC gaming is forwards and backward compatible.
There are some edge cases with PC gaming, where a game might only be compatible with older versions of Windows or whatever OS you're using. There are some workarounds to that, but they're not always perfect and do require some extra effort. I think this issue could potentially worsen in the next few OS cycles.
edge cases with PC gaming, where a game might only be compatible with older versions of Windows
I found this out when I got Populous: The Beginning on Steam. I was all prepared for a nostalgic trip, and Windows 11 just could not run it properly.
Hilariously, using Steam Play under Linux with Proton worked just fine. All it took was checking a box.
From what I've read, that's an issue with the Steam version for some reason. Apparently if you get it from GOG they have an updated version that works fine on Windows 11.
Gog is the goat for old games anyways.
Literally in the name
Good Old Goats
That's a GOG policy I believe to ensure old games bought through then work on new hardware.
So they, stopped killing games?
If you call bundling wrappers around games (like DosBox and like) that make it work better "stopping killing them", then sure
Honestly, that's good enough for most people.
If it works, it works.
Throw back to Mac gaming in 2012 and throwing every conceivable game into a wine wrapper and praying.
That shit got me through the PoE and Dota 2 betas. Sure I had 15 fps at 40% render quality but you take what you can get.
Started resuscitating more like
Yeah. A big part of what Ross keeps hammering with Stop Killing Games is the publishers wouldn't have to provide this kind of ongoing support. It's enough to put it out there in a playable state and then let the community deal with compatibility workarounds on future hardware, or even just keeping old hardware alive to play it on. The point is to stop the studios from stealing from their customers, not to lock them into eternal support contracts.
Also I hate that the big supporters haven't been calling it theft. Piracy isn't theft. What these game studios do when they take away products they've already sold is.
Yep. The GOG Guarantee. Only applies to certain games, but if it breaks, you can email support and they will try to patch the game to make it work again
GOG is the best
GoG will commonly patch windows compatibility issues by adding a wrapper to the game, which provides the windows assets the game relies on from earlier versions of windows which are simply missing in newer versions of windows.
GoG will also usually include baseline community made patch mods to increase stability and reduce bugs without affecting gameplay. A good example is Fallout 3, the steam version is what was provided ages ago, GoG version has community patches by default, no modding experience required.
GOG is great when it comes to preserving old games in a playable state.
One of the more funny edge cases I've encountered, is that it was impossible to beat Resident Evil 5 when playing on 60fps or higher. For whatever reason, you can't trigger the transitions in the final boss fight so you'll never win.
Changed back to 30fps and did it no problem. I don't know if this has ever been patched but it got a good laugh out of me at the time.
We just experienced this yesterday. Ran out of ammo and places to explore. Didn't know what to do. Charged Wesker with a stun rod and a dream, and got yeeted off the cliff and into the volcano.
In this day and age there are good options for those too with a little searching.
I set up a whole Virtual Machine just to run Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri easily. No joke it was easier to set up a VM than it was to go through the usual process of making an old game run smoothly on modern windows. Younger me wouldn't even be able to imagine that doing that would be the no stress easier solution.
PCGamingWiki offering documentation for known problem and fixes, games with dedicated communities often having their own mods and .exes for compatibility... it's a good era to game.
GoG has Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire prepatched for working on Windows 10/11 out of the box. I think it even has resolution mods already applied to allow at least 1080 but don't quote me on that.
It's like $6, and even goes on sale.
It's $2.39 right now. That's an addiction that I need to not indulge in right now though.
The proper way is to buy now and play never.
Dragons Age Origins is a pain to get working on a 64 bit PC. This is one of the cases I’d consider even though if you’re willing to do a little tweaking you can get it to run on current machines.
hm, I have the GOG version, works out of the "box", fortunately.
Yeah, GoG is the goat. They fix old games to work better on modern hardware.
I'm looking at you Wing Commander II <squint>
Although the Kilrathi Saga compilation is an option, stinks I have to break out my 386 if I really wanna enjoy the game I bought... checks notes..34 years ago. Ugh.
You can still play any game you've bought in the last 15, 30, or even 45 years on console (with few exceptions) provided you still have the hardware you played it on originally.
I know everyone thinks the PS2 is totally obsolete, ancient technology that can't possibly work anymore, but they do (provided you took decent care of it).
I have a functioning SNES and N64. What I don't have is my Dell Desktop from 20 years ago. Yet, I can still play nearly all my games from then, and even before then on my new PC.
A lot of those systems die. My NES and SNES I've had since they were new are still going strong. All of my Playstation-era and up consoles have died despite been well taken care of.
Systems with no moving internal parts like NES, SNES and N64 have far fewer problems than disc reading systems.
I replaced my pc for a newer one. I didn't have to rebuy the games. This is not a similar situation. I want all my games on the best machine I have.
Even if you have the subscription, there's no guarantee that they'll keep what you want to watch. Rather, they actively remove shit for no real reason. Steam at least doesn't have such a reputation, so buyers can feel somewhat secure that their purchases will remain available. (Mostly)
Yeah. It's exceptionally rare that a game is taken off of steam, and when it does happen it's generally still maintained in the library of people that do own it.
I understand digital goods are fleeting and there's nothing you can really do to confidently say you have it "forever", but if all my library becomes inaccessible on Steam it's because some bigger shit went down. My favorite shows disappear from streaming services all the time.
Fable 3 was delisted from steam. You can still buy a key and activate it on steam and then download the game just fine.
Delisting from steam usually doesn't mean that you lose the game, only that they no longer sell it on their storefront.
Yeah, actually removing a steam game from libraries is basically reserved for "this was not actually a game, it was a worm pretending to be a game"
Last I heard there is a worm pretending to be human in charge of American health care system. Can he be delisted too?
No, the worm died.
Its actually not that rare that a game is removed off Steam, it's just that they're usually really bad games no one cares about. Steam Tracker indicates around 6,500, but I'm not sure how complete that is.
There is a curator called Games at Risk of Removal that tracks any that have confirmed removal dates, as there are people who collect delisted games and will buy them before they get removed.
Bigger games tend to get removed over licensing issues, like it used a 3rd party IP to make the game and the dev loses the license for whatever reason.
Small games tend to get removed because they're a small developers first game and they don't want a terrible game showing up in their store front, or don't want to support the game anymore.
But you can still download the game taken off steam so it doesn't matter.
Rather, they actively remove shit for no real reason.
The reason is licensing agreements; when they sign the contracts to gain the right to host a show/movie, there's an end-date after which they have to remove it. Whether we think it's a good reason or not is separate from the reason being real & existing.
Some licensed games suffer from this too. This is why Forza games are delisted after a specific period of time and why all of the Activision Marvel games are no longer available for purchase.
I stopped giving "Netflix Original" shows a chance when they kept canceling them after one season. I got tired of watching a season of a show that never had a season 2. So I don't even watch Netflix Original shows until season 2 is out and season 3 is in production.
Then you just have the problem of waiting 3 to 4 years for the new season.
Yeah this, but also especially regarding save data. Some services make it hard to own a local copy of your saved games. When I unsub I want all my precious game data.
Also-- Unlimited saves on Steam, as compared to consoles. I uncheck Steam Cloud saves and using Oblivion Remastered as an example, people on consoles are repeatedly screwing themselves or getting screwed because they are limiting their saves and occasionally won't have one old enough. Whereas-- I have about 560 current saves on my current Oblivion Remastered playthrough, and almost every UESP quest page lists known bugs, so I am never going to get screwed by 5 auto-saves going through loading doors. I will always have local saves, as many as I want.
Occasionally I try to get worried about not technically owning steam games to insure their safety, but really I can't bring myself to worry about it. It feels kinda like worrying about my gmail history.
Occasionally I try to get worried about not technically owning steam games to insure their safety, but really I can't bring myself to worry about it. It feels kinda like worrying about my gmail history.
At this point if Steam or Google fails to a point that I lose my games/data I have invested in there services, something is probably wrong enough with the world that it those things small potatoes, or they will have done something to their service that I will be choosing to divest from them anyhow.
Gabe also said in an interview many many years ago that if Valve did ever go completely under, they'd probably release some sort of patch or something at least lets people access their libraries etc.
I don't know how that'd look nowadays given how crazy huge the service is and games that rely on so many different components of it, but its a nice thought.
It'd never happen anyway as you say, Steam is a money printing machine and Valve is incredibly cash rich. Even if it did, it'd be bought up instantly by another big publisher (Yikes)
I've run into this also. Amazon Luna is one such offender. I signed up to try it, and found that my game data wasn't portable out after the subscription period was over.
Amazon thinks keeping that data captive will make me resubscribe. The reality is it's a poison pill that will ensure I never resubscribe. It's not their data, it's my data, they just have the responsibility of hosting it for me. And until they figure that out, their untrustworthiness makes them unviable.
Amazon's black patterns in their subscription stuff is really sketchy. You go through a lot of pages and click a lot of not-highlighted buttons on pages with much more prominent buttons on order to cancel.
Last year I spent about 200 but I will spend it again next year and not play any of my library
It's important to note that you don't actually own the games you purchase on steam. You're purchasing a license to install and play the games.
Functionally, you may as well own them. It would be company suicide for Steam to do anything to change that, but this is still an important distinction in my opinion
This is extremely important. It’s very hard to retroactively roll back actual ownership (and basically impossible if it’s physical or digital that is stored locally), but if you are just purchasing effectively a license, that’s much more subject to changes in law and business practice.
Yup. If your account gets banned all of your "owned" games are gone.
Uh ....you don't own most steam games either
What If steam goes offline? Do you really own these games? Its just a different subscription model, one where you pay bulk and the other where you pay individually. Paying full price for games on a platform that can just shut down is crazy (ive done it too)
Steam does have in its contract that any game that users bought through Steam will be made DRM free should Steam go offline.
Is that why some providers still use their launchers even via steam? Does that mean technically they only need to make the launcher run "offline"?
Yes stuff like Ubisoft has double DRM. Even if Steam takes off their DRM Ubisoft does not.
A friend of mine lost access to several games he bought on Steam because they simply vanished from his Ubisoft account.
EA pulls that sometimes too.
Source? I've never seen anything supporting this claim.
Probably a 20 year old reply from GabeN that people reference all the time, back when it was mostly Valve games on steam and people were worried it might not make it as a service.
As far as I know, Valve has been relatively quiet on the issue, meaning that if they were to go down there is absolutely no warranty that the games would be made DRM Free.
It's not even possible since a lot of them use third-party DRM which Valve has no control over... Those protected by Steamworks? maybe... but if Steam were to go down, do you think Ubisoft would be quick to remove denuvo from all the titles you purchased from them? Hell no.
It's a gray area issue... an issue that has been mitigated, for better or for worse, by the cracking groups that are still cracking games. GOG is also doing good.
And many people forget, Steam as a default is basically a delivery mechanism. There's a significant amount of DRM free games on steam... meaning that you download it, and you can basically backup or copy it to another system and it'll just work. It's up to the dev/publisher to choose if they want to enable drm or not.
Still, the way it is...if still were to go down tomorrow for whatever reason, then only 1,477 out of 42,941 games in total would still be playable.
Which contract are you referring to? Can you cite the relevant passage?
Temporarily? Steam has offline mode.
Permanently? I'd imagine steam DRM would be removed. Realistically though, there's no reason steam would shutdown, other than some catastrophic world war or other major impactor, and if that's the case you have bigger problems to worry about 😂
I'd imagine steam DRM would be removed.
There a are a few types of steam DRMs, one of those you can bypass by adding a .txt file in the game folder.
I don't know if the other types of DRMs are easy or hard to bypass.
I'd imagine steam DRM would be removed.
They've said in the past if they ever shutdown they would remove the DRM from their games. The statements a little hollow though as obviously if they are ever shutting down something has gone horribly wrong. Even if they mean to do it, it might not be possible for them.
I feel very seen by that quote
Excuse me while I purchase 3 more games at a 80% discount I won't have time to properly play...
It's not about the games I'm going to play, it's about sending a message... The message is that I'm irresponsible with money and have no impulse control
THIS is the message that makes me feel seen…
Also: 😂😂😂
Lol I see it like this, I am willing to support some games/devs in some manner like buying their game deeply discounted, just to help ensure other great games get made.
Let me put it this way. Pillars of eternity wasn't that great of a game. I did the Kickstarter on it though and even did a high tier package. The success there led to pillars 2 which was an incredible game and I don't think we get BG3 the way we did if there wasn't a sort of resurgence in iso RPGs that seemed to start with pillars. You could argue about divinity original sin here as well but I think pillars and torment also really laid the ground work for bg3 to exist which I have put an insane number of hours into. So anyway, support good devs and games if you can even if you may not play that specific game lol
But what if the next month when you want to play but then the 60% discount is no longer there???
Just in case - the feeling that prompt ridiculous action even across industries
I finally bought MonHun World after years of it being released. i doubt I will be playing that anytime soon tho.
Looks at my 500 steam games, 400 of which I’ve never even opened.
I may be one of the people mentioned.
As long as there are no further questions, then I definitely have no unplayed games
*sets library to private to hide over 3k unplayed games*
Yeah, I'm about there. I make the mistake of looking at how much I've spent over my accounts lifetime and it's like $10k
Wait... where do I check that?
I saw a thing years ago that would add up the prices of all my steam games but it didn't take account of sales or humble bundles etc.
"Be weary when you stare into the heart of the abyss, for you risk it staring into the heart of you."
If it helps, that probably represents a better dollars per hour of enjoyment ratio than most other hobbies.
Don’t feel too bad. The reason you’re buying them is because they are dirt cheap at different times of the year. Spending $100 bucks on like, 150 games is all fair enough. In the long run, it’s not hurting you. And you own those games now for if you do play them. It’s absolutely not the worst way to spend money these days with how expensive things are.
It's about building the collection.
in my defense....it was on sale.
The summer sale, while disappointing, still fuckin got me.
I swear I'll play everything in my backlog eventually. Maybe when I retire.
Im actually trying to do this instead of buying new games…only finished Cyberpunk and not sure what to start next. Thinking Mirror’s Edge or Alpha Protocol.
Mirrors edge is pretty short and really fuckin fun
Mirror's Edge is such an amazing game and is pretty short too. You really get immersed in the story. Absolutely recommend it !
If i do this i'll never buy a new game in my life tbh.
Wow, Alpha Protocol... Your backlog is loooong! 😅 But Alpha Protocol is one of my favorites, regardless of the bugs and jank.
Definitely Mirror's Edge, you can finish it in a day or two and it will stick in your mind.
Alpha Protocol is jank but has some really fun ideas. Stick with it, the first parts are the roughest
I might need those games later. They’re like IRL potions I’m saving.
I don't get why this is a bad thing? I bought the game so it's a time thing. My plan was to buy a GPD win and play it when I travel.
To be fair all of this is mainly possible because sales allow you to get great games for spare change. I doubt Steam backlogs are made up of games bought for 40 dollars or more.
*Pushes Fallout 4, BG3 and Civ 7 out of view with my foot*
Still sitting on Cities Skylines 2 in case it ever runs better than absolute dogshit (it won't)
I jumped on Kerbal Space Program 2 what a scam that turned out to be
just as defunded and broken as actual NASA. The simulation got too real.
The pain you just dredged up, its too much
43 minutes played, paid full price. So much shame.
get that refund baby!
Has to be under 120m AND 2w since date of purchase sadly
Yikes, why you gotta see me like that
Pushes the Conan exile “sale” I bought five years ago that was $80 for everything at the time, and I only put 15 hours into.
”we don’t talk about her”
But yeah a lot of my library was under $20, even if it was a $60 game originally. I just wait. and if I spend $1/hr to find out a game isn’t that interesting, oh well. I’d go see more movies if they were $2.30 too.
This is me and Planet Zoo. You can't build a proper zoo without all continents! You also can't build a proper zoo if you never boot up the game, but that's on me. One day though!!
To be fair my purchase of civ 7 was an investment in it being a good game sometime later
once they actually finish it with DLC…
Oh maaan, I feel like that is your loss not playing BG3. What a great game.
FO4 is also really fun but I think it's lackluster compare to 3 and NV. It does give you standard big open world to explore, which I personally love.
Yeah it's weird that he doesn't mention this. 90% od my backlog came from sales.
On the other hand i don't have a single unplayed game on my switch cus I'm not buying a 70 dollar game that I won't immediately play.
The trick is not charging people $80 for a broken game. Who would've thought!
Well, it's a bit of a trick isn't it? If it costs 60 dollars all year round, let's say 20,000 people buy it.
Now let's say it costs 60 dollars from it's release, but in the last month it is on sale for $8. That's gonna roughly be the original 20,000+100,000 more people. "What a steal!" logic.
But, if it costs $8 all year round, people think "oh it's just another $8 game." That can be a bit hit or miss when the market is flooded with decent $5-$20 games. People read books by their cover, and often, games by their price tag.
But, by starting high, you inject the feeling of "exclusivity" and value into the exact same experience. So, potentially more sales.
I'm not saying this always rings true, but it definitely is a huge part of marketing strategy. I'm not condoning or advocating for it, but just mentioning it. It is more a problem with average consumer behavior and financial education and critical thinking, but that goes beyond just games.
Its also that heavily discounted games are older titles that nobody wants to pay full or almost full price for.
It's the supply demand curve with infinite supply and finite demand.
Except they put those $40-60 for like $10-20 in the summer/winter sales and rake in billions as both gamers & resellers stock up. You can still buy those $40-60 games “off-season” from resellers.
Netflix could add same approach to movies. Allow 50% sale codes. If movies costed like $2.5 instead of $5.99 AND no subscription… you’d probably see similar surges of buy options.
Subscription model only became popular because it beat going to the store physically, had better options, and was generally cheaper. Now the prices are hiked, you still don’t own anything, and don’t even have half the selection you want from 1 source. The moment Blockbuster decides to go digital with Steam’s business approach it might change.
EDIT: scalpers -> resellers since yes, you cannot buy out the supply on steam.
Steam doesn't set the prices for games or their sales, the publishers do.
Its not a traditional store that buys merchandise and resells it.
The way Netflix and other Streaming sites work is that they pay a fee to the content producers and studios to use their works, and this is why content is always getting removed.
Either Netflix runs the numbers and sees that not enough people are watching a piece of content to justify continue paying for it, or the studios demand more money.
This is also why there are so many Streaming options, each content producer decided they wanted a bigger cut of the pie.
There are still 1-time purchase options, Amazon Prime has them. People just don't really want to pay $20 for a single movie anymore.
Wtf is a Steam expert
Me. As i just declared myself one.
Someone who graduated in Steam in the University of Gaming.
This. It makes sense if you look into the guy. Considering his job and apparent success at it, id say the title is reasonable if a little strange to hear.
From his website:
Hi, I am Chris Zukowski.
I am a game marketing consultant and strategist. I have helped Games-as-a-Service companies, indie publishers, and small to single-person teams understand their audience and communicate with them in a more personal way. I specialize in optimizing your marketing for the Steam algorithm, creating fantastic Steam pages that sell themselves and setting up Email marketing campaigns that your fans will look forward to opening
I specialize in optimizing your marketing for the Steam algorithm, creating fantastic Steam pages that sell themselves
Bro is the fucking reason im eating noodles last spring sale.
food is overrated anyway
To be fair he does seem to know the clientele
He does not! makes my library private
Does my 17 years of service badge make me a Steam expert?
Steam expert
probably someone older than henry ford
I think what helps is:
- There's no entry fee to get in to the service
- Valve doesn't take down games after a set amount of time. So I can keep that game that I bought 10 years ago without any worry of it disappearing. It's partially why I don't have a gamepass membership.
Yeah, I still have games that I bought in 2004
What’s even more awesome is that I have bought some games that were later removed from steam, but I can still play them.
I don't understand what this has to do with Netflix. A storefront and a subscription service are two different business models
If someone made a "Steam" for movies and TV shows that wasn't owned by an already giant tech oligopoly and that consistently had sales like steam does + an app on my devices to watch things with my friends, I'd be using that too.
Yeah, I guess a better comparison would be buying a digital movie on Amazon.
Or you know, Netflix and Game Pass.
Its content made for circle jerking in the Reddit echo chamber of useless garbage info that stagnates the evolution of humanity.
I have made the comparison before. Makes sense to me.
Both took advantage of the customer desire for digital distribution in an industry that was resisting it, where the only options for it were illegal.
Both took advantage of the idea that pirates would be happy to use a legitimate service if one existed that catered to their wants at reasonable prices.
The main difference is NetFlix embraced a subscription model where customers are left with nothing after they decide to stop paying and when partners pull content customers feel it. It is far easier for customers to leave for another platform or just return to pirating.
In Steam you buy games and you own them. When partners pull content they must still keep them available to customers who purchased those titles. Customers don't need to pay a fee to retain access to their games and won't lose them as long as they comply with the ToS. Because of this leaving for competing platforms is hard if not outright undesirable.
I mean, who here hasn't gotten blackout drunk and bought a copy of Assassin's Creed Black Flag on Steam because it was $1.99?
Exactly. Except the blackout drunk part
Exactly. Except the buying Assassin's Creed part.
Hey I just started Nier Automata which I bought like 5 years ago. I will play my other games too at some point. Shut up!!!
That may be true but they were bought for pennies on the dollar, lol
“Yeah we wasted money—but we didn’t waste as much as we could have!”
Yeah, but selling a game costs them almost nothing at that scale. So a sale is better than no sale.
they have actually calculated out sales to profit margins and something like 75% discounts actually makes the most money.
Find your sweet spot
Once your game has been out for a while, you'll be able to identify a sweet spot in terms of discount, which, taking the base price into consideration, will drive your unit sales without devaluing your title. Usually that sweet spot is somewhere between 70% to 85% off, Schade says."There is a sweet spot [before] you lose too much revenue per title -- for Everspace, at a $30 price point, it's around 75 to 80% off. It matters if you go below typical price points like $20 -- $19.99, $9.99 and so on. Because then you might pop up in other categories like 'Games below 10$' or 'Games below $5'."
Players often browse by discounts -- at the time of writing, 'Up to 80%' wasa category on Steam's Special Offers page -- or through the price point categories Schade just highlighted. But be careful: do not apply a drastic discount just to appear in these categories.
"Don't go lower than [85%] off," Schade advises. "We did 85% and now we're going back to 80%. We will most likely never do 85% for the base game [again], because the extra 5% doesn't change that much."
"Pennies on the dollar" is better than nothing on the dollar, esp. when the marginal cost for making another copy of your product is basically nothing more than a database entry. IMHO, when you have people who aren't even going to play the game giving you money (i.e. the case mentioned here), you aren't losing potential sales... it's literally free money that you would have never had before.
Thats far more concerning for the publisher rather than Valve or Steam.
you're still spending money. You remind me of my mom who gets suckered into BOGO deals on shit she would have never bought and claims she's saved money by doing so
Even after reading the article I have no idea why they bring up Netflix as a comparison/competitor. Netflix sells you a monthly subscription and you have access to everything at that point, the business models have nothing in common.
Meanwhile, I'm collecting free games on Epic and I'll probably never play 90% of them 😆
Lol hits hard. But in our defense the real difference is this:
When I buy a Netflix or Spotify subscription for a month, after that month I don't get to watch any shows.
When I buy a game on Steam (yes even though I don't "own" it) I can reasonably expect to play it anytime I want in the foreseeable future. Even if my PC breaks, I can play for hours once I get a new PC.
The difference I see is that Netflix and other streaming services thought that they could nickel and dime us every month with a subscription. What they didn't realize is that we would nickel and dime ourselves if we had guarantee that we can watch the shows anytime anywhere without further payment.
I literally made a commitment to not buy a single new game until I have either cleared my backlog, or the game is less than $5. So far that's been going swimmingly! Went from ~200 to now ~50!
Steam sale : Bonjour
System message: Backlog has increased by 275%
Lol, surprisingly the " less than $5," rule has been a godsend. Almost nothing on my wishlist ever drops below $6
The only problem here is Netflix doesn't sell movies/series.
Do you guys know how much money I would spend buying Movies, TV Shows, and Music albums or singles if I just had ONE place I could go for those? Especially if there were regular sales? My Plex library is full of stuff I'm never going to watch and simply saving as a retirement plan at this point when I'm to old to be able to actively do anything.
We truly just want a Steam, but for Movies and TV Shows.
This is wrong on so many levels.
Most of the backlogs weren't brought full price. They were brought during steam sales or humble bundle or what have you. Gamers buying games they don't play is a real phenomenon, but it's blown way out of proportion by the so called "steam expert".
Also Steam use a completely different business model. If you stop paying for Netflix, you lose everything. If you stop paying Steam, you still have all your games. Apple to Orange.
Anyway, the reason why Steam is excellent is because they are really really good at advertising. Steam have a massive user base, they know their users very well (by virtue of knowing what game you already have and how much you played them), so they display very relevant ads to a lot of people. For publishers, it's a lot of additional sales. For users, it's a good source of recommendations, to the point that some people actually look at ads intentionally (the discovery queue).
What the fuck is a "steam expert"?
The amazing thing about steam is convenience. The same thing that Netflix "cracked" before steam, but flushed everything down the drain.
Also even if its just a licence to the game you can still download the game after it was taken down from the store not like Netflix where you don't know when their licence to have something on there is going to run out..
It sounds like the "problem" being talked about is the attention economy. That is, the concept that a consumer only has so much time they can spend on entertainment, so different forms of entertainment are competing for that limited time. But then the idea is that Steam/gaming gets around that a bit because so many people buy games they never play.
his. It makes sense if you look into the guy. Considering his job and apparent success at it, id say the title is reasonable if a little strange to hear.
From his website:
Hi, I am Chris Zukowski.
I am a game marketing consultant and strategist. I have helped Games-as-a-Service companies, indie publishers, and small to single-person teams understand their audience and communicate with them in a more personal way. I specialize in optimizing your marketing for the Steam algorithm, creating fantastic Steam pages that sell themselves and setting up Email marketing campaigns that your fans will look forward to opening
Courtesy u/wolfgang784
So he is a marketing / Market researcher that help game publisher & distribution Platforms on Marketing, specially how to market your game on Steam.
We are all that guy from that twilight episode where he just wants to read books at the end of the world, except the glasses are our steam accounts and breaking them is forgetting our password
Went to nearly 400 unplayed games when I was working, thinking that I will find the time to play them all someday. Had to quit my job, spent almost 6 years mostly unemployed and gaming most of my time.
Well, I've only eaten half the pile, still more an hundred games to go. That's the bane of playing strategy / soloRPG, I guess... Each one is a hundred hours or more.
*shudders while thinking of my 3k+ wishlist*
Honestly valve uses it's users and we use them.
People will wait years for a steam game to go on sale for like 60% + and valve is perfectly happy waiting years for bobs 20 dollars. And bob is perfectly happy waiting because he's getting shit for cheap. Win win
Wtf is a "Steam expert"?
The gimmick works cause they ACTUALLY HAVE REAL GODDAMN SALES.
We all have games on Xbox, Nintendo or PlayStation storefronts we looked at often and held in our wishlist only to see it stick forever to a specific price point that we refuse to pay. Then you just remove it and move on. Interest will always valley at some point. An exception is $20 games that go to $15 like Cuphead or 1000xRESIST which gain a following of their own and the low cost point means their sale price can be minimal.
Most of a new games sales are within the first week. You can give a bump to the first sale price too. After that everyone that wanted it, bought it. So the continued same sale price for a year is diminished returns. Steam has shown you can make bank doing actual sales rather than continually offering the same $49.99 price or cutting the price of you super ultra legendary edition in order to force that high price purchase.
Steam wise I'm fine buying 2-3 titles on sale and spending decent coin. On PS, Xbox or Switch I'm extremely conservative cause the ONLY time worth buying is summer sale (which is worse now), Mid September and holiday season. The increased game price is only going to widen this gap.
What a weird conclusion.
I didn't buy humble bundles because I wanted to collect games... it was because they used to be good deals... Id get 1 20-40€ game for 5€ and like 19 other games I couldn't care less about.
I bought tons of software on humble bundle in the same way, got like 20 different versions of rpg maker, Photoshop and sony Vegas for like 5€.
I dont doubt theres a minority who buy games to collect, I mean people collected physical copies, but they are the minority, not the majority
Hey if there's one thing PC gamers hate about video games, more than anything, it's playing them.
They also cracked the problem of getting criticised. They cannot be wrong. Every gaming company gets heavily criticised for gambling and here Valve gets no criticism on the scale others get.
And all of this even after they support and encourage gambling and have a NFT like storefront where they also get a cut from the skin people got from loot crates by giving Valve money. Infinite money glitch.
Earn money by selling skins through loot crates -> People Gamba -> Make a store for people to trade skins like NFT -> Get a large chunk of % cut from people who already paid you money to win skins through gambling -> Still gets praises.
Lord GabeN.
Yep Valve never gets criticized despite selling addiction.
True in boardgames too, with shelves of $80 games that get played once .
And of course, the 40k pile of plastic that will get painted "any day now"
You underestimate how many of the boardgames on my shelves I haven't even played once.
I play DND with a group, my DM has like 5 shelves of board games and I swear half of them have been opened, gawked at, and then put back.
We do a board game night every month, and it's usually 2 hours of setup/rules, some clunky trial of the game, and then boxed back up to never re-play.
Towards the end of the session: "Ohh, okay - I'm starting to get it now!"
And then you never play it again; rinse and repeat 🥲
Biggest reason? It is like a whole day's work learning the rules and potentially month's work putting up a group to play games with.
As opposed to things like Love Letter, Splendor, Catan that are simple and easy to start.
The Gray Legion is the ultimate space marine chapter
Its actually just the Alpha Legion in disguise
"I am Alpharius!"
Those aren't space marines, those are necrons.
If this is from the Infinite and the Divine, I really need to read it.
It is! And you should, it's a great book.
As well as TTRPGs. I have two bookshelves of books in different systems, but I'll be lucky if I get to play 5 of them.
Speaking of books, I also have a similar issue with actual novels and stuff.
The cover and the back synopsis drew my attention, so I bought but not read it yet.
I have a couple of 40k Omnibuses, as well as Journey To The West books I still have yet to read.
Man backlogs are everywhere.
If only it were 80$. Nowadays, we boardgamers are collecting 150$ kickstarter boardgames + expansions to never play them because we lack friends
r/soloboardgaming
I went all in on Wingspan, its expansions, and the nesting box last year. I swear I'll find people to play it all soon.
My least favorite part of being into board games is finding people to play them with. It's actually such a pain. Looking in board game groups usually has people that are maybe a little too into board games lmao.
Thanks to me and my old friends hoppin on the Humble Bundle train back when it was brand new and absolutely insane for deals - ive never even installed/opened over half my Steam library lmao.
Every Bundle had something we all wanted to play together, and did if we bought it, but there was also always half a dozen "weird" or super niche titles that none of us had any interest in but a Bundle is a Bundle, yknow?
Idk that ive bought a specific individual game though and never played it. Pretty sure all my unplayed stuff is just from those Humble Bundles.
Even if you only like 1 game, it's a great deal... I do try to play a couple of these games that I wouldn't normally bother with as I now own them.
Yup and the 1 game you did want from that bundle was still cheaper AND you get 6 or 7 other games? Obviously worth.
I followed that with a Humble Choice subscription. Nearly 1200 games in the library now.
I have to end my Humble Monthly. I’m cresting 2500 titles and haven’t touched like 80 percent of those.
The Steam sales don’t help this problem either. Resident Evil 4 remake on a deep sale? Sure I can give it a try for $15, after all that’s 75% off what a deal! 0 hours played since purchase 3 months ago
3 months? Pff. I first played The Witcher 3 a year ago. This was the only game i ever pre-ordered, back in 2014...
What is that a mere decade. Thats nothing boyo. Behold!
Tomb Raider: Legend
Purchased on release: april 7th 2006
Hours played: 0
They definately know me.
Steam pile of shame. 40K pile of shame. Gunpla pile of shame. World building pile of shame. Tabletop campaign pile of shame. Book series pile of shame.
Maybe I am the real pile of shame…
The real pile of shame is the friends we don’t have to play with along the way.
We all are just giant piles of shame. I like to think to George Carlin's wisdom at times like these:
You ever noticed your shit is 'stuff' but everyone else's 'stuff' is shit?
A house is just a big pile of stuff with a cover on it.
And then your Steam account gets stolen. Though the amazing thing about Steam support is that they always manage to find ways to get your account back, and if you get banned for any reason, whether it's on the community forms or a particular VAC-protected game, you can still access your library and buy more games/DLC if you want. As flawed as Steam as a whole is in many ways, I can't really complain about this one.