Valve "followed" 1.7 million Steam users for over a year, and now reports those gamers spent $20 million on microtransactions and another $73 million on games and DLC
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"Valve Child Gambling" brings up nothing. Care to enlighten me? As well as hand-wavey "a lot of concessions"...care to elaborate?
Their refund policies only came about because different governments sued them. Check out either coffeezilla or People Make Games on CS:GO loot boxes, the latter of which has interviews with plenty of the victims of this system that Valve allows to continue because it's so lucrative for them.
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$20 million on microtransactions
Please don't.
$73 million on games and DLC
$42 per person average? Those are rookie numbers!
Man, I downloaded my data from steam for the past ten years I've been active and the total $ amount made me sad. It's definitely not $42 a year....
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Man, I downloaded my data from steam for the past ten years I've been active and the total $ amount made me sad. It's definitely not $42 a year....
I realise i must be an edge case but i think my steam account of 10+ years is positive money wise.
Got thousands of hours in the same few games and sold my old €100 CS inventory for about €500 PayPal when the market boomed.The amount of money I've spent on my system to play those few games at more fps tho, lets not calculate.
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Man, I downloaded my data from steam for the past ten years I've been active and the total $ amount made me sad. It's definitely not $42 a year....
I've been on steam for over 4 years and I've spent a whopping $0.99.
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Their refund policies only came about because different governments sued them. Check out either coffeezilla or People Make Games on CS:GO loot boxes, the latter of which has interviews with plenty of the victims of this system that Valve allows to continue because it's so lucrative for them.
I'll give you the csgo gambling. That is fucked up.
But their refund policy is best in class. I don't care how they got there, it's better than shops give me for actual physical games...
I'd love to see what you consider an alternative better storefront.
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Elaborate?
It's easy to just spout generic steam hate, but I'd love to hear what steam does worse than other pc storefronts.
Lmao... it's not Steam hate, it's the people buying the MTX. I wasn't clear enough, my bad.
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I'll give you the csgo gambling. That is fucked up.
But their refund policy is best in class. I don't care how they got there, it's better than shops give me for actual physical games...
I'd love to see what you consider an alternative better storefront.
I was specifically refuting, "They’re the only ones safeguarding the industry," and how they got to their refund policies matters when it comes to that statement. I was not here to throw a gauntlet down, insult Steam's honor, and challenge anyone to a duel. I prefer to shop on GOG these days, when possible, but my Steam profile says I have 991 games in my account, and I bought most of those. Valve and Steam have done lasting, measurable good to this industry and medium, but that doesn't mean they're safeguarding it or that it's all good news. As to the thing about ads, I don't think that model would actually work with the PC gaming audience, and I think Valve prohibiting it is just so that their audience still finds quality products on Steam and spends more money. Valve's best behaviors and worst behaviors are motivated by profit.
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Man, I downloaded my data from steam for the past ten years I've been active and the total $ amount made me sad. It's definitely not $42 a year....
It's like 60 / month I bet
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I've been on steam for over 4 years and I've spent a whopping $0.99.
You monster!
\s
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Valve says the data proves "Steam isn’t just a storefront—it provides social community, game discoverability, interactive events, and a deep set of game-enhancing features to attract and retain players who will be checking out new games in the future."
I think it proves that Steam is the largest storefront on PC and that PC is growing and replacing other platforms.
PC is the fastest growing market. Consoles are slumping and I think the return of Steam Machines done right would accelerate the market shift.
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Lmao... it's not Steam hate, it's the people buying the MTX. I wasn't clear enough, my bad.
Fair enough
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I was specifically refuting, "They’re the only ones safeguarding the industry," and how they got to their refund policies matters when it comes to that statement. I was not here to throw a gauntlet down, insult Steam's honor, and challenge anyone to a duel. I prefer to shop on GOG these days, when possible, but my Steam profile says I have 991 games in my account, and I bought most of those. Valve and Steam have done lasting, measurable good to this industry and medium, but that doesn't mean they're safeguarding it or that it's all good news. As to the thing about ads, I don't think that model would actually work with the PC gaming audience, and I think Valve prohibiting it is just so that their audience still finds quality products on Steam and spends more money. Valve's best behaviors and worst behaviors are motivated by profit.
Valve's best behaviors and worst behaviors are motivated by profit.
That's where I disagree. Valve is not a publicly traded company. It is not beholden to shareholders to strive for profit above all else, and it shows in Valve's leadership.
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The 1.7 million customers who originated from a top 2023 release
This wording is a bit strange, are they tracking the new steam accounts that signed up to buy a specific 2023 title (like Baldur's Gate 3, Hogwarts Legacy, or Starfield)?
If so it says more about the specific demographic attracted to that unknown title than it does about Steam in general.
Edit:
The methodology is explained here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/751641001553035271
To gather data illustrating the effectiveness of that approach, we went all the way back to 2023 and identified the biggest 20 releases of that year. We looked at every new first-time purchaser generated by those products (that is, an account making a purchase, or redeeming a Steam key, for the first time) for a total of 1.7 million new users.
Yeah, that's a bit strange. Not everyone starts their account by a big game. My current steam account is quite old and first games were the ones I could afford back then as a student: indie titles, freebies, maybe one big game at some point. My previous account was only for HL / CS.
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$20 million on microtransactions
Please don't.
$73 million on games and DLC
$42 per person average? Those are rookie numbers!
20 million divided by 1.7 is about $11 per person, which isnt really that high.
I also think theres a distinction to be made between microtransactions in f2p titles and microtransactions in AAA premium titles. I logged something like 4000 hours in Mechwarrior online and I bought mech packs because I wanted to support the devs.
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PC is the fastest growing market. Consoles are slumping and I think the return of Steam Machines done right would accelerate the market shift.
They'd be a shoe-in now that Valve developed Proton so well
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Valve's best behaviors and worst behaviors are motivated by profit.
That's where I disagree. Valve is not a publicly traded company. It is not beholden to shareholders to strive for profit above all else, and it shows in Valve's leadership.
Just because they are private doesn't mean Gabe doesn't like to make a ton of money. Dude owns tons of yacths and would like to own more. I love Valve and think they are the biggest ethical company in gaming. But they're still a massive corporate monopoly. No one is perfect, and they did do things that hurt people. No need to be publicly traded to also be evil. Trust but verify.
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Valve's best behaviors and worst behaviors are motivated by profit.
That's where I disagree. Valve is not a publicly traded company. It is not beholden to shareholders to strive for profit above all else, and it shows in Valve's leadership.
Striving for profit is a quality tied to being a company, not being a publicly traded company. Everything they do is in pursuit of making more money. Often times, that means making the best store out there so that we shop with them instead of their competitors, which is how it's supposed to work.
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I don't think microtransactions are inherently bad, they are just used in the most greedy, money-grabbing ways.
There are some free-to-play games that don't restrict your access to any gameplay at all as a free player, which can only be subsidized by microtransactions. If it's just cosmetics, and they're priced fairly, I wouldn't feel any concern over it.
I say this as someone who will put 100 hours into a f2p game and maybe spend $10-20 on a skin or two. I feel that it's fair to spend that much after reaping so many hours of play.
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I don't think microtransactions are inherently bad, they are just used in the most greedy, money-grabbing ways.
There are some free-to-play games that don't restrict your access to any gameplay at all as a free player, which can only be subsidized by microtransactions. If it's just cosmetics, and they're priced fairly, I wouldn't feel any concern over it.
I say this as someone who will put 100 hours into a f2p game and maybe spend $10-20 on a skin or two. I feel that it's fair to spend that much after reaping so many hours of play.
I'd be with you if I still got to keep the game and the skins I bought in perpetuity, but that's basically unheard of.
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20 million divided by 1.7 is about $11 per person, which isnt really that high.
I also think theres a distinction to be made between microtransactions in f2p titles and microtransactions in AAA premium titles. I logged something like 4000 hours in Mechwarrior online and I bought mech packs because I wanted to support the devs.
I think that's entirely fair.
I do wonder how much of that money has gone to the developers themselves, and not just some executive
