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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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.
Everything they do is in pursuit of making more money.
That's where I'm saying you are wrong.
Publicly traded companies are beholden to their shareholders, and MUST strive to make money above all else. Privately held companies can put that profit motive behind other more important motives. Sure, does Valve want to make money? Absolutely - we've all got to make a living.
But is that their ONLY goal at the expense of everything else? Also, clearly not - or we'd have ads on every steam store page, we'd be paying monthly for steam, and you've seen all the shady, shitty things that all the other wanna-be steam competitors have done. So clearly valve does not value profit above everything.
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just did the math, I've averaged about $165/yr on steam, with very little (though not none) microtransactions. like maybe less than $50 total in 15 years.
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Everything they do is in pursuit of making more money.
That's where I'm saying you are wrong.
Publicly traded companies are beholden to their shareholders, and MUST strive to make money above all else. Privately held companies can put that profit motive behind other more important motives. Sure, does Valve want to make money? Absolutely - we've all got to make a living.
But is that their ONLY goal at the expense of everything else? Also, clearly not - or we'd have ads on every steam store page, we'd be paying monthly for steam, and you've seen all the shady, shitty things that all the other wanna-be steam competitors have done. So clearly valve does not value profit above everything.
That's just not true. They're seeking profit by attempting to be the best place to spend your money. Epic would love for Valve to charge users monthly for Steam, but they don't, because it would just drive people away from Steam. They stand to make more money by doing what they're doing. This is not a public versus private thing. Arguably the negative that comes along with public companies is that there are more short term incentives at the expense of long term profit, but they're both doing what they do for profit.
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Would that even count as a "whale"?
Less than 20 dollars per user on "microtransactions" which the article goes on to define as "in-game transactions". And 73 dollars on direct steam purchases of games/DLC which very well could just be a single newly released game.
So... one "battle pass" or two or three cosmetics for a live game and a new game or a season pass or two of DLC for an older one?
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just did the math, I've averaged about $165/yr on steam, with very little (though not none) microtransactions. like maybe less than $50 total in 15 years.
I think I probably have a similar average on my 18 yr old account, except the only microtransactions on my account are credits from selling any hats, skins and duplicate weapons I unlocked for free in TF2 and CS
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That seems like a lot, but that's <$12/user in microtransactions and ~$43/user in games. That's like.. 2 microtransaction purchases and a couple indie games each.
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From their report report :
[ For years we’ve seen an encouraging pattern. Hit new releases are excellent at generating new first-time purchasers, and we’ve tried to build many platform features to encourage those new users to stick around, find more great games, and play with friends. 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. Then we followed that cohort of new users. The stats below represent what those players did from January 2024 through early March 2025.
......That cohort of players has gone on to spend $20 million on in-game transactions across hundreds of other games—plus another $73 million on premium games and DLC across thousands more products. ]
So they are not average gamers, more like new blood in steam, and the numbers are for money they spent additional after the reason they came to steam.
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That seems like a lot, but that's <$12/user in microtransactions and ~$43/user in games. That's like.. 2 microtransaction purchases and a couple indie games each.
But the sad reality is that the mtx are in all likelyhood,concentrated in a small group of users.
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You monster!
\s
Lmao. I mostly play the free games. I also have the heroic launcher and I'm signed into gog, epic and prime on it and so far, they've given me 85 free games. I have a lifetime supply of games.
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But the sad reality is that the mtx are in all likelyhood,concentrated in a small group of users.
No doubt, but it's still not a lot over the sample size.
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