Poll: Steam only gamers?

[zumbledum]

I'm wondering if there are groups of people who find that they buy and play all of their PC games on Steam nowadays. Not from discs or gog.com, but Steam only?

I'm interested if knowing if there are groups of people Valve are selling too who they are purely persuading to buy games, instead of persuading to buy their games on steam rather than other platforms. It's relevant because if there are significant percentage it's good motivation for closed platforms like MS or Sony to move towards similar sales models, but if they do it in response to competition and to make their platform more dominant over other PC platforms then we might have even less chance of seeing console companies move towards better sales.

If you have a console that doesn't stop you from being Steam only on the PC for the sake of this poll. Also if you used to buy games on other platforms in the past but now buy only Steam I'd consider you still as a steam only user

cant really compare PC to the consoles in this regard, Steam does so well because valve is in a competitive market and they decided the best way to get users was to supply utility.

The competition on consoles ends when you buy the system you are then buying from a monopoly . im sure as time goes by MS and sony will both move to a purely online DL purchasing of licences exactly like steam , but that doesnt mean they will offer the same service or value steam does because they have no reason to , MS especially you can take it to the bank they will pocket every cent from cutting the publishers out and ill wager they will try to charge you more for the privilege.


and i buy nearly everything from steam myself , gog supplies me with the occasional old title.

 

[DanielBrown]

All the PC games I've bought lately are from bundle sites, where it's almost always codes for Steam you get, so I wasn't sure on how to vote. Went for the second option. Gone from like 10 to 70+ games in just two months. x.x

Check out the Indie Bundle Tracker group on Steam if you're intrested. It's great for finding deals.

 

[Vegosiux]

I'm one of those funny folks.

I do use mostly Steam for my PC games, but there are two rather important factors in it:

1) Quality over quantity. I don't impulse buy on sales, maybe one or two per year. But last Xmas sale I got a buttload of gifts, so, yaaay, backlog.
2) I'm not a Valve fanboy. Sure, currently the service they're providing is efficient and I appreciate it, but I could opt to use Steam just as a glorified chat room if it goes the way I don't want it to - and the upcoming community update has me a tad cross with Valve, since it's uncharachteristically iffy for them. It's basically stuff other companies could catch a lot of flak for, but people will give them free pase, because hey, Valve; which is something I will not adhere to.

 

[BrotherRool]

cant really compare PC to the consoles in this regard, Steam does so well because valve is in a competitive market and they decided the best way to get users was to supply utility.

The competition on consoles ends when you buy the system you are then buying from a monopoly . im sure as time goes by MS and sony will both move to a purely online DL purchasing of licences exactly like steam , but that doesnt mean they will offer the same service or value steam does because they have no reason to , MS especially you can take it to the bank they will pocket every cent from cutting the publishers out and ill wager they will try to charge you more for the privilege.


and i buy nearly everything from steam myself , gog supplies me with the occasional old title.

No this is the entire reason for the poll. Because if there are a large number of people who now buy and play their games almost exclusively through steam, then it means that Valve are no longer acting in a completely competitive market. There is an information exclusivity where people won't know about green man gaming prices or what games GoG is selling etc, which means that Valve doesn't have to necessarily compete with those companies on price or service, except on the rare occasions when one of the other people put on an exceptionally incredible deal.

If Valve had successfully captured a large portion of the market, then it's also possible (and it's been implied in press releases by them) that they still view sales as a way of making people buy games they wouldn't have already, although they don't need to worry about capturing them from competing organisations. If that were true, then that's logic which is just as applicable to MS and Sony. Sure they've already got you captured, but that doesn't mean you're going to buy a lot of games, whereas good sales can persuade people to buy more games than they actually want or consider playing, something that would profit MS and Sony greatly still.



I'm not sure if the poll has been particularly conclusive though. It's clear that steam does have a large market advantage of it's competitors and that there are a lot of people who will default to buying a game on steam without looking anywhere else for it, but I'm not sure if those numbers are sufficient to switch the motive of Steam sales from 'capturing market' to 'making money'. And there's clearly a large number of people who are captured only because of Valve's reputation for constant sales, which means the competition would still be a driving factor.



Hopefully the PS+ sales scheme will continue and then we may get a much more solid comparison on the money making advantage of sales in a closed environment situation. But Sony are much less likely to disclose data and the potential success of it than Valve have been. I guess if PS+ sales suddenly stop then we'll have had our answer

 

[lacktheknack]

I get my the majority of my PC games from GameStop. The reason is simple. I do not want to give valve any money.

And why is that?

Is game stop any better? Their business practices are utter shit, even when compared to origin.

What could Valve do that is any worse than what game stop does? In fact, they are the more innocent companies out there.

Because they forced me to install steam when i got Dawn of War 2 back in 2008. Because of that they earned a place in my hate list.

*But it was THQ and Relic that chose to put it on steam.

Yeah, some choice. Lets be honest, if it wasn't on steam just how many copies would have been sold? Not as much, lets be honest because of the damn presence that valve has. It is insulting that I have to use their services to play a game that they didn't make, publish, or touch in any way.

So, you're against them because they... offered a service that Relic and THQ accepted?

And as an alternative, you're... buying from the second most loathed distributor... in the whole... industry...

Nope, that's textbook pettiness, and oblivious pettiness at that. If you seriously can't bring yourself to use Steam because they... offer... wider distribution... uh... have you tried something like GamersGate instead?

 

[TeaCeremony]

After i joined the GameDeals subbreddit on reddit... i have started branching out alot more. Purely Steam before i know buy about 20% of games on steam and the rest from whatever gives me the best deals. That said most of them usually have steam keys anyway so its a round-a-bout way of saying i use almost purely steam.

 

[JediMB]

For regular AAA-ish titles, I tend to go with whatever sells them cheaper. Be it Steam, Green Man Gaming, something local, or Amazon UK. It just so happens that a lot of the games are Steamworks games these days, so they end up on Steam regardless.

Otherwise, I occasionally indulge myself with Steam sales, indie bundles, or buy stuff from GOG or other digital distributors (including the developers' websites).

 

[Amir Kondori]

Dont Starve is $15 on their site, and $15 on steam. I would rather pay the devs in full then let steam take a cut for the privilege of the game being on steam

Actually most indie guys have come out and said that they prefer gamers buy their games on Steam, because it boosts them in the charts and the higher their visibility on Steam the vastly higher their sales get. So you may actually not be helping them as much as you think.

I tend not to buy straight from developers not because of that though, but just because it is much easier to manage my games through Steam, and I have my friend's list there, there is Cloud Sync for supported games which is nice because I game on multiple computers, not to mention the fact that you can bring your library anywhere you want on a portable hard drive, which is pretty cool.

Of course if a game is on GOG.com I'll buy it there first because I support no DRM and of course if WWIII happens and the internet goes out I can still play those games. Provided we have power at all and no super mutants are wandering the streets.

See that might be ok if I actually liked steam. I dont. I dont care for it because its just more DRM riddled nonsense that gets in the way of my gaming. Besides if I like a game Ill tell people about it doing my own word of mouth which has more pull with my friends, family, and aquantiences then any ranking chart ever will. I mean think about it, are you more likely to buy a game because you see it high up in the rankings or because a friend (or even stranger) says its awesome?

That is fine, I am just saying that a few developers have gone on record saying they prefer if you buy from Steam to boost their visibility. It has nothing to do with recommendations and everything to do with getting their game seen by Steam's massive audience.

As far as DRM goes, unless you are buying your games from GOG.com you have some sort of DRM in most of them. To me Steam is one of the least onerous forms of DRM.

 

[Poetic Nova]

I do play some PC games, but I used to use Steam only for Valve games. Untill I found out steam is just another form of DRM and games from Valve are lackluster.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

There is missing the option "Wherever it's cheaper except for Origin".
I buy at GoG, Greenmangaming, Steam, Amazon and Impulse... wherever the game I want is on sales... or wherever the game I don't care about is at such a low price that I buy it before I even realize what is going on and now have mover 50 game I will never play. But hey, they were at +80% off, great deal to get a game which I won't play.

DAMN YOU IMPULSE BUYING!!!!

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

I have a lot of games bought directly from Steam, Gamersgate, Green Man Gaming and retail that use steamworks. Though I do buy a lot of games from gog.com and humble bundles as I prefer to have a completely drm-free version of a game where possible.

 

[deathzero021]

i'm 100% steam, only by coincidence though. i didn't really make the decision, it just sorta happened. i only got into PC gaming since the current generation began, mostly due to a lack of interest in consoles. Steam just happened to be there and had a growing library of games. i didn't get too invested into steam until around 2010, especially with all the indie games coming in now.

I will still buy games separately from steam though. You could count Minecraft as an off-steam purchase for me. i've visited GOG but i don't really like their selection. seems like a lot of low-budget wRPGs and Strategy games, not really my kinda thing.

oddly enough all the games I've bought on steam were on sale when i bought them, some in bundles so if it weren't for that i could say i probably wouldn't use steam as often as i do. i have never bought a PC game full price.

 

[so-it-goes]

About half of my PC games are bought from GOG or Amazon; I buy the rest on Steam. I just go where the bargains are.

 

[viranimus]

Hrm.

Would have been nice to have an option of "I do not buy from steam/anymore." Almost as if it is a foregone conclusion that if you do any PC gaming you MUST use Steam. Still speaks volumes of the undue consumer adulation steam gets when they are every bit as bad if not worse than the "big corporate guys"

Even being predominantly a PC gamer (what little gaming I do anymore) Ive found that practically anything I could want gaming wise can easily be obtained via GOG, Humble Bundles, Desura/Indie Royale, Indie Game Stand, Groupees, etc and realistically about the only things that genuinely cannot, can be picked up on some form of console or handheld.

Simply put, Steam is just as bad, yet completely unneeded but gets a pass without justification for one.

Ill step off that soapbox whenever they decide to stop holding content purchased through them hostage and trying to convince the world a product is a subscription.

 

[tiakeravelonna]

And why is that?

Is game stop any better? Their business practices are utter shit, even when compared to origin.

What could Valve do that is any worse than what game stop does? In fact, they are the more innocent companies out there.

Plus, find me a Gamestop that actually *has* PC games that aren't pre-orders or just-out games.

99.9% Steam gamer. I have purchased *one* game on Desura, and that's because it hadn't been Greelit yet on Steam and it was relatively cheap. The only hard copy of a game I have purchased recently was Guild Wars 2.

 

[Weaver]

I'm probably half steam then half other resellers (GOG, GMG, Origin, Desura)

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

I prefer console gaming but I do play games on my pc then yes, I only use Steam. There's no point otherwise. Physical pc games have a limited number of activations and the whole game needs to be installed anyway so might as well buy them on Steam for less money without leaving my house. I'd prefer full control over my games with no drm if I can't play them off a physical disk but GoG's selection is shit doesn't have hardly any games I want

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

Double post derp

 

[pvaglueman123]

I'll usually do steam, but if I don't fancy downloading a 27gb game (Lookin' at you Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition...) I'll try and find a disc. I've not used gog. Need to really, I've seen some great stuff on there.

 

[BrotherRool]

Hrm.

Would have been nice to have an option of "I do not buy from steam/anymore." Almost as if it is a foregone conclusion that if you do any PC gaming you MUST use Steam. Still speaks volumes of the undue consumer adulation steam gets when they are every bit as bad if not worse than the "big corporate guys"

That's what the 'Haven't bought a game on Steam' option is for. I made a mistake in the tense though, I agree that 'Don't buy games on steam' would have made more sense, I went through a tense shift middway through questioning which is also led to me clarifying that 100% counts if that's your situation now and I didn't correct the other poll option to suit it better. I certainly didn't mean to suggest everyone would use Steam, I myself try to avoid steam if possible, because it drives me up the wall like no other service does. Its a weird state of affairs that I find Origin 100% less annoying than I find Steam. I think it's the way it makes you wait a few seconds to start Steam up everytime you choose to play a game, whereas Origin hides the login a lot more. And GoG is clearly so much better than steam in the way it lets you use your games and the fact it's not supporting a practical monopoly.*


*In fact the purpose of the poll was to find the exact extent of the monopoly that steam has to try and get an indication if it's strong enough that they can do whatever they like to customers without fear of losing out to their competition.