Valve: If Steam Sales Didn't Work We Wouldn't Run Them

PingoBlack

Searching for common sense ...
Aug 6, 2011
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Come on people, you know the truth.

This so called "expert" from Valve can say all he want, but we all know EA has their hands over their ears so hard their head is popping from screaming la-la-la from top of their lungs they know instinctively this guy has no idea what he is talking about.

:p
 

bLAZay00

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Dec 10, 2011
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A bigger question is: why should the gamer pay 60$ for a digital version of a game? Seeing as how the regular distribution network has been cut out these kind of deep discounts should be the rule not the exception.
 

Somebloke

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Aug 5, 2010
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The Escapist has obviously grown into such a humungous megacorporation, that it is no longer possible for the 549'th hand from the left to know what the n*7^4'th one from the right is/has_been/will_be doing. :9
 

nawoa

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Jul 18, 2012
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Hey EA. You know what cheapens the value of a game? Dicing it up into bits and selling them to me every couple of months after I've bought it, including on release day. Or splitting chunks of content off from the main game and making those a "pre-order bonus" exclusive to a certain retailer. Or making me pay $10 extra for the collector's edition to get the full game, as if $60 wasn't enough to begin with.

The argument about artists or whoever needing something to work on while the game is finished is a load of crap. Game companies with the resources to have such a large staff aren't just resting on their laurels while the finishing touches are being put on one game, they're already working on the next one.
 

Patrick Buck

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Nov 14, 2011
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dragongit said:
Though I have to probably add against Valve in at least the obsessive compuslive consumers... hats. They love to make hats. And sell them for rediculous prices. Other then that, I love Steam and Valve.
To be honest, I've always seen people buying hats in TF2 as stupid, and prehaps Valve are charging so much, to try and make them realise they are spending money on such pointless stuff?
But then I talk to someone on TF2 and I see that isn't working...

Also, Valve do wanna make money, while they are a better company than most, they still want money. All of them do. I don't blame them for it, it's just when they start making day-one DLC, or charging stupid prices for online, or pointless changes, does it get stupid. (Looking at you EA, and a little at you too Valve, with your overpriced TF2 hats.)
 

Waaghpowa

Needs more Dakka
Apr 13, 2010
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Rednog said:
I honestly lost faith in the steam community when Spec Ops hit like #5 of top sellers on the North American client. Amazon had it for $25 and no one bought it. People are head of heals for steam that they'll willingly pay more to buy it directly from them than save a handful of money.
Amazon.com wont let people outside the US purchase from the site, so it has very little to do with that.

Hey, there's another good thing about steam over it's competitors. It's not region specific!
 

thenightgaunt

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Mar 2, 2008
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The thing is that EA has been run in recent years like any other company and for good reason, traditionally Game companies were just like any other company in regards to how they should be managed. For EA, sales are a bad idea because every sale is lost revenue. This is a very physical minded sales mindset though. The store sells the game at full price, the net profit on it is not only known, but was planned for and other future investments (new game dev) is planned based on that number.
But if the store sells the game at a discount, there goes the profit. All that's been achieved is an increase in awareness of your store and a reduction of inventory.

But none of that matters to Steam, because their inventory has NO COSTS relating to sales aside from server costs (this is very simplified). They don't spend millions on producing discs, boxes, shipping, store rent, etc...
So sales make damned good sense from Steam's point of view. Especially since people can't trade games. So you got Portal for free. But you missed Portal 2 at the sale. So you buy it full price afterwards. Or you tell friends about it and they buy it for $9. Either way, Steam's making $$ off those sales. From the oldschool EA perspective, each of those sales is loaded with opportunity cost (the money that could have been made in a normal sale). From the digital download mindset, those sales are more profit. That's the fantastic thing about this model. When you're product is 100% digital you can play with the price charged for a product in order to boost sales without loosing any money. EA just can't get their heads around that. Look at how they've run their digital stores up to now (Sims 3 especially).
 

aba1

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Mar 18, 2010
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Why is EA so shallow that they are actually outright slandering the competition, seems fairly shallow to me.
 

mattaui

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Oct 16, 2008
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Stores have sales, they get people to buy stuff they might not otherwise have bought, sometimes even in the hopes that a low enough price would entice someone to buy something they'd never think of buying, but might give it a try for a few bucks. Everything goes on sale at some point, somewhere. Is EA attacking Amazon for putting everything on sale pretty much all the time?
 
Sep 14, 2009
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Rednog said:
oldtaku said:
Spec Ops: The Line hit $33 today... sold!
Ed130 said:
Well another $33 to Valve and 2K!
I honestly lost faith in the steam community when Spec Ops hit like #5 of top sellers on the North American client. Amazon had it for $25 and no one bought it. People are head of heals for steam that they'll willingly pay more to buy it directly from them than save a handful of money.
that's not steam's fault, people just are too lazy to check all over every single day, and for the most part steam has ridiculous sale deals, so it allows these people to save money, and be lazy...what's not to love?


plus was it a physical copy or a digital download for that spec ops game?

captcha: fuzzy wuzzy

yes i am :)
 

T_ConX

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Mar 8, 2010
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For a company that wants to unseat Steam as the king of digital distribution, EA is doing a piss-poor job of it. Right now, I regard Origin as little more than the program I'd have to put up with if I were to play Dragon Age 2 on my PC.

My feelings for Steam, on the other hand, are best communicated through this:


The most critical point that EA fails to understand is that the though process a Steam user goes through during a sale is significantly less scrutinizing than when a game is at full price. If a game is $40, you have to ask yourself a lot of questions, and the answers tend to direct away from the purchase button. You've got other games you're playing, the reviews might not be all that great, you're not really into the genre, etc.

But if Gaben slaps a '75% off, but only for 48 hours' sticker on a game, all those reservations fly out the window. 'I don't have time to play this' turns into 'I'll buy it now and play it SOMEDAY!'

Not only that, you make more money when I buy a game for $10 than when I'm NOT buying a game at $40.
 

Rednog

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Nov 3, 2008
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Ed130 said:
Amazon can be really finicky with downloads if you don't live in the US. An attempt to download a soundtrack turned into a series of loops that ended with a "sorry this service isn't avalible outside the US."
Like I said I was looking at the rankings for the North American client. Also, Spec Ops the Line requires Steam, it was for a steam key.
Soviet Heavy said:
How does that make you lose faith in Steam's community? If anything, I think it is telling that people are more willing to pay extra cash and put up with Steam than save money, because the service works so well.
It makes me lose faith because you're paying for the same exact thing, both are steam keys, but you pay more to steam just because you like them? Then the whole we love steam because they give us sales becomes a bit muddled.
Waaghpowa said:
Amazon.com wont let people outside the US purchase from the site, so it has very little to do with that.

Hey, there's another good thing about steam over it's competitors. It's not region specific!
Once again I said North American client. Also, you'd be surprised to know but Valve does region lock some (if not all) of it's own games. I spent 3 years living in Europe and much to my surprise when I came back to the US to find that Portal 2 and another game would no longer work unless I was connected to a European IP.
gmaverick019 said:
that's not steam's fault, people just are too lazy to check all over every single day, and for the most part steam has ridiculous sale deals, so it allows these people to save money, and be lazy...what's not to love?


plus was it a physical copy or a digital download for that spec ops game?

captcha: fuzzy wuzzy

yes i am :)
It was up on Amazon for 2 weeks, and it is for a steam key of the game.
 

SnakeoilSage

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Sep 20, 2011
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I just wrote a three paragraph rant trying to educate EA but what's the point? You can trim the fat, get a boob-job and carve your nose into all kinds of shapes and sizes, but as Ron White said, "you can't fix stupid."

Steam gets my money and you don't, Origin. Just deal with it.
 

Waaghpowa

Needs more Dakka
Apr 13, 2010
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Rednog said:
North American client.
Well I'm Canadian and I couldn't get it off Amazon without help from some American friends. Here's a thought, does steam count the actual purchases or activations? I got the CD key and it's a steam activation and I've noticed that simple activations are listed as purchases in the "Friends purchased X" thing.
 

Lunar Templar

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Sep 20, 2009
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Rastelin said:
Is EA doing this on purpose? Do they actively try to be the biggest pricks in the gaming industry. Is there a douchebag achievement they are aiming for?
yes, there is.

there's an award handed out annually for the 'worst US Company'. they won last year. my guess, they're going for 2 in a row