Steam - The PC Saviour?
I love Steam, I really do. I think it is a great thing for Valve, for all the people using it to sell their games, for all 15 million users and it is a great thing for the PC. Back in December last year I wrote an article ‘Steampunked.’ What you will read now is a totally new revamped version of that article. This goes into more depth in some areas and hopefully is a better read. Hit the jump below to read about Steam and the PC.
Steam is changing the gaming world and is providing a chance to greatly improve the fortunes of the PC gaming industry. Since it first came into being with the release of Counter Strike 1.5 it has gone through legal proceedings, long periods of downtime and major facelifts. But that is history, Steam is here and is making a difference.
Currently Steam is host to over 15 million accounts and is host to over 250 titles (as of January 08) and these numbers are constantly increasing. As such Steam offers developers a chance to distribute and promote their products to over 15 million users. I must mention that with 15 million users, there are more Steam accounts than there are users of World of Warcraft. This is a platform which offers developers of all sizes ranging from GSC, to PopCap to independent developers such as Dylan Fitterer (whose Audiosurf is soon to land on Steam) the chance to show off their games and sell them to a massive worldwide target audience.
Developers are being given the chance, thanks to Valve to sell games at their own price points, not those of their publishers. They are also able to keep a much larger percentage of the sales from their games on Steam, only Valve take a small cut of the sale. This provides smaller companies and people like Dylan a great chance to make the money they wouldn’t normally receive after publishers and retailers take their share. This is surely only a good thing for a gaming area which is being marginalized in retail outlets by the newest generation of games consoles. Steam is offering developers a chance to reap what they deserve for their games, something which for the smaller developers like PopCap is a great source of revenue and for people like id Software can show them that there is still a viable market for PC games and lead them to continue developing for the PC. Steam is changing the gaming world by providing developers a chance to sell directly to the customer from a massive platform base be it casual, hardcore or ‘casi-core’ PC gamers.
With the recent release of the Steamworks utilities by Valve developers have been given a magnificent chance to view detailed statistics of their games. Any developer using Steamworks can see how their game is performing on day one of launch and is able to tailor marketing and other resources to better exploit the market. These statistics can also be used to see patterns and trends that occur in games using Steamworks. We have seen this with the Half-Life 2 Episodes, developers are able to see charts showing off where people die most in maps, where the most killing occurs, how long people take to complete areas of the game and much, much more. This gives developers the chance to change and tweak games to better suit the playing style of the full gaming audience. The most prominent example of this is in the scene in Half-Life 2: Episode 1 where Gordon and Alyx are battling to get to the elevator in the car park facility. Valve were able to see, using the Steamworks tools, that gamers were struggling in this area which allowed them to take action and change the area in an aim to improve the gamers experience of that section. This means that issues which may not have occurred in small play-tests during development can be spotted and fixed much more readily than by responding to complaints via forums.
Another great facility supplied by Steam is the Hardware Survey. The Hardware Survey can be used to show the spread of hardware being used by all of those who take part in the survey. It covers almost every part of a gamers system allowing developers to see trends in gaming hardware. The most striking results of the latest survey show that only 8.75% survey participants use DirectX10 and Windows Vista. This leads to the question of why developers are continuing to push games as DX10 exclusives when the vast majority of gamers cannot play them. This shows that games like Halo 2 which was released as a Vista Only game are going to have a very limited audience which is able to play it on the PC. From the results of the Hardware Survey, Valve have been able to realise that moving the Source engine to DX10 is not a necessary step. We can hope that other developers see this issue and start to lower system in order to stop alienating potential customers and make games that people can actually play well on their PC.
If Steam was able to start a trend by developers to focus less on flashy graphics requiring all the latest hardware then we can truly say the Steam is changing the PC gaming world. At this moment in time many gamers are turning away from the PC towards the consoles as they are not willing to spend massive amounts of money every couple of years just to play games as they are designed to be played. While I doubt something like the Valve Hardware Survey will spark such a change in direction from developers, it is something worth hoping will happen for the sake of PC gaming as a whole. It can already be seen with Battlefield Heroes which is promising low-spec, great gaming tapping into the PC market. Whether this was influenced by the Hardware Survey is a moot point as change is already occurring.
In relation to PC game sales many statistics that are released concerning the number of game sales for the consoles and the PC show ever declining figures relating to PC revenue. The latest NPD statistics for 2007 gaming sales showed a 6% drop in PC game sales. However this is a system which does not take into account MMORPG subscriptions and online distribution. With Steam being host to over 15 million accounts then surely there is a massive amount of PC sales being missed out from the statistics. Many people herald the death of PC gaming without taking into account distribution methods like Steam. As many developers move to the consoles to further maximise their sales, if they would take a look at the opportunities presented by Steam then maybe we would see less of a movement away from the PC.
We can see that there are some developers who have recognised the potential and strength of Steam as a distribution platform. GSC, the team behind STALKER recently announced that the forthcoming expansion pack, Clear Sky would be available from Steam as a digital distribution exclusive. This deal was announced before GSC had found a publisher willing to take Clear Sky to retail. This really shows that developers committed to the PC have somewhere they can turn to in order to get their product available to us gamers.
Steam is also leading the way in tackling PC gaming piracy. While many people may argue that they don’t trust Steam, that they prefer physical copies of their games, we can all agree that Steam offers developers the chance of no day zero piracy and lost sales. If developers use Steamworks they can ensure their game needs online verification and is secure until the day of release. We have seen problems recently with other anti-piracy measures in PC retail games, namely Bioshock which suffered from massive criticism for the anti-piracy measures used. If more and more developers see that by using Steamworks they can cut day zero piracy to nothing then I am sure they will start giving more attention to the PC.
Steam is an evolving beast, and is something which more and more developers are realizing and it is a distribution platform more and more are moving to. Steam is a key component in the future of the gaming industry; especially the PC industry. Steam must be fully embraced to help ensure the continued growth of the PC as a gaming platform.