Steam Sale Saves Developer

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Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the feel good story of the day…brought to you by Valve. :cool:

Valve okayed the promotion and even though it didn't focus on DEFCON we were happy that we had achieved our core objective. This was the game-changer. When we started Introversion we'd had a string of successes and believed we were undefeatable, but it was a long time since we'd had a victory and we really needed one. Right on cue, Valve delivered. The promo exceeded all of our expectations and when combined with our low burn rate (no office or staff now) we had gone from being fearful about paying our mortgages to having a year's operating capital in the bank.
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Very cool story. Of course having no office or staff isn't exactly where they'd like to be, at least they're not done for good.
 
Steam does what steam is supposed to do. It allows a method of pricing that maximizes the income of the developer. They get the money from the day 1 people who need it now at any price to the people that want the game but are only willing to pay $5-$10. I live in the $5-$10 world....and have no problem paying that.
 
I liked Defcon but never got past the demo. Same with Darwinia.

But yeah I am a big fan of the under $10 game market. Especially when it's original stuff from Steam and not ancient games dug out of the grave to be prostituted once again to make a few more bucks for EA/Activision/Lucasarts etc etc
 
Many people are going to jump into the Steam love fest that will soon happen here, keep in mind that low prices are not always the best for the developers. Many of the people using Steam will not buy anything unless it is on sale. Even $19.95 prices on some newer games from small developers get blank stares from gamers who immediately note that they would only pay $5 or $10 for that, since there no way in hell are they buying it at "full price".

Meanwhile people keep expecting deeper and deeper discounts so they keep buying titles...
 
ocellaris said:
Many people are going to jump into the Steam love fest that will soon happen here, keep in mind that low prices are not always the best for the developers. Many of the people using Steam will not buy anything unless it is on sale. Even $19.95 prices on some newer games from small developers get blank stares from gamers who immediately note that they would only pay $5 or $10 for that, since there no way in hell are they buying it at "full price".

Meanwhile people keep expecting deeper and deeper discounts so they keep buying titles...
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I love the sales, get's me into some older games, some I missed during release, or some where I was just on the fence. That said, I've pre-ordered many games through Steam, including collectors additions, so they make full price off me. Not to mention I'm in WA, so I have to pay tax.

All this after I was the biggest Steam hater when CS and the rest of the Valve stuff was rolled into it. I swore never to use Steam, friends make me eat my words everytime I like them to a new sale.
 
ocellaris said:
Many people are going to jump into the Steam love fest that will soon happen here, keep in mind that low prices are not always the best for the developers. Many of the people using Steam will not buy anything unless it is on sale. Even $19.95 prices on some newer games from small developers get blank stares from gamers who immediately note that they would only pay $5 or $10 for that, since there no way in hell are they buying it at "full price".

Meanwhile people keep expecting deeper and deeper discounts so they keep buying titles...
Click to expand...

These are the same people who won't buy anything at "full price" anyway. They would just end up buying used copies or games from friends anyway, there's no difference.
 
Despite the paranoid critics, I love steam and what they have done for PC gaming. GREAT GAME SALES! Especially for people who have somewhat older machines as they can get titles that run well on their computers that were new and expensive a while back but now get sold inexpensively. DiRT 2 for $10 has been an awesome deal for me!

Great when you want to reload your titles after a OS refresh install; no need to find the original discs to install and/or play!
 
Hop-Scotch said:
I love the sales, get's me into some older games, some I missed during release, or some where I was just on the fence. That said, I've pre-ordered many games through Steam, including collectors additions, so they make full price off me. Not to mention I'm in WA, so I have to pay tax.

All this after I was the biggest Steam hater when CS and the rest of the Valve stuff was rolled into it. I swore never to use Steam, friends make me eat my words everytime I like them to a new sale.
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Right on Hop-Scotch! Way to man up and admit that you were wrong about Steam when it came out. I agree it was scary at first, but its benefits far outweigh the risks IMHO.
 
Hop-Scotch said:
I love the sales, get's me into some older games, some I missed during release, or some where I was just on the fence. That said, I've pre-ordered many games through Steam, including collectors additions, so they make full price off me. Not to mention I'm in WA, so I have to pay tax.

All this after I was the biggest Steam hater when CS and the rest of the Valve stuff was rolled into it. I swore never to use Steam, friends make me eat my words everytime I like them to a new sale.
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Same here, I was a day one purchaser of Half Life 2 (back when CSS was bundled with it), and I remembered how much Steam pissed me off then. Now I marvel at Steam, and wonder what I ever did without it.

Valve loves pc gamers, and I love them right back.
 
I have Defcon, and I have to say the graphics, the interface, the sounds and music and everything is great. However, ethically it might be another story. :p

OK, LET'S PRACTICE ALL-OUT NUCLEAR FALLOUT AND KILLING EACH OTHERS MASS [civilian] CITY POPULATIONS.
 
is this feel good or not?
I like defcon, but darwinia et al are pretty shit games IMO. This is a wakeup call to indy devs who think they can actually make money selling their half assed games for premium pricing. I know lots of ppl supposedly liked it, but thats mostly the loud indy loving crowd that for some reason thinks crap is good when its developed by an indy dev.
 
I still wish that they would send me physical copies though. End of the world and all. Don't need a box, just a disk, usb drive, SD card, whatever.
 
4saken said:
is this feel good or not?
I like defcon, but darwinia et al are pretty shit games IMO. This is a wakeup call to indy devs who think they can actually make money selling their half assed games for premium pricing. I know lots of ppl supposedly liked it, but thats mostly the loud indy loving crowd that for some reason thinks crap is good when its developed by an indy dev.
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this^
 
Discounted sales are better than no sale at all, especially for these small indie developers.

If a person isn't going to buy a game at full price, then he/she isn't going to buy that game at full price anywhere, Steam or not. I'd rather see these people buy them at promotion price rather than pirating it.
 
jcollett said:
Right on Hop-Scotch! Way to man up and admit that you were wrong about Steam when it came out. I agree it was scary at first, but its benefits far outweigh the risks IMHO.
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Scary at first is understatement of the year. Steam was a fucking mess when it was released and not just compared to the way it is now, just in general. It was fucking horrible. Steam friends was down for literally YEARS, 1.6 ran like total ass after Steam was released, and no one wanted to run it because it was so bloated, slow, and buggy. I'll say it, if Steam wasn't REQUIRED to play Counter-Strike that should would have sank shortly after release. The only thing I liked about early Steam was playing checkers and shit on Steam friends when it worked because if you managed to get a pawn across the board in chess it would crash both of your Steam clients.
 
Guys, obviously piracy is killing this poor developer....oh...wait -- digital distribution and they are doing fine. Who would have thought convenience and ease of legitimate distribution would work?
 
im not sure what is better, the story, of the fact that the link in the OP aactually links directly to it

:eek:
 
ocellaris said:
Many people are going to jump into the Steam love fest that will soon happen here, keep in mind that low prices are not always the best for the developers. Many of the people using Steam will not buy anything unless it is on sale. Even $19.95 prices on some newer games from small developers get blank stares from gamers who immediately note that they would only pay $5 or $10 for that, since there no way in hell are they buying it at "full price".

Meanwhile people keep expecting deeper and deeper discounts so they keep buying titles...
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And what is wrong with that? You have to consider the alternative which is no sale at all. Not every dev house will be able to get $50-60 for their title, and to be frank most indie games aren't even close to being worth that. They think their shit title is awesome and worth $20-30, blame pirates, cry foul and throw poo.

SilverSliver said:
Guys, obviously piracy is killing this poor developer....oh...wait -- digital distribution and they are doing fine. Who would have thought convenience and ease of legitimate distribution would work?
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Its good to see distribution in the hands of the good guys for a change, the big publishers and retail giants are the equivalent to the music and movie industry in many ways. With steam devs who have the balls and creativity can actually succeed.
 
I actually purchased a physical copy of DEFCON when it came out... hrmm, should find it and play it again lol
 
Hop-Scotch said:
That's a ton of CDs. Just need to snag a Blu-Ray burner then I'll be set, or more hdds, always playing catchup one way or another.
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hehe yeah I hear ya..I have been backing up ever since I hooked up with Steam, and while I do have a shitload of CD's, as long as I do it when I 1st get the game it's not that bad. :)
 
If you are really concerned with backups, why not just go get a 1TB external drive and backup to that? That being said, I'll gladly take the risk of Steam going out of business over ruining/losing a disc.
 
ryken said:
If you are really concerned with backups, why not just go get a 1TB external drive and backup to that? That being said, I'll gladly take the risk of Steam going out of business over ruining/losing a disc.
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And it was more of a joke, "end of the world and all."

Read my sig, I have space. I just like the idea of getting a disc. Like Windows updates, you can just have the send you a disc for free.
 
Thank god valve is not a public company. I can only imagine what the stockholders would've done to steam to create more "value" for the shareholders. And say goodbye to free Updates to CSS/TF2
 
Valve just has it right. They're just about the only major developer right now which still realizes that free updates = sales. (Epic gave up on that long ago, although the free UDK is great)

The guys are Nation Red and Killing Floor (one of them even replied to the article) are on the right track too. They released their game, they released an update and the game on special and they sold more games each time.

Nation Red in particular started off as a single-player zombie shooter and now has online co-op, leader boards, lots of new weapons, achievements and levels - and they're not paid DLC, that was all free. What did they get out of it? Well, whenever they had a big update, they advertised the game again and sold it for cheap.

It's much better to sell copies of a game for cheap on-line than to not sell it at all. Most PC devs realize that now so they put up all their old games on STEAM. Doom 1, Quake 1, etc. would never have sold a copy, but now they're selling tons on STEAM for just a few dollars.

I personally pretty much gave up piracy and bought dozens of games off STEAM and I don't think I paid more than $30 for anything other than L4D2. I bought hundreds of dollars worth of good, cheap games (GTA IV, Dead Space, etc.) instead of $0 worth of expensive games. I don't think some (console) publishers realize how much more money they'd make if they lowered prices.
 
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