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by enraged_camel 3514 days ago
>>Is steam so profitable this makes sense?

We don't have the numbers obviously, but Steam must be so profitable that Valve is primarily a software distributor these days. Over the past six years, they've released only two titles (Portal 2 in 2011 and Dota 2 in 2013), and Half-Life 3, a game that is guaranteed to sell millions upon millions of copies, isn't even on the horizon.
2 comments
DumpOfGenius 3514 days ago
I don't think they really care about earning money from their original games. They give out team fortress 2 for free, and has been actively maintaining it all these 9 years. They sell all value game as a bundle for like $20 last year.

On the other hand. Others like battle.net, origin, uplay are just other game companys trying not to give away 30% cut of their new hot game by selling at valve's platform. They will probably lose more from the 30% cut, than the potential customer they would lose selling only on their platform. I totally understand them, I just couldn't be bother to buy them (except blizzard)

Nevertheless, it's just PC games, not a big market. Nowhere compare to apple's iphone games or facebook's web games.

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kbenson 3514 days ago
> Nevertheless, it's just PC games, not a big market. Nowhere compare to apple's iphone games or facebook's web games.

Yeah, only estimated to be about 27 billion in 2015[1]. Chump change. (I'll include this aside as a definitive indicator of sarcasm, for those incapable of detecting it accurately on their own).

1: https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/global-games-market-wil...

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grogenaut 3514 days ago
This is just called Free to Play. Look up how much money TF2 made on hats.
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icebraining 3514 days ago
Yeap. I know many kids who rather spend their allowances and gifts on TF2 items than on new games. Hats, weapons, taunts, all in different combinations for maximum profit.
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ejstronge 3514 days ago
That's a really great point - do you have any insight into whether Valve's headcount reflects a shift in priorities to software distribution vs game design?
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kbenson 3514 days ago
Well, steam now makes hardware as well[1], and invested in VR research quite a bit IIRC, so it's not like they've decided to become a distribution company exclusively.

1: http://store.steampowered.com/hardware/

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