Videogame Marketing Success

[weemadando]

Hey, I'm a Steam fan because they went some way towards de shittifying PC gaming. Fact is that they step trying to vertically integrate their service with retail and publishing. And they're pulling some shady shit as part of it. But its not exactly conspiracy theory territory.

[CaptHawkeye]

The NES de-shitified the console market, did that cause the market to be any worse off when competitors emerged? I just think it's ridiculous that people are criticizing EA for making a perfectly pertinent business decision that will hurt no one. It's hilarious though that nerds think market competition is bad or something. Because it will "split the market"? That's a slippery slope fallacy.

Valve isn't evil, they're just doing what any business on top would do. Trying to preserve the magnitude of their market hold. I do not buy for a *second* that Valve is oh so concerned about the DD market being split. If they were really concerned about that, they would not have made a ridiculous rule forcing developers to chose between Steam or another service.

[Mr Bean]

Valve isn't evil, they're just doing what any business on top would do. Trying to preserve the magnitude of their market hold. I do not buy for a *second* that Valve is oh so concerned about the DD market being split. If they were really concerned about that, they would not have made a ridiculous rule forcing developers to chose between Steam or another service.

What rule is this?

[CaptHawkeye]

I should be more clear, they should not micromanage the products and content availability of another developer's product. If they *really* didn't want the market to split, they would let EA handle its own content on their service.

[Starglider]

Consider the game Evochron Mercenary. It is a highly polished title which proved quite popular amongst those who played X3,Freelancer etc. The company TRIED HARD to get their game on Steam. You know what happened ? The only response they received was no.

I suspect it was the pricing. They want $30, Indie games on Steam seem to be mostly $10 or $5. Still better (from a developer perspective) than Xbox Live Indie Games which is some $3 with strong pressure to go down to $1. Also possibly user experience issues, going from this review; having ugly indie pixel graphics is tolerable if the game is simple and fun, e.g. Cthullu Saves The World, but for this title maybe Valve thinks there aren't enough Steam users prepared to put up with simhard controls combined with Eve-style endless confusing menus.