Valve: Steam Is Really Good For Retail Sector!

When I first heard of Steam I was very sceptical. I mean there is a possibility of not having access to game you paied for. But I have sense purchased many games from steam and not one has offline mode not worked. If there is no connection on start up I have the option to start in offline mode and it has worked every time. The plus for me is steam sales, I purchased Borderlands for $7.50. Thats great for whatever profits they can get because unless it was that cheap I would not have purchased it. Also love not having to change disks to change games .

Steam isnt good for retailers at all, christmas sale for example is hell for retailers. And the fact that sales go up doesnt at retailers take away the fact that most of the sales are made on steam. Steams is the reason retailers are weary of stocking up on games. I believe this because every game Ive bought in the last 2 years has been on steam...

I'll be honest, I have bought many games of Steam that I would normally just pirate because of the sales they have. My guess is this is the same for many others, either not pirating cause the prices are low or actually buying instead of skipping games cause of the sales, Steam is great far as I'm concerned.

metro 2033 didnt work offline last night, little brother ripped apart the eathernet cable, so his own fault and i didn't put any time into figureing out the problem.




retailers deserve to get screwed. you know why games cost 60$ now? because retailers want a bigger profit margin. 14$ go to retailers alone on game sales. they get the biggest cut of anyone. if all games were digital, they would be closer to 50$ or even 40$ new because you can cut the big publishers out. but because retail is around, you see games cost the same online as in store, even though online IS cheaper.

i personally want to see retail for games DIE, because it holds everyone back as a whole. and if you seriously want to say not everyone can go digital only, THINK AGAIN. realistically speaking, a 32 gb thumb drive is 45$, how many games take more than 32gb compressed, and that aren't online only (excludes mmos, because they can be huge). if you cant get a high speed internet (300kbps + down) than you would go to a store, and plug it in there to get it. because lets be honest, a store wont support online only because you can buy from home, but if a store has a 3-5mbps down stream, and home only has 300kb, people will buy there. a computer costs less than 5$ a day to have run, and the internet costs less than 100$ a month 1 month you are looking at 200$, as only as 40 games are bought in store than you have a service that is doable. and if games were online only, there would be a method for this, trust me, no store will give up a 5$ profit with no risk involved at all.

lol metro 2033 doesnt work well no mater what. try taking off your gas mask...

I don't know about being "good" for the retail sector, but Steam certainly doesn't harm it. Publishers jack up the prices on Steam to compensate for their excessively high margins in store, so if anything it's actually "really good" for publishers.

Problem is that with digital distribution, it's a lot easier to make massive sales which is a lot harder with physical distribution because with physical distribution, you have to pay people at each juncture of the distribution ... you don't need to do that with digital distribution and unlimited copies can be made without cost unlike physical distribution.

This is what hurts these stores since Valve and other digital distributors are undercutting them. The main barrier in the future won't be credit cards barring people from buying online, it'll be bandwidth caps. Personally, that's the only thing that keeps me going back to EB Games (owned by Gamestop). My 60 GB/month cap is tiny and ain't cheap since my family pays $46.95/month for it. Each GB over the limit is $2.

I always get physical copies if I can because of the faster installs, cool packaging, and I don't burn up a bunch of my bandwidth for the month. For me it just makes sense, but I will admit that these stores are fat pigs and now that they aren't making a killing they're whining. Quess what stores! If you don't sell a game with Steamworks then I'll just go somewhere else and buy the game. No big deal, your loss for being so stuck-up.

Well...most retailers have a very poor variety of pc games. So why complain about people abandoning you from the industry you don't support?

I haven't bought retail outside of last minute gifts in years. I don't think Steam's gonna stop my Mom from going to Best Buy for Christmas gifts.

I didn't wish to use steam at first, but I wanted to play a game that I couldn't fine in the retail stores. Then it happened again. The brick and mortar stores are not stocking the games very well, and as a result, they've forced me to use Steam.

I would never have used Steam had they carried better stock. Now I do appreciate not having to deal with their copy protection crap too.

I question this thought, since Steam typically charges the same or more for their games than retail stores, and they are charging the same exact cost they've always charged at stores. Sure they occasionally have specials, but I don't think Steam undercuts them at all.

Do we really care if retail is having a hard time with PC Games.. I mean most likely if you have a PC or Mac you are online, so purchasing a game saves time and GAS MONEY and are lower in price. Valve is a good company as far as i'm concerned

I buy all my games on steam. I would much rather have a physical copy, and a copy on steam, that way, If I want to install it right away instead of having to download the game, I can, and always good to have a backup copy just in case. But if I have to choose between a steam only download, or a physical copy that can't be linked to steam, then I'll buy it through steam.

Most retail stores have kind of shunned us pc gamers back in the day, some still do. I still go into stores and find long isles dedicated to console games with only small sections dedicated to pc games. It is getting better though. So when I do buy a physical copy of a game, I go to the retailers with the most pc games because I want to support that store. Every now and then I'm to quick to buy the game, just to find out it's not steam supported, so most of the time I just stick it on the shelf and buy it on steam when it's on sale. I actually have a few double copy's like crysis, crysis wars, battlefield 2. Steam is much easier with updating and saved games, and I like having the chat built in. What can I say....When it comes to installing games, I'm really lazy.

My big dream is that one day steam will be partnered with all the developers so that I can buy all my games in the store and they will work with steam. Or, it would be nice if I could order back up blu-rays or something with all my games on them, just have a section where you go and order whatever disc's you need. That would be sweet. Just an idea.

Oh, here is another idea, maybe steam could integrate Fraps into there client and have it automatically convert the video's in the best quality possible to upload them on youtube. Sorry, i'm brainstorming here.

i think its good too. when i buy a game i would like for it to be added to my steam account. when i buy a game at a retail store im just getting it there for the convenience of not having to wait for the download on steam. usually it takes quite a bit less time to download a 5-15GB games than it does to drive to the store and install it

Word to Brick and Mortar stores: If I can't buy it in your store and then activate it on steam later I'm not going to buy it from you. Period.

So support steam being available for retail copies. I actually like getting retail boxes (especially as gifts), but I like steam more. So give me the best of both worlds and let me buy games at your store that I can activate on steam when I get home.

Bull, STEAM is the worst thing to happen to games since the beginning. I will never ever ever ever buy any game that uses STEAM, which includes Duke Nukem Forever.

Its great for Retail.
Sure Steam has sales like the EA sale week that makes it dirt cheap compared to retail, but retail sometimes sells stuff at a much cheaper price. Take Fallout New Vegas, $30 at bestbuy, or 60 on steam. With the amount of savings, i can register it on steamworks then afford the extra DLC.

Making a troll account to post once.........now that is bullcrap.

i can't wait to hear the screams as steam gets taken down like the play station network.
when the cloud rains, it pours as evidenced by all the tears of sony play station owners.

Good thing there's offline mode and for other online only games the ability to launch the game without useing steam...good try tho.

Deals work both ways, i went to go buy portal 2 today and it was $49.99 on steam, i looked around and found it cheaper in a retail store.

You know what, it's all about what is EASIER and CHEAPER!
For the typical shopper a good deal is the best deal. Plain and Simple. That saying applies to groceries, clothes, games, cars, it's just the way it is. With today's technology everyone wants it cheap and fast. No waiting time.
What gets me is that someone will pay twice the price for something just because they support a specific store or they have tons of money. Now the latter we can't do anything about. Rich is Rich! But for the first reason don't be stupid. Save money and support the industry. Maybe two $30 games will support two developers oppossed to one $60 game that supports only one developer. Now which is better?
I rest my case.

You know what, it's all about what is EASIER and CHEAPER!
For the typical shopper a good deal is the best deal. Plain and Simple. That saying applies to groceries, clothes, games, cars, it's just the way it is. With today's technology everyone wants it cheap and fast. No waiting time.
What gets me is that someone will pay twice the price for something just because they support a specific store or they have tons of money. Now the latter we can't do anything about. Rich is Rich! But for the first reason don't be stupid. Save money and support the industry. Maybe two $30 games will support two developers oppossed to one $60 game that supports only one developer. Now which is better?
I rest my case.

I used to be very skeptical of Steam. Thought it was a virus at one point.

However, I have since then bought a few of my favorite games, which were all pirated before then. The Christmas sale really gave me a reason to buy them, for $5/$10 apiece.

Contrast this with retailers that still sell CoD4 for $30. There's a reason I don't go to those places anymore.

Well it's almost impossible to buy PC game locally here (they don't sell them anymore), glad that Steam, d2d, impulse and gwl exist..

Steam! Brings to honest folks what pirates had for years!

And why is that?

I think the retail market is just crying because they see the future and it does not include them. Face it technology is changing the industry, it happens all the time. To survive they have to be smarter and change their business model not try to force the market back to the old way of doing things.

Maybe the retail shops should work with step and put game cards in all the stores, then when someone is shopping through Target for stuff they can buy Diablo III when it comes out as a card. Go home, sit at the PC and punch a code in and download the game. Steam then becomes the distributor for the Retail environment.

Or Gamestop could setup a Steam Kiosk that has many of the games installed on it and let customers who walk in play any game they are interested in. They find one they like and buy it at the kiosk and the retailer gets a % of the sale.

At the end of the day Steam is going to sell games, if the Retail market plays it right they can help Valve sell more games via their platform and make money doing it rather than watch their profits slowly vanish.

If they should be afraid of anything it should be the console makers moving their products into all online markets ... buy/download/play business model. If this ever happens the retail market will be in more trouble than what they are seeing with the PC/Mac gaming market now. The only thing saving them from this is that games are growing in size for content, if a game is 10GB in size people don't want to wait for it to download. They would rather buy a disc and play it with little to no delay. If the download speeds increase to a point that 50GB can be downloaded in 10 minutes at a persons home kiss the retail game market good bye.

Brick and Mortar stores will soon be a thing of the past, this is the digital age.
Also, DVDs and Blu-Rays will eventually go away as well in the distant future with services like Netflix, Google TV, Hulu etc... Why pay $20 for a movie when you can pay $8 a month and watch almost anything you want?

I like steam, but in all due respect if you buy a game with steam activation such as Fallout:NV, you should be able to remove your key from the steam network and sell the game as you wish . The developers got their paycheck so why shouldn't you be able to do what you want with the game? I personally have bought most of my PC games used before steam came around, now I am forced to buy games new for highly inflated prices that make no sense. I love steam, I use it everyday, and it is convenient. Though in no way should I be restricted from participating in a free market and reselling the game I bought key and all.

I like steam,but i think it sucks that my kid cant play a game on his pc while i play one one mine. I think they need to be more like netflix where you can have 2 or 3 pcs running yoru account at a time.