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So You Want to Compete with Steam

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Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#21

Post by kgwxd »

c3534l wrote: post #13

The convenience of having your game licenses all in one place over the long term is too great. The only way you could shut down Steam at this point is create an open industry standard that would allow a license to play a game to transfer seamlessly across platforms. No one wants to buy a game from a website that isn't going to exist in a year and will take your game with you. And no one wants to have 10 different pla…

No one wants a game that requires a "platform", they just don't realize it or care enough to boycott over it.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#22

Post by dleslie »

kgwxd wrote: post #21
c3534l wrote: post #13

The convenience of having your game licenses all in one place over the long term is too great. The only way you could shut down Steam at this point is create an open industry standard that would allow a license to play a game to transfer seamlessly across platforms. No one wants to buy a game from a website that isn't going to exist in a year and will take your game with you. And no one wants to have 10 different pla…

No one wants a game that requires a "platform", they just don't realize it or care enough to boycott over it.

Gamers love relay servers, NAT punching, automatic updates, matchmaking, friend lists, achievements, community forums, screenshot sharing, streaming and more.

Gamers love platforms and what they provide at least as much as they love games themselves.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#23

Post by outworlder »

FussyZeus wrote: post #3

Mind you the USERS don't even want a lot of Steam's competition. The GOG downloader is...okay? Origin is almost universally hated and every time one of these big companies announces $NewNotSteam the collective community rolls their eyes and groans, dreading the new application that has to be installed, and kept running so it can update, to accomplish the exact same thing that Steam, GOG, Origin, and uPlay already acc…

True.

The best thing Steam has ever done was allowing(but not requiring) importing of other games to it. We (as in myself and other users) will voluntarily move to Steam in many cases, just to avoid dealing with whatever download site the game had before, or to get the automatic updates. I've done that with KSP and Elite Dangerous (which has a non-shitty site).

And then Steam added VR - a very good implementation at that, which also supports Oculus Rift.

Updates just work flawlessly, download speeds are good in general, one can move games around, you can backup them if needed, etc.

Other competitors would not only have to match that, but do it better. And still most people wouldn't bother, because of their existing friends and libraries.

The article is spot on.

(Also, Origin is garbage, the only good thing is the name)

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#24

Post by joshtynjala »

grahamburger wrote: post #19
PostOnce wrote: post #18

What if Steam had to, by law, share your game library with other services? i.e., just like you can take your phone number to any other phone company, or how banks in europe have to share info, you were able to take your game library with you to any other game distribution service? Perhaps the same could be done for iOS/Android portability

I've often wished that this would happen for movies / music. When I buy a streaming movie on Amazon I'd like to be able to transfer it to Google Play or vice versa.

Check out Movies Anywhere.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#25

Post by grawprog »

As specific as this is to steam competitors this seems like good advice for trying to get into any crowded niche market. A friend of mine lately found the random hobby of promoting dog toys and such through instagram. He started with pretty much nothing but pictures of his dog and over a few months has begun working with different manufacturers and distributors to make and sell custom products and to distribute existing products and I've watched him do almost everything described in this article to succeed.

He's spent his own time and money to help big name companies get more customers, helped smaller companies expand their business without much incentive to himself at first other than a mention here or there or some free products, in turn he used those products to gain more business for those companies and eventually became well known enough to start getting small amounts of cash and more expensive products. Eventually these companies trusted him enough to make some of his custom designed things and get commission on their sales.

I'm kind of getting sick of hearing about instagram but it's been cool watching him grow this weird little business he's been doing.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#26

Post by PetahNZ »

Morizero wrote: post #11
fellellor wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Origin is the worse. While downloading games, it would often roll back the progress stretching the process into hours. A complete piece of shit that.

My girlfriend uses it for the Sims. On at least 3 occasions it's taken over an hour to get the game running due to Origin issues. It's truly garbage.

I kinda like the Origin Access model though. Subscribe for $5 per month, get access to a library of games.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#27

Post by davvid »

krapp wrote: post #16

Really, Steam seems to be the closest thing Windows has to an application/package manager[0]. It's almost kind of a shame that it's more or less entirely for games and game development software - something like it with sourceforge/github integration or an API for general purpose Windows installers would be nice. [0]notwithstanding whatever Windows 10 might have, because I still refuse to touch that, but it's probably…

If you're looking for a package manager on Windows, you might be interested in Chocolatey: https://chocolatey.org/

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#28

Post by drb91 »

joshtynjala wrote: post #24
grahamburger wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've often wished that this would happen for movies / music. When I buy a streaming movie on Amazon I'd like to be able to transfer it to Google Play or vice versa.

Check out Movies Anywhere.

How do you transfer from movies anywhere to eg your itunes account?

Because otherwise they seem like just another walled garden.

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#29

Post by tambienben »

grahamburger wrote: post #19
PostOnce wrote: post #18

What if Steam had to, by law, share your game library with other services? i.e., just like you can take your phone number to any other phone company, or how banks in europe have to share info, you were able to take your game library with you to any other game distribution service? Perhaps the same could be done for iOS/Android portability

I've often wished that this would happen for movies / music. When I buy a streaming movie on Amazon I'd like to be able to transfer it to Google Play or vice versa.

You wouldn't transfer a car to Google Play, would you?

Re: So You Want to Compete with Steam

#30

Post by larsiusprime »

discoursism wrote: post #20

This article is full of good observations. A shorter way to say it is that the distance between Steam and "perfect" is not very large, and there isn't enough margin to be had to justify the cost of building something to close that gap. And that's assuming you can identify the features that would bring you to perfect from where Steam is. I cannot even imagine a game distribution product that would get me to switch fro…

> unless the prices were at least 10-15% lower.

Article's author here :) You couldn't even do this, because every distributor I've ever heard of reserves the right to match your full retail price. So you can't even cut your margins in a bid to pass on the savings to the consumer.

So yeah, it's tough out there.

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