I remember thinking that Microsoft Instant Messenger would last forever.
It goes back even further than that I suppose. When IRC was out I just didn’t see how anything could compete with this mass chatroom format, then messenger wiped them out.
Microsoft’s Live Messenger became so dominant that it wiped out all of the messenger competition.
But as it ended up Facebook wiped out Live Messenger. It was a year ago I logged on and noticed no one was around. I deleted Messenger that day. The day after I received an email from Microsoft telling me that they merged my account with Skype and would discontinue their messenger service.
Facebook was successful in connecting the whole of the internet together and it was also successful in linking up all games, tablets, cell phones, and even televisions. It was a successful platform that dominated social media. Of course, Facebook could be wiped out eventually too.
Which got me to thinking, how long will it be before Steam stops being relevant?
Steam was the first digital distribution service for video games. It initially became popular for two main reasons.
The first is that Valve makes really great games and they forced you to install the Steam DRM in order to purchase Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Gary’s Mod and other of their DRM loaded super popular games.
The second reason is that because of Valve’s reputation for making outstanding games people have become very loyal to Valve and have stuck with Steam.
But signs that Steam is not alone have really shown their signs.
The first and most obvious is Electronic Arts’ Origin platform. A lot of people compare this to an indie developer and a big giant corporate evil developer.
But let’s think about it a different way.
Electronic Arts is a huge publisher that puts out tones of great titles every year. Last year we saw Mass Effect 3 and Battlefield 3 launch as an Origin exclusive (on PC). Those are two massive games. To compete Valve produced… nothing.
This year Origin exclusives include Sim City and Crysis 3. Crysis is one of the best selling game series of all time. Sim City will be the highest selling game of 2013.
Whether you love or hate Electronic Arts the fact is they are putting out huge AAA titles that are actually good and that people actually play. They are games that require the Origin platform to play and as I’m writing this Origin hit its peak of traffic with over 1,000,000 users online.
Steam at its peak was 2,000,000 users. Origin clearly has a long way but they have taken a huge bite out of Steam and might continue to.
Valve simply put, does not make games. All Valve does these days is publish mods as stand alone games.
There last few titles include Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2, DOTA2.
Counter Strike: Global Offensive as far as I can see is just a graphical update on the original game.
Left 4 Dead 2 is a sequel to Left 4 Dead, which was a popular mod of Half Life.
Portal 2 is the sequel to Portal. This is actually a game a Valve employee made in his spare time and was released as a 1 hour game. It is the only real game they’ve released in a long time.
DOTA 2 of course was “ripped off” from Warcraft 3 and it’s still in court the exact legal status of this game. Surely it will go live, but to say Valve made it and has exclusive rights to it is laughable. As we speak League of Legends is launching a mega campaign to crush this title.
Other than Portal, Valve has not released a meaningful title in years. On top of this the only publishers they are getting to sign up for Steam only DRM are very small publishers like Focus Home Interactive and Paradox Studios.
To be fair Bethesda does all their work through Valve. They are a major publisher and they do release a game once every 2-3 years that shatters records every time.
That’s being fair.
But the fact that all of the Bethesda’s of the world are doing without Steam is becoming kind of bothersome.
Steam, like Facebook, is trying new things to try and stay meaningful and stay ahead of the game. The goal of their current developments is to offer enough tools to publishers that they will accept the Steam only DRM and not go to other digital distributors.
The Steam Workshop is one of the big grabs for developers. By hooking their game up to Steam and only Steam they can rent the Steam Workshop and inspire a modding community relatively cheaply. For some games this makes a lot of sense and leads to sales. ARMA 2 and Skyrim are the biggest benefactors of this to date. But for other games, like Torchlight 2, largely get ignored.
There is also Steam Leaderboards which is relatively new. This feature allows for smaller games to create global ratings based on performance.
The Market, which is still in beta, will eventually allow players to buy and sell things on a virtual market and make money. Steam picks up a commission on every sale. In the future it will probably be possible that other developers will be able to put their games on there and pick up the commissions.
The Greenlight Project is another attempt at staying relevant. One of the big guiding forces that is stealing gamers away from traditional platforms is the massive Kickstarter indie market. Basically a developer throws his game up on Kickstarter and asks for X number of dollars. But he’s not really looking for X number of dollars, he’s actually looking for X number of players. In truth most of the really great games on there could be funded through a legitimate publisher.
But that’s not how this profit model works.
They want to have people contribute to the game and work with them developing the game. The game will spread through word of mouth and increase the total number of contributors. In the end these small team projects have great room for success and can operate completely separate of any platform. Most of these games are hosted on their own websites and allow you to download the game from their own servers.
By dipping their fingers into this pocket Valve is not actually looking to increase the quality of games that are available on Steam, but instead grab this unique user developer market that is emerging.
Greenlight if anything will keep Steam relevant in the future.
But for how long?
It has been 9 years since the release of Half Life 2. No doubt if or when a Half Life 3 (or Half Life Episode 3) was to release it would peak interest in gamers. But by comparison Electronic Arts is throwing out 2-3 AAA releases every single year as Origin exclusives and Ubisoft is creating 2-3 AAA releases every single year with UPlay.
It won’t be long before other people figure out they can do without Steam.
For those who think that the Steambox will save PC gaming and save Steam… think again. The Steambox is just a platform that supports any client, a person can load Origin and Steam on it. It is no different than how Facebook can appear on your cell phone…. however if Facebook were to venture into the hardware market it would be a nightmare.
TheGameGuru.Me 