Jawmuncher
Member
Were not getting steep discounts for the entirety of the sale this way.
That's the problem. Why am I gonna sale dishonored for 75% off for a whole week when i can just sell at 50% and prey on people who don't know any better?
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STEAM | November 2015 - Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty Never Changes
- Thread starter jshackles
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Were not getting steep discounts for the entirety of the sale this way.
That's the problem. Why am I gonna sale dishonored for 75% off for a whole week when i can just sell at 50% and prey on people who don't know any better?
Tizoc
Member
Neverdead really was that bad.
I thought it looked great and the rolling concept was the kinda of ridiculous Japanese thing some people liked ala Suda51 silliness.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
I think ultimately it's a bummer, but there's no way around that when you have 5,000 products, the kind of sale you want to do is different.
It doesn't make sense to discount 90% if you're not going to do somewhere around 10 times the volume you would at full price, or around 5 times the amount you would do at 50% off. Obviously no one is buying stuff full price during the sale event, but I'm skeptical that people are buying random turd indies 4x as much if they get a deep discount than a standard one. I say somewhere around because it's OK to be a bit of a loss leader to drive volume, awareness, etc. But you certainly don't want to be giving away your business.
I do think if you're the featured, front page sale, there's some likelihood you'll achieve that. But if only say 60-70 games are, out of 5000, it's increasingly not the relevant way people are doing business with Steam. The sad thing is if you're one of those tiny indies that got plucked from obscurity and made buy-a-house money off a day of sales, you won't be able to anymore.
I think what they'll try to move towards is something like a personalized front page. A handful of titles from your wishlist, a handful of big titles, and a handful of up-and-comers, highlighted for you. So your front page isn't my front page. And that's probably a good thing. It will mean fewer crazy breakouts, but the tide should help match people to the games they are most interested in and help ensure that the people making smaller, less popular games aren't discounting for nothing.
It doesn't make sense to discount 90% if you're not going to do somewhere around 10 times the volume you would at full price, or around 5 times the amount you would do at 50% off. Obviously no one is buying stuff full price during the sale event, but I'm skeptical that people are buying random turd indies 4x as much if they get a deep discount than a standard one. I say somewhere around because it's OK to be a bit of a loss leader to drive volume, awareness, etc. But you certainly don't want to be giving away your business.
I do think if you're the featured, front page sale, there's some likelihood you'll achieve that. But if only say 60-70 games are, out of 5000, it's increasingly not the relevant way people are doing business with Steam. The sad thing is if you're one of those tiny indies that got plucked from obscurity and made buy-a-house money off a day of sales, you won't be able to anymore.
I think what they'll try to move towards is something like a personalized front page. A handful of titles from your wishlist, a handful of big titles, and a handful of up-and-comers, highlighted for you. So your front page isn't my front page. And that's probably a good thing. It will mean fewer crazy breakouts, but the tide should help match people to the games they are most interested in and help ensure that the people making smaller, less popular games aren't discounting for nothing.
jediyoshi
Member
Uplay preload isn't encrypted/packed. Their games are more secure if they were just on Steam.
yeah, i guess that's possible
i think there's a middle ground to be set in like just having dailies + regular sales that probably makes everyone happy
i think the flash sales and community votes and all that other garbage just made things more confusing and were annoying to keep track of
but tbh i think that not selling games for dirt cheap will probably be healthier for indie gaming in general so it might not be the worst move in the long run
then again it's valve so who am i kidding
i think there's a middle ground to be set in like just having dailies + regular sales that probably makes everyone happy
i think the flash sales and community votes and all that other garbage just made things more confusing and were annoying to keep track of
but tbh i think that not selling games for dirt cheap will probably be healthier for indie gaming in general so it might not be the worst move in the long run
then again it's valve so who am i kidding
criesofthepast
Member
Is steam fuckity right now? I changed my password earlier and now I can't login telling me login incorrect but I know it is not. Wondering if it is just Steam being down or something with my account.
Yeah, definitely not. The fact is, the reason they can price games for 75% off for daily deals, is that not everyone buys the game during the daily. Plenty of people just go nuts on the first day, and others will pick up a game after their friend buys it on the daily and recommends it to them. If it has to be the same price for the whole sale, then they can't rely on that anymore. So we will see a lot less 75-80% off and more 50-60% off.
But at least I can get all my shopping done in a day and be done with it. Which I think ultimately is why they will go back to the daily deals after this. If I'm logging in every day to see what the deal is, I'm going to have a lot of opportunities to buy something. If I buy everything and then move on, I won't bother to check Steam every single day, so I'll buy less (even if the discounts were the same).
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
The point of my statement is that Uplay probably takes seconds to unpack because their encryption is probably simple in comparison to Steam's. Hence the pre-release cracks.
Chance Hale
Member
New blood effects in Syndicate are terrible, I don't understand what happened. Every game since III has had blood stain your outfits and the walls but all of that is completely removed and replaced with oddly out of place comic book blood.
Makes sense, are origin games normally cracked though? I was playing Battlefront less than 5 seconds after I signed in via a vpn.
Jawmuncher
Member
Dunno why they can't just plop more shit on the front page.
The big indie stuff breaks out via word of mouth like undertale.
The other stuff people pretty much already know of or run into. Alpha kimori isnt suddenly going to become a success because there are no dailies now. people will probably just skip over those indies more so now, because the triple a games will be at a higher price. But i agree cutting flash/votes is fine, but no dailies is pretty disheartening. Even with stumps clarification, just sounds like were in for higher prices across the board.
all i see from this is everyones a loser
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
I can't remember the last time I played a game on Origin and it wasn't like always online type shit.
hasn't "everyone's a loser" been valve's m.o. forever now?
Coreda
Member
This might be worthwhile if Steam could actually pick things I like. Not once has their system presented me with a game I'm seriously interested in, let alone buying, even after completing several of those game selection queues and with all Valve knows about my buying habits.
Their algorithms need improving. Perhaps pulling more from other sources such as curators I follow, friends who share many of the games I own, identifying phrases/keywords from reviews I make, etc. Something anyway.
I'm moving more and more away from Steam for indie title when possible though, as Galaxy becomes a decent client.
jediyoshi
Member
Same as Uplay.
Chairmanchuck
Member
So I can buy everything day one now during the sale?
Excellent points. And the biggest complaint we had about last winter sale was how few games (relatively speaking) went on sale. So it does allieviate that to an extent. The only thing I can think is Valve could have something else they think will drive traffic, like a metagame of some sort. Even a "log in every day for five days, get a stacking 20% off coupon" would work pretty well. But we'll just have to see.
I really don't see this lasting more than one sale though. They can't possibly think this is a "minor change." It basically destroys the Steam sale as we know it.
Come with me, friends. We must make refuge.
I'd rather use the eShop
texhnolyze
Banned
corrosivefrost
Member
Nice to see so many people have their MBAs up in here.
Chairmanchuck
Member
Yes, but not at so deep discount.
With the Chinese RMb almost everything I can buy are at a discount already.
With most recent Steam sales, I've ended up finding something I want cheaper somewhere else to redeem on Steam than on Steam. That's not to say I'm okay with the change, though. Just because there's often something better than Steam doesn't mean there always is, and Steam's sales are probably what cause others to want to undercut them in the first place!
NingenJanai
Member
Nice to see so many people have their MBAs up in here.
I have LBA 1 and 2 on GOG.
corrosivefrost
Member
What's it like being a voice of reason? :3
oipic
Member
Interesting move to opt for not having a hook to drive people to the site/store on each day of a sale (or multiple times per day, as it had been) - I guess the numbers must have indicated that this didn't necessarily lead to a return or benefit in keeping with the effort it took to run and maintain.
Will be very interesting to see how they handle this, but on face value, can't help but feel that all the 'event' excitement of sales will now obviously be a thing of the past. Bit like the weekly deals, we'll analyse quickly, pick up the obvious deals, then promptly move on.
Will be very interesting to see how they handle this, but on face value, can't help but feel that all the 'event' excitement of sales will now obviously be a thing of the past. Bit like the weekly deals, we'll analyse quickly, pick up the obvious deals, then promptly move on.
Chairmanchuck
Member
I guess outside of the gaming communities, no one really cared whether it was a daily, flash or whatever and most people just bought what was "advertised" on the front page.
My wallet is happy and that's all that matters!
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Got through GoT episode 6. Not as disappointed as others. I keep the same average stance as I did from the start.
oipic
Member
Yep, good point - easy to forget sometimes that those of us here are extreme edge cases as Steam users, and the buying patterns of those in the middle ground, where most customers would sit, would dictate changes like this.
corrosivefrost
Member
Who says that the new format won't have games at 75% off? Where's the reasoning behind this?
jediyoshi
Member
One of these days the apparent, imminent downfall of Steam will actually follow through and we will be as but lost souls, wallets full of useless gabe bucks.
Who would want to discount their game for that much for a whole duration of the sale?
The guys that discount their game for that much for the Weekly deals.
How great are the games discounted for that much for the Weekly deals exactly?
Check and mate, mate.
Darth Kupi
Banned
What Valve should do (but never will), is give coupons out that only work during the sale. They could vary between 5-30% and would come directly out of Valve's cut. They could be limited to one person/account/credit card. They could be earned in a "buy $25 dollars worth of games during the sale, get a 25% off coupon for any game you want" type of deal. This would encourage greater purchases while leaving publishers and developers alone to generate their own sale values that would stay constant for them. Valve would be taking a hit, but it might be worth a try to see if it spurned revenue on in general.
This is basically how GMG existed. They would have/get publishers to generate Steam keys (free to pubs) to sell to GMG at the same price that that pub would get for selling the game on Steam (basically, everything minus the 30% Steam cut). GMG would then sell those Steam keys with their coupons taking a cut out of their own profits instead of the pubs'. So the pubs were mostly fine with it until places like GoG started to see the downside to this.
Valve needs the 30% to fund the bandwidth, servers, store upkeep, transaction fees, etc. Basically, all of the costs of actually distributing the games. GMG has none of this. They just send out a key. No bandwidth, patch distribution, platform development, nothing. So they can make 5% on a game sale and be content. Valve gets jacked out of that money because GMG makes the profit and Valve has to cover the server/bandwidth/everything. Valve is okay with that because it prevents the monopoly scares and they make money hand over fist anyway.
GoG is much smaller and saw this happening and basically gave GMG the middle finger, because they probably can't afford to give away bandwidth et al for free.
Basically, what I'm saying is that Valve should follow the idea of what GMG is doing for the sales (and just for the sales) to beat them at their own game. 5% is better than 0%.
This is basically how GMG existed. They would have/get publishers to generate Steam keys (free to pubs) to sell to GMG at the same price that that pub would get for selling the game on Steam (basically, everything minus the 30% Steam cut). GMG would then sell those Steam keys with their coupons taking a cut out of their own profits instead of the pubs'. So the pubs were mostly fine with it until places like GoG started to see the downside to this.
Valve needs the 30% to fund the bandwidth, servers, store upkeep, transaction fees, etc. Basically, all of the costs of actually distributing the games. GMG has none of this. They just send out a key. No bandwidth, patch distribution, platform development, nothing. So they can make 5% on a game sale and be content. Valve gets jacked out of that money because GMG makes the profit and Valve has to cover the server/bandwidth/everything. Valve is okay with that because it prevents the monopoly scares and they make money hand over fist anyway.
GoG is much smaller and saw this happening and basically gave GMG the middle finger, because they probably can't afford to give away bandwidth et al for free.
Basically, what I'm saying is that Valve should follow the idea of what GMG is doing for the sales (and just for the sales) to beat them at their own game. 5% is better than 0%.
LurkerPrime
Member
The whole point of dailies, community votes, etc, was to encourage impulse buys and repeat visits; static, sale-wide pricing doesn't do that.
If you give every potential customer hankering to buy your game a great deal with no additional visibility you're leaving money on the floor because those that have been waiting for any sale will still bite on non-impulse pricing. It's the front-page visibility that makes banner sales such big earners for devs.
just a correction on this
i doubt that 30% is to cover the bandwith, etc.
probably more like 5% or something
yeah and this is a good thing because manipulating people into buying things they don't really want or need is not cool
Tizoc
Member
I was unaware you already got Ikaruga.
You know that Treasure game that if it sold well we would've gotten a lot of Treasure games by now.
I'm not so sure about that. It has to cover store development, back end servers (hardware and software) for both the store and every game, patching systems, all the community hubs and friend servers, cloud game saves, and likely the most expensive thing: customer service (which is terrible blah blah blah, but as JShackles has mentioned, it's Valve's biggest department by staff size). All of that has to be covered in perpetuity for every single game on the store regardless of whether it sells or not.
I really don't think that Valve is pocketing 25% of every single game that sells on Steam. I think they would be much richer than they already appear to be.
EDIT: wasn't there that email from Gabe about dealing with the emails that came in just from the Skyrim Paid Mods debacle that amounted to very large amounts of money:
"Let's assume for a second that we are stupidly greedy. So far the paid mods have generated $10K total. That's like 1% of the cost of the incremental email the program has generated for Valve employees (yes, I mean pissing off the Internet costs you a million bucks in just a couple of days). That's not stupidly greedy, that's stupidly stupid.
You need a more robust Valve-is-evil hypothesis."
corrosivefrost
Member
If something is a mid-week deal, it's on sale for 3 days. (Tuesday 1pm EST - Friday 1pm EST, total 72h)
If something is a weekend deal, it's on sale for 4 days (Thursday 1pm EST - Monday 1pm EST, total 96h)
We'll have to wait and see how the publishers have decided to handle this sale, but usually the Fall/Autumn sale runs about 5 days, I think. So it's not that big of a stretch, at least for this sale. The winter sale... that's entirely different as it runs for more than 10 days usually, so we'll have to see how this experiment plays out and how Valve adjusts for the next one.
No more dailies means no more getting to the store page early waiting for them to refresh, all in hopes of a price error past the first day. I'll miss that somewhat if this last beyond just the Holiday sales.
I look forward to less clutter of "wait for the dailies" (no matter how deserved) and more talk on what is a good deal, what are hidden gems, and so forth.
I look forward to less clutter of "wait for the dailies" (no matter how deserved) and more talk on what is a good deal, what are hidden gems, and so forth.
That's the plan, at least.
LurkerPrime
Member
Oh, man. You just reminded me how bad Steam's gonna implode when the sales switch over.
Gonna be a wild two hours or however long it takes for the prices to settle.
electroflame
Member
Depending on when GMG release the keys, and schedule permitting, yeah. I'm really looking forward to it.
The Dear Leader
Banned
Made by the some of the folks that made Project Reality BF2, so I have high hopes, everything I've seen from it looks great.
Ban Puncher
Member
What's this? Steam Sales suck now?
Whelp, back to consoles.
Whelp, back to consoles.
The Dear Leader
Banned
A Steam sale on the worst day is better than any of those "deals" Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo come up with.
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