泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] Past, present, and future of Steam (Part 3)

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]

 

Past, present, and future of Steam (Part 3)

 

There are many strong points of Steam. First of all, it supports various operating systems. The digital distribution platform, which was originally based on Windows, now provides the best possible environment for not only Mac OS X and Linux, etc. but also console games on PlayStation and Xbox, etc. and it is finding a way to assist mobile games at present. Moreover, users can select a language among more than 20 ones including English, Japanese, and Korean and they can pay by credit cards, the payment system in smartphones, or various gift cards. The payment system includes many different currencies of the world such as dollars, euro, pounds, yen, and won, etc. so that Steam provides a convenient form of payment method for its consumers in numerous countries and various environments.

 

The other advantage of the platform is that it has countless users and content. Steam now has over 200 million subscribers with its over 10 million concurrent users and more than 10,000 video games are released on the platform. Most of the regular visitors are not beginners but video game-savvy people. A newly launched game on Steam is exposed to about a million gamers on average. And there are a variety of gaming communities targeting those customers; they include not only various categories from basic friends list to chat room, profile editing, achievement, event page, and leveling/ranking system to induce cooperation and competition between players but also provide features such as social networking service, news feed, gaming forum, and game channel.

 

While the platform has definite advantages, it has some vulnerable points. To begin with, as many users complain about its login system, it takes way long time to log in to the website. Even taking security issues and various users from all over the world into account, it's too tardy and a guest under different access environment has to go through red tape-like additional procedures for identification. Some functions which are disabled under no internet access seem to be needed to improve.

 

Furthermore, there is a credibility problem with the alpha-access that has been a hot issue recently. As I explained earlier, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds was launched on Steam Early Access. The service of the platform doesn't guarantee perfection because it is supposed to allow users an opportunity to play an incompleted game in advance. Some companies' "eat and run" cases are serious problems to be ironed out.

 

Finally, there is a security issue. Steam has tons of personal data of over 200 million subscribers and a lot of information on their payment and digital goods. The website was hacked several times and I reckon that the company should make every effort to regain users' trust by stabilizing the system.

 

Let's take a look at the size of the market for Steam and its recent performance next time.

 

 

※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.

(http://www.khgames.co.kr)

 

Translation by Kim Ki-hui

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] Past, present, and future of Steam (Part 2)

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]

 

Past, present, and future of Steam (Part 2)

 

As I noted the success of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds in the Part1, Steam can be a meaningful distribution platform for domestic game developers. If you know your enemies and yourself, you will not be put at risk even in a hundred battles. So let's find out more about Steam first.

 

Steam is a video game distribution platform by Valve Corporation, an American video game developer and publisher, for more than 10 years from 2002 to the present. The large online distributor that is similar to a global open market has more than 200 million users worldwide and, so far, a lot of video games have been released on it.

 

Valve Software was originally famous for the leading game developer which made first-person shooter (FPS) games such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike, etc. In particular, Half-Life, Valve's first product, is highly acclaimed by laying the groundwork for the FPS genre at present. Both visual composition and the WASD-controls in the current first-person perspective video games are originated from the Valve's FPS game. The company is now better known as the Steam operator, however, it started the distribution service to support smooth operation and update of its another FPS Counter-Strike at the beginning.

 

As I mentioned earlier, Valve launched Steam to reduce server traffic, provide automatic updates, and improve the service quality of its 2002 smash hit Counter-Strike. It was closer to a streaming media and was used for Blizzard Battle.net-like purpose at that time.

 

It has been turned into a gaming open market, electronic software distribution (ESD), since a British indie game developer Introversion Software Limited introduced Darwinia, which was not made by Valve, through the new platform in 2005. Steam started to provide support for macOS in 2010 and Linux in 2012, respectively, which made it the largest video game digital distribution platform for PC gaming.

 

Steam has launched Big Picture mode for users with their TV and game controller to provide them comfortable gameplay and recently extended its service for DualShock 4 Wireless Controller for PlayStation 4. Now it's seeking a way to support console games on PlayStation and Xbox 360 and mobile games as well.

 

I took a look at the establishment of Steam and the history of the business briefly. I'd like to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of the platform and its characteristics in Part 3.

 

 

※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.

(http://www.khgames.co.kr)

 

Translation by Kim Ki-hui

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌 [A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity] Past, present, and future of Steam (Part 1)

泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌

[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]

 

Past, present, and future of Steam (Part 1)

 

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, a video game made by Krafton (known as Bluehole Studio until April 2015), which is a South Korean video game developer, has recently come into focus. The company is best known for TERA, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) since it was established in 2007.

 

The reason PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is receiving the major spotlight is that not only because it is a PC platform-based Third-person shooter (TPS) paying full price for a version of the game but also because it has been high in the rank since it was released in Steam, a video game digital distribution platform.

 

Few national PC gaming developers target only the local market because its domestic market is relatively small in scale compared with other game platforms. The size of the PC gaming market is a lot smaller than the other ones even if it includes overseas markets. It lost its ground to stand on at home over the past several years in the face of competition with online and mobile games. Furthermore, users can hardly find full-paid PC games since in-app purchases (IAP) and selling virtual goods have been widely popularized throughout the online and mobile games. However, the biggest cause of the attention is that this is the first time the local PC game has brought big achievements on the global game platform Steam.

 

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds totaled over 60 billion dollars in revenue selling over 2 million copies of 29.99 dollars a piece for less than two months since it launched in March 2017. Moreover, it used Steam's early access before the official release. And the result was the top-level record among numerous other released video games in the Steam gaming platform in both South Korea and abroad, which is raising users' expectations of the official version that is scheduled to go on sale in August this year. Alpha-access is a funding model in the video game platform by which players can purchase and enjoy a game in the making for user feedback and suggestions.

 

The reason I elaborate on the Krafton-made video game is that Battlegrounds showed its potential for the international expansion of domestic PC games through the distribution channel Steam. For this reason, I'd like to talk about past, present, and future of Steam which is unfamiliar to local game developers yet.

 

I'm not sure, but this article will be of help to small and medium-sized game companies considering release their game on Steam.

 

 

※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.

(http://www.khgames.co.kr)

 

Translation by Kim Ki-hui