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 4)

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 4)

 

In January 2017, Steam graded on 100 top games released in 2016 regardless of their sales rank. The highest selling 12 games were classified as 'Platinum games'. It included The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Rocket League, Fallout 4, Sid Meier's Civilization VI, XCOM 2, No Man's Sky, Total War: Warhammer, Tom Clancy's The Division, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Grand Theft Auto V, Dark Souls III, and Dota 2. In particular, the achievement of Rocket League—the only Platinum-tiered indie game—was exceptional. The other independent games such as Stardew Valley, Subnautica, and Astroneer were landed on the top 100 best games. The four smaller-developer-made games on the chart show that the PC gaming platform seems to be in favor of indie games so far.

 

Compared 2015 top-sales ranking list by Steam Spy to the 2016 data, more than a few games are still loved by subscribers in 2016. Also, one can know that upper-ranked games generate significant revenue. The highest-placed games are especially bringing in from between 10 billion won to 200 billion won a year.

 

The top 5 sales list in 2015 is as follows.

 

No.1 Grand Theft Auto V : $161,253,971

No.2 Fallout 4 : $122,571,232

No.3 Metal Gear Solid V : $41,252,772

No.4 Counter Strike : Global Offensive : $40,929,890

No.5 The Witcher 3 : Wild Hunt : $38,911,116

 

South Korean games have never been reached high on the annual Steam sales revenue, however, local games such as PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG), Black Desert Online, and Knight Online, etc. are expected to move up the chart in 2017 for the first time.

 

When it comes to the genre of computer games, PC gamers, who usually sit for long periods, become less biased than mobile gamers because of their environmental characteristics and difference of interfaces. Therefore there are various types of games including First-person shooter (FPS), Real-time strategy (RTS), and role-playing game (RPG), etc. being ranked in the top range.

 

Steam has seen steady sales increases, given many indie game makers a chance to grow, and proved that various genres of games can coexist together in the platform. Next time, I'd like to talk about the future of the video game digital distribution service and what a developer needs to launch its 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

 

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