Thread: Steam Update

Anyone see the Steam updates coming? The like the new groups and having the included forums with the ability for sub-forums. Could save a lot of clans/guilds money by using Steam instead of some other place with extra features noone uses and ads noone wants to see.

Steam Community

I'd wager that the ads will come soon enough. Valve needs to monetize it somehow.

Ads-No
Hats-Yes




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Originally Posted by Alundil

The service is already monetized.

How so? You pay for games, just like you do anywhere else and they cost just about the same as everywhere else (if not cheaper).... Maybe i can see the microtransactions claim on TF2, but its hardly required to play the game and is a farcry from games like Spiral Knights who make it extremely, extremely difficult to play without whipping out your credit card....

Originally Posted by Alundil

No on both counts please? ... Most people using the service are doing so to play paid for products. And valve makes a juicy percentage off of each sale.

Its not that much, trust me. Contrary to popular belief even Valve is feeling the pressure of the current economy. Keep in mind that they have to pay for the cloud they host (thats ALOT of money) and its not some shit face pos crap like EA's. Look at the speeds you see when download games, rate at which images and other content loads in the steam interface, the cloud save content, player uploaded content (screenshots, soon to be videos, game mods), all the player stats they save per game, etc. Not to mention Valve also hosts a modest number of game servers for every game they've produced. So all in all its far from EA's couple of servers in a basement and more along the lines of several rows of full racks in many, many data centers.



I do not know the specifics (for once :< ), but I'd wager you already are seeing Valves version of ads and have been for a LONG time. AKA the "Game Updates" window that appears after you exit a game. I'd bet theres money involved in how big an game ad is and how long it stays up for.


But as for seeing stereotypical non-game related ad's, I seriously doubt well ever see Valve become that greedy. Valve may be hat whores ( ) but even they have standards . They may charge you for keys to unlock crates in one of their games, but its a far cry from pre-separating game content during development to release a brandnew game with immedate DLC (mass effect 3). Or an fps shooter with what... 10 expansion packs? Not to mention that some of which are required to play on certain servers. Or hell remember when CSS just came out and Valve was releasing their offical version of 1.6 maps for free, every few months? If it was EA (or the people who made dungeon defenders), we'd be paying for those maps! Frankly, im shocked EA doesn't charge for the bandwidth you use when downloading games off their service.

Also, do not forget that Valve supports the games they release, updates for free and EXTREMELY quick release schedules... Unlike some companies *cough* EA *cough* who take 6-12 months to release a patch.


BUT, if they did pop ad's with their traffic throughput, the ads would generate an insane amount of revenue, so there does exist a possibility.



Why am i defending Valve? Because honestly, i think they've done a service to the gaming community. Look at where things were before Steam existed... Had to go to walmart or gamestop to buy games, and there were hardly ever any sales. If you had technical problems with a game, there were rarely ever a centralized forum which had any decent amount of traffic and posts (and thus were that much more likely to not have a post that solves your technical problem). Most games at that time did not auto patch... you usually had to go download and manually apply them.... There was no centralized chat (though xfire was picking up steam and popularity, but it had (and still does i think) ad's), server browsers sucked if they even existed ....best anticheat was pb and that... hah was a joke... Fuck look at all the new cool stuff valve is doing..... Movie maker for games... this game hub system... forums where you are not banned from a game you own if you troll the company who pays for the forums....




Think about what things would have been like if it had been EA who started steam... We'd probably be paying for everything: maps, patches, bandwidth, right down to each steam message sent via chat! Don't forget it was EA who tried the "you can only download games you purchase in our online system for 4 months, then you will have to repurchase the game"..



So ya Valve, do what ever you have to do to stay awesome.


And no, I do hot virulently hate EA (...ok maybe i do), they just make excellent examples on what not to do!

Do you know why Valve isn't EA? There is only one reason. Who can guess?

Because they are a completely different company?