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Steam users have spent $19 billion on games they have never played.
(www.pcgamesn.com)
Yeah, and?
I have 1048 games in my dynamic wall of shame list which is games I have never started.
I'm doing my part!
The problem is that you pay $20-30 for a game that ends up sucking when you finally get to play it 2 months later which is past Steam's refund date. If you never play it, it may still be a fun game and not a bad decision. Schrodinger's game.
Gaben be like "Sounds like a seventh yacht to me!"
So does that compensate for all those pirated games that people actually do play?
They probably saved 30 billion through sales and got even more worth out of finding the games they really enjoy that they may have never even tried without the sales.
I can confidently say that I spend less per year on games now than 25 years ago, very rarely regret a purchase, and don't bother with refunds (which I hear are easy) because if I buy three games for cheap and spend all my time on one then I got my money's worth.
Hell, I spend less each year than my wife spends on switch games and get way more entertainment out of it.
and valve got 30% of that.. for basically doing nothing more than hosting a store page. If you're wondering why we don't have Half-life 10 by now.
I'll glady pay a 30% tax to play on linux and have the steam client
This isn't anyone playing anything. This is a story about how people bought $19 billion worth of games and then never played them (which would suggest they likely never downloaded them either). Valve made over $6 billion and used no more resources than serving up the store page and the payment processing.
and this is why Valve is in no rush to pump out games like they used to. Why they have no real burning desire to continue half life. They made enough money to keep the lights on indefinitely by doing no more than simply letting an automatic process run that any first year web developer could set up.
This is insinuating they aren't doing anything when they made a whole new engine, the steam deck, steamOS and more importantly proton.
It's not insinuating anything like that. It's stating a simple fact that they got 6 Billion dollars for basically zero effort and resources. All of the things you've described are to allow people to buy more games. They cement valve simply as a store front and platform but not a game developer.
This is the point as to why Half life and most other games were basically dropped. Valve made 6 billion in passive income while trying to build a game selling and delivery platform. Even the best game in the world isn't going to make that kind of income and it's likely to take more effort than what they've done already.
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2024
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