5 ms·

Origin, steam, battle net, uplay... And now gameroom. Is steam so profitable this makes sense? What possible motive does FB, one of the largest companies in t

by arcanus 10y ago

Origin, steam, battle net, uplay... And now gameroom. Is steam so profitable this makes sense? What possible motive does FB, one of the largest companies in the world, have to compete? The revenues should be paltry.

jameskilton 10y ago
I doubt this is about direct revenue. This is about further cementing that "Facebook is The Internet" to as many people as possible. Facebook wants to know and control everything you do on your computer, on your mobile device, and on the internet at large. From all of that, they then earn the real revenue via advertisements.
notgood 10y ago
One theory: Facebook most important metric is session duration, the only part where a big chunk of people spend more time than on Facebook, is on videogames.
robryan 10y ago
Facebook made a lot of its early revenue off games people were playing via their platform. Over time that dropped off and now they make the revenue pushing ios/android apps. I guess that it is a long term play to try and get some of that control back.
enraged_camel 10y ago
>>Is steam so profitable this makes sense? We don't have the numbers obviously, but Steam must be so profitable that Valve is primarily a software distributor these days. Over the past six years, they've released only two titles (Portal 2 in 2011 and Dota 2 in 2013), and Half-Life 3, a game that is guaranteed to sell millions upon millions of copies, isn't even on the horizon.
- ejstronge 10y ago
  That's a really great point - do you have any insight into whether Valve's headcount reflects a shift in priorities to software distribution vs game design?
  - kbenson 10y ago
    Well, steam now makes hardware as well[1], and invested in VR research quite a bit IIRC, so it's not like they've decided to become a distribution company exclusively. 1: http://store.steampowered.com/hardware/ http://store.steampowered.com/hardware/
- DumpOfGenius 10y ago
  I don't think they really care about earning money from their original games. They give out team fortress 2 for free, and has been actively maintaining it all these 9 years. They sell all value game as a bundle for like $20 last year. On the other hand. Others like battle.net, origin, uplay are just other game companys trying not to give away 30% cut of their new hot game by selling at valve's platform. They will probably lose more from the 30% cut, than the potential customer they would lose selling only on their platform. I totally understand them, I just couldn't be bother to buy them (except blizzard) Nevertheless, it's just PC games, not a big market. Nowhere compare to apple's iphone games or facebook's web games.
  - grogenaut 10y ago
    This is just called Free to Play. Look up how much money TF2 made on hats.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      Yeap. I know many kids who rather spend their allowances and gifts on TF2 items than on new games. Hats, weapons, taunts, all in different combinations for maximum profit.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    > Nevertheless, it's just PC games, not a big market. Nowhere compare to apple's iphone games or facebook's web games. Yeah, only estimated to be about 27 billion in 2015[1]. Chump change. (I'll include this aside as a definitive indicator of sarcasm, for those incapable of detecting it accurately on their own). 1: https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/global-games-market-will-grow-9-4-to-91-5bn-in-2015/ https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/global-games-market-wil...
forgettableuser 10y ago
It is estimated Steam made $1.5 billion in revenues in 2014, and $3.5 billion in 2015. If you assume Valve gets 30% of that number, and remember Valve is a privately held company of about 360 employees, that is an impressive figure.
WalterSear 10y ago
Steam makes more money per employee than Apple.
danso 10y ago
If FB is looking forward in regards to VR, having their own platform in which friends connect and play (and watch ads) together in a Facebook-hosted VR world could be something of real impact.
drivingmenuts 10y ago
The target audience for Gameroom is not the same as the target audience for Steam; it's the people who play Farmville or Words with Friends - not the product of Triple-A game producers. Think parents of Steam players, if not Steam players themselves. Sure, there will be some bleedover - after a long day of ganking noobs and insulting moms, some people think it's nice to sit down to a casual game and buy a vowel or a cow. If FB can make Gameroom stick around, it will be profitable. Farmville has stuck around for 7 years now and most people would snerk at the idea that it's "a real game". But it's target audience doesn't care about the snark. They have fun. The real worry here should be how FB is losing it's focus with the shopping pages and the social pages and the game hub and the blah and the blah. You know, just like what happened with AOL and Yahoo. They were big for a long time, and then they suddenly don't matter much anymore.
kbenson 10y ago
It's looks to be pretty damn profitable. Here's an article from 2011, which indicates some people value Valve between $2-$4 billion[1]. That's for a private company with ~360 employees according to wikipedia (although they only have.102 people listed on their company page). In 2015, they look to have taken in about 3.5 billion in revenue[2]. 1: http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2011/02/15/valve-and-steam-worth-billions http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2011/02/15/valve-an... 2: https://medium.com/steam-spy/steam-sales-in-2015-2e81a6bb0f5a https://medium.com/steam-spy/steam-sales-in-2015-2e81a6bb0f5...

by arcanus 10y ago

jameskilton 10y ago

I doubt this is about direct revenue. This is about further cementing that "Facebook is The Internet" to as many people as possible. Facebook wants to know and control everything you do on your computer, on your mobile device, and on the internet at large. From all of that, they then earn the real revenue via advertisements.

notgood 10y ago

One theory: Facebook most important metric is session duration, the only part where a big chunk of people spend more time than on Facebook, is on videogames.

robryan 10y ago

Facebook made a lot of its early revenue off games people were playing via their platform. Over time that dropped off and now they make the revenue pushing ios/android apps. I guess that it is a long term play to try and get some of that control back.

enraged_camel 10y ago

>>Is steam so profitable this makes sense? We don't have the numbers obviously, but Steam must be so profitable that Valve is primarily a software distributor these days. Over the past six years, they've released only two titles (Portal 2 in 2011 and Dota 2 in 2013), and Half-Life 3, a game that is guaranteed to sell millions upon millions of copies, isn't even on the horizon.

ejstronge 10y ago
That's a really great point - do you have any insight into whether Valve's headcount reflects a shift in priorities to software distribution vs game design?
- kbenson 10y ago
  Well, steam now makes hardware as well[1], and invested in VR research quite a bit IIRC, so it's not like they've decided to become a distribution company exclusively. 1: http://store.steampowered.com/hardware/ http://store.steampowered.com/hardware/
DumpOfGenius 10y ago
I don't think they really care about earning money from their original games. They give out team fortress 2 for free, and has been actively maintaining it all these 9 years. They sell all value game as a bundle for like $20 last year. On the other hand. Others like battle.net, origin, uplay are just other game companys trying not to give away 30% cut of their new hot game by selling at valve's platform. They will probably lose more from the 30% cut, than the potential customer they would lose selling only on their platform. I totally understand them, I just couldn't be bother to buy them (except blizzard) Nevertheless, it's just PC games, not a big market. Nowhere compare to apple's iphone games or facebook's web games.
- grogenaut 10y ago
  This is just called Free to Play. Look up how much money TF2 made on hats.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Yeap. I know many kids who rather spend their allowances and gifts on TF2 items than on new games. Hats, weapons, taunts, all in different combinations for maximum profit.
- kbenson 10y ago
  > Nevertheless, it's just PC games, not a big market. Nowhere compare to apple's iphone games or facebook's web games. Yeah, only estimated to be about 27 billion in 2015[1]. Chump change. (I'll include this aside as a definitive indicator of sarcasm, for those incapable of detecting it accurately on their own). 1: https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/global-games-market-will-grow-9-4-to-91-5bn-in-2015/ https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/global-games-market-wil...

forgettableuser 10y ago

It is estimated Steam made $1.5 billion in revenues in 2014, and $3.5 billion in 2015. If you assume Valve gets 30% of that number, and remember Valve is a privately held company of about 360 employees, that is an impressive figure.

WalterSear 10y ago

Steam makes more money per employee than Apple.

danso 10y ago

If FB is looking forward in regards to VR, having their own platform in which friends connect and play (and watch ads) together in a Facebook-hosted VR world could be something of real impact.

drivingmenuts 10y ago

The target audience for Gameroom is not the same as the target audience for Steam; it's the people who play Farmville or Words with Friends - not the product of Triple-A game producers. Think parents of Steam players, if not Steam players themselves. Sure, there will be some bleedover - after a long day of ganking noobs and insulting moms, some people think it's nice to sit down to a casual game and buy a vowel or a cow. If FB can make Gameroom stick around, it will be profitable. Farmville has stuck around for 7 years now and most people would snerk at the idea that it's "a real game". But it's target audience doesn't care about the snark. They have fun. The real worry here should be how FB is losing it's focus with the shopping pages and the social pages and the game hub and the blah and the blah. You know, just like what happened with AOL and Yahoo. They were big for a long time, and then they suddenly don't matter much anymore.

kbenson 10y ago

It's looks to be pretty damn profitable. Here's an article from 2011, which indicates some people value Valve between $2-$4 billion[1]. That's for a private company with ~360 employees according to wikipedia (although they only have.102 people listed on their company page). In 2015, they look to have taken in about 3.5 billion in revenue[2]. 1: http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2011/02/15/valve-and-steam-worth-billions http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2011/02/15/valve-an... 2: https://medium.com/steam-spy/steam-sales-in-2015-2e81a6bb0f5a https://medium.com/steam-spy/steam-sales-in-2015-2e81a6bb0f5...