3 ms·

Your recollection matches mine. I recall much discussion of how PC gaming was dying and being replaced by consoles in large part due to piracy. Valve did it so

Your recollection matches mine. I recall much discussion of how PC gaming was dying and being replaced by consoles in large part due to piracy. Valve did it so much better than the streaming services though. There are remarkably few games I can't get from Steam, but I need half a dozen TV streaming services to get decent show coverage. Gabe took to heart what media companies refuse to believe: that piracy is a service problem. Make the legitimate service better and more convenient than piracy and it practically goes away overnight.

echelon 5y ago
> Valve did it so much better than the streaming services though. There are remarkably few games I can't get from Steam, but I need half a dozen TV streaming services to get decent show coverage. Valve has a lot of amazing things going for it: a major social component, game save backups, achievements, deep libraries of purchased content. These make the platform sticky in a marketplace with lots of alternatives. They are also smart enough to recognize Microsoft trying to choke them and they've made investments in platforms that will ensure their continued success: SteamOS, Steam Deck... Valve also caters to the developers: easy networking, easy distribution. Lots of code you don't have to write or support. While Netflix isn't suffering, they certainly wish they had these sorts of advantages going for them. Netflix didn't build a monopoly on the content and franchises that legacy media companies then used to bootstrap their own competing services. After this licensing weakness became obvious, other tech companies started to encroach on the market too. Netflix saw a way to survive the drying up of their licenses in making their own original content. Unfortunately, it's a slow and expensive process to produce media, with no guarantees of success for any given title. And it's not something that only Netflix can do, either. Anybody with money can produce content. Netflix should have offered the ability to buy titles early on and run deep discounts on what they saw were subscription drivers. It might have cannibalized their subscription revenue and resulted in some subscribers churning, but they wouldn't be churning to other services. You'd be surprised by the number of people that subscribe to Netflix and just want to watch The Office or Parks and Rec. They could have perpetually kept these folks on the platform. Netflix should have also built a ratings, review, library, and social component that kept viewers involved in the platform. Something not portable. Going forward, Netflix should build tools to let content producers run faster when making content for Netflix (run a lot of operations, provide ADs, personnel, studio space, etc.) The rest of the industry is consolidating, and they need to get in on this. Netflix also needs to get ahead of the game on new tech. Automated means to change product placements dynamically to earn even more revenue on long tail content (re)watching, etc. Ultimately, I think film and television media is going to be disrupted by new forms of content that are orders of magnitude faster to produce, orders of magnitude cheaper, and satisfies the entire long tail of interests. If a company can get in and build a marketplace that caters to both producers and consumers, and establishes a deep moat, it will be the Valve or YouTube of future long form content.
- gigaflop 5y ago
  Steam has reaped the rewards of the first-mover advantage, but I feel like they deserves a bit of respect for it, since the problems they were solving were still 'new', and solutions allowed people to actually do new things/have a better experience, instead of sitting back and extracting rent. SteamOS is something I'm going to be incredibly thankful for in the future, since I plan to transition from Windows-first to Linux-first, and can now take more of my games along with me. I don't think Netflix would have had such an easy (as in straightforward or simple) time of things. Different audiences, different histories, different use cases and existing structure, etc. I like their product, but I don't know how much wiggle room they had when dealing with 'Big Film', who would have likely been heavy and in a deep trench. Steam was 100% digital from the start, and their customers were almost guaranteed to have an internet connection on their PC, which let them make assumptions about how to move forward. Their main competition was boxed software being sold in stores. Like you say, they added value in making it more attractive for developers to put themselves on the platform, while making it more attractive for a user to be there as well. Netflix was physical-first, and (imo) didn't really disrupt anything, but just made certain 'workflows' easier(Don't bother driving to the video store, but still pick out the movies, and just put them back in the mail) to achieve. It could have been implemented with a physical catalog and some postcards, if the web weren't as developed as it was. I don't have hard evidence, but I think that part of their model relied on not selling, in order to keep licensing costs down. Since blank DVDs can be had cheap as dirt, why else would they charge a fee for unreturned discs? It's a way for them to show that people aren't actually buying something, which may mean that they don't need to pay as much back to the content owners. > Netflix should build tools ... Film studios cater to those who are creating something to be sold in some form, and don't necessarily care about the consumer at the end(imo). They're B2B, where Steam is B2B + B2C. Netflix is mostly B2C, but may still have some innovation left if they take what they're learning with Originals to build a stronger/more valuable B2B.
gigaflop 5y ago
I'm glad to see that Steam has more competition nowadays, but I'm just not a fan of the competitors. I feel like some of them have reduced the value they provide to users by creating their own storefronts/launchers/etc. Fortunately for them, they only need to care about shareholder value. Users come second </s> I like GOG enough to willingly use their Galaxy client, since they tend to provide DRM-free options, and because buying CDPR games via GOG gives them a bigger share of revenue without costing me more money or dignity. Origin and Uplay seem to add no value for a user, and I remember a big fuss a while back about Origin scanning people's PCs a bit too eagerly. I think Ubisoft and EA also started withdrawing their newer titles from Steam and the likes to push people towards their own platforms, but that isn't consumer-friendly in the least bit. Epic seems to have had ups and downs with their store/services. I don't use it personally, but it was not feature-complete at release[1], and they got a lot of titles on their service by making exclusivity deals, instead of by offering a better experience. Metro Exodus was a particularly stinky example of this, in that people preordered the game on Steam, only to have a timed exclusivity deal with Epic put into place shortly before release. If I were a games developer, I don't know if the better revenue share with Epic would be worth the potential lost sales from being available everywhere, even if it were only a timed exclusivity. I'm part of the camp that just doesn't want to use certain storefronts, so why wouldn't I expect the same from my customers? [1]: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/news/introducing-the-epic-games-store-shopping-cart https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/news/introducing-the-epic-... (Because a Shopping Cart feature was apparently not necessary for their 1.0 release of a video game storefront)
- baud147258 5y ago
  > Origin and Uplay seem to add no value for a user, and I remember a big fuss a while back about Origin scanning people's PCs a bit too eagerly. I think the issue is when EA and Ubisoft bundles Uplay and Origin in the games distributed through Steam, forcing you to create a Uplay/origin account and install it. I understand why they're doing it (so that people install Uplay/origin), but I really dislike it. Also it recently prevented me from playing a Ubisoft title, as I couldn't get it to run with the last Uplay version. > I think Ubisoft and EA also started withdrawing their newer titles from Steam and the likes to push people towards their own platforms, but that isn't consumer-friendly in the least bit. For EA it worked so well they started putting back their games on Steam...

echelon 5y ago

> Valve did it so much better than the streaming services though. There are remarkably few games I can't get from Steam, but I need half a dozen TV streaming services to get decent show coverage. Valve has a lot of amazing things going for it: a major social component, game save backups, achievements, deep libraries of purchased content. These make the platform sticky in a marketplace with lots of alternatives. They are also smart enough to recognize Microsoft trying to choke them and they've made investments in platforms that will ensure their continued success: SteamOS, Steam Deck... Valve also caters to the developers: easy networking, easy distribution. Lots of code you don't have to write or support. While Netflix isn't suffering, they certainly wish they had these sorts of advantages going for them. Netflix didn't build a monopoly on the content and franchises that legacy media companies then used to bootstrap their own competing services. After this licensing weakness became obvious, other tech companies started to encroach on the market too. Netflix saw a way to survive the drying up of their licenses in making their own original content. Unfortunately, it's a slow and expensive process to produce media, with no guarantees of success for any given title. And it's not something that only Netflix can do, either. Anybody with money can produce content. Netflix should have offered the ability to buy titles early on and run deep discounts on what they saw were subscription drivers. It might have cannibalized their subscription revenue and resulted in some subscribers churning, but they wouldn't be churning to other services. You'd be surprised by the number of people that subscribe to Netflix and just want to watch The Office or Parks and Rec. They could have perpetually kept these folks on the platform. Netflix should have also built a ratings, review, library, and social component that kept viewers involved in the platform. Something not portable. Going forward, Netflix should build tools to let content producers run faster when making content for Netflix (run a lot of operations, provide ADs, personnel, studio space, etc.) The rest of the industry is consolidating, and they need to get in on this. Netflix also needs to get ahead of the game on new tech. Automated means to change product placements dynamically to earn even more revenue on long tail content (re)watching, etc. Ultimately, I think film and television media is going to be disrupted by new forms of content that are orders of magnitude faster to produce, orders of magnitude cheaper, and satisfies the entire long tail of interests. If a company can get in and build a marketplace that caters to both producers and consumers, and establishes a deep moat, it will be the Valve or YouTube of future long form content.

gigaflop 5y ago
Steam has reaped the rewards of the first-mover advantage, but I feel like they deserves a bit of respect for it, since the problems they were solving were still 'new', and solutions allowed people to actually do new things/have a better experience, instead of sitting back and extracting rent. SteamOS is something I'm going to be incredibly thankful for in the future, since I plan to transition from Windows-first to Linux-first, and can now take more of my games along with me. I don't think Netflix would have had such an easy (as in straightforward or simple) time of things. Different audiences, different histories, different use cases and existing structure, etc. I like their product, but I don't know how much wiggle room they had when dealing with 'Big Film', who would have likely been heavy and in a deep trench. Steam was 100% digital from the start, and their customers were almost guaranteed to have an internet connection on their PC, which let them make assumptions about how to move forward. Their main competition was boxed software being sold in stores. Like you say, they added value in making it more attractive for developers to put themselves on the platform, while making it more attractive for a user to be there as well. Netflix was physical-first, and (imo) didn't really disrupt anything, but just made certain 'workflows' easier(Don't bother driving to the video store, but still pick out the movies, and just put them back in the mail) to achieve. It could have been implemented with a physical catalog and some postcards, if the web weren't as developed as it was. I don't have hard evidence, but I think that part of their model relied on not selling, in order to keep licensing costs down. Since blank DVDs can be had cheap as dirt, why else would they charge a fee for unreturned discs? It's a way for them to show that people aren't actually buying something, which may mean that they don't need to pay as much back to the content owners. > Netflix should build tools ... Film studios cater to those who are creating something to be sold in some form, and don't necessarily care about the consumer at the end(imo). They're B2B, where Steam is B2B + B2C. Netflix is mostly B2C, but may still have some innovation left if they take what they're learning with Originals to build a stronger/more valuable B2B.

gigaflop 5y ago

I'm glad to see that Steam has more competition nowadays, but I'm just not a fan of the competitors. I feel like some of them have reduced the value they provide to users by creating their own storefronts/launchers/etc. Fortunately for them, they only need to care about shareholder value. Users come second </s> I like GOG enough to willingly use their Galaxy client, since they tend to provide DRM-free options, and because buying CDPR games via GOG gives them a bigger share of revenue without costing me more money or dignity. Origin and Uplay seem to add no value for a user, and I remember a big fuss a while back about Origin scanning people's PCs a bit too eagerly. I think Ubisoft and EA also started withdrawing their newer titles from Steam and the likes to push people towards their own platforms, but that isn't consumer-friendly in the least bit. Epic seems to have had ups and downs with their store/services. I don't use it personally, but it was not feature-complete at release[1], and they got a lot of titles on their service by making exclusivity deals, instead of by offering a better experience. Metro Exodus was a particularly stinky example of this, in that people preordered the game on Steam, only to have a timed exclusivity deal with Epic put into place shortly before release. If I were a games developer, I don't know if the better revenue share with Epic would be worth the potential lost sales from being available everywhere, even if it were only a timed exclusivity. I'm part of the camp that just doesn't want to use certain storefronts, so why wouldn't I expect the same from my customers? [1]: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/news/introducing-the-epic-games-store-shopping-cart https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/news/introducing-the-epic-... (Because a Shopping Cart feature was apparently not necessary for their 1.0 release of a video game storefront)

baud147258 5y ago
> Origin and Uplay seem to add no value for a user, and I remember a big fuss a while back about Origin scanning people's PCs a bit too eagerly. I think the issue is when EA and Ubisoft bundles Uplay and Origin in the games distributed through Steam, forcing you to create a Uplay/origin account and install it. I understand why they're doing it (so that people install Uplay/origin), but I really dislike it. Also it recently prevented me from playing a Ubisoft title, as I couldn't get it to run with the last Uplay version. > I think Ubisoft and EA also started withdrawing their newer titles from Steam and the likes to push people towards their own platforms, but that isn't consumer-friendly in the least bit. For EA it worked so well they started putting back their games on Steam...