Valve Corporation / Steam
Valve Corporation
The Little Giant of Video Game Industry.
From boiled water to steam.
Original Half-Life Dev team
At the early age, Video game still mainly in console. But during 90s and 2000s PC gaming is gaining more popularity. Valve also founded during that time. Founded by the former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington with first debut product "Half-Life (1998)", First person shooters video game. It was critical and commercial success and lasting influence on the FPS genre even until this day.
modern Steam home page
Harrington left in 2000, but Valve still continue. They release "Steam" famous video game marketplace platform, along with diverse titles include, Half-Life 2 (2004), the episodic sequels Half-Life 2: Episode One (2006) and Episode Two (2007), the multiplayer games Team Fortress 2 (2007) and Left 4 Dead (2008), the puzzle games Portal (2007), Portal 2 (2011), multiplayer online battle arena game Dota 2 (2013) and some other titles. Moreover in 2022 they release handheld gaming system called "Steam deck". Even they are slowing down on video game production now. They still dominated PC games market only by their "Steam" platform
How good is this valve?
Here, Are some stat overviews from 'https://financesonline.com/steam-statistics/'
English as the first place most using language is expected but Chinese and Russian comes as 2nd and 3rd is interesting, Highlight growing of Chinese interest in western video games.
Having 120 million active users shows that Steam do having dominance in the PC gaming market and 62.6 million daily active players suggests a highly engaged user base, with many people using Steam regularly and 2.6 million average purchasers per month shows a healthy and active market on Steam, with users consistently buying new games.
This indicated that big portion of people using Steam, Buying, Selling, Participated in. Not counting players who play their titles like "Counter Strike 2", "Dota 2", "Team fortress 2" etc. That also doing high number monthly.
Idle running and still winning.
"As VP of Prime Gaming at Amazon, we failed multiple times to disrupt the game platform Steam. We were at least 250x bigger, and we tried everything. But ultimately, Goliath lost. " - Ethan Evans, Retired Amazon VP, Posted in his Linkin.
Many tried to take Valve's position in PC video game marketplace platform. For example, Epic Games Store, EA's Origin, Microsoft Store, Battle net etc. Many of them fail, even from bigger corporation.
How they do that? From my personal analysis as person who play video games on PC. They have 2 main advantages include Community and Quality. As old establish platform, they gather a large and diverse loyal customers.
Next question might be how they make customer loyal to them. Imagine, you buy a new book, you might want to keep it in same shelf with other books for better accessibility. This idea also applies to Steam platform. User already use Steam when other competitors not started. So, they have some of their game in their account and if they change platform, they need to switch between 2 or more. Making it inconvenience for them.
Just being old does not mean better. Thier platform also up to date and having diverse functions for example "community" for gather and asking questions relate to those games. "workshop" for some modification for the game that allowed. Build in in-game item marketplace etc. Making "Steam" is one of the best all-in-one platforms for PC gamers.
How long this Steam Engine would still be running.
Steam deck, one of their first hardware release.
In conclude, Valve is now stable by their platform. They don't even need to make video games anymore. As long as demand for PC video games still exist enough for them, they would still do good considering they don't need to satisfy shareholders like other public company. However, things are not certain, Market shift and technology disruption might be largest concern of Valve, for example, if there is new technology that is not PC in the future? or if mobile gaming being more powerful and stable that you don't need big PC to play game anymore? This kind of scenario is their challenges that might faces. As an industry outsiders, I might not have any recommendations but hope for them to find solutions in time that these scenarios occur.
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The comparison to failed competitors and insight into customer retention strategies are well presented.
ReplyDeleteValve is really inspiring company, Especially the CEO (gabe newell)
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