Valve doesn't sell ad space on Steam so it can make room for surprise hits: 'We don't think Steam should be pay-to-win'
Valve doesn't sell ad space on Steam so it can make room for surprise hits: 'We don't think Steam should be pay-to-win'
"We're surprised all the time" by which games take off, says Steam's Erik Peterson.
Valve seems to be the only company on this capitalist world that actually understands that company profits cannot and should not grow exponentially forever without eventually destroying itself. All other companies don't know or want to stop the greed ad are constantly pushing for more profits to see until where they can push the greed and milking without losing "too much" costumers. They even weight the amount of costumers lost vs the extra profits to see if its viable to lose those costumers and still profit, like Netflix. Valve does not work like this. Valve grew to a size, and that size is giving them stable and steady profit. And they are holding that size, slowly growing more here and there but nothing big. The biggest thing they did in like 10 years was the Steam Deck and they will not update it with a Deck 2 anytime soon. Valve plays the very slow, but steady profits game. This is how you win as a company. You try to keep yourself on a balance between good profits and good public perspective.
I'm not one that usually calls for the "Hail Corporate" BS where people lick the boots of big companies. In fact, I typically am very anti-corporate in every way, but Valve is one company I honestly have very little problem giving my money to. They very rarely have any anti-consumer things that crop up and every one to memory they've taken feedback and course corrected very rapidly. I'm afraid for the day Gabe Newell dies or retires, though. Whoever takes over Valve is going to have some big shoes to fill.
I really hope that Gabe has future-proofed valve. It really is a remarkable treasure and one of the most user-friendly platforms of all time. Especially in these days when we are seeing a corporate takeover of the internet, or realizing that we lost a long time ago when we put all of our eggs in the Google basket.
I could see so much potential for fuckery happening, can you imagine if steam was as fond of kicking people off the platform as Reddit is? Or if games were constantly being curated to make sure they check all the boxes like the YouTube algorithm does? Five Nights at Freddy's would have never existed if steam played by those rules, same for every other surprise Indie hit
It's kind of odd, because it feels like they do sell promotion at the very least. For instance, Immortals of Aveum (the new EA game) is constantly shown on my store homepage, despite it being more or less a commercial flop. I know that page is customized, but I would have figured that game would be replaced by others now if the selection was fully organic. I had just assumed EA paid for some agreement that would promote the game on the main page for a set amount of time.
I'm sure it's just coincidence, but their statement just surprised me since the store feels like it promotes specific games already.
all hail Lord GabeN
SideQuest VR went the exact opposite direction.
Giga chads
I thought it was due to their poor grasp on mathematics and inability to count beyond two.
Lol. This is a cute idea but we all know it will go through enshittification with time. You are naive if you believe otherwise.
...Granted you can turn this off, but by default every time you start Steam an ad for a game flies up in your face.
I would also call every single store page on Steam a "sold ad." Again, granted that it doesn't seem you can pay to promote your game above anyone else's and the search seems to be fairly straightforward and functional.
While I do feel there is definitely advertising that happens on Steam, I'm okay with the level of it. I can find products I want, and products I do not want are not mercilessly crammed down my throat.