Quote:
Originally Posted by SirFozzie
Going forward, I won't buy games on anything but steam. For example, to use a competitor's example, I bought Draft Day Sports: Pro Basketball 4 late last year. Shortly afterwards, my computer blew up, and required a major rebuild.
So, with eSellerate and other such stores, I'd have to basically beg to get my license back, and risk them saying "Tough titties, you pirate".
On steam? Install steam, say "Install". Poof. Done.
It's ease of use/mind that makes steam more powerful then anything else out there.
edit: A more pertinent example.. I haven't asked you Arles to resissue licenses for the various stuff that I've purchased through your company (because of the computer going boom).. because that's a pain in the ass for all involved.. I just stopped playing, and that affects my desire to purchase new games involved
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Steam is the best customer experience for licensing - I love it for games as well. One of the things we have done for relicensing via Elicense is Scott Vibert and I handle all requests ourselves. We have found that it allows a quicker and better (for mass relicense for CPU issues) process. I just had a guy who had 9 licensed Grey Dog games and his HD quit. He emailed elicense and they immediately forwarded him to us and (within 24 hours), we had an email to him with all 9 licenses listed and reset.
I have a pretty good relationship with the lead developer and CEO at Viatech, so they have given us a ton of freedom and leeway. The system is not as streamlined as steam, but we have made it part of our business model to ensure customers get quick and direct responses on re-license requests.
I think the Steam model is (as many have said above), more about deals and impulse. Listing TEW 2013 on steam for 34.95 with few sales for the first year or so wouldn't provide that many additional sales than what we get from our site directly. Now, if instead, we list TEW 2010 and allow it to be priced at 19.95 with some "humble bundles" and sales, we may end up landing 1000 new TEW customers over a period of 3-4 months. If half those customers buy the newer game for $30-35 at our site, suddenly Steam is paying dividends. I look at steam as a marketing engine, no different than ads on other sites, free demo downloads and so forth. The goal is to use them to increase our overall customer base for new releases - with the idea that eventually we could hit sales totals on steam that allow it to be our main avenue (but I don't see that happening anytime soon given the success of our webstore and direct marketing effort).