Steam Business Update

Notes on a talk from GDC 2019

• To be a good platform, need to:
  • Create value for players and devs
  • Best experience for a given game
  • Grow the addressable market
  • Invent new ways for devs to make customers happy
  • …over the long term
  • E.g., Steam Link Anywhere automatically makes your game more valuable—no integration costs for devs
• Coming soon
  • Steam Events: communicate to players when new stuff is coming; free stuff, live streams, updates, etc. 
    • customers choose how they want to hear about this: email, in app, push notification, iCal feed, etc. 
    • give people a reason to play/buy right now
  • Redesigned library
    • New home page to easily resume last game, show cool stuff happening in hames you already own, join in with friends
    • Pull in events on individual game’s page, prompt for review
    • Advanced filters for use with large libraries (like tagging)
• Recently released
  • Developer homepages where people can follow you and automatically be notified of your new games
  • Livestreams directly in your store page
    • Show people what it’s actually like to play your game—better than screenshots or video
    • Can elevate user’s live streams to show up on your own page
  • Exclude off-topic review “bombs”
    • Automatically based on surges in review traffic
    • Added “call for help” button to get Steam’s intervention
• New networking API
  • Valve’s infrastructure for use in your game
  • CDN has direct connections to 2500 ISPs; can see avg download speeds by ISP online
  • For multiplayer: want stable connections, low ping, quality matchmaking, protect against DDoS
  • Prioritize game traffic (latency sensitive) over downloads
  • Allows matchmaking across the globe (or if you’re more latency sensitive, maybe a small number of pools across the globe)
  • Available for both Steam and non-Steam versions of your game
  • Free
• Emerging markets
  • Regions with a growing economy, or an established market where Steam hasn’t penetrated much (like Japan)
  • Challenges: expensive payment methods, esp. cash
  • Invest early
  • Use preferred payment methods locally: e.g., Japan prefers to buy online, walk to a convenience store, pay in cash there, come back with a printed validation code to download
    • Introduced Steam retail cards to make this easier (costs Steam 10-15% of the face value of the card)
  • China: 12.5% of transactions go through the five “standard” payment methods; most of the rest are cash based
  • PC cafe program