Quest to Nowhere

Steam: It’s a Service First, and a Store Second

I picked up Saints Row: The Third for PC a few days ago, but I’m not actually going to talk about the game itself, rather my experience purchasing it. For the first time in a while I chose not to purchase the game on Steam, but instead I got it through Amazon as a digital PC download (well had a choice to not purchase it through Steam, I didn’t have a choice of where to get Battlefield 3 for PC.)

However after purchasing the game on Amazon I downloaded it through Steam. I was able to do this because Steam will let you use the product code/CD key to verify that you own a game they have in their store and then let you download it. They don’t care that you didn’t purchase the game through them, and this sort of solidified why it is that no digital distribution service for PC is as good as Steam (and maybe won’t ever be.) I don’t think Valve sees Steam as a store first, but rather sees it as a service they provide which just so happens to have a store.

Obviously the store is incredibly important, but if you look at the sorts of services they provide through Steam. Beyond the basic social stuff that other digital distribution services have (ie: buddy list, chat, voice chat, etc.,) they have cloud saves for your games so that you can easily play a game on any number of different PCs without having to figure out how to move your save data between them. They let you download any game they have, so long as you can provide them with a CD key. They let you trade items I collected in one game to other players to get items from other games (so far I think you can only do this with Team Fortress 2 and Spiral Knights, it may include more games than just those two now.) I can trade items I collected in a game to other players for actual games, or vice versa (ex: I can trade a TF2 hat to another player for a copy of Bastion.)

I think what has happened is that the sales on Steam have brought a lot of people into using Steam to get their games, and these services that Steam is starting to provide are what is going to keep them from leaving. Well not so much leaving, but perhaps keep them from using another digital distribution service as their primary way to get PC games. Granted it certainly helps that Steam has the biggest selection of games, but even as EA expands the library of Origin to include stuff from other developers, and GameStop starts trying to do something with Impulse, I don’t think in either case they’ll be able to catch up to Steam’s services.

I think this comes down to the fact that no one else really has as much invested in the PC market as Valve does. They made Steam initially to distribute their game, because most of their customers for their games are on the PC. So if they are only ever going to sell their games through Steam they have to make sure that people are going to use Steam so that when they do release their games they have an audience who will buy them.

It seems like an odd thing to think now, that people wouldn’t purchase Valve games, but if Steam hadn’t been around I don’t think we’d be having this PC gaming revival. And I certainly don’t think you’d be seeing EA and GameStop getting into the PC business the way they have lately either.

Writer’s Note: Sorry if this came off as a little rambling/disorganized.  I write a bit stream of conscious and I think this one sort of got away from me a little bit, but I think there are some good ideas in it so I’m posting it anyway.