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Stardock are estimating that Valve controls around 70 percent of the overall game download space, due to its time advantage and its exclusive titles. Our estimation is that Steam as the current market leader enjoys approximately 70 per cent of the overall digital distribution market with Impulse at 10 per cent and all others combined at 20 per cent in terms of actual dollars generated per month, said Stardock boss Brad Wardell. Another trend we have seen in the past year has been Valves successful work with getting Steamworks licensed as a DRM solution by major publishers. Once a game requires Steamworks, it is effectively cut off from us, which limits our content. Examples of this include Dawn Of War II, Empire: Total War and Modern Warfare 2.
Comments
#2
RE: Steam dominates digital distribution
Posted by BlueMak | 21st Nov 2009 4:47pm
Have you ever used Steam?
It requires to have a full application running at all times you want to play a game, although you can minimize it. What the other companies are their own ways to do DRM, so if one publisher goes with Steam, it would be silly to have another DRM on it, from a competitor too (since they also sell games).
Basically if they went ahead and said OK, then they would be bringing a Trojan Horse inside their walls, to lose customers in the long run.
On top of that, no users that would HAVE to have Steam installed would see any point in getting it from another DRM, eh I mean Store, just to have Steam running.
It requires to have a full application running at all times you want to play a game, although you can minimize it. What the other companies are their own ways to do DRM, so if one publisher goes with Steam, it would be silly to have another DRM on it, from a competitor too (since they also sell games).
Basically if they went ahead and said OK, then they would be bringing a Trojan Horse inside their walls, to lose customers in the long run.
On top of that, no users that would HAVE to have Steam installed would see any point in getting it from another DRM, eh I mean Store, just to have Steam running.
#3
RE: Steam dominates digital distribution
Posted by EcPercy | 21st Nov 2009 10:30am
Yes, I have used steam. I have several games that I have bought through steam. I prefer steam to buying a physical copy since I can use steam on multiple computers and always have my games available.
So you are saying that if a game is released on steam and the company wants to also release the game through say direct2drive or a similar service that the company would not be able to use the steamworks DRM? Or is the issue here that when you publish a game on steam you are going to be forced to use the steamworks DRM and this would not be cost effective in the long run if the company wanted to release the game on a different digital distribution platform because at this point they would need to use multiple versions of DRM?
Maybe there is a business opportunity here to make a unified DRM for digital distribution platforms this way you can publish on multiple platforms with a single form of DRM.
So you are saying that if a game is released on steam and the company wants to also release the game through say direct2drive or a similar service that the company would not be able to use the steamworks DRM? Or is the issue here that when you publish a game on steam you are going to be forced to use the steamworks DRM and this would not be cost effective in the long run if the company wanted to release the game on a different digital distribution platform because at this point they would need to use multiple versions of DRM?
Maybe there is a business opportunity here to make a unified DRM for digital distribution platforms this way you can publish on multiple platforms with a single form of DRM.
#4
RE: Steam dominates digital distribution
Posted by BlueMak | 21st Nov 2009 5:43pm
No, the problem is when a publisher wants to use Steam and anything else, but refuses to have Steam removed from the game when sold through other stores.
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What does Stardock have to do with the content of any game other than their own?I don't understand how any DRM would effectively stop the game creator from adding content to their own titles.