Do bundle sales hurt Steam Sales?

[puzgyesz]

So what are your experiences, and opinions, does selling a let's say 3$ game in a 6 game bundle for 1,5$ ona third party website via steam keys hurt the actual steam sales? Because it's an easy way to make money and gather some audience, until you can manually contact enough youtubers, streamers and websites to get attention for the game.

And I think that people buying bundles from third party sites via keys and people buying games directly from steam are two different group, there isn't really anyone who does both, according to my opinion. What do you think?

[Start_Running]

Nope. Many of the bundles buy keys en bloc from the publishers hence they get a lower price per unit.

[RGX12]

They also get a certain percentage of first time buyers, who have never used Steam before. So, nothing for Steam to have a problem with when they get a few new subscribers.

[cinedine]

Not Steam sales, but the industry as a whole - and especially indie studios. As do Steam sales.
It's about de-valuation. Many people consider a game with pixel graphics or indie games in general not worthy of a price tag of more than 10 dollar. Even with higher budget titles and well known specialist games many don'T think it's worth the initial price tag because they never heard of it before.

And it's fully understandable. Why should I pay 15 dollar for a game if I can get it in a bundle for under 10 dollar AND get a bunch of other games I might be interested in on top of it? For some reason this line of thinking is more prevalent than "why should I pre-order a game and buy the season pass, if I can get GOTY half a year later".

[Cablenexus]

I absolutely do both.

For me it's just setting a priority. I rarely buy a game before release (pre-order) and some games directly after release when I know from articles, let's plays and history with the developer that it is absolutely something that I want to support.

Sometimes the game have less priority for me and I wait for a sale on Steam and because I subscribed for a few Bundle offer sites (Humble, Indiegala and Bundlestars) I receive mails from them on a regular base and when there is a game on my wishlist I probaly buy it there if the price is much lower than the Steam offer.

Eventually I was never buy that game at all when not on sale on the third party site and / or Steam so I don't see who it hurts.

But I have to admit that the site effect of too much games I really don't want in my library eventually let me skip that specific bundle even when the price for just one game is very acceptable.

Actually is my expectation that most of us do and never only one way or the other

[RedLightning]

I do both .. well at least untill lately, Steam has hurt it 'own' sales in my humble opinion.

[Cablenexus]

Originally posted by RedLightning:

I do both .. well at least untill lately, Steam has hurt it 'own' sales in my humble opinion.

Well since the changes in the review system has some "forced" buy on Steam policy (while not admitted) I check bundles more often as well

[Dr. Fronkensteen]

To be fair, by the time a game is bundled; it is older, it has likely been through a couple 75%+ sales, no one knows about it.

If any of those three things are true, than most of those games are not selling well, or at all. I know a coupke if game i really enjoyed I never would have played or even known about if not for the bundle websites.

Steam sales has done far worse than bundles in my opinion, not that I'm personally complaining about it.

[Narcoleptic Marshmallow]

I don't believe so, or else no one would do it. Things like demos, that have been proven to hurt sales, have died down. Bundles are still very popular among developers/publishers.

Keep in mind that, while it may look like a wonderful deal to buy a game you want along other games in a bundle, you are still making a $15 purchase instead of a $10 purchase, for example, if you had bought the game you wanted only.

It's also great for advertising; a way to make us aware of obscure games of questionable quality that no one would know of otherwise.

[puzgyesz]

Thank you all for the answers :)

Yea, regarding Steam I cannot understand them at all. I was really unfortunate as on the next day after game release they changed the review system without any notice or whatever, and I guess I am not the only one who doesn't understand the logic behind it and who is very angry about it. It immediately hurt the sales and took away at least half of all the potentional sales in that week, I believe.

I don't see any logic behind this new review system. It is obvious that there were people who used industrialized methods to cheat with steam key reviews and try to trick people into buying low quality high priced games, but this is absolutely no solution to the problem.

People who use industrialized ways to cheat the review system in an effort to try to hype and sell mass produced low quality games will find new ways to trick the system in no time, by using multiple account and fake accounts, so when they buy the game they pretty much simply transfer the money between their accounts, and although they lose like 50% of the money even that way, for people who want to trick hundreds of people buying their mass produced overpriced 10$ or whatever game, it will be more than worth it to spend a few bucks to get the fake reviews.

The only thing Steam did with this update is to heavily hurt their own sales and put Indie developers in a very difficult position, as people do not give a f*ck to write a review at all. Especially in the beginning of the life of the game, people who enjoyed the game or found it worth the price take the time to write a positive review very rarely, and if you are unfortunate enough a few idiots will leave a review after playing 5-10 mins usually bashing it all around, complaining about minor things only actually like "they found a game too hard that said right in the description that it is too hard" or "they don't like the genre of the game - well why did they buy it then?". And there are thousands of kids running around on steam with several thousand game on their account with 100-200+ or even 1000+ reviews, 80% being reviews about games that they played 5-15 minutes with, than bashed it to the ground and requested a refund, usually the core of their problem not even being with the game, but being with the fact that they wasn't even barely interested in the game or may not even like the genre of the game, they only purchased it so that they can play a few minutes with it and leave a review and request a refund, because they feel like it gives you some kind of respect to have given tons of "very useful" reviews.

And if your game catches a few of these people in the beginning, combined with the fact of people who liked the game barely giving a f'ck about a review or whatsoever, they sales will immediately drop and stop and you will have to try to set it into motion with extreme effort manually.

This is why steam keys were very useful. You gave them out to a couple of people who wrote a detailed and honest review both being positive and negative, and even if there are more positive reviews in that way, an honest and not exploiting developer only gives out a few keys in the beginning so as people start to buy up the game, if it's not that good in reality as it seems from the key reviews, the review numbers will quickly drop and normalize.

This review update is ignorant, idiotic and shi*tty. Steam basically shot indie devs in the leg and made it absolutely clear that they do not give a f*ck about small developers. If they continue with changes like this this will backfire and give birth to a new giant concurent consisting mainly of A and AA developers, and if they choose to have a cut less than Steam's "industry standard" giant 30% robbery even the AAA developers will leave Steam for good.

[Cablenexus]

Originally posted by puzgyesz:

Thank you all for the answers :)

Yea, regarding Steam I cannot understand them at all. I was really unfortunate as on the next day after game release they changed the review system without any notice or whatever, and I guess I am not the only one who doesn't understand the logic behind it and who is very angry about it. It immediately hurt the sales and took away at least half of all the potentional sales in that week, I believe.

I don't see any logic behind this new review system. It is obvious that there were people who used industrialized methods to cheat with steam key reviews and try to trick people into buying low quality high priced games, but this is absolutely no solution to the problem.

People who use industrialized ways to cheat the review system in an effort to try to hype and sell mass produced low quality games will find new ways to trick the system in no time, by using multiple account and fake accounts, so when they buy the game they pretty much simply transfer the money between their accounts, and although they lose like 50% of the money even that way, for people who want to trick hundreds of people buying their mass produced overpriced 10$ or whatever game, it will be more than worth it to spend a few bucks to get the fake reviews.

The only thing Steam did with this update is to heavily hurt their own sales and put Indie developers in a very difficult position, as people do not give a f*ck to write a review at all. Especially in the beginning of the life of the game, people who enjoyed the game or found it worth the price take the time to write a positive review very rarely, and if you are unfortunate enough a few idiots will leave a review after playing 5-10 mins usually bashing it all around, complaining about minor things only actually like "they found a game too hard that said right in the description that it is too hard" or "they don't like the genre of the game - well why did they buy it then?". And there are thousands of kids running around on steam with several thousand game on their account with 100-200+ or even 1000+ reviews, 80% being reviews about games that they played 5-15 minutes with, than bashed it to the ground and requested a refund, usually the core of their problem not even being with the game, but being with the fact that they wasn't even barely interested in the game or may not even like the genre of the game, they only purchased it so that they can play a few minutes with it and leave a review and request a refund, because they feel like it gives you some kind of respect to have given tons of "very useful" reviews.

And if your game catches a few of these people in the beginning, combined with the fact of people who liked the game barely giving a f'ck about a review or whatsoever, they sales will immediately drop and stop and you will have to try to set it into motion with extreme effort manually.

This is why steam keys were very useful. You gave them out to a couple of people who wrote a detailed and honest review both being positive and negative, and even if there are more positive reviews in that way, an honest and not exploiting developer only gives out a few keys in the beginning so as people start to buy up the game, if it's not that good in reality as it seems from the key reviews, the review numbers will quickly drop and normalize.

This review update is ignorant, idiotic and shi*tty. Steam basically shot indie devs in the leg and made it absolutely clear that they do not give a f*ck about small developers. If they continue with changes like this this will backfire and give birth to a new giant concurent consisting mainly of A and AA developers, and if they choose to have a cut less than Steam's "industry standard" giant 30% robbery even the AAA developers will leave Steam for good.

+1

[Je Rie]

No, the bundles they sell are crap anyways.

[Kargor]

Any game that's not sold through the Steam store "hurts" the Steam financials.

It doesn't have to be bundles -- I often buy games in other stores simply because they are cheaper (slightly lower base price, better sales discount, and/or currency conversion benefits).

Also, being in Germany, some games are "soft censored" in the sense that the full version can be registered, but those can't be bought in the german Steam store. In such a case, the Steam store isn't even a candidate.

And, of course, I only need a game once. So once I have it, the Steam store is out for good no matter what.

[Ishraqiyun]

Originally posted by puzgyesz:

So what are your experiences, and opinions, does selling a let's say 3$ game in a 6 game bundle for 1,5$ ona third party website via steam keys hurt the actual steam sales? Because it's an easy way to make money and gather some audience, until you can manually contact enough youtubers, streamers and websites to get attention for the game.

And I think that people buying bundles from third party sites via keys and people buying games directly from steam are two different group, there isn't really anyone who does both, according to my opinion. What do you think?

They very rarely sell items for cheaper than they're worth, so no, I don't think they hurt anything,

[Cablenexus]

Games sold outside Steam which need activation on Steam generates profits indirectly.
There are 130 million subscribers now to who Steam can sell games via their platform.
The only games that hurts Steam are p*****d ones and DRM free games that does not need activation on their platform.

[FPS]

Highest peak of the sales is generally on the first week after launch. When a month have passed, everyone interested in buying a game for full price have already bought it. The second peak is when game goes on ~50% sale, third peak on ~75% sale (each smaller than the previous one), after then you can safely participate in any bundle - it won't affect steam sales at all.