How long until we get the "Netflix" for games?

[Ishraqiyun]

Netflix and Spotify (and others) have popularized the subscription based model, whereby the user pays a set fee per month (for example), and gains unlimited access to the catalog of the provider.

Will Steam be the first to adopt this model for gaming, or will some other re-seller take up this challenge?

I can imagine this being the only way to pay in the mid-term future and beyond, and once it's been established once, I don't think it can ever go back to how it was...

[Aliquis Freedom & Ethnopluralism]

BossGalaga の投稿を引用：

Ishraqiyun の投稿を引用：

Well if BOTH models were on offer, which would you choose?

For example:
a) Buy each game on demand (control your expense)
b) Pay $50 per month for unlimited access to 90% of Steam's catalog.
c) pay $80 per month for unlimited access to 100% of Steam's catalog. (That last 10% are new releases or DLC or EA or some other perk).

It was reported almost a year ago there were 6000 games on Steam. That number has obviously grown since then but let's just use that number for now.

If you pay 80 bucks a month for unlimited access to Steam's catalog (woo, sounds like a lot!) then each developer/publisher will get 0.01 cents for every game. Wow, if enough people subscribe to this full package developers/publisher could easily be raking in almost a whole penny! And in the long run...pennies even!

See a problem there?

No. Because everyone doesn't play and want every game.

Steam has 30+ million subscribers too I think so your $0.0001 / game would have to be multiplied with 30 million (now all wouldn't become game subscribers but your calculation too has flaws so) which would still just make it $3000 / game _AND MONTH_, that's bad news for the large titles but great news for some indie games / greenlit games.

Now in reality you should of course distribute the money after what people actually PLAY.

A more fair and correct comparision would be:
How much do people pay now and how much would they pay in a subscription model? And I don't think the average person pay $80 / month now so as such it would generate MORE money for the industry if people paid for such a subscription. But I think that's too expensive for the average person.

It's better if it was say $20 and if they could have 300 million subscribers instead. 10 times more subcribers at 1/4 the cost = 2.5 times more money in anyway.

But of course Valve has costs for providing their service too.

[Ishraqiyun]

BossGalaga の投稿を引用：

Ishraqiyun の投稿を引用：

Well if BOTH models were on offer, which would you choose?

For example:
a) Buy each game on demand (control your expense)
b) Pay $50 per month for unlimited access to 90% of Steam's catalog.
c) pay $80 per month for unlimited access to 100% of Steam's catalog. (That last 10% are new releases or DLC or EA or some other perk).

It was reported almost a year ago there were 6000 games on Steam. That number has obviously grown since then but let's just use that number for now.

If you pay 80 bucks a month for unlimited access to Steam's catalog (woo, sounds like a lot!) then each developer/publisher will get 0.01 cents for every game. Wow, if enough people subscribe to this full package developers/publisher could easily be raking in almost a whole penny! And in the long run...pennies even!

See a problem there?

I see a problem - you made the assumption that Steam has a single user.

[BossGalaga]

Ishraqiyun の投稿を引用：

BossGalaga の投稿を引用：

It was reported almost a year ago there were 6000 games on Steam. That number has obviously grown since then but let's just use that number for now.

If you pay 80 bucks a month for unlimited access to Steam's catalog (woo, sounds like a lot!) then each developer/publisher will get 0.01 cents for every game. Wow, if enough people subscribe to this full package developers/publisher could easily be raking in almost a whole penny! And in the long run...pennies even!

See a problem there?

I see a problem - you made the assumption that Steam has a single user.

No, I didn't. 6000 games (that number has grown since nearly a year ago so this is a conservative estimate) divided by 80 bucks is 0.01 cents. Now, you see I said that developers/publishers could be making a penny even pennies.

Now when Steam's #1 and #3 most played games (Dota 2 and TF2) are FREE, just how many people do you think are going to be shelling out 80 bucks a month?

[Ishraqiyun]

BossGalaga の投稿を引用：

Ishraqiyun の投稿を引用：

I see a problem - you made the assumption that Steam has a single user.

No, I didn't. 6000 games (that number has grown since nearly a year ago so this is a conservative estimate) divided by 80 bucks is 0.01 cents. Now, you see I said that developers/publishers could be making a penny even pennies.

Now when Steam's #1 and #3 most played games (Dota 2 and TF2) are FREE, just how many people do you think are going to be shelling out 80 bucks a month?

Don't make the mistake that you think that I'm recommending this model. All I'm asking is if it works music and movies, might it work for games?

But you're not arguing with me, your actually arguing against say, Spotify. Who charge much less - $12.00 per month - and would have to "distribute" the smaller amount even wider. Yet they survive, and even flourish.

Besides, the fee isn't naively distributed to everyone equally, it's applied in a weighted fashion, with more popular downloads attracting more of the fee and less popular attracting less. Surely you don't need me to tell you that when someone streams Taylor Swift, Tiny Tim does not get any of that money too...

[The End]

Ishraqiyun の投稿を引用：

BossGalaga の投稿を引用：

No, I didn't. 6000 games (that number has grown since nearly a year ago so this is a conservative estimate) divided by 80 bucks is 0.01 cents. Now, you see I said that developers/publishers could be making a penny even pennies.

Now when Steam's #1 and #3 most played games (Dota 2 and TF2) are FREE, just how many people do you think are going to be shelling out 80 bucks a month?

Don't make the mistake that you think that I'm recommending this model. All I'm asking is if it works music and movies, might it work for games?

But you're not arguing with me, your actually arguing against say, Spotify. Who charge much less - $12.00 per month - and would have to "distribute" the smaller amount even wider. Yet they survive, and even flourish.

Besides, the fee isn't naively distributed to everyone equally, it's applied in a weighted fashion, with more popular downloads attracting more of the fee and less popular attracting less. Surely you don't need me to tell you that when someone streams Taylor Swift, Tiny Tim does not get any of that money too...

Now you mention Spotify, try google "spotify Financial Results" and you'll see why Valve probably won't have any interest in this.

Valve can't split the money evenly between all publishers, those with AAA titles would not be pleased, those who would win the most, would be the companys with shovelware, my guess is 40% or more of the titles would fit that discription.

The problem with streaming, way too many people has not good enough internet, and if they keep it as it is now (you download the full game) Steam would be a vending machine for all the 0dayz release thiefs.

Would never fly imho.

Edit.
Personally I would never subscribe, I buy the games I like, that is far cheaper than feeding a company with 50$ every month, why pay for something you will never use, not even 5$ would tempt me.

[Naota]

Adding up the past 8 years (almost) of buying games on Steam , and it comes to about 5 dollars a month - and I still have more games than i can play.

A monthly subscription would have to be less than that, or I wouldn't be interested, and, heh, that ain't gonna happen.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Ishraqiyun の投稿を引用：

Well if BOTH models were on offer, which would you choose?

For example:
a) Buy each game on demand (control your expense)
b) Pay $50 per month for unlimited access to 90% of Steam's catalog.
c) pay $80 per month for unlimited access to 100% of Steam's catalog. (That last 10% are new releases or DLC or EA or some other perk).

Considering that I spend far less than $600 ($50 x 12) per year on gaming, I would of course pick a).

I think at the peak I spent about $500 one year.

I think aiming for $100-$200 may be good. $300 if I buy a new console system.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Etnopluralism / Aliquis の投稿を引用：

A more fair and correct comparision would be:
How much do people pay now and how much would they pay in a subscription model? And I don't think the average person pay $80 / month now so as such it would generate MORE money for the industry if people paid for such a subscription. But I think that's too expensive for the average person.

Considering that I tend to get a game years after it comes out and then play it months or a year after that...the amount of money I'd pay for a subscription model would be quite low.

It'd basically be a fee to keep my Steam account active -- at which point I'd probably eat my losses and just quit Steam altogether.

If it's not a continuous fee, I might consider it, but then at best I'd probably only subscribe in the summer months. So maybe about three months per year.

And let's say there's a $20 game I plan to pick up at full price, or there are four $5 games that I plan to pick up because they're discounted -75% from $20. Translating that directly into a willingness-to-pay, that means I'd pay about $6.67 per month.

That's far less than the $50 figure cited in one of the preceding posts.

[laff]

I'd rather not let someone else decide for me which games I'm allowed to play that month.

Besides, the subscription would cost way too much considering all of the games currently on Steam.

[YoWutSup]

Ishraqiyun の投稿を引用：

Well if BOTH models were on offer, which would you choose?

For example:
a) Buy each game on demand (control your expense)
b) Pay $50 per month for unlimited access to 90% of Steam's catalog.
c) pay $80 per month for unlimited access to 100% of Steam's catalog. (That last 10% are new releases or DLC or EA or some other perk).

When you do the math, either $50 or $80 they both add up quite a lot in just a few months, it would be very expensive for the customer. And also, you would need a few thousands of customers just for a company to pull in a few bucks per month, considering how many games Steam has to offer.

And what if I decided to release a simple tic tac toe game, should my game be treated the same compared to a much bigger budget triple A title? How would Steam determine who gets the bigger cut? Like I said before, a subscription for Valve games only could work, but a subscription for the entire Steam catelog would seem to likely fail. It would just be impossible to keep the rates reasonable for customers while companies generating a decent profit.

[nxmt]

Don't mean to shove my big boy pants around but eventually when you get older and have much less time to invest in games and an even smaller interest in "collecting", dedicated streaming for games like Netflix is a very attractive offer.

EA is already doing similar at a very a low cost and albeit with a rather limited amount of games but they seem to get the idea.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

awkward teenage lesbians の投稿を引用：

Don't mean to shove my big boy pants around but eventually when you get older and have much less time to invest in games and an even smaller interest in "collecting", dedicated streaming for games like Netflix is a very attractive offer.

I've had the opposite experience.

As you suggested, as a child, I had too few games and too much time. Now, as an adult, I have too many games and too little time.

But this means that dedicated streaming is a worse choice for me, since I would be taking more time to enjoy the same amount of game.

So I could either save money and buy the game at a discount, or I could pay for streaming time and more streaming time, repeatedly.

[Aliquis Freedom & Ethnopluralism]

Economically $10 / month for all games would be way better for me than what I'm currently paying, economically.

And since most people play free to play games or the same game the whole time it may not be worse for those who sell the games.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Etnopluralism / Aliquis の投稿を引用：

Economically $10 / month for all games would be way better for me than what I'm currently paying, economically.

And since most people play free to play games or the same game the whole time it may not be worse for those who sell the games.

But wouldn't those people just stop playing?

[🍋 Lemonfed 🍋]

If they ever do subcribtion I have a feeling it's going to be divived into different ''channels'' like subcription where you pay a certain ammount of money per month to access a given selection of game.

like war games ? activision wargame channel all of your Call of duty for 15$ per months ... you want to play Final fantasy ? subcribe to square enix role playing network for another 15$ per months or you can take a square/activision combo for 25$ per month and save 5$.

and that war game from Enix ? it's on it's own channel called Square Enix action game since they're too cheap to put all their game in one place ... and it's another 5$ if you want it.

and that's going to cost more for the customer rather then just buying dirrectly the game you really want to play.