A Few Brief Thoughts on Valve & Steam

As far as I’m concerned, there are four major consoles on the market right now: Nintendo Wii, Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Valve’s Steam. Of course, you have to be willing to have a somewhat flexible view of what being a console is to share this view, and there are certainly other arguments to be made about what Steam actually is or is not, but right now it’s as close as you can get to a universal PC-based platform for games and content delivery. And, though I can’t necessarily stream HBOGo or Pandora through Steam (nor would I want to), it has become the central source for my PC life.

Even if you don’t buy into the idea that Steam is at least console-ish, it’s hard to deny the substantive impact it has had on the PC-gaming industry. Which is why I have this kernel of fear that steeps in the recesses of my mind, a vision that’s just a little too clear, a little too easy to conjure. It’s a vision of some Joystiq or Kotaku headline that reads something like, “Activision buys majority stake in Valve.” Besides the terrible question of how you might portmanteau that company now (Activalvizzard?) the possibility that this company might someday be lured from its lofty philosophies is deeply troubling.

I realize that many of us in the media and many of us in forums have labelled Valve a White Knight in an otherwise a dark time. Some would argue that there are no shortages of reasons to keep a skeptical eye turned ever toward a company that has the keys to the locks of our games -- games that some of us have spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars on. After all, if a company like Blizzard can undergo a cultural shift that seems to skew them away from the interests of their customers, presumably anybody can.

But for now, I can’t help but feel that the recent whispers of the PC returning as a competitive force in the business of gaming can largely be attributed to the success of Valve and Steam.

It’s not often I say this, but our own Pyroman brilliantly predicted the future back in September, 2003 with an article that I really wish I had written. At this point GWJ was still in its infancy, trying to figure out whether it was a news site, a forum community or a place for commentary. Less than a month later we would be the site that broke the news of the Half Life 2 source code theft -- though most of the attribution ended up going to Slashdot which referenced our story, so I guess I’m discovering that I’m still bitter about that -- but Pyro’s analysis of Steam which was only just coming out of beta at the time was almost prescient.

It talks about all the ways the kind of technology that powers Steam could be misused and at a time where everyone was worrying about server load issues, this was an article that looked forward and asked:

“Do you trust Valve to not screw you? As I've said in several speeches made to my dog while we were hiding from the government mind control beams, Digital Rights Management is a technology ripe for abuse that only works if it's not abused. For every Apple iTunes store there are 30 BuyMusic.coms. DRM has a horrible track record of benevolent enforcement with other media. However Valve has a great track record with regards to community. They treat their fans well and give all kinds of content away, if any developer can pull this off it's them. Really though, it's about trust. Who do you trust? “

In the end, or more precisely to date, Valve has been one of the companies that ended up being worth the trust a lot of people invested. But, once the genie was out of the bottle, we were rewarded with the treatment we’ve seen from companies like UbiSoft, Activision and, yes, even Blizzard. While we can take some solace that our faith was well placed in the hands of Valve, they have blazed a trail that far less benevolent overlords have since trod.

But, there’s still no guarantee about tomorrow, just like there wasn’t in 2003. I hope that Steam remains a reliable, customer-friendly platform. I would even say that I expect it to, that for what it’s all worth I actually trust Gabe Newell and the team he has put together to walk that tightrope line of innovative, successful and service-oriented. In an industry that constantly seems to one-up itself on marginalizing its customers, it’s hard not to be waiting for the other shoe to drop.

As the latest Summer Sale takes shape on Steam, it’s pretty easy to get a belly-load of warm fuzzies about Valve. After all, before them the idea of clearance discounts for games were little more than a way for the Gamestops of the world to unload two year old EA Sports titles and last Christmas’s duds. Now I can get games like Max Payne 3, Saints Row the Third and Shogun 2 for deep discounts.

That’s all well and good, but the more I invest my games into Steam, the more I can’t help but note how that means I am now married to the platform. Should the unthinkable come to pass and Valve suddenly take a turn for the worst, there’s no eject cord. No emergency exit. I either have to continue using their platform or give up, well let’s just say a lot of games.

I try to keep this in mind this time of year, because every time I start unloading dough into the Steam sales, it’s not just a transaction where I now own a product. It is a commitment that I will remain a Steam client. It is another root planted into the ground tended by Valve. And, for now and hopefully the foreseeable future I am comfortable with that because they have earned my trust.

But, I have a laundry list of companies that have done the same in the past, and most of those names eventually let me down. So, a part of me waits and worries.

Comments

Sparhawk wrote:

If worst comes to worst, I will find a way to get all my games back that I have paid for. No qualms about how to get them even. Every way is good then in my eyes, despite EULAs, copyright and what not.

Just wondering - can anyone think of any examples of companies pursuing people for 'unDRMing' their games when it's for personal use and enforcing a EULA? The only examples I can think of is Blizzard when looking for an angle to stop hackers/botters and private servers in their games (WoW/D2), or for large scale/commercial piracy (which is another discussion as it's pretty much a prerequisite that you don't care about the EULA in that case).

It would seem like any company in the position where they would have a big problem with their customers breaking DRM, such as their online service going offline long term/permanently, is also probably not going to be in the position to pursue them as they're going out of business or in poor health.

Great article Elysium. While I find it difficult to accept being married to Steam, it was the best decision of my PC gaming life.

PyromanFO wrote:

Steam is the best gaming service on the PC, so they pretty much just swim in money pits every day. Their main competitors for your gaming time (services are measured in how much you use them) are F2P, consoles and mobile.

Somewhat recently Steam introduced F2P games perhaps to fend off competition. That, or they decided their money pit needed another hose =D

Something to bear in mind is that Gabe is only nominally a CEO. I suspect that the majority of the employees of Valve -- all as co-owners, per the leaked handbook -- would not allow the company to become overtly evil.

TheHipGamer wrote:

Something to bear in mind is that Gabe is only nominally a CEO. I suspect that the majority of the employees of Valve -- all as co-owners, per the leaked handbook -- would not allow the company to become overtly evil.

I find your thoughts on Mob Mentality interesting and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

That said, let's all hope for the best!

TheHipGamer wrote:

Something to bear in mind is that Gabe is only nominally a CEO. I suspect that the majority of the employees of Valve -- all as co-owners, per the leaked handbook -- would not allow the company to become overtly evil.

This is true. My understanding is that Gabe's primary responsibility at this point is to shield the other Valve employees from being targeted by memes and gifs. He is very good at his job.

Mister Magnus wrote:
TheHipGamer wrote:

Something to bear in mind is that Gabe is only nominally a CEO. I suspect that the majority of the employees of Valve -- all as co-owners, per the leaked handbook -- would not allow the company to become overtly evil.

I find your thoughts on Mob Mentality interesting and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

That said, let's all hope for the best!

I did not say evil, just "overtly evil". The popularity of Steam is its golden ticket; selling out to EA, breaking their DRM promises, or otherwise causing their service to fall out of favor would negatively impact their bottom line. Since the company is essentially flat, that means that (a) everyone would suffer, and (b) anyone could respond.

I expect that the Valve corporate model has some failure mode, but their organizational principles are sufficiently different that I also expect that failure mode would come from an out-of-context problem and result in something quite unexpected (unless the failure takes the form of transitioning to a more traditional corporate structure, in which case we know all too well how that will go).

I wrote some similar thoughts when Valve launched Steamworks:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/arti...

Ironically, since I wrote that one of Valve's biggest critics - Stardock - decided to get out of the digital storefront business and start selling its titles through Steam.

I like Valve. A lot. But they are a company, and company exists to make as much money as possible. Good management realizes that the best way to do this in the long run is to keep customers happy, but good managers are just people. They die, they retire, they decide to pursue new careers. And once the good managers are gone, things can go to sh*t real quick.

Recently I decided I just won't buy from Steam anymore. There are far too many good games to play and I have far too little time to play them, so I'm just going to grab games that are DRM-free. Fortunately, a wealth of choice is what lets me do this, which Steam is partially responsible for in the first place.

Faceless Clock wrote:

I like Valve. A lot. But they are a company, and company exists to make as much money as possible

As the owner of a company and veteran of a number of start-ups, some of which succeeded and some of which flopped, I politely disagree. Some companies exist to make enough money to stay afloat while still being fun; some are lifestyle businesses, designed to give the owners creative and/or personal freedom.

Faceless Clock wrote:

Good management realizes that the best way to do this in the long run is to keep customers happy, but good managers are just people. They die, they retire, they decide to pursue new careers.

What's interesting here is that Valve made a conscious decision to not have "management"; it's a flat structure instead of a hierarchy.

shoptroll wrote:

However, it's worth noting that (and this probably wasn't known at the time of writing) Valve is opening up their processes a little more by turning over some of the decision making to the customers and developers/publishers that use the service. So I don't think they're about to make any sort of heel turn in the near future.

I'm a little worried about one thing though, from the linked article:

The only thing that might be lost is an association between Steam and quality. There’s plenty of terrible stuff on Steam – we gave Flatout 3 28% – but for indie games, it’s become something of a badge of honour. Now it’ll be decided primarily by excitement, which denotes a good trailer and not much else.
RolandofGilead wrote:

I'm a little worried about one thing though, from the linked article:

The only thing that might be lost is an association between Steam and quality. There’s plenty of terrible stuff on Steam – we gave Flatout 3 28% – but for indie games, it’s become something of a badge of honour. Now it’ll be decided primarily by excitement, which denotes a good trailer and not much else.

I think they're jumping the gun. Greenlight seems to be a way for them to get cues on what's worth consideration, not a blunt "it got X votes, hand them a contract". As I understand it, Valve still gets final decision, so hopefully they keep crap out, and developers still have to sell their game to gamers well, which can include (and should in my opinion) working demos.