chsdbacks Page 561
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The status of Sony and Microsoft.
Spark has received support from both Chinese and Japanese developers, much like Sony did back then.
Steam, on the other hand, has a wider selection of Western games.
In retrospect, it's clear that Sony emerged victorious over Microsoft.
If Steam doesn't do something at this point...
The future will be even more difficult because Spark's base is far larger than Sony's back then. Steam knows better than anyone how terrifying the Chinese market is.
Not to mention, Spark also has terrifying revenue from both mobile and PC platforms, shares in Ubisoft, and a large number of IPs from classic Western games, as evidenced by the performance of the Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Remake demo.
In the future, these games may not necessarily lose to Steam in the European and American markets due to their exclusivity.
Steam can't wait any longer, and neither can Aldrich.
A response is necessary.
After deciding to respond, Aldridge's first strategic opportunity was the Chinese New Year sales.
Steam started the Chinese New Year sale marketing campaign in 16.
This activity has been quite successful since 16.
Especially in the Chinese community.
Moreover, the timing is also suitable if we want to do some activities during the 19 Spring Festival special sale.
Aldrich knew very well that February was a holiday month in China, which meant that Spark employees would have several days off from work.
"A surprise attack on Pearl Harbor?"
Although this analogy doesn't seem quite right, Aldridge did have this idea.
Taking advantage of the fact that Xinghuo was unable to react during the Spring Festival holiday.
Let's launch a surprise attack.
Having determined the timing of the attack, Aldridge quickly identified several specific directions for the assault.
For example, persuading existing game developers to offer even greater discounts during the Spring Festival promotions.
For example, historically low prices for first-party games on Steam.
This includes announcing remasters for some older games on Steam, such as Half-Life.
Finally, there are plans to release a batch of Steam exclusive games, such as the development plans for CS2 and a new Left 4 Dead game.
Although Steam has focused on its platform in recent years, it still has an internal development department.
If we really pull ourselves together, we always have a hand to play.
However, the overall strategy this time is less about responding to a challenge and more about sending a message to all game developers: Steam is not to be trifled with.
The whole plan is not very difficult.
However, problems arose during the actual implementation.
first question.
Steam's staffing shortage problem.
There are too few people in the platform operations department.
In low-intensity battles, having fewer troops is not a problem at all, but in large-scale battles, the side with fewer troops will definitely be at a disadvantage.
Steam doesn't have as many marketers as Starfire and EPIC.
Normally, when Aldrich organizes an event, he sends out invitations to various game developers, and they can participate if they want. But the problem is...
In the current market environment.
Using this method again is definitely not going to work.
Firstly, sending out invitations is too uncontrollable; leaks are almost a certainty.
Secondly, there's another issue: Christmas in December, many games have already finished their big sales.
The cancellation of the Spring Festival sales in later generations was also because the two major promotions in December and February were only two months apart, which had a negative effect on each other.
Aldridge had already noticed this problem after two consecutive Spring Festival sales in 16 and 17.
Many manufacturers are not enthusiastic about the Spring Festival sales.
At this point, you must contact each manufacturer individually to get more discounts.
The problem is, there's nobody on Steam.
As mentioned before, the entire Steam operations department only has a few dozen people.
Many of them are programmers.
Therefore, a more realistic approach would be for Aldrich to directly distribute coupons in cash through Steam, similar to how Spark promotes sales by issuing coupons.
Spark's coupons are issued through a prepayment system.
I calculated it in detail before.
I won't explain further.
When it came to Aldridge, if he wanted to use the coupon, he also had to use this method.
That is, if a user buys a game for 100 yuan, the developer can only get 70% of the revenue after the revenue sharing.
Now, with coupons, users might only spend 80 on the game, but the developer still gets 70.
On the surface, Steam incurs no cost.
After all, the costs are borne by the users.
In reality, for capital, not making a profit is a loss.
This is not a joke.
It's very true, especially for Steam. If they didn't run the coupon event, they would definitely make money during the Lunar New Year sale, but they did run this event.
Not necessarily.
Ever since.
This brings us back to the beginning.
Aldridge reports to Gabe Newell.
According to his plan, he would allocate a total of $2 million in commissions to this promotional activity.
“Boss, $2 million is a lot, but compared to the long-term reduction in commission, it’s really nothing.”
"Moreover, this $2 million investment will definitely lead to a surge in sales, stimulate more developers, and let them see that they can make money on Steam."
"Finally, as long as we pay attention to adjustments when distributing the coupons, we can recover more than half of the activity costs."
These words finally persuaded Gabe Newell (GabeN).
He agreed to the marketing campaign and, quite humorously, even named it himself.
"Fire fire fire"
Chapter 142 Bringing Us to Our Battlefield?
So, after nearly half a month of back and forth, the first event was resolved.
Next, the second thing to do is to choose exclusive titles for major games.
To be honest, this exclusivity goes against Steam's values.
Steam's owner, Wilford, is very averse to exclusivity.
On many occasions, he has publicly criticized Starfire and EPIC for pursuing exclusivity, saying it would ruin the gaming ecosystem.
However, upon closer examination...
Steam's values are reminiscent of environmental protection initiatives in Western countries.
Back in the day, Steam built itself up by playing a series of first-party games.
Now Steam has succeeded.
They've started advocating against monopolizing things again.
However, at this moment, no matter what Steam says...
Spark and EPIC have ushered in the era of PC exclusivity.
Steam is something that has to work, whether it works or not.
At the very least, they need to demonstrate a competitive stance to stabilize market confidence in Steam.
Besides its own first-party games, Aldrich needs to find at least one or two more companies to support Steam.
Aldridge couldn't get anyone else to do this.
It could only be him.
I'll personally go and find those old partners who work with Steam to see if there's any opportunity.
Aldridge is looking for some exclusive partners.
He thought that although this matter would be a little difficult, it wouldn't be that difficult.
However, after he made a few phone calls with Steam's goodwill, they actually experienced the same thing that EPIC had gone through.
This is actually not difficult to understand.
Because at that time, even Steam itself hadn't figured out what kind of treatment it would give to exclusive games.
Ambiguous policies.
It's not enough to get others to make decisions.
"Although the current Spark program is not large in scale, it has great momentum."
"If you want to give people a high commission rate and make them exclusive on Steam, you also need to stir up public opinion."
"To make everyone believe in the future of Steam."
"In your current state, there's no way to convince them to choose you."
During an in-depth conversation with a developer.
Aldridge heard these views and agreed with them.
The problem is, the FireFireFire plan still needs time. What should we do now?
Steam has never done anything like this before.
"Spark, oh Spark, this is such a headache."
~~~
Beneath the surface, undercurrents were swirling.
The entire month of January.
On the surface, the global gaming community is relatively "peaceful".
Various media outlets and game developers are writing summaries and reports.
Various "year-end review" programs have emerged one after another.
Ma Xiao sat in the office.
I stared blankly at a report from CCTV News.
This is from the 2018 China Game Industry Report.
Several figures are quite interesting. One is that the revenue of China's game market reached 2344.4 billion yuan, accounting for 25.6% of the global game market.
Secondly, the actual sales revenue of the mobile game market was RMB 1239.6 billion, a year-on-year increase of 17.4%.
The last item is also the most important.
In overseas markets, Huaxia's self-developed online games achieved actual sales revenue of US$135.9 billion, a significant year-on-year increase of 34.8%.
Ma Xiao was in a pretty good mood all the way through this.