Steam parent company Valve announced a new revenue split for its online video game marketplace late Friday evening, with the change in its distribution agreement giving developers more money as the number of unit sales increases. Normally, Valve takes around 30 percent of all game sales on Steam, with some exceptions for games for smaller developers in its Steam Direct program. That will remain the case for the first $10 million in sales a game maker or publisher earns. For all sales between $10 million and $50 million, the split goes to 25 percent. And for every sale after the initial $50 million, Steam will take just a 20 percent cut. “The value of a large network like Steam has many benefits that are contributed to and shared by all the participants. Finding the right balance to reflect those contributions is a tricky but important factor in a well-functioning network,” the company wrote in a statement on the Steam Community page. “It’s always been apparent that successful games and their large audiences have a material impact on those network effects so making sure Steam recognizes and continues to be an attractive platform for those games is an important goal for all participants in the network.” Valve is also letting developers be more transparent about game sales with an update to the confidentiality clause of its agreement. This updated agreement marks the most substantial change to Steam’s financial terms in the store’s 15-year history, and it seems clearly designed to entice more developers to stick around, instead of self-releasing games or going with the growing number of competing online game distributors. Steam became the dominant platform for PC games over the last decade primarily by loosening restrictions on getting onto its platform and becoming, early on, the primary destination for PC gamers to collect and launch titles, which is all done from a single piece of software. In 2017, Valve took in $4.3 billion in Steam revenue alone, not even counting microtransaction and downloadable content, according to game analyst Steam Spy. But over the years, big game developers and publishers have created their own distribution channels to more directly control aspects of their businesses like copyright restrictions, refunds, and game updates, as well as to avoid the revenue cut Steam would otherwise take. Blizzard, EA, Epic, and Ubisoft all now operate their own launchers, and Valve has seen its influence begin to wane. Additionally, as Valve as found itself mired in controversies over its increasingly lax stance on letting violent, hateful, and other questionable content onto its platform, a number of smaller, more curated game distributors like Itchio have become popular alternatives, especially for big-name indie game makers. Also, game chat platform Discord, perhaps the one company with the social infrastructure to rival Steam, recently launched its own Steam competitor, posing yet another existential threat to the dominance of Valve’s marketplace. All of this adds up to a precarious situation for Steam. Although it remains the biggest PC game marketplace, with more than 150 million registered users, the company clearly recognizes that it can’t rest on its laurels. Valve has started borrowing some social features from Discord to keep its built-in social advantage from slipping away, and it plans to launch its store in China, the world’s biggest gaming market, some time soon. But changing the Steam revenue split to more generous to developers is certainly a highly effective strategy to keep developers happy and sticking around.
0 Comments
After much anticipation, Ariana Grande finally dropped her music video for "Thank U, Next," and it's full of celebrity cameos (15, to be exact). Given that the video pays homage to our favorite rom-coms from the early 2000s — Legally Blonde, Mean Girls, 13 Going on 30, and Bring It On — it makes sense that Ariana tapped some of the characters from the films. Yep, we're talking about Jennifer Coolidge and Jonathan Bennett! Not to mention, Kris Jenner also makes a hilarious appearance. See all the cameos you might have missed ahead.
This site uses cookies for analytics, personalized content and ads. By continuing to browse this site, you agree to this use. Learn more
Facebook hasn’t had a hit show yet for its long-form video hub Watch, so it’s got a new plan: digging up some deceased cult favorites from television. First up, Facebook is making all episodes of Joss Whedon’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly free on Facebook Watch. There’ll be simultaneous viewing Watch Parties where fans can live-comment together for Buffy at 3 pm PT today, Angel tomorrow at 12 pm PT and Firefly on Sunday at 12 pm PT. Facebook recruited Buffy star Sarah Michelle Gellar to promote the launch. These shows aren’t original, and they’re far from exclusive, as they’re included in a Hulu subscription and are available to rent or buy on other platforms. But at least they’re not run-of-the-mill web content. With Facebook’s remake of MTV’s Real World not arriving until Spring 2019, these sci-fi and horror shows are the most high-profile programs available on the free ad-supported streaming service. The hope is that fans of these shows will come get a taste of Watch, and then explore the rest of its programming. However, Facebook downplayed this as a change is overarching strategy when I asked if it would be licensing more old TV shows. Instead, it’s trying to build a well-rounded mix of content. A Facebook spokesperson provided this statement:
There’s no guarantee Whedon fans will flock to Watch in droves. [TechCrunch owner] Verizon tried the same thing, bringing Veronica Mars and Babylon 5 to its Go90 streaming service. That failed to move the needle and Go90 eventually shut down. Meanwhile, Watch Party’s simultaneous viewing hasn’t blossomed into a phenomenon, but perhaps bringing the feature to Messenger (which TechCrunch reports Facebook is internally testing) could more naturally spur these social consumption experiences. Watch has made some progress since its lackluster August 2017 debut. Indeed, 50 million people now spend at least 1 minute per month with Watch. For comparison, more than 18 Snapchat Shows have over 10 million unique viewers per month. Facebook Watch users spend 5X longer watching than on clips discovered on News Feed videos. But Facebook Watch really needs to pour the cash in necessary to secure a tent-pole series — its Game of Thrones or House of Cards. That might mesh well with its new strategy of conceding the younger audience that’s abandoning Facebook in favor of targeting older users, CNBC reported. With so much free video content floating around and plenty of people already subscribing to Netflix, Hulu and/or HBO, it’s been tough for Watch to gain traction when it’s so far outside the understood Facebook use case. Laying a bed of diverse content is a good baby step, but it needs something truly must-see if it’s going to wedge its way into our viewing habits. Looks like Amazon Music is coming to Android TV, as Android Police has spotted a listing for the TV version of the app appearing now in the Google Play Store. It’s not available just yet, but there is an option to pre-register for it. Other music streaming services have been available on Android TV for some time. Spotify’s Android TV presence came way back in May 2016, and Tidal made the jump to Android TV back in December 2017. There are a few screenshots for the Amazon Music on the app listing that give a preview of how it will look, and the interface is quite clean and stripped down. Amazon Music comes bundled with Prime accounts, and provides access to over two million songs, ad-free. The upgraded tier, called Amazon Music Unlimited, gives you access to over 50 million songs on-demand, along with high-quality audio options. There’s no word on when the app will officially become available, but you can reserve it in the Play Store now. We knew 2018 was going to be a big one for the British royal family, but getting to see more of the firm's famous members — whether they were walking down the aisle, roasting each other in speeches, or getting their life at the polo — was a real treat this year. There were weddings, babies, pregnancies, and tours, all giving us deeper glimpses into their royal lives and more opportunities to feel like maybe, just maybe, we have more in common with the Windsors than we thought. It might be a hard choice, but now that we're nearing the end of 2018, it's time to pick your favorite royal of the year! Click on a photo to cast your vote before the poll closes on Dec. 21. Image Source: Getty / Anwar Hussein Who Was Your Favorite Royal Family Member This Year?
This site uses cookies for analytics, personalized content and ads. By continuing to browse this site, you agree to this use. Learn more
E Ink — a name synonymous with e-reader screens — just debuted a new writing Display technology called JustWrite. The tech offers the company’s familiar monochrome aesthetic — albeit in negative this time, with white on black. The key here, as with most of E Ink’s technology is minimal power consumption and low cost, the latter of which it was able to accomplish by dumping the TFT (thin-film-transistor LCD). Instead, it’s a thin roll that could be used to paper surfaces like conference rooms and schools, in order to let people write on the walls using a stylus with practically no latency, as evidenced in the below GIF. “The JustWrite film features one of E Ink’s proprietary electronic inks and offers similar benefits as E Ink’s other product lines: a paper-like experience with a good contrast and reflective display without a backlight,” the company writes. “The JustWrite film is an all plastic display, making it extremely durable and lightweight, with the ability to be affixed and removed easily, enabling writing surfaces in a variety of locations.” The technology could go head to head with the likes of Sony and reMarkable on drawing tablets, but E Ink appears to be more interested in embedded it in non-traditional surfaces. No word yet on how or when it will come to market, though the company is showing it off in person for the first time this week at an event in Tokyo. Facebook’s video-on-demand service Facebook Watch is getting a trio of familiar classics: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly. The social network is teaming up with 20th Century Fox to bring every episode of the shows to Facebook starting today. The shows aren’t exclusive to Facebook — you can purchase episodes from a variety of places, and the episodes can be streamed on Hulu — but earlier this week, Facebook rolled out its Watch Party feature to everyone, so groups of people can watch something at the same time. Facebook’s head of video Fidji Simo says in a blog post that she thinks a fan-favorite show like Buffy or Firefly will be a good way for “avid fan communities to experience them in new ways,” as well as a good way for newcomers to check them out for the first time, describing the experience like meeting up with friends when the episodes first aired on TV. The company will hold watch parties for each of the shows:
Bringing in fan-favorite shows also seems like a good way for the company to lead more fans to the service. Facebook has already been hard at work putting together its own original content, such as a reboot of MTV’s The Real World, a show starring Avengers: Infinity actress Elizabeth Olsen, and a pranking show from Kim Kardashian. For a number of your favorite onscreen couples, it's been quite a romantic year. Although 2018 isn't over just yet, everyone from Fifty Shades Freed's Anastasia and Christian to The Big Bang Theory's Sheldon and Amy have made things official with gorgeous wedding ceremonies. Since we're closing out wedding season in the real world, there's no better time to take a look at the most beautiful onscreen marriages we've gotten the chance to see so far this year. And if you're feeling nostalgic, check out last year's biggest fictional fairy tale weddings! |
AuthorAt the moment I'm exporting jigsaw puzzles in Prescott, AZ. Once had a dream of getting my feet wet with crayon art in Orlando, FL. Spent a year training wooden trains in Salisbury, MD. Spent childhood selling salsa for the underprivileged. Had moderate success building Virgin Mary figurines on the black market. Archives
April 2019
Categories |