Tencent's territory has already reached Gabe Newell's home. The rise of TGP may herald the end of the STEAM era

As the world's largest gaming platform, Steam is a platform that players love and hate. They love it because they can easily buy their favorite games on it, but they hate it because their wallets are emptied by half during a big holiday sale. Especially after Steam launched the Chinese version, more and more players began to fall into the trap of buying genuine games. In particular, Chinese players continue to flock to the Steam platform, which has continuously increased Gabe Newell's revenue.

At the Valve Developer Conference that ended not long ago, Valve announced a message that perfectly answered a question that has troubled players for a long time - where did the players' money go? In the past two years, Valve's revenue in Asia has skyrocketed by nearly 500%. And this Asia is East Asia, which includes five countries: China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, and Mongolia. The impact of North Korea and Mongolia can be basically ignored. So why can the revenue of the Steam platform in East Asia soar by 500% in just two years?

Constantly buying and buying

Steam, as a gaming platform, is attractive to players who want to invest money in it. The reason is inseparable from Steam's promotions, such as daily discounts, weekly discounts, mid-week discounts, and weekend discounts. The original prices of some games may be prohibitive for some players, but once they are discounted, players can no longer hold on.

Especially for some super blockbuster games, 4% of the purchasing users are from China. According to official data from Steam users, China only has 6 games on average, and most of them are free. China is slowly turning into a country of genuine games, and players are slowly accepting paid games. For example, the normal price of GTA5 released a few years ago was 360 yuan, and after discount it was more than 150 yuan. As a result, 11% of GTA5's sales came from Chinese users, that is, 225,000 copies sold, contributing tens of millions of yuan.

In addition, the Steam platform has a card system, and the account level can be upgraded by synthesizing card medals. Although the level itself does not affect the game process, the high-level players can contact different groups of players, thus forming a middle class in Steam. Therefore, there are also Chinese players who invest thousands of dollars in it, and some even buy games continuously, from the initial 2,000 games to 3,000 games. Many top game collectors have 5,000-6,000 games.

Among this group of players, there is also a very special group, the collectors of games that have been removed from the shelves. As a legitimate game platform, some of the games on it involve copyright or option issues. Once violated, they may be removed from the shelves. As the games that have been removed from the shelves are rare and expensive, their prices have skyrocketed, and they have become a symbol of status on Steam. Usually, players with a hobby of collecting also like to collect some things in real life, such as perfume. But compared to perfume, games on Steam are more cost-effective. Some players even said that if Steam was free, they would not have the desire to buy it.

A mature and forward-looking platform

In today's game market, which technology is the most mature and which game is the most popular, it is undoubtedly VR games. In order to promote VR games, the Steam platform has done everything it can! The Steam platform has targeted segmentation of game prices, and the types and quantities of games meet the needs of different users. At the same time, it has launched a price war, promoting VR games at half price or even for free. Many players will pass by the paid download of VR games, but the half-price or free games can make players ponder for a few seconds, and it is these few seconds that play a key role in whether a game can be successfully sold. At the same time, this is undoubtedly full of temptation for those who have time but no money, especially students, for the promotion of new technology games and the half-free and half-paid nature strategy.

Not only that, the Steam platform is very friendly to independent game production teams. Steam provides an excellent game sales platform for small and medium-sized production teams and independent developers. They no longer have to look at the publisher's face, burn CDs, or worry about being squeezed out of their living space by AAA masterpieces and unable to reach players.

In addition, the Steam platform will try to achieve a balance between games from big companies such as Activision and Ubisoft and small companies like Kui Luosheng that are not well-known, and will also be more inclined to independent developers in terms of channel promotion. This also makes Steam very popular with independent developers. Just like those unpopular advertisements, people are unwilling to spend time studying them, but these annoying advertisements are subjectively changing people's impressions. For example, sharing a certain advertisement can give you the right to download the independent developer's game for free. During major holidays, such a strategy will give priority to independent developers.

Three years ago, Steam launched the "Greenlight" project to support independent game development. On this platform, developers can publish information, screenshots and videos for their games, and then get enough community support so that the game can be selected and finally released. This sounds similar to the model of Kickstarter, a world-renowned crowdfunding platform, except that Kickstarter users use money to vote for products, while Greenlight raises the fame of the game.

Is it possible for other gaming platforms to shake up Steam's position?

Facing the huge pie of the Chinese game market, I am afraid no one would not be tempted. If other platforms want to get a piece of the Chinese game market, they will inevitably have to face off against Steam. So, is it possible for these platforms to shake Steam's position as the industry leader?

When it comes to similar game platforms abroad, the first ones to come to mind are EA's Origin and Ubisoft's Uplay. However, these two platforms have one thing in common, that is, most of them are promoting their own games, so the choices for players are too narrow. And although EA and Ubisoft of these two companies are rich, the experience is quite poor, and more people criticize them, and the criticism is even more miserable, which is even more miserable in comparison with Steam's success and good user reputation. The performance of Origin and EA makes people feel that EA is just coveting Steam's revenue generation, and is using a quick success attitude to get player traffic and money, so such a platform is impossible to threaten the Steam platform that respects players and developers.

Now that we have finished talking about foreign platforms, let's talk about domestic platforms. In fact, there are only a few domestic platforms like this. The more well-known ones are Shanguo and Tencent TGP, which just transformed this year. I think whether Shanguo can replace Steam is like whether Loongson can become Intel. First of all, Steam is quite friendly to China. It has simplified Chinese. Valve's own games basically have simplified Chinese versions. There are servers in Chengdu, Shanghai, and Beijing in China. Secondly, its own strength is not enough, at least the publicity is not done well. In addition, whether manufacturers are willing to cooperate with Shanguo, the domestic game review is simply a pitfall, and there is no rating system, so it is still a little unrealistic for Shanguo platform to replace Steam, not to mention that Shanguo is still selling steam keys.

As the leader of the domestic game industry, can Tencent compete with Steam? In fact, people who are familiar with this industry know that TGP will not only not be on par with Steam, but will be further and further away. As a game platform, Steam not only has social networking, but also all achievements, communities, groups, game updates, game reviews, item trading, cloud synchronization game progress, etc. In addition, it is called an open platform because it provides many, such as the Source engine library, for game developers to use directly.

On the other hand, TGP operates Penguin's own games, which are extremely simple and closed. I think most people only use it as an integrated login tool. The account function mainly relies on QQ, and there are no highlights. It is more similar to the model of Battle.net, and it can't even be called a platform. Such TGP certainly does not pose any threat to Steam.

So in summary, no matter whether it is other foreign or domestic platforms, there is currently no way to threaten the dominant position of the Steam platform, but this does not mean that the Steam platform can sit back and relax. There are still some unstable factors that may erupt at any time to shake the dominant position of Steam.

As we all know, the Steam platform has always been on the edge of policy, especially the "Internet Publishing Service Management Regulations" issued around March this year. Although it did not cause any serious damage to Steam, it was at least a serious warning, so domestic policies are likely to bring Steam down from the altar.

In addition to domestic policies, consoles are also likely to become a potential threat to the Steam platform. As we all know, the price of a high-configuration PC is shockingly high, while the price of a game console is very cheap. What's more, some games will be available on all platforms and console users can play them as well. So if Steam loses its dominant position one day, it is very likely that consoles will have a second spring.

Although the Steam platform does not have to worry about competition from similar platforms at present, it still needs to be wary of domestic policies and the resurgence of consoles. As the saying goes, it is easy to dodge an open attack but hard to guard against an arrow from the dark. Players do not want to see Steam being forced to leave the Chinese market one day.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.