Left4Dead sales went up 3,000% during recent 50% off sale

PogMoThoin

The service, which now has 20 milion registered users, has partnerships with every major PC game publisher and offers full game downloads as well additional content and services for more than 350 of the top PC games currently available. And with 100 per cent growth every year since the company started in 2004, it must be doing something right.......

The real success story for Steam, however, is that each successive major update or special offer creates sales spikes for the original titles as new players are tempted on board. Every time a new update is announced for Team Fortress 2, sales of the original game spike by at least 100 per cent and Steam registrations have been known to go up by 71 per cent during these periods. A recent half price offer on Left 4 Dead led to an eye-watering 3,000 per cent uptake in sales.

Full article here

And they say PC Gaming is dead

Samurai

whos they?

Matt Simis

Samurai wrote: »

whos they?

Yeah, I think "they" stopped saying that. Steam alone has an installed based competitive with the next gen consoles.


However:

From article wrote:

Any game exec out there pondering whether entertainment software is too expensive would be well placed take a close look at Steam's pricing policy. Newel reckons that the company has seen sales increase by 35 per cent with price cuts as small as ten per cent, whilst a 25 per cent cut can see the number of units shifted increase by 245 per cent

If they know that, then why are they still pricing everything when not on promotion above RRP for a boxed retail version? DOW2 is EUR49.99 on Steam and £24.99 in Game (£34.99 for Steelbook Special Ed.). Dunno the EUR pricing in Game, but I would assume its a lot less than EUR50..

witnessmenow

it going up by 3000% could just suggest that it wasnt selling at its original price which i personally feel is too high. Like i love L4D but at €50 its a bit too expensive. I thought something like €35 would be a fairer price.

PogMoThoin

I bought Left4Dead at pre-release, so others buying it for half that price pisses me off, but such is life. Its an enjoyable game and was worthy of my money. At €50 its a lot better value than €50 for FEAR 2, all 4.5 hrs of the single player. I agree with whats said about added content, this is what makes the difference.

Azza

PC gaming was never dieing. Only un-informed people say that still. Retail figures continue to drop but digital distribution makes up for it. However PC gaming is still and always has been much smaller than consoles when it comes to mainstream games. PC gaming continues to grow but consoles are growing a much faster rate.

PC gaming is changing. This article does not change the fact that developers (with a few exceptions) while not abandoning PC gaming are primarily focusing on consoles first. Each developer has to be taken on a case by case basis, but this has with certain developers lead to a drop in quaility of their output on the PC. PC gamers are getting fewer exclusives, fewer open world games and fewer games to take advantage of the PC's superior hardware. Developers won't be making more Crysis like games cause they can't port them over to consoles and thus restrict there userbase and potential profit. Most games that come to PC are only have a small graphical edge over the consoles versions and we are getting more dodgey console ports (although still most games that are multiplatorm are better on PC). The only traditional PC games that could buck that trend maybe Project Offest and Shattered Horizons.


The major success storys on PC are MMO's and casual gaming. RTS games are thankfully constricted to the PC as the console controller does not cut it but even a great game like Company of Heroes only did moderatly well on the PC. RTS games while still making a profit are not doing the business like years of old, just look at Relic's reasoning for changing Dawn of War 2. The FPS and CRPG genres are suffering quite badly at the moment on PC. The Flight Sim niche scene has got smaller still. Genres can go extinct, like the point and click adventure games we use to get on PC.

Like or hate it piracy is a significant problem for PC. Even if only 1 in a 100 pirated games are a lost sale thats a significant chunk in lost revenue. DRM is not helping and puts people of PC gaming futher while doing nothing to stop pirates (at best a slight delay).

I'm sure people will point to the leak of Street Fighter 4 on the Xbox 360 and go hey look consoles have large scale piracy too and proves the stupidity of holding up a game for release on the PC for piracy concerns. While console piracy is large PC piracy is far far larger go to any torrent site and you will see this easily.
http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_4.html

This gives an example of piracy on PC being ten times greater for Call of Duty 4 than piracy on the Xbox 360. 58,000 on Xbox 360 to 556,000 on the PC and thats just off one torrent site.

Some may also say piracy leads to sales (even the PC Gaming Alliance said it recently with regards the original Doom), but from people I have taked to its more a case of lost sales than a sale gained (not that it does not happen)

I've been to lan parties in Ireland with attendance of 20 to 200 and 95% of people at them pirate games and whatever else they can get online. Piracy is massive and widespread end of story.

Piracy is not the sole reason PC's are not as big as consoles. They don't have the advertising that consoles do and no single voice advertising the systems advantages and many people don't want the hassle of getting them set up over the plug and play option of the PC. There is an incorrect perception that PC's cost a fortune to maintain and update and that you have to send at least €1500 on a decent PC to play games at decent settings.


Anyway on the topic of Valve, they where always one of PC gaming big success storys, high quailty games that sell well. At retail L4D sold 1.7 million (PC and Xbox 360) that does not include steam sales so you can probably near double that already. Steam is a decent enough DRM system thats not to intrusive and is reasonably effective in keeping the pirates delayed most of the time.

Shame Valve are overcharging us Europeans for nearly every game and I'm boycotting them till it stops.

I payed more for L4D on Steam than I would of in the shops. L4D is a great game but its needs more content. €49.99 is abit much. The retail price of €39.99 over here is fine with me and for that you get a box, manual and disc meaning installation is easiar. The whole point of digital distrubtion is to cut out the middle man so us gamers get charge less and therefore can buy more games.

They are charging €50 for Dawn of War 2 while its €30.00 in Game.
So to hell with Valve at the moment. They make great games and offer a great service but I won't have my wallet hammered by then any more.

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

Here it is:

The reason a company would sell "soft" copies of software would be to cut down on costs, pass this on to the consumer and have a competitive advantage. Valve do not hire anyone with a business mind, they don't have a clue about E-Business. They have sold these games without a hard copy to maximise profits, not giving a damn about the consumer.

Same happened with dell. Dell are not so cheap anymore. You can buy a better computer online for the same or less, from another company. They all suck at the moment...

Snake Plisken

Well the 50% off deal caught my eye last weekend for €22, I couldn't really pass on it as it seems to get decent reviews all round, so Monday evening I signed onto my steam account and purchased the game, if it had been full price I wouldn't have bought it.

Burgo

Same as snake,bought it for half price,wouldnt have bothered to pay full price,it is a great fun game to play,but not worth 50 by a long shot imo.

Look at the price of Cod4 on steam,still 50 :S I think i spent 35 on it in town,and i thought hard copies were more expensive:rolleyes:

fugazied

Awesome game My 14 year old cousin was so excited to get a copy at that price.

steviec

Matt Simis wrote: »

If they know that, then why are they still pricing everything when not on promotion above RRP for a boxed retail version? DOW2 is EUR49.99 on Steam and £24.99 in Game (£34.99 for Steelbook Special Ed.). Dunno the EUR pricing in Game, but I would assume its a lot less than EUR50..

Because the numbers being given here are extremely misleading.

A game going on sale at half price to begin with isn't going to sell 3000% more (and the same for the other percentages given) than a game going on sale at full price.

However a game that's been out around 6 months and is selling next to no copies anymore is going to see a huge spike when you put it on promotion and the people who were waiting for a price cut jump on board.

None of these figures say a whole lot about anything to be honest.