With the advent of digital video game distribution, gone are the days of worrying whether a new release will be in stock or wondering if you’ve lost a game in your collection. After just a couple clicks on a computer or console, anyone can immediately access and play a game.
A 2021 Statista report shows that digital distribution has come to make up 83% of game sales, up from merely 20% in 2009 [1]. At the forefront of this wave is Valve, a first mover in the industry that has managed to buck all its competitors’ attempts to remove it from the throne. Valve’s digital distribution service, Steam, released in 2003, has the market cornered with a 75% market share on digital PC games. How have they managed to stay on top for so long [2]?
Design Philosophy
Gabe Newell, the co-founder of Valve, has stated that “the main goal of Steam has always been to increase the quality of the user’s experience by reducing the distance between content creators and their audience.” [3] At each step of the game creation process, from production to launch to distribution and maintenance, friction is reduced as much as possible for both the user and developer.
Building For Users
For the gaming community, Steam supports a variety of use cases including software delivery and maintenance, as well as community features like friends lists.
Purchasing games
Steam’s purchasing experience is quite comprehensive. Every game’s page contains videos, images, and descriptions, as is typical for a digital storefront. Steam differentiates itself from others, however, by virtue of its community features. On a game’s store page, potential buyers can read reviews from other users, browse game-specific forums, and see what curators have
to say about a game. Users can also see whether they’ve played similar games or have friends that own the game. These features provide useful feedback for buyers to make an informed decision on whether or not to purchase a game.
Store pages also have tags that show whether a game supports features like cloud saves, remote play, controller support, or achievements. Many of these features are exclusive to Steam and enable new use cases.
Remote play, for example, works by streaming gameplay from one device running Steam to another - a TV, laptop, or even a mobile device. Through remote play, users can access graphically demanding games on low-end systems and play from virtually anywhere. Controller support is another important feature that proves useful in many scenarios. Steam supports a “Big Picture” mode designed as a console-like experience, and with native controller support, navigating and playing games on the TV becomes a simple task. Even for players who don’t care to play on a TV, controller support has its uses for the simple fact that many games are designed to be played with controllers.
Library Management
Library management is also intuitive on Steam. Users can input search queries or use predefined filters to narrow down games by genre, features, hardware support, and more. Upon clicking a game, a large button labeled “PLAY” pops up on the screen, and just below, developer news and updates are shown. Steam’s library design also follows Nielson’s first usability heuristic, visibility of system status, very well [4]. A cursory glance at the library tells users which games are installed or not, which are updating, and whether any friends are currently playing them.
Friends List
Steam’s friends list is simultaneously feature-packed yet simple to navigate. Friends are separated into three distinct groups: in-game, online, or offline. Right-clicking on a friend’s name or icon brings up the option to chat with them, spectate, or even join in on their game, among other things. Thanks to Steam’s excellent friends list integration, these game-specific actions can conveniently be accessed both in-game by the player and from the Steam client itself.
One minor design issue arises in Steam’s “add a friend” feature. Clicking on this icon brings up an entirely separate window from which users can search for other users by profile name or friend code. Oftentimes, this window is slow to load, and friction could be reduced by simply querying and displaying results in the friends list window itself, under a separate tab.
The examinations above clearly indicate Steam’s community-oriented focus. Each interface features a multitude of methods for interacting with members of the Steam community, whether it’s random users, friends, curators, or developers. With such a large amount of features, the client interface tends towards visual clutter, especially for users unfamiliar with the product. While this detracts from the user experience a bit, Steam’s design language counteracts the issue with consistent styling on important features. At its core, a digital gaming platform should allow users to easily purchase, launch, and play games with their friends, and the client interface distinguishes these features with a bold green that contrasts well against Steam’s varying shades of blue.
Valve has created a feature-rich client while staying true to their design philosophy of reducing the distance between content creators and users. Keep in mind, however, that Steam is a digital distribution service that requires content to grow. While Valve initially relied on first-party developed games to attract users to their service, they have decreased their focus on game development in recent years. The question then arises: What incentives does Valve provide for developers for them to opt towards publishing their games on Steam?
Building For Developers
Since 2008, Valve has offered the Steamworks API, a set of tools and services developers can use free of charge to publish their games on Steam [5] With the release of Steamworks, Valve sought to break down the traditionally enormous barriers to entry for developers seeking to produce and distribute copies of their games. This development has in the last decade led to the proliferation of indie games, games developed by smaller studios lacking the financial support of larger publishers.
Steamworks offers a vast array of tools developers may find useful during development. For example, online multiplayer games can simply use Steamworks to support features like player authentication, peer-to-peer or dedicated servers, anti-cheat, and matchmaking services. Games can also be closely integrated into the Steam client through tools providing stats and achievements, microtransactions, cloud saves, and other community features.
Another portion of the development process Steamworks streamlines is post-production, which for game studios typically entails maintenance work, including bug fixes, or ongoing content creation in the form of free updates or DLC. Whenever game patches need to be made, developers can upload a new build to Steam’s servers via SteamPipe [6]. This tool provides developers with the ability to freely push or roll back builds, view update sizes before enabling public access, and efficiently and quickly deliver new content to players. By simplifying this workflow, developers can focus their efforts entirely on content creation in the pursuit of growing their player base and retention rate.
The Steamworks API, with its comprehensive feature set, proves to be a valuable tool for any developer. Instead of spending time building out a suite of middleware to support required game features or worrying over how to distribute and support their game, developers can facilitate the entire process with Steamworks.
Key to Success
Many attribute Steam’s success to its large, enduring user base and high game sales (Valve takes a 30% cut from all sales and transactions). While true, these points are merely a consequence of what makes Steam’s business model so successful - Steamworks. Steamworks is the engine under the hood, attracting developers who introduce new games onto the platform. These games then attract users who provide value in the form of sales and a persisting community upon which Steam thrives, all while Valve pays nothing at all for any of the content on their platform.
In this sense, Valve has truly succeeded with Steam’s design philosophy. For developers, the provisioning of Steamworks greatly reduces the friction required to release games on Steam, and for players, Valve has continued iterating on Steam’s design over the years to polish the user experience. There’s a lot to be said when Steam remains highly usable despite being the most complex, feature-packed platform.
Prospects
Over the years, many major publishers have built their own digital distribution platforms to “compete” with Steam – Ubisoft’s Uplay, EA’s Origin, and Blizzard’s Battle.net, to name a few. There is a valid reason why none of these services have been able to emulate Steam’s success. Uplay, Origin, and Battle.net are all publisher-exclusive services and thus, are automatically disadvantaged by having far less content available to users.
Epic Games’ Epic Games Store, released in late 2018, is a promising newcomer to the industry. Its first draw is taking a 12% cut on sales rather than the industry-standard 30%. More importantly, however, is their offering of Epic Online Services (EOS), a Steamworks analog. The major differentiating feature between the two is that EOS is platform-agnostic. If a developer chooses to use Steamworks, then they are locked into publishing on Steam; with EOS, developers are free to integrate their game with any platform whatsoever. The potential upside of widespread adoption of EOS is enormous – Epic Games will have created a community independent of any one platform, a group from which they can draw revenue.
By catering towards both developers and players, Valve has managed to build Steam into the juggernaut it is today. With all the players and all the games on their platform, it’ll be incredibly difficult for any newcomer to compete effectively with Steam. If Epic Games continues to improve EOS and iterate upon its storefront’s design and features, then they might just be the first real competitor since Steam’s inception. Until then, Steam will remain the premier destination for anyone looking to get into the PC gaming world.
References
[1] Statista. (2021, May 5). Digital and physical game sales in the U.S. 2009–2018, by format. Retrieved April 14, 2022, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/190225/digital-and-physical-game-sales-in-the-us-since-2009/
[2] Bloomberg - Are you a robot? (n.d.). Bloomberg. Retrieved April 14, 2022, from https://www.bloomberg.com/tosv2.html?vid=&uuid=115a3b4e-bc73-11ec-beaa-6b6d74694577&url=L25ld3MvYXJ0aWNsZXMvMjAxMy0xMS0wNC92YWx2ZS1saW5lcy11cC1jb25zb2xlLXBhcnRuZXJzLWluLWNoYWxsZW5nZS10by1taWNyb3NvZnQtc29ueQ==
[3] News - Steam Passes 65 Million. (2013, October 13). Steam. Retrieved April 14, 2022, from https://store.steampowered.com/oldnews/12396
[4] Harley, A. (2018, June 3). Visibility of System Status. Nielsen Norman Group. Retrieved April 14, 2022, from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/visibility-system-status/
[5] Features (Steamworks Documentation). (n.d.). Steam. Retrieved April 14, 2022, from https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features
[6] Uploading to Steam (Steamworks Documentation). (n.d.). Steam. Retrieved April 14, 2022, from https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/sdk/uploading
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