Gabe Newell on customer-based pricing

[sgc_meltdown]

We’re more looking into what Valve can do with payment services than engine services.

The industry has this broken model, which is one price for everyone. That’s actually a bug, and it’s something that we want to solve through our philosophy of how we create entertainment products.

What you really want to do is create the optimal pricing service for each customer and see what’s best for them. We need to give customers, all of them, a robust set of options regarding how they pay for their content.

An example is – and this is something as an industry we should be doing better – is charging customers based on how much fun they are to play with. Some people, when they join a server, a ton of people will run with them. Other people, when they join a server, will cause others to leave. We should have a way of capturing that. We should have a way of rewarding the people who are good for our community.

So, in practice, a really likable person in our community should get Dota 2 for free, because of past behaviour in Team Fortress 2. Now, a real jerk that annoys everyone, they can still play, but a game is full price and they have to pay an extra hundred dollars if they want voice.

That’s just one example. Another is how much people want to pay for items. Some people are happy paying a dollar. They’ll pay a dollar over and over and over again, others want to be different, others want to run servers and create mods.

Each one of these people should represent a different monetisation scheme for the community as a whole.

So, one thing we do have are these high value customers. We’ve now started connecting their Steam account to their PayPal account, and now these people aren’t just paying for games, they’re making money from them. And it’s not just a little bit of money, it’s $20,000 per week some people were making.

Their cost for Team Fortress 2 is negative $20,000 per week. You’re never going to see that in a retail store. [Laughs]

That’s the best thing in the long run for the community. Our challenge is to knit all the positives and negatives of our community together so that everyone who is one Steam is adequately tailored for – and that doesn’t at all look like a RRP on a box. It’s people who make hats get paid. People who are really popular play for less, or free.

http://www.develop-online.net/features/ ... l-on-Valve , the very last bit

yeah I'd pay mmos if I was given a 100% discount for not being a twat.

 

[Exmit]

An example is – and this is something as an industry we should be doing better – is charging customers based on how much fun they are to play with. Some people, when they join a server, a ton of people will run with them. Other people, when they join a server, will cause others to leave. We should have a way of capturing that. We should have a way of rewarding the people who are good for our community.

Yeah Hitler had also a way with the Jews who were bad for the community according to him.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

This shit's more vile than anything that's been spewed by Hines or Laidlaw.

 

[Captain Shrek]

As much as I like Gabe, this is a childish idea.

 

[Dire Roach]

[Laughs]

 

[sgc_meltdown]

first he ate the team killers

and I didn't speak out for I was not a team killer

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

The glorious God-Gaben of Mankind rewards the faithful and punishes the heretic, the mutant, the xeno.

 

[pocahaunted]

As much as I like Gabe, this is a childish idea.

How can one even like this fat ass retard?

 

[Topher]

So how exactly were people making $20,000 a week with Team Fortress 2?

 

[Raapys]

They made horse armor.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

The sales of hats, weapons, and map stamps. A lot of the recent hats/maps/weapons added to TF2 were community made (In a fair number of cases cleaned up by Valve to look a bit more official), and then the money from items sold in the store goes to the creator.

Five Steam community members participated in the initial round of content creation. Rob Laro, Shawn Spetch, Steven Skidmore, Spencer Kern, and Shaylyn Hamm created items for Team Fortress 2 which were then made available to other community members for purchase from the in-game Mann Co. Store. Today they received checks for the first two weeks of sales, with royalties ranging from $39,000 to $47,000 per person...

..."It's astounding that so many people want to purchase the items that came out of the community," said Spencer Kern, TF2 community content creator. "The response exceeded my wildest expectations. There really is no doubt at this point that there's a huge demand for community-created content in TF2 and, hopefully, more games will start to tap into this demand."

Funds from sales of community members' items were to be deposited directly into their PayPal accounts. However, within days, the revenue that their items generated exceeded PayPal's cap on the maximum deposit size. While Valve made alternate payment arrangements for the others, two of the community members flew to Seattle to receive their first checks directly.

That's when it was first added. I believe they didn't sell community items previously added to the game until they were in contact with the people who made them, which is why more hats trickled into the store and (I think) some hats are still missing from the store.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Model and texture hat = $46,000 dollars profit

Create and maintain unofficial bugfix patch over many versions and years = $0 dollars profit or possibly drog

 

[Hobo Elf]

So, in practice, a really likable person in our community should get Dota 2 for free, because of past behaviour in Team Fortress 2. Now, a real jerk that annoys everyone, they can still play, but a game is full price and they have to pay an extra hundred dollars if they want voice.

So in other words, they want to create a sort of dystopian online community where everyone must smile and be nice or big brother will crucify them and then charge them extra dollars.
Seriously, if someone is gonna act like a faggot, I'll call them a faggot.

 

[Metro]

Not much to worry about since Valve only produces one title every three or four years.

 

[SCO]

As much as I like Gabe, this is a childish idea.

How can one even like this fat ass retard?

Well.. He is a fat ass, granted. He's hardly a retard. When you make millions of dollars next Wednesday just don't forget to buy me the Deus Ex Augmented edition.

The American mentality in action - he's not a retard because he is a accomplished software engineer, no, it's because he became rich.

 

[MetalCraze]

Good thing I'm not stupid enough to give money to Steam like the majority of the Codex and cause Valve to invent more and more ways to rip off the cattle.

Retards who buy from Steam fully deserve anything that's coming to them.

 

[Angthoron]

The industry has this broken model, which is one price for everyone. That’s actually a bug, and it’s something that we want to solve through our philosophy of how we create entertainment products.

Yes, and this is exactly why $1 = 1€, because Steam/Valve believes that one price for everyone is a broken model.

 

[pocahaunted]

That's a bit biased, he actually became rich because the world is full of actual, borderline braindead, retards. It just speaks volumes about how dumb people in general are - in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king indeed.

 

[Captain Shrek]

That's a bit biased, he actually became rich because the world is full of actual, borderline braindead, retards. It just speaks volumes about how dumb people in general are - in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king indeed.

Remember. The world includes you. So... are you a millionaire?

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

The industry has this broken model, which is one price for everyone. That’s actually a bug, and it’s something that we want to solve through our philosophy of how we create entertainment products.

Yes, and this is exactly why $1 = 1€, because Steam/Valve believes that one price for everyone is a broken model.

Isn't it the same amount of work?

 

[Kraszu]

As much as I like Gabe, this is a childish idea.

How can one even like this fat ass retard?

Well.. He is a fat ass, granted. He's hardly a retard. When you make millions of dollars next Wednesday just don't forget to buy me the Deus Ex Augmented edition.

The American mentality in action - he's not a retard because he is a accomplished software engineer, no, it's because he became rich.

Fine. He's not a retard because he's smart and he used that smartness to make millions of dollars. Satisfied?

Did he? It was more luck to make first service where you buy games online, and you download them from the server rather then wait for box to arrive. Valve was one of the few developers with popular enough title to make it work.

 

[Kraszu]

That's a bit biased, he actually became rich because the world is full of actual, borderline braindead, retards. It just speaks volumes about how dumb people in general are - in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king indeed.

Remember. The world includes you. So... are you a millionaire?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0sLuRsu1Do

Oh and my post wasn't to support Captain Shrek you are both wrong.

 

[Konjad]

As much as I like Gabe, this is a childish idea.

How can one even like this fat ass retard?

Well.. He is a fat ass, granted. He's hardly a retard. When you make millions of dollars next Wednesday just don't forget to buy me the Deus Ex Augmented edition.

The American mentality in action - he's not a retard because he is a accomplished software engineer, no, it's because he became rich.

Fine. He's not a retard because he's smart and he used that smartness to make millions of dollars. Satisfied?

Did he? It was more luck to make first service where you buy games online, and you download them from the server rather then wait for box to arrive. Valve was one of the few developers with popular enough title to make it work.

Not really. Steam became successful only because it forced HL2 to be registered on it and Half Life was a very popular game, so it was certain many people will buy sequel.

 

[Kraszu]

As much as I like Gabe, this is a childish idea.

How can one even like this fat ass retard?

Well.. He is a fat ass, granted. He's hardly a retard. When you make millions of dollars next Wednesday just don't forget to buy me the Deus Ex Augmented edition.

The American mentality in action - he's not a retard because he is a accomplished software engineer, no, it's because he became rich.

Fine. He's not a retard because he's smart and he used that smartness to make millions of dollars. Satisfied?

Did he? It was more luck to make first service where you buy games online, and you download them from the server rather then wait for box to arrive. Valve was one of the few developers with popular enough title to make it work.

Not really. Steam became successful only because it forced HL2 to be registered on it and Half Life was a very popular game, so it was certain many people will buy sequel.

" Valve was one of the few developers with popular enough title to make it work" ya really.

 

[Raapys]

As much as I like Gabe, this is a childish idea.

How can one even like this fat ass retard?

Well.. He is a fat ass, granted. He's hardly a retard. When you make millions of dollars next Wednesday just don't forget to buy me the Deus Ex Augmented edition.

The American mentality in action - he's not a retard because he is a accomplished software engineer, no, it's because he became rich.

Fine. He's not a retard because he's smart and he used that smartness to make millions of dollars. Satisfied?

Did he? It was more luck to make first service where you buy games online, and you download them from the server rather then wait for box to arrive. Valve was one of the few developers with popular enough title to make it work.

Yeah, it was pretty simple actually. They forced everyone who played the user-made mod Counter-strike to use Steam, and thus they immediately had a huge user base.

 

[MetalCraze]

Did he? It was more luck to make first service where you buy games online, and you download them from the server rather then wait for box to arrive. Valve was one of the few developers with popular enough title to make it work.

Steam wasn't the first.

With Steam you wait for Jesus to arrive to play the game because Gabe won't let you even if they let you to download it until it arrives in boxes everywhere else.

The popularity of HL2 and aggressive Valve campaign to force online DRM in every country was the only thing which made Steam work.

I don't know why people complain though. Valve was selling activation-based online-DRM where you had to go online to play the SP game offline without any alternative - and cattle was more than gladly buying it which was a big flashing sign to Valve that they can do whatever the fuck they want with sheeple, including selling a mere digital copy for a price of a boxed game, and they will still pay. What's wrong now?