Those same criteria aren't even really applicable outside Steam. In our case because we really haven't pushed Impulse's community features (partly owing to Reactor still being in development, and the different way in which it's implemented) in the same way as they have, and other DD outlets don't really have anything comparable at all that I'm aware of.

My point is that 1) you can't really rely on a press release for "real" data, and 2) figures indicating customer investment/commitment to a platform are more interesting from the potential monopoly standpoint, because it gives you some idea as to whether people will even give alternatives a chance or how quickly the market could shift.

Figures based on how many accounts bought something in X period of time, or have logged in within Y (which in Steam's case may mean they just played a game they bought months or years ago that uses Steam DRM) don't tell you anything that interesting, and basically just serve as a bragging point.

Definition of acitive account at Steam is (IIRC):

User logged in in last 30 days

Account have at least 1 full game (free games dont count AFAIK)

 

On another note:

Yes I agree that there need to be competition in order for us (gamers) to get better services, lower prices etc. Problem is that in order to get higher marketshare Impulse and others need to try harder. For example when last year Paradox released HoI3 many customers who bought from GamersGate had to suffer 10+ hours to download relatively small game (700MB download IIRC) - lots of them promised at forum never to buy again from GG and to buy from Steam next time (I bough it from Steam who relesed game later than GG but thanks to fast Steam servers I was able to play it within 15 minutes after release).

Hrm. I've been buying stuff on Steam as a matter of course. I have a few things on Impulse because you folks got it working faster or had it released earlier. Might have to change that, coming soon here.

 

As it stands, I'm rather tired of companies discussing their number of 'active' or 'working' accounts. Maybe that's just my hatred for Blizzard talking. Hnh.

Do you have a URL to an official source for this?

 

Sure:

QUOTE=MikeBlaszczak;13289641 "Active accounts" are accounts that were online in the last 30 days. I'd have to double-check to be sure, but I think they're also accounts that own at least one game. We call this "accounts" because we don't know if each account represents a unique individual or not. /QUOTE

Link: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=13289641#post13289641

I can look for confirmation that account must have at least 1 full game (and free games dont count) but that will take some time (googling topics about Steam generate lots of search results, most of which are not related to what I was looking for)

It would be important to know if they have to have at least one paid for game since Valve uses steam to do free weekends and give things away. My first venture with steam was a free weekend with L4D1 and then later L4D2. I didn't purchase either game or anything else until long after both events.

For our purposes, their idea of active accounts (active in the past 30 days) seems reasonable.

When one talks about active accounts, the key question is how many people can a given promotion realistically target.

Isn't that like Zynga touting millions upon millions of Farmville players even though it seems like majority of those players never give Zynga a dime. I am not saying it's not relevant, but having 25 mil active accounts tells us what exactly? A lot of people will use anything once for free. It's an entirely different step to throw money at them.

That's the nub. While the default behavior of Steam is to pop up ads and the store page, both of those behaviors can be (and likely are) changed by users.

So I get counted as an "active account" because I got bored a few weeks ago and played a couple of rounds of Plants vs. Zombies, even though I never saw an ad, never browse the Steam store, don't use their friends or community overlay stuff, and close Steam as soon as I'm done playing.

I can't say how common that sort of usage might be, but unless I'm completely insane it'd probably indicate that the community users figure (even though that's inflated too by people who've just set up a page then abandoned it) is a better estimate of people who would actually be exposed to Steam marketing efforts.

I don't recall offhand if Steam runs at startup by default (think it does), but that'd add even more "logged in in the last 30 days" numbers that may not even be from users who've visited the steam site or played any steam games at all recently.

It does, and given how many people will allow mountains of bloatware just run on their PC (a hardcore PC gamer obviously wouldn't, but a hardcore PC gamer will know about turning off auto-start), it wouldn't shock me if a sizable portion of the 25 million are running it completely unaware of its existence.

Furthermore, DD is still quite young and I don't think raw numbers are the best way to predict the future of it just yet. I think it's important to consider customer satisfaction. I have a Steam account and would be considered an 'active' account because I'm still trying to get some Just Cause 2 achievements during my first playthrough. But I haven't bought a full-priced game from Steam since Tom Clancy's Endwar was released. And even since then, I've only purchased two games (a grand total of $17.50 spent). Since Endwar, I've bought more games from Impulse (6) total and spent significantly more on them. It's also worth noting that all of the games I have on Steam were not available on Impulse when I bought them (and most still aren't).

So looking at the next couple of years ago, assuming that all digital distributors got the same game at the same time, will Steam continue to be the leader? It's really difficult to say. How many purchases are from Steam merely because there's no other option? When DD continues to grow and more people stop buying at retail, are they all going to jump to Steam or somewhere else? My suspicion is somewhere else. While there's certainly a sizable amount of hardcore PC gamers who love Steam, I do know that after 2K Sports released NBA 2K9 with Steam as a requirement, their forums were flooded by angry customers who bought a retail version and didn't want Steam. These are more casual gamers who are used to buying from brick and mortar shops- they've yet to convert to buying digitally, so they're a potential future customer for any distribution service.

For NBA 2K10, from what I'm to understand, they went with Securom due to how angry people were. Take that as you will.

My issue with the whole thing is distribution rights. For example, I've wanted at one stage to buy "the witcher" from impulse. But as I have found a lot with D2D and impulse, the title is restricted to only the US and Canadian purchasers. So I brought a hard copy of it from my local EB store. I've found that a lot with so many games. E.G. When Civ 4 was going for $10 at D2D I wanted to buy it, was it resticted to overseas only.

Steam doesn't seem to have this issue. If I see the game, I can buy it if I wanted too.

I would love to purchase more from other stores but I can't, is there anyway that impulse can overcome this? If you could it would most likely increase your sales.  

 

 

Tormy- just wondering have you bought something else from stardock becasue you have a member number that is a little more dated then elemental...though doesn't nessarly mean anything,

stardock does a number of other programs besides games, in fact if i remember correctly games is almost like a side business to stardock, or at least not their bread and butter

also i wonder if i count as four members because i bought one multi-player game 4 times over when it was dirt cheep and play it when i have friends over all on diff accounts at diff times. 

though before impulse stardock had another DD platform. i remember from back when i bought gal civ for the first time. 

Stardock's primary business is selling underground volcano bases to evil villians. (Someone really needs to make Evil Genius 2)

 

 

Anyway, Steam exposed itself to me... and I liked it. Whoever is to blame for sexy sales, I have picked up some serious fun from steam because of it. MoarPlox.

 

I still buy from 'retail' (as in box but the internet delivers it to my door) because I don't have such an awesome connection and I like feeling things. When I get a game that needs to be installed to steam (like the Brittish Empire Simulation Game, sorry, Total War: Empire) its cool because I get access to my friends, it auto updates, it sings at me in its emo self loathing - or maybe thats just my mind? Anyway while I know this is "bad", I benifit from it.

(If your wondering, Impulse sings a disco tune all night at me.)

I see. I tend to agree. Thanks for the explanation Kryo.

Ah nop, I only bought EWoM so far. I registered a couple of years ago, because I wanted to buy something, but I forgot that what was it. Either way, I haven't bought anything in those years...I am not sure why. My memory fails me.

This still doesn't show how many people are actually buying from steam.. I have an active account but have never bought through their online service.  I was made to have an account through supreme commander 2 and LFD2 of which I bought both retail.  They are just trying to blow up their numbers since many people flock to the place where most others go.  they want people to say "Wow that many people buy from there. Maybe I should too?"

Personally I put Gamestop and Steam in my don't buy from here list.  I mostly don't buy from steam since it bars you from using map editors and modding tools for 3rd party games.  Gamestop is always more expensive.

 

Why yes they do!  And if they whip me up a Dungeon Keeper 3, I'd have my christmas purchases sorted.

Anyway, I always find it interesting when Valve and other companies start talking numbers of accounts, not because of trends or some such, rather because of the type of numbers and their word plays usually show where the company is or is headed.  Usually, given the difference between an Account Holder and an actual Customer for example, the company will go with the larger number to use the good old fashioned 'popular kid' trend.  World of Warcraft, for example, doesn't provide any offical details about it's current numbers - it's last stated customer base was 11 million Active Accounts.  Considering that their server problems in China cost them around 50% of the Asian player base (roughly 3 million or so players), that number is significantly lower.  Blizzard won't state this, because they want WoW to remain the 'biggest'. 
Valve stating that they have 25 million active accounts is very different from saying they have 25 million active customers, and in trying to use word-based gymnastics to promote themselves kind of gives a bit of insight into whats happening - Valve want people to think Steam is a massive force within the industry, and while it's the largest DD Platform, it's getting the table scraps from the retail market.  Clearly, Valve want to go much, much bigger - adding Active before accounts simply shows that Valve want to make it clear that it's 25 million accounts being used, not simply registered. 
I use my Steam Account daily, currently playing Torchlight to death, but I only buy things on Special and I use Steam as a method of obtaining games for as cheap as possible - some times ebay is cheaper (Mass Effect new for 360 for AU$15.00 with postage) and so I'll shop there and I avoid any non-Valve Steamwork title like the plague.  Any attempts to data-mine some kind of marketing trends from their 'active users' to better promote their games on Steam or promote to Steam to others falls down when dealing with tech-savy gamers because we're used to blocking out pop-up adds and the in-your-face marketing Valve use on their service.  Most gamers use DD like Steam to get was what promised; better games for cheaper prices - actual getting the trade-off for not having a box or physical manual.  Unless the number next to the dollar sign is low enough, I suspect many of Steams customers don't even notice most titles unless they're looking for them.

My two cents worth.

You say that like its a bad thing.

The sales are one of the best things to ever happen to video game marketing. In the past (and still true with a lot of console games), they come out for X, and stay at X for years. All the sales are front loaded, after 2 weeks there's virtually no activity.

With the sales on PC games, you get that initial surge market at full price, then you also get people a year later who would pick up the game for less but won't get it for full price. Those sales are pretty well pure profit with digital distribution, and they really help extended the life of a game on the market.

I've got several games that I'm disappointed in their price not coming down, because I'd like to play but they just aren't worth full price. The result right now is no purchase and no money for the publisher. Give me a sale, and they'll get some money.

I agree, however with EA, Ubisoft, THQ and several other companies using zero-day DLC as a form of DRM as opposed to a form of expanding the life of a game (look at the POS DLC for Mass Effect and it's sequel) and I think it's something that'll simply be abused.

Instead of needing to drop the prices of a game to clear back logs of unsold games, Digitial Distribution allows for the provision of the game for eternity for next to nothing.  Imagine a world where the release price is the permanent price, with allowance for Christmas or major holiday Sales.  This is the world of main-steam DD.

I thought that the DLC content for the various games is also being "released" [heh what a funny word in this case.. ]  by the pirates. I might be wrong of course.

Yeah, Mass Effect 2 DLC has been pretty well universally awful. Glad I didn't buy. It's amazing just how overpriced it is.

The best guide IMO isn't the number of users, but the total sales value from those users. I'd rather have 1m users spending an average of $100 a year than 10m users spending an average of $8 a year.

I agree.

Thats why total sales/revenue per year would be very usefull for comparison of DD services.

I think we'll see the distribution market shift a bit now that they're plastering Mac feature ads all over.

I just made my last Steam purchase unless something changes there.

Well, actually I think this will just make their position stronger.

They are going on a virgin videogame market where customers are kinda of happy to throw away money for cool stuff.

And they are planning Steam on Linux too, which made me think they can be a good driving force for revitalization of PC market.

 

Oh come on, not again. You know it's not true.

 

December 2007: http://web.archive.org/web/20071225164318/www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=news&id=1382&cc=US

Other source: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/50525

 

Impulse has been released in June 2008.