Valve retires the Steam Store video section

[HEXUS]

Previously purchased content will remain available to owners.

Read more.

[Ttaskmaster]

Always thought it was a bit weird that a games platform was doing movies and TV shows...
I bought one, but only because it was a game tie-in, both of which costs about a Dollar.

[Kanoe]

(launched April 2019, will close on 28th Feb 2019)

Soooooo it was open for minus 2 months, impressive.

[Yoyoyo69]

The problem was the excessive cut Steam take. So you buy a PC or video / music - expensive.

Now to to Steam and have them add their cut onto too, then a "Steam tax" (mainly with Steam boxes) because they were "gaming systems"

The very low level stuff was priced higher than mid to high tier, then delivery costs too, which were very excessive.

I never really felt the video section was fully supported, it was barebones

[proaudio]

The problem was the excessive cut Steam take. So you buy a PC or video / music - expensive.

Now to to Steam and have them add their cut onto too, then a "Steam tax" (mainly with Steam boxes) because they were "gaming systems"

The very low level stuff was priced higher than mid to high tier, then delivery costs too, which were very excessive.

I never really felt the video section was fully supported, it was barebones

Not only was it never really fully supported, but I think they were barking up the wrong tree entirely. I have only known Steam for Games.

[AlSomething]

The problem was the excessive cut Steam take. So you buy a PC or video / music - expensive.

Now to to Steam and have them add their cut onto too, then a "Steam tax" (mainly with Steam boxes) because they were "gaming systems"

The very low level stuff was priced higher than mid to high tier, then delivery costs too, which were very excessive.

I never really felt the video section was fully supported, it was barebones

Not only was it never really fully supported, but I think they were barking up the wrong tree entirely. I have only known Steam for Games.

With enough marketing and options it could of done it. It lacked too many features to compete with Netflix etc. Amazon only sold books and now sells everything, proof it can be done. But as with most things timing plays a big part too.

[Tabbykatze]

The "cut" for media might well have been different and unlikely the cause. "steam tax" is no worse than "EA/Ubi/Blizz tax".

I like that since Epic Launcher everyone calls Steam the biggest money grabbing mizer in history...

[Output]

While I do have a few purchased videos on there (but only a few), they are all game-related.

I like that since Epic Launcher everyone calls Steam the biggest money grabbing mizer in history...

The way I see it is that with Steam one valuable benefit is the audience that is already present on it, and thus much more likely to be open to purchasing a new game for their library there.

Epic's Launcher on the other hand likely doesn't have as much of a willing purchaser audience in comparison, especially if you consider the recent shift of many from Fortnite to Apex Legends. Steam however is well-acknowledged as a store-front for more than one game, and thus has the appeal for users to keep using it.

I don't have anything against competing store-fronts, but I do think it makes more sense to release it on more than one (especially such a new one like the Epic Launcher), as I expect it to be less likely that people will join that store-front just to buy that particular game. So overall, I'd expect it to eresult in less revenue during such a period of being exclusive to a non-Steam store-front.


TL;DR: I think publishers are really only hurting themselves when they choose to release exclusively on a new store-front like the Epic Launcher.

[azrael-]

(launched April 2019, will close on 28th Feb 2019)

Soooooo it was open for minus 2 months, impressive.

I always thought there was only Valve Time. Apparently there's such a thing as Razer Time as well.

[Rad77]

I just bought my first videos (Alan Tudyk's series "Con Man") from Steam at xmas! It was half the price that I was anywhere else.

Hopefully they will continue to support existing purchases for quite a while, after all they need to provide lots of video streams anyway.

I can see that the video store wasn't really a great fit in Steam, pretty hard to fit in any real marketing push for it when you are working 24/7 to projectile vomit a constant barrage of game related promos and sales.

[Rad77]

I just bought my first videos (Alan Tudyk's series "Con Man") from Steam at xmas...

And I bought series two from Steam yesterday, so "non-gaming" videos have not gone yet.