The Steam Review

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic might run on the Source engine, and its multiplayer beta might have been managed through Steam, but it is only today that its Steam release has been confirmed. Unlike everything else currently held on the content servers however, Dark Messiah is neither a back-catalogue nor a primarily or purely digitally-distributed title; as such, it is to raise the upper limit of Steam’s single-item packages with the asking price of $50 (£26; the previous holders of the top spot being Dangerous Waters and, ahem, Birth of America).

Despite this record fee the Steam price remains not only lower than the game’s RRP, but also neck and neck with bulk retailers’ offerings both in America and here in England. It’s a reasonable enough decision in my mind: there is little point now in trying to support the struggling independent and specialist retailers, and as a prominent console developer and publisher Ubisoft can afford neither to cut out bulk retailers nor to follow Valve and base their price structure around digital distribution.

There is currently no word on whether the additional weapons available in the Collector’s Edition and Limited Edition retail releases will be making an appearance on Steam, nor how interoperability between the standalone and Steam will be handled–something that may well lead to in-game Steam account creation and management for functions such as VAC.

While the Leipzig GCDC was primarily about Valve’s games, one piece of Steam news has come of it. PayPal and direct ‘wire’ transfers are shortly to join credit cards as accepted purchasing methods. The original hlportal.de interview is here; an English translation can be found on the Steam Forums.

For the consumer, this is all good news. Although common in America, credit cards aren’t so popular in countries like Germany—from where, perhaps not incidentally, more Steam games were purchased last month than the USA. Wire transfers are popular in Europe for being both instantaneous and largely secure (they are apparently quite expensive internationally, but the extent of that in comparison with cards is unclear), and PayPal, while not the most trustworthy of financial services, is undeniably popular.

On Valve’s side, things are a little different. Wire transfer is still a solid option, at least as far my knowledge goes, but PayPal offers absolutely no buyer protection for digital distributors and plenty of opportunity for fraud. Quite what Valve have done to offset what is certain to be an enormous influx of fraudsters is an internal matter; perhaps they have limited PayPal transactions to certain regions, but it is more likely that we won’t find out what’s going on without ending up behind bars.

Another issue for Valve will be age verification. Credit cards are only widely accessible to those above 18 and have so far acted as a stand-in system, but with wire transfer almost anyone can purchase anything. Without some form of verification, it will surely only be a matter of time until anti-violence protestors get wind of the surreptitious backdoor shovelling of immoral filth into their children’s computers. Plus of course, allowing kids to buy games of their own accord isn’t going to do the already worryingly childish wider community any favours.

Ultimately though, there is little doubt that this is a good move. We’ll be seeing a significant boost to Steam users in the months following the systems’ introduction, assuming they are reliable, and regardless of age that is a positive thing.

Steam is diving into the casual market with today’s announcement of a distribution deal with PopCap Games, prominent casual developers and minds behind several of the casual industry’s greatest hits.

PopCap’s titles such as Bejeweled and Zuma are benchmarks of the casual games industry; generating over 175 million downloads and three billion player minutes per month. Steam is the first full-featured broadband platform for the delivery and management of games and digital content, and has pioneered its broadband services to over 10 million customers, generating over six billion player minutes per month, with core titles such as Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike.

“The addition of PopCap Games’ expansive library of leading casual games is an important step for the growth of Steam and direct distribution channels,” said Gabe Newell, co-founder and president of Valve. “The benefits of Steam will now be provided to a much wider group of games and game customers. PopCap games by themselves are larger by an order of magnitude than the next-gen consoles online gaming services.”

Initially, 17 of PopCap’s products will be made available via Steam on August 30, 2006. Keeping with PopCap tradition, each PopCap game offered via Steam will be available for a free trial period as well as for purchase. And PopCap collection packages will also be offered.

A large departure, no question about it. Steam has traditionally been aimed solely at high-end titles such Valve’s own or Red Orchestra, with lightweight offerings such as Codename Gordon and Darwinia being rare exceptions.

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The new Store is now live and in testing. The changes are mostly cosmetic, and the main thrust of the new design is toward handling more information in an only slightly bigger space. There is now a sidebar on each page displaying metadata: the name, developer, languages, and even details like whether or not Friends is supported or whether the game includes HDR. Media files have thumbnail video streams, a clever addition but one that has the perhaps intentional effect of reducing the desire to invest time into downloading the full-resolution version. There are also links to related resources like demos and trailers for each entry.

The new banners rotate with each refresh, evenly distributing visitors.

Which is all useful enough. But there is one part of the new Steam Store that makes it truly worthy of its 3.0 label: it is also the new Steam website.

The first clue is the splash page itself, which has been expanded to include the Steam news feed, the old Store navigation menu and a list of recent releases, as well as the introductory blurb and a direct link through to the ‘Get Steam Now’ download page.

Visit the download page for our second proof: it has been subsumed into both the new Store design and the soon-to-be-www storefront subdomain. Refer to the header bar and you will find that the News, Forums and Stats pages have undergone a similar process, although Stats (formerly Status, implying a unified entry point for network status and game statistics) still redirects to the current page.

The real clue, however, is a small detail that I for one didn’t pick up for some time. The old Store link, Games, is no longer present in the list, and ‘Home’ now brings you back to the root storefront page. Or, as we should probably get used to calling it, Steam portal.

The next question is whether or not we’ll be seeing this new portal expanding, as such things tend to do. There doesn’t seem to be much room for such activity here without pushing even more information down and off a visitor’s initial view; for now we can only assume that Steam’s storefront offerings aren’t going to diversify too much in the foreseeable future.

A beta test for the 3.0 iteration of the Steam Store is starting later today. The new design was uncovered last month, but was quickly withdrawn after the news leaking out.

While we have a rough idea of the visual theme of the new store, its functionality is not yet clear. It has been given the ‘3.0’ monkier however, so it’s safe to expect something significantly different from the current system.

The Wiki page implies that the testing will start later today, PST. However, it is just coming up to 11PM here in England so initial reactions will probably fall to you, dear readers: be sure to watch this post’s comments.

And here it is.

Seeing as it has been an extremely quiet period lately, with the team’s efforts seemingly focused on server- and client-side fixes and no relevant news of any importance, a wrap-up of what is currently known of Valve’s future plans for Steam seems worthwhile.

While I have it on good authority that Valve’s Steam strategy stretches at least two years into the future, its form is still a mystery. For now, we must make do with what little has found its way out of Valve’s offices. So, in order of certainty:

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