A challenger appears! WeGame Hopes To Take On Steam With Online Game Store
121 replies, posted
[url=http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/08/wegame-hopes-to-take-on-steam-with-online-game-store/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29]Source[/url]
[release][img]http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/game_library.png[/img]
Back in the old days — say, 2004 or so — the only way to get computer games was from retail outlets. Then Valve’s digital distribution platform [url=http://store.steampowered.com/]Steam[/url] came along, allowing gamers to pay for and immediately download games from both Valve and major third parties (it’s a little like Apple’s App Store). And it’s done very well — Steam now has over 70% of the digital game distribution market, and some retail stores have gone as far as [url=http://www.mcvuk.com/news/41746/Retail-threatens-Steam-ban]banning[/url] games that install Steam because it’s eating up so much of their business.
[url=http://www.wegame.com/]WeGame[/url], a 4-man startup that’s been around since 2007, wants in on the action. Up until now the company has been primarily focused on building software that lets gamers record and share their in-game exploits using screenshot and video capture tools. And now it’s also launching a digital distribution store that will let gamers pay for and install games, in much the same way they would using Steam. If you want to try it out, you can sign up for the private beta [url=http://www.wegame.com/beta/?code=TECHCRUNCH]right here[/url].
So why would anyone use WeGame instead of Steam? Founder Jared Kim says that the current situation — where Value controls so much of the digital distribution market — is bad for developers. Valve gets a cut of each sale (even when it’s selling competitors’ games) and also manages which games get featured in the store. Kim says that WeGame will be a better deal for developers (it will take a smaller cut than Steam) and because it’s a third party that doesn’t make games of its own, developers won’t have to worry about handing over money to a competitor.
So far, WeGame has partnerships with Shanda/MochiMedia (who will offer 250 browser-based games), Bigpoint, Perfect World, Subagames, and CMUNE. Down the line it hopes to be distributing AAA titles like Trion World’s forthcoming game Rift.
For now, all of the games being distributed through WeGame are free to play — WeGame is doing revenue share and CPA deals with game publishers to monetize these games. Down the line, it will also introduce transactions, so gamers can purchase software the way they do on Steam.
Of course, in order for the marketplace to be attractive for developers, it needs users. WeGame currently has 1.7 million registered users and 1 million installs of its desktop client; around half of these users are active — nothing to scoff at, but a far cry from Valve’s 30 million users on steam.
WeGame has a long road ahead of it. Kim sounds confident that it will be able to line up quality games (he says publishers are eager to have popular options other than Steam), but it’ll need to give gamers a compelling reason to make the switch, too. And at this point I don’t think the integrated screen capture software will offer a very strong incentive.
WeGame raised $3.5M back in 2008 from True Ventures, Jeff Clavier, Aydin Senkut, Ariel Poler, Naval Ravikant, and Ryan Scott.[/release]
No need to take sides, start flamewars and all that crap... no matter what you think about it, competition is and always will be good, specially for us, end-users and consumers :)
Good luck to them
Its funny because half the games in the pic require steam to run.
Inb4 Valve creates their own easy-to-use capture software and run them out of the market.
The Digital Distro Wars ... It has begun.
Never gonna work. Too many users are already on Steam.
Unless they can either target a different demographic, or somehow have cheaper products and/or services, they are of little threat to Steam.
But most of the games in that image require steam.
xfire does this.
It's shit.
I like steam being the only (major) service, if only for the simple reason that I can have all my games on one program rather than several games over several programs.
They're pretty optimistic if they think this is gonna pull in a nice amount of money.
lol
just saying
I hate how people are looking at Steam's dominance on the Online market is a bad thing.
They know what they're doing and then some. Then again i don't ever think there's been a non abusive monopoly.
well if this guys have games I want and steam dos not for some odd reason I might check them out
Oh WeGame, they had that clip capturing software that barely worked, i remember them...
Well... like someone said, competition is always good, good luck to them.
If they'd be successful it would only be healthy competition. Should be good for the end user.
Everyone is looking at Steam's near-monopoly as a bad thing because it is a bad thing. Competition is absolutely necessary in a healthy system. When Valve controls 70% of the digital distribution market, they can do whatever the hell they want with prices and new rules about your purchases. This was a problem in the early 20th century, when huge trusts controlled almost every facet of production in the US.
Goddamn it, who is stupid enough to even attempt to challenge Steam? This isn't going to end well for WeGame.
Well, I still don't like them after they started charging for HD-recording... Bastards.
[QUOTE=BagMinge104;26574820]Inb4 Valve creates their own easy-to-use capture software and run them out of the market.[/QUOTE]
Please do this Valve
Please.
Steam pretty much has a monopoly with online game sales, with the exception of the EA and D2D sites.
[img]http://images2.memegenerator.net/Charmander/ImageMacro/1903436/And-not-a-single-Fuck-was-given-that-day.jpg[/img]
Honestly, why do people even bother trying to compete with the monster that is Steam?
[QUOTE=postmanX3;26575857][img_thumb]http://images2.memegenerator.net/Charmander/ImageMacro/1903436/And-not-a-single-Fuck-was-given-that-day.jpg[/img_thumb]
Honestly, why do people even bother trying to compete with the monster that is Steam?[/QUOTE]
do you want then NOT to compete?
Competition is good
[QUOTE=BagMinge104;26574820]Inb4 Valve creates their own easy-to-use capture software and run them out of the market.[/QUOTE]
That is a good idea sweet damn.
Hmmm spam threads on steam about it. Proper recording, perhaps even proper utilities for source recorder in source games.
[QUOTE=MisterLANCE;26575975]do you want then NOT to compete?
Competition is good[/QUOTE]
Well yeah, but all the competition thus far has just been trying to copy Steam. It's just not going to work. The service that will beat Steam won't be a Steam-clone, like Facebook isn't just a MySpace clone.
Currently, Steam has too huge an established base with too good a record of sales/minimal DRM, etc. A rival service that offers more or less the same service simply can't compete, because no one wants to move to a new service when all their games and friends are already on Steam.
[QUOTE=LoLWaT?;26576042]I've always wondered though....
If Steam was to ever go away, as with any digital distribution network, what would happen to our games that we've bought over the years?
Would our library of games and all of our money we put into it be instantly vaporised into [B]NOTHINGNESS[/B]?
If so, fuck ANY competition for the sake of keeping our games :gonk:[/QUOTE]
pretty sure if Valve were to magically go bankrupt and Steam had to be discontinued, they'd have some sort of plan.
[QUOTE=postmanX3;26575857][img_thumb]http://images2.memegenerator.net/Charmander/ImageMacro/1903436/And-not-a-single-Fuck-was-given-that-day.jpg[/img_thumb]
Honestly, why do people even bother trying to compete with the monster that is Steam?[/QUOTE]
competition is and always will be good, specially for us, end-users and consumers :)
When stuff like this happens it really makes me realize how steam has this whole "market" by the balls.
I'm pretty sure there are about half-a-dozen other digital game distributors(mainly Direct2Drive and Impulse) that are much bigger then this company, yet still aren't anywhere near Steam's level.
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