INTERVIEW: JASON HOLTMAN & DOUG LOMBARDI, VALVE Full Steam ahead
Valve’s PC download service Steam is often championed, sometimes controversial – but it’s eternally popular. Rob Crossley visited the service’s chief Jason Holtman and marketing head Doug Lombardi in Seattle to find out more about the leading force in digital distribution
There are now 1,700 games on Steam. Has its success been much of a surprise to Valve? Jason Holtman, director of business development & legal affairs: It takes us by surprise every day, it really makes us aware that – even though it sounds a little trite – you have to innovate every single day. We had actually, looking back on it, built the Steam business the same way we build games. In that we iterated, took feedback, tested it, and iterated again.
So when we were small, when we were distributing Rag Doll Kung-Fu [from the team that became Media Molecule], we took what we learned from partnering with them and used that for our partnership with Tripwire. From Tripwire, we applied what we learnt to 2K and Activision, who were our first major publishers. I think the important thing is we are learning how to constantly improve and learn from our relationships. So it is surprising how successful
Steam has become, but when you look back on it, you can see how we grew as a company. We nurture this the whole time.
And at our core, we’re an engineering firm – we really like data. We love data, we love feedback and this is how it all came to be.
MCV recently revealed that some traditional retailers are considering not stocking Steamworks- integrated games, as they fear it ultimately drives their customers over to rival digital retailers. Do you expect this kind of backlash? JH: From time to time, we have people react to us in that way. But the proof in the pudding is when you look a few months after those articles and those flare-ups happen. Retailers are still stocking those
games, they are supporting them. And the reason they are stocking those games isn’t because someone won a war, it’s because these products are successful.
18 May 6th 2011 It’s good to stock a game with
Steamworks integrated. It’s good business. People want them. It makes customers happy. The work we’re doing on Steam is
to make the PC and Mac a better platform for retailers. Sure, the more Steam customers we have, the more people are going to buy from us, but it also means more Steam users are going to visit stores.
So Steam is good for retail? JH: Yes, Steam is good for retail. If you look at some examples of things we’ve done in the past, it shows that. One thing we did with Left 4 Dead was have a free weekend, so every one of our customers were able to play the game. At the end of the weekend we give people the option to buy the game, and the Steam sales went up.
But something that people didn’t see was that retail sales spiked, too.
Valve’s Doug Lombardi (left) and Jason Holtman (right) believe retailers will come to realise how Steam enourages consumers to buy boxed games
People loved to write that Steam is a retail killer. I cannot remember when any of us said that.
“ Doug Lombardi, Valve
And of course this happens. Everyone is talking about the game, but not everyone has a credit card, or credit on their card. Not everyone wants to make a purchase right away and lots of people are heading into the High Street anyway.
So when we do promotions, we see sales spikes both digitally and online. People who use Amazon still go to bookstores. You can buy almost anything online, but people still go out to the High Street to buy things. The second thing is, our partners can use Steam to drive sales on the High Street. So, for Left 4 Dead 2, Doug and his team were looking at the retail side of the business, and went to GameStop and organised it so that those who bought the Special Edition from this chain recieved an in-game baseball bat. And then Steam was used to send out that message.
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