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Comment by chaostheory | Hacker News Reader

The PC game revival probably would have taken much longer without Steam. The things that Steam does seamlessly like installing required frameworks, a regular update delivery system, cloud saves, and a cloud-based library with a low price is really easy to take for granted now that it's everywhere. Before Steam, it was a chore to play a game on PCs.

Also being able to stream a PC game to any device is really cool.

I liked their games, but I like Steam better.

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> Before Steam, it was a chore to play a game on PCs.

I disagree. It was somewhat more elaborate but the experience (having an actual physical copy, a manual/books, sometimes nice installer screen) made it feel more special. Nowadays most games feel the same, you just hit a button on Steam, it downloads itself and then you play. But it's mundane; the charm got lost along the way.

It was indeed a chore. Your local shop might not have the game - it might not have been released in your country. Media could be damaged. DRM that wouldn't work on your system. You buy that huge box and all it has is a leaftlet and a CD in a paper sleeve. The game might not actually run, depending on a patch that you had to huntdown in some slow FTP server somewhere.

Long live Steam and GOG.

One thing that I kind of miss from "physical" game was the leaflet/manual. Some of them were truly awesome. For example, the original boxes for guild wars had those huge manual with concept art, lore, and explanation about the whole game. It gave you something to do while downloading all the updates on a 256k connection ;) . When you buy games on GoG, they sometimes give you access to the old manual in PDF, but most game don't really have any anymore or it is really just a barebone manual on how to install and play the game.

That drastically increases the cost of the game though along with the physical copy itself. One of the major benefits of a cloud gaming platform is that games become cheap. If you really like that type of swag though it's still available via crowdfunding

I do not miss manual patching one bit. If you were lucky the publisher hosted the patches themselves. If not you're downloading them from some potentially sketcky third party site. And then you often had to apply the patches sequentially instead of just applying the latest.

It was definitely a tedious process, made all the more frustrating when all you wanted to do was play. But damn if your post didn't just make me smile from a wave of nostalgia.

Don't think so, most of the gamers I know, even today rather buy their games in physical mediums at places like https://www.gamestop.de/

Console gamers sure, PC gamers mostly buy digital and have done for a long time.

I am speaking about PC gamers, not everyone is in love with Steam.

Your personal anecdote doesn't match the data. You and your peers are the exception.

https://www.wepc.com/news/video-game-statistics/#pc-gaming

74% of all the video games and computer sales were sold in digital format form.

That's just one source. You'll find similar numbers confirmed elsewhere.

PC gamers overwhelmingly buy digital, either from Steam or other digital storefronts like GOG, Greenman Gaming, Epic Games Store, Origin etc.

Apparently no, from the same report

"29% of Steam sales revenue was attributed to Western Europe according to Valve. (GeekWire, 2018)"

The typical US == The World view.

I'm not American mate.

Don't be so presumptuous, it's arrogant.

And you are cherry-picking stats by stating only sales on Steam. Steam is not the only digital delivery platform on PC. There are many.

From 2014 worldwide:

https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/matthew-wilson/92-percent-of-...

92% of game sales worldwide were digital.

From 2019 in the UK:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-01-03-uk-video-game-...

80% digital sales for games in the UK alone.

And it's not just the UK and US.

https://business.financialpost.com/technology/gaming/digital...

The number of physical sales is declining everywhere, some quicker than others.

I wouldn't be GOG surprised if it was GOG that stole Valve's market share in Europe because no one buys physical copies of PC games anymore, especially when most of them are just boxes with just the Steam code.

There is GOG for that. No one is buying physical media, that's so '90s. The only exception are probably collector editions, which people buy for fun. But surely no one does it for convenience, because it can't compete with convenience of digital DRM-free stores.

GOG is for the 1% Linux desktop market.

Physical media is for the last century. Even slow thinking incumbent console makers are starting to realize that.

Physical media survives centuries.

Not optical disks, which are commonly used for selling such stuff. If you preserve your archives using them, you are in for a nasty surprise. And who sells games on hard drives? So the way it works - you buy digitally, and do a proper back up of your copy using whatever good storage you want. Not optical disks though.

Surely longer than DRM.

That's why don't buy it with DRM naturally. You need DRM-free games to preserve them long term. Or otherwise, you'd need to break DRM to do it.

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