Game Development: Starting with Recreating the Anime Game Style

Chapter 483 Has the situation changed?

Just as StarCraft Games was preparing its trump cards, in a conference room at Valve's headquarters in the United States, they were discussing how to fulfill their "boasted promises."

"...That's the way it is."

Jason finished his report, his voice carrying a hint of weariness that even he himself didn't realize.

"They're all watching and waiting; I need your help with this."

Since Gabe Newell (GabeN) held his last conference and confirmed that Steam's winter marketing focus would be on the Chinese market...

Jason, the operations manager for the China region, entered "spinning top" mode.

I'm incredibly busy every day.

Only then can the first phase of Steam's promotional work be considered complete.

In other words, Chu Chen and the others saw the Steam announcement and the series of promotional activities. Logically, after the announcement was released, Jason would need to confirm the specific execution process of the event.

See here.

Some observant readers may have noticed a problem.

That's Jason's workflow, which looks quite different from other companies.

Other companies finalize the event details before launching their promotional campaigns, but why does Jason launch his campaigns first and then finalize the details?

The reason is actually very simple.

Because Steam is a platform, and the platform has very few staff members. In its previous life, in 2021, Steam had only 79 people in total.

Jason, as the president of the China region, only had four or five subordinates under him.

Normally, this number of people is enough.

After all, Steam's main focus is on a relaxed operation, unlike StarCraft, which has dozens of regional operations managers who have to run around to developers and recruit people to the StarCraft platform.

However, when it comes to organizing large-scale events, this manpower disadvantage becomes apparent.

Normally, Steam sales are actually initiated by the publishers themselves; they can offer whatever discount they want, since Steam doesn't subsidize them.
So Jason did the same thing as always.

First, they released an event preview, then sent an application to various game publishers on Steam to participate in the event, and specifically emphasized that they hoped the publishers would cooperate and provide the strongest possible discounts in the China region.

However, unlike in the past when he would receive feedback quickly after launching an event, the replies he received this time were quite subtle.

Independent games and smaller developers, as always, quickly completed their application for the event. However, for any slightly larger developers, let alone asking them to increase their discounts, many game developers responded with...

"We will carefully consider this proposal."

"We need to conduct an internal evaluation of the pricing strategy for the China region."

"Thanks for Valve's suggestion, but our current global promotional plans..."

As these ambiguous email replies increased, Jason became completely bewildered, and the atmosphere in his office gradually shifted from initial confidence to anxiety.

He couldn't understand why these companies, which used to offer their games at rock-bottom prices during Steam's winter sale in exchange for featured spots on the homepage, had suddenly become so reserved.
Actually, the principle is very simple.

Because there was a fundamental problem that he, and even the entire Villefort leadership, subconsciously overlooked.

That's why manufacturers offer discounts on Steam.

Jason believes that Steam's success in hosting its winter sale is due to its vast game library and developer ecosystem.

But the truth is exactly the opposite.

For a long time, manufacturers chose to participate in discount events because Steam was the only behemoth in the market with absolute dominance.

This is a "event" based on a monopolistic position. Steam's Winter Sale is essentially an event where the platform hardly loses any money, but instead uses its traffic advantage to persuade or even "coerce" manufacturers to lower their prices and exchange profits for sales and exposure.

Even if a $60 game is discounted to $10, Steam can still steadily take 30%, which is $3.

Manufacturers only receive $7, after deducting development, marketing and other costs.

Are manufacturers willing to do this?

In the past, they were willing.

Because Steam is the only channel, the only bridge for games to reach hundreds of millions of players worldwide.

Not being on Steam, or not having any events on Steam, means giving up the PC market. So instead of letting the PCs gather dust in your warehouse, you might as well sell them at a huge discount. At least you can generate some buzz and maintain some community interest.

But now, things have changed.

After more than a year of development and several rounds of fierce price wars, StarCraft Games, though far smaller than Steam, has firmly established itself and become a force to be reckoned with.

More importantly, the business logic of the Starry Sky Games platform is completely different from that of Steam.

Xingchen really does provide subsidies.

In previous large-scale promotional events, Xingchen Games platform, after subsidies for key partner games, basically achieved zero commission.

Anyone can do the math.

Independent games and small studios often struggle to detect market changes, and even if they do, they find it difficult to negotiate with Steam, hence their lack of activity.

But it's different for medium and large-sized manufacturers.

Most of them had already been in contact with Starry Sky, and even those who weren't currently logged into Starry Sky knew what Starry Sky was like.

Of course, with Steam still at its peak, they certainly won't abandon Steam, but they also won't give up this hard-won "bargaining chip."

Consequently, influenced by several major publishers who were already dissatisfied with Steam, this Steam discount event quickly reached a stalemate.

Steam discounts are set by the developers themselves.

Since you're not providing subsidies, we won't offer discounts either. All the discounts will be allocated to StarCraft, which offers subsidies. This will force Steam to make concessions, or even, through Steam's concessions, we can use that to force StarCraft to offer further discounts.

all in all.

Having reached this point, Jason felt that the matter was beyond his control.

That's why we have this meeting today.

Now, if this activity is to continue, it's no longer something Jason can handle alone.

He needs to bring people in to help him come up with a solution.

The first person he recruited was Mark, the COO of Steam, who is currently the actual person in charge of Steam's operations.

"So, your suggestion is... that we subsidize the winter sale in the China region?"

As the operations director of Steam, Mark is not young.

He was around 40 years old and was one of Steam's first employees. He was wearing a faded Half-Life-themed T-shirt with a plaid shirt over it, a meticulously trimmed beard on his chin, and black-rimmed glasses perched on his nose.

Compared to the elite-like executives of traditional game companies.

Mark is more like an old professor who has taught programming at a university for twenty years and is disliked by students because of his outdated coding style.

(End of this chapter)