«
»
13
Dec

SteamPlay and Mac Game Publishing

Posted by Russ Looney
As some of you may remember, prior to the Civilization V Mac release, we were having internal debates on whether to enable SteamPlay for the title or not.  We even opened up the debate to our fans and followers in a Call for Comments post here on the NonBlog.  We had tons of great feedback from the community and ultimately went with the wishes of our customer base by enabling SteamPlay. What became clear through the comments that poured in, however, was that it was generally unknown how SteamPlay worked.  There were a lot of assumptions about the business side of it that were not necessarily correct.  In a recent interview with Inside Mac Games, our very own Elizabeth Howard talked about the subject of SteamPlay and explained how it’s not always an easy decision to make for Mac game publishers:
On the sales side, Valve’s support of the Mac platform via Steam right now is reliant on publishers participating in Steam Play which is Valve’s program of releasing every game “Hybrid” despite who did the development work.  Right now there is no compensation for the publisher if their game is downloaded but not purchased. For the publisher this is tough to swallow and I think this is a hindrance to Valve seeing the same market dominance on the Mac as it has on the PC.  I believe if Steam even offered a Mac version of an existing PC game for just $5 there would be less of a barrier for Mac publishers to sell content on Steam, the consumers would still get a great gaming experience across two platforms, and a big catalog of great content could find it’s way to Steam.
This blurb is only a small part of what turned out to be a really great interview.  Talking points include transparency between Mac game developers/publishers and the Mac gaming community, DRM, the upcoming Mac App Store, and the potential threat of emulation software.  It’s a great read that will give anyone that’s interested a fantastic insight into the inner-workings of Mac game development and publishing.  Big thanks to the team at IMG for asking us to participate!

No related posts.

Tags: ,   Posted Aspyr News, Classic Posts, Special Feature |

  • Jason Kenney

    You would think that considering how steam already takes your hardware data they could use that to determine a cut of the sale.

    The only other thing I can think would be rather than the mac publisher publishing the title, they get contracted to port the game, and the original publisher publishes it on steam. Given Civ’s history with mac, I’ve been very surprised Firaxis doesn’t just have a few mac developers on staff and go the Blizzard route.

  • Jim

    If Amazon buys some boxed games of Civ for PC from 2K, and I buy them, and I type in the code on Steam and download the Mac version, how would Steam ever pay Aspyr? They didn’t get the money to pass on.

    Now granted, I have no use for the Civ game disc, and I just happened to take advantage of a lightning deal that ultimately gets me the same product. I hope Steam solves this, because there really should be a way for Aspyr to end up with a cut of that money. But until they figure that out, it’s going to be tough.

    The Blizz route of putting both versions on the same disc and releasing simultaneously would be a good start. But when it’s two different developers (2K and Aspyr), how do you split the money? Based on the latest NPD consumer PC/Mac sales figures?

  • BladeRnr

    First, thank you for writing openly about this. I think it will help all your customers better understand your business.

    Although there’s something I still don’t understand. I get that, since I bought CiV on Steam before it was released for the Mac, you didn’t get any part of the price I paid. But if I was to buy it today, on Steam, would you get anything? Or would the cash (minus Valve’s cut) go straight to 2K/Firaxis? Can Steam tell I bought a game either through the Windows Steam client or the Mac Steam client?

    If you don’t get anything, ever, through all the purchases made through the Steam client, then yes, I can see the problems you would have with that business model. And while I wouldn’t enjoy having to pay an additional 5$ fee to get the Steamplay version of a game, I could understand why that price tag would be beneficial in the long term for the Mac gaming community.

    Having said that, I think that the first comment made by Jason may be right. It could be the time to rethink your relationship with Windows developers/publishers; with them paying you to port the game instead of (as I understand your current business model) you paying them to license it.