Yesterday we finally got a release date for something that has been in the works for a while. Guild Wars 2 is launching on Steam on August 23rd, and this announcement has been met with quite a bit of frustration on my social timelines. Guild Wars 2 being available through Steam is a universally good thing, because it lowers the barrier to entry into this game. The frustrations however lay with the fact that if you are already a Guild Wars 2 player with an existing account, you cannot link it in any way to steam. This means that those of us who have been around for a while are going to miss out on the convenience of being able to launch the game through what has effectively become the PC Gaming storefront.
We can gnash our teeth about this decision, but I think ultimately it comes down to financial reasons. If I understand correctly there is certain verbiage in the steam agreement that indicates the 30% cut of sales, is taken for all members playing on the steam platform regardless of where the purchases are made. So even if you went directly to the Arena.Net website and purchased gems… because you are a Steam player 30% of that money will go back to Valve. For a game that has persevered by its bootstraps like Guild Wars 2, immediately losing 30% of funding from a significant chunk of its player base would be brutal. I would have absolutely been open to rebuying the base game and all of its expansions if it meant that I could launch it from my platform of choice, but alas that is not a thing that can happen.
So you might ask yourself, why even bother with a steam release when existing players can’t make use of it? In the short time since the announcement yesterday, there are already over 25,000 players who have wish-listed Guild wars 2. I am not an industry flack so I am not entirely certain what that equates to for a potential conversion rate, but it is nonetheless still impressive to me for a 10-year-old game. The other piece that comes into play is that Guild Wars 2 will now be listed in the Free To Play section of Steam allowing anyone who wants to dip their toes into the game to try it out quickly, with minimal friction. It is a lot easier to convince someone to try a game when all they have to do is click the play button in a client that they already have than to track down the website, set up a unique account, and download an individual launcher.
We also have some data supporting the spikes in sales that come with launching a game on Steam thanks to Satisfactory. Satisfactory originally launched as an Epic Games Store exclusive, a platform with a sweetheart deal for game exclusivity and a significantly lower cut of the profits. It took roughly three months to reach the 500,000 sales mark on the Epic Game store and at the end of their year-long exclusivity period, the game had reached over 900,000 sales. Within the first two weeks of being on Steam the game sold almost 400,000 units and since then has gone on to sell well over 3 million copies. Essentially releasing a game on Steam puts it in front of a larger magnitude of eyeballs than it does on other platforms. So while it would be awful to lose 30% of all of the existing sales… that equation becomes completely different when it could garner millions of new players.
The Steam launch of course coincides with the 10th Anniversary of Guild Wars 2. For those of us who already play the game, while we are not getting the benefit of being able to use the Steam launcher… there are a number of goodies for us as well. There is a “Decade” armor set that can be obtained and starting today there are I believe a series of daily free items on the Black Lion store. I checked this morning and was able to purchase a single Black Lion Key for free, so you might keep an eye on things as the next few weeks roll out. It was also hinted in the update blog that there will be a free mount skin available at some point during the sequence of freebies. Finally on August 23rd at UTC-7 Twitch Drops will be enabled which can net you Transmutation Charges, boosters, a mini, a Glowing Purple Mask, and your choice of a classic Guild Wars 2 character outfit.
I am curious as to how much business being on Steam brings to an older MMO when it arrives there. Daybreak put all of their titles on Steam, but if you look at the stats for EverQuest and EverQuest II, their recent concurrent and all time peak numbers are not exactly buying anybody a new Porsche.
As for the money thing, that is always the rub. Steam will get its 30% from any account they create then and forever after. With EVE Online, which gets some decent Steam numbers still, you either have a Steam account or a CCP account, and if you have a Steam account you must do all your transactions through Steam. The technical challenge is always dividing the players so that company doesn’t end up having to give a cut of the money to Steam for their direct customers, which leads to some odd behavior like making customers buy another copy if they want to play on Steam.
I think there’s more technical stuff to it than you listed here. For example, WildStar also did not let you merge your already active account to your Steam account, nor did Wurm Online, or Black Desert Online, or a bunch of other games that eventually ended up on steam. For Wurm we were told it was something that simply couldn’t be done tech wise. There are lots of people who are happy to buy a 2nd copy of the game if it means playing their original account on steam, and if companies had that possibility, I feel that they’d offer it – because it would mean MORE money for them (bringing in the old established crowd).