Steam Statistics and @Steam_Spy
After an in-depth investigation of Valve's Steam in a while, I found that it has a lot of statistical features that might help the project. Steam has four statistical features, they are
- STEAM & GAME STATS, which can display concurrent Steam users (most recent 48 hours) and top games by current player count.
- STEAM DOWNLOAD STATS, which can show Steam global traffic map (most recent 7 days) and Steam download bandwidth used (most recent 48 hours).
- STEAM SUPPORT STATS, which can show Help Requests and Backlog (most recent 90 days) and recent help request activity.
- Steam hardware & software survey: September 2019, which demonstrate the hardware usage of the participants, it can be referenced by the hardware company.
S.W.O.T. analysis
Strength
The strength of steam is that it has been running for years, with a mature and constantly improving rating and review mechanism, a large number of users, a mature global node network, an unimaginable number of games on sale, and a building under construction. social media.
a large number of users
a large number of users
A mature global node network
A mature global node network
Weaknesses
The weakness of the Valve is that it has no consoles similar to Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft. The other game companies have their own unique game consoles, such as Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox. But Steam's HTC VIVE and Steam Machine are not as successful as the other game consoles described above.
Opportunities
Steam as a digital distribution company it is too inclined to sell games. There are still many digital products in the world other than games. If Valve tries to launch more kinds of merchandise on Steam, such as music and movies, it may have a big development, become a comprehensive sales platform. But on the other hand, Valve might compete with companies like Netflix. Movies, TV shows and music are indeed a huge market, but it also represents a huge influence. The picture below shows people comparing Netflix with steam. We can see that Netflix is much higher than steam. After all, people who watch movies don't necessarily play games at the same time, but those who play games will definitely watch movies or TV shows.
Steam's rating and review features also make this platform a film review or music tasting platform. The valve can open up this area to encourage ordinary people to create their own work and make a profit. Let the author decide their work should be charged or not.
It has always been important to evaluate the value of an employee within the game industry as a result of the need for the employee to present their work. If you open a block in the Steam community for job seekers, it will attract more game companies to use and rely on the Steam platform. Job seekers can place their work directly on the platform for sale and use the platform's data to prove their excellence and creativity.
Threats
The main threat facing by Valve today is other competitors. At present, the main competitor is Epic Games. Epic's main products are Fort Night, Unreal Engine, and Epic Game Store. Unreal Engine is a famous game development tool, and Fortnite is a very popular video game. December 4, 2018, Epic Games announced its own game sales platform. To attract other independent developers and vendors to the platform and against the 30% fee of every game sold on Steam, Epic offered a 12% fee of every game sold, and if the game is developed by Unreal Engine, an additional 5% deduction will be available. Expansion utilizing acquisition of exclusive distribution rights.
In addition, Epic expands by uses its acquisition of exclusive distribution rights: Epic will pay publishers/developers a large amount of money to buy exclusive distribution rights, making the game available only in Epic stores, or buying A few months of pre-release, let the game available on the Epic store for a few months earlier than other platforms.
Epic has higher strength and passion in the last month. This means that more people are discussing Epic than Steam and are willing to discuss it repeatedly. The remaining sentiment and reach are not as high as steam, but we need to know that Steam has been on the market for several years, and the Epic store is released on December 4, 2018, which makes Epic a threat.
Recommendations
I think Valve's Steam has done a great job on the groundswell. It has its own rating and review system, its own statistical system, and a social media system that will soon have its own users. I came into contact with Steam because my friends are using it. From here, I can see that the word of mouth strategy has been used successfully. Even though Steam has many advantages, I have found three areas where improvements can be made.
First, Steam should strengthen its connection with followers on social media. According to my observations, Steam's Twitter and Facebook accounts are more like a 'daily deals post machine.' It will only post information about promotions. It doesn't comment on social hotspots to attract attention like the Epic Games' CEO did. Perhaps this is because Steam is just a trading platform, and developers from all countries and races around the world may publish their work on it. If the hot comments are hot, it may cause dissatisfaction from customers, but it will increase the chances of competitors. My advice is to have their CEO or founder create a separate personal account to interact with followers.
Second, develop Steam's own social media platform. So far, Steam's social platform has come in the form of a company, and ordinary users can only follow these companies instead of core producers. So I think add a feature that can make producers stand out and interact with buyers and fans. In Chapter 6, the author mentions that one of the techniques for talking with the groundswell is to create a community. The feature I proposed can create a small community based on company and producer. In this community, only the content related to the producer or company will be discussed. Companies and producers can easily get feedback, thoughts, and ideas from the customers.
Third, establish a mutual help mechanism in the steam community(Chapter 8. helping the groundswell support itself). Sometimes, when a user solves a problem, if he finds that other users have the same problem as him, the user will have a good chance of helping other users. They are solving problems in this way much faster than the customer service department.
Example of how the groundswell support itself
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