TwinfiniteIf you’ve ever used Steam, chances are you’re a fan of its simplistic and streamlined layout, luckily for us, it’s set to stay that way.
Speaking to Gamespot in a recent interview, Valve’s Erik Johnson detailed that while it would be profitable for the company to make ad space available in the short term, the long term effects would be overwhelmingly negative for the service.
He said on a possible ad deal with Doritos:
We don’t see a case for that ever getting user value, so we wouldn’t do it. I don’t think that those ever work, either. To take it a step further, I don’t think anybody buys Doritos as a result of that. We tend to focus on long-term relationships. It would be a bad business decision, let alone just dumb.
PopsopWith Valve reportedly worth an eye-watering $3billion – and founder Gabe Newell being worth $1.5billion on his own – a large portion of that money comes from microtransactions in games like Team Fortress 2, Counter Strike Global Offensive and DotA2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n68mYfdIXY
With a library of over 6,000 games, Valve simply don’t need the money from adverts on the Steam platform. The soon to be released Steam controller and Steam Machines should also help keep the company well out of reach of ad money. Happy days!
Mark is the Gaming Editor for UNILAD. Having grown up a gaming addict, he’s been deeply entrenched in culture and spends time away from work playing as much as possible. Mark studied music at University and found a love for journalism through going to local gigs and writing about them for local and national publications.