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Monthly fee for Steam, how much would you pay

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How much would you pay?

  • $0-9

  • $10-19

  • $20-29

  • $30-39

  • $40-49

  • $+50

Results are only viewable after voting.
postmortemIA said:
404 interest not found. PC games (unlike console games) needs you to be engaged in them. Thus you can't possibly play too many games at once.
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lolwat? you don't need to be anymore engaged in pc games than console games. that doesn't even make sense. most pc games are console ports anyway. the vast majority of what's not is a flash game.

Anyway, $30-$40 sounds pretty fair to me to be able to play any game in the steam selection per month.
 
If I were interested, probably at least $20, if not $30.

Hell, I felt that my Gamefly subscription was worth it at ~$20, an all you can eat Steam subscription would be worth it at a similar cost.

That said, I own so many games on steam already, so it'd have limited appeal to me.
 
I game a lot, and if the service meant literally any PC game in their entire library, than I'd go up to $19.99 a month.

A year of service would be $239.88 - which is equivalent in price to about 5-6 "AAA" title games in total now.

Keep in mind I assume the games can be played from ANY COMPUTER. Also keep in mind you would have access to a whole lot of MMO's, which would pay for itself in this particular pricing model if you took advantage of it that way.

On the other hand, holiday sales really wreck this pricing model since Steam packs can offer huge value.

/shrug
 
Nothing. I tried GameTap for a year thinking I'd play everything I could on it. Truth of the matter is all I ever played was a NeoGeo baseball game, and I could play that on an emulator for free. Anytime I tried to d/l and play a real game, it seemed way too buggy.

Besides, do you really see big developers like EA, Activision, THQ and Ubisoft letting you go unlimited, especially on newer games?
 
darkxshade said:
-Build a backlog of games
-Subscribe
-Power through backlog
-Cancel Subscription
-Profit?
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that is one issue. Another is that they cannot magically remove all other games from the market. so the only people who will subscribe are people for whom the service is cheaper.
If you are one of the rare few for who the service will be more expensive, you will just buy the games in another store. In other words, they gain nothing but give everyone a huge discount.
 
taltamir said:
I am not sure about the "unfortunately" part, but otherwise you nailed it.
If it was done that way then game developers will have to make due to with a fraction of the returns. Think about it, even if you pay 100$ a month and steam keeps nothing of it, if you play just 3 games that month then they make less money then selling you the game.
Realistically you will be looking at games going from 50$+ a person to 2-5$ a person.
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I was just thinking about that, but realize that that is 2-5$ per month. so to break even a developer would have to have his game played for 10 months. probably not going to happen with single player games, but with multiplayer-focused games, it could be a good thing.
 
Sometimes I am a bit surprised there is no cost to using Steam. They do have an infrastructure they need to maintain.

I'd pay x$.

I think a LOT more games would get played if it was netflix style for every game STEAM has.
 
The subscription based formula creates an artificial threshold where only those who will derive more value would subscribe and those that don't wouldn't. So wouldn't it be a better model for Steam to create a time based plan where you pay say $10 for 100 hours and you can play any game in its library for the alloted time until you buy more. The only issue is that you would have to be logged in to play but I kind of assumed the same for a subscription based model anyway. Of course, Steam would have to implement and provide tracking of usage.
 
darkxshade said:
The subscription based formula creates an artificial threshold where only those who will derive more value would subscribe and those that don't wouldn't. So wouldn't it be a better model for Steam to create a time based plan where you pay say $10 for 100 hours and you can play any game in its library for the alloted time until you buy more. The only issue is that you would have to be logged in to play but I kind of assumed the same for a subscription based model anyway. Of course, Steam would have to implement and provide tracking of usage.
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That could work. Or just provide access to less popular games with the Subscription model. That would increase revenues for Indy or less successful games and still provide Subscribers a large library of Games to play. It would have to be quite cheap though, perhaps tiered Subscription levels.
 
NoSoup4You said:
The more I think about it, $50/month would be SUCH A STEAL. Just look at this month alone - Dragon Age 2, Shogun 2, Crysis 2, Rift, Homefront, DoW: Retribution.
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It's a steal if you have the burning desire to play games on day 1 and are willing to pay @50-$60 each. Those same games will all be on sale for $25 or less (some a lot less) come Christmas.

The only game I paid full price for on steam is DA1, and I have about 50 steam games. My usage pattern is to splurge on a pile of games during one of their big sales and then spend the rest of the year playing them. Given their sales I wouldn't pay more than $10/mo for a sub, and if they got rid of the sales to replace it with buy @full price or sub I'd just wait for sales from other vendors.

Honestly I think they do a lot better with the sales than they could ever do with a subscription model. How would Valve work out who gets what from the subscription money? And the super cheap 50/75% off sales cause a lot of impulse buys. I know I've bought a fair amount of games that I wasn't planning to because at $5-$7, if I don't like the game it's not a big deal. And the sales make the math of who gets what money a lot easier.
 
rangda said:
It's a steal if you have the burning desire to play games on day 1 and are willing to pay @50-$60 each. Those same games will all be on sale for $25 or less (some a lot less) come Christmas.
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I believe however if Steam were to implement a subscription based model or even a tiered model that newer games would take longer before being added to the library as to allow developers to milk it for all its worth at retail first. Kinda like how you payd ~$10 at the movies on release and rent for $1 6 months later when it gets released on DVD/BR
 
Not very much, maybe $3-$5 simply because i don't get new games very often.

Now if you tied it with my Amazon Prime membership, count me in 🙂
 
I'd do $20 a month for that service. Theres always tons of games that interest me but aren't worth paying full price for. Getting a chance to try those out would be worth it.

Also so much lack of OP reading in this thread.
 
LessThanDan said:
Terrible, terrible idea.
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How is it a terrible idea? I think it would be an awesome idea if it encompassed their entire catalogue and allowed you to play new games. I have barely any time to game right now, but I could see spending ~$15/month for this if I had a bit more time.

KT
 
makken said:
I was just thinking about that, but realize that that is 2-5$ per month
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No, it isn't. Its 2-5$ per player TOTAL. Crysis? beat it in 6 hours. Starcraft 2? eh, took me 5 days because I was really thorough. Racettear? beat it in 3 days. etc.

makken said:
probably not going to happen with single player games, but with multiplayer-focused games, it could be a good thing.
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This is rather rare for a non MMO multiplayer, and even for MMO not that common. And as I said, step down. Most MMOs are over 10$/month.
 
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