So I read the Gamesbrief "Valve has just started the PC games race to zero" article:

http://www.gamesbrief.com/2014/03/valve-has-just-started-the-pc-games-race-to-zero/

I mean, seriously?

OK, this is Nicholas Lovell we're talking about; and on any given day, as long as you were in the business of making games, you'd be wise to pay very close attention to what he has to day.

Not today.

No, today, he's pulling a John Dvorak (if you know who that is, then you're as old as you look) which means that you get to bail two paragraphs in. Assuming that you're just bored or have nothing better to do with your time.

The article - starting from the "suspiciously alarmist" headline - is pure and utter bullshit. In fact, to someone like me, a PC gamer and developer who has been around since they pulled the curtains, it's pure comedy Gold.

I am not even going to bother taking it apart because that would mean that I care about it enough to invest my time doing so. However, I have one single pointed response. It's lengthy and probably a much better read than Nick's conjecture-laden bullshit.

It starts like this:

So what?

Since the very beginning, publishers and game developers have been able to set the price of their own games. The only time you will even find a developer having no control over that, is if they are going through a traditional publishing deal (in which case the publisher gets to set the price of the game).

Or if you were dumb enough to waste your time putting a game up on XBLA in which Microsoft gets mostly the last word on pricing.

Apple, Google, Amazon, IGN/GameFly and even our crazy (in a good way) Swedish friends over GamersGate and every company in the digital space, has allowed content creators to set their price.

Go ahead, show me how that got the "race to zero" PC game pricing started.

Steam, funny enough, has always done so as well. They don't tell you how to sell your game; though they probably should because, let's face it, if you price your game too low (or free), how is that going to pay for the Steam services used to serve that game? And what makes YOU so special that Valve gets to lose money so YOU get to sell your probably shitty game at an unreasonable price?

All Valve does - at least in my experience - is provide sales guidance. Want to sell your game at $49.99 when in fact it would probably do better at $29.99? Have at it.

Even when they do their periodic sales, up until a week ago when they allowed us to set our sales prices, it was an "invite-only" thing. You'd get an email advising of a sale, you'd get some guidance on pricing and you get to opt-in or opt-out. And if you opted in, you get to set whatever discount you wanted.

IT WAS YOUR CHOICE!!!

Heck, just days ago, because I was getting crap from some friends of mine who in a discussion (we were placing odds on how long before Star Citizen implodes under its own weight. I went with a conservative eleven months) say that I've abandoned the space combat genre because I don't have any of my legacy (Fun Fact: I stopped making pure space combat games back in 2008) games up on Steam, I decided to dust off the source code for a game that I did back in 2008 for GameTap, Galactic Command Echo Squad. https://www.facebook.com/galcomechosquad/

After spending a day with it, I was surprised at just how well it had held up. So I figured that I'd throw it up on Steam after discovering that there were like, less than six space combat games on Steam!! And the genre doesn't even have its own category. Yes - I was shocked at that. The horror!

Anyway, long story short, I fired off an email to my Valve account managers asking them what they thought about the idea. They told me to go for it. In a follow-up discussion - as most of us tend to do - I suggested a price point to them, asking them if they thought it was fine or if I should lower it. The response was pretty much the same as every other time. Without quoting it verbatim (NDA and all that), it pretty much said, sure, but feel free to go lower IF YOU WANT.

The ability to set the price of our games has always been in our hands, developers and publishers. So just because now you don't rely on Valve for periodic sales and such, it's a bad thing?

There is a reason that things like Steam Early Access and Greenlight exist. In the case of the former, it is up to Valve to determine if it is worth doing. In the case of the latter, the gamers get to determine if the game is worth getting on Steam. Guess why that is.

Simple. Because Valve - at least as far as I know - is not in the least bit interested in shoving every piece of game or software on the Steam service.

So for there to be a "race to zero" on Steam (the gaming digital leader), you'd have to see everyone - n00bs and oldies like yours truly - set bullshit prices.

Aside from the fact that even thinking of setting prices to mobile levels is suicidal (once you go low, you're done) - at best, the dumb ass who is even thinking of doing that won't even be approved to sell games on Steam at all. So the point is moot I think.

Case in point, several weeks ago, my new game, Line Of Defense Tactics, went up on mobile stores. We released a PC and Mac version as an afterthought (just kidding!!) and a bunch of entitled PC gamer nutjobs (who actually assume that I give shit what they think), were crying foul because - according to them - since the game was $4.99 on mobile (Apple, Google, Amazon), that the $29.99 (despite the fact that it was $19.99 for a whole week post-release) price on PC and Mac, that it was too high.

They took to the Steam forums (where else?) to try and pull their brand of anti-social behavioral bullshit on us, put us under siege etc. Undeterred, we just banned (because they never heard of respectful discourse) the whole lot - left the price unchanged - and moved on. Like it never even happened.

The game made back every penny of its $250K+ investment in under six days. And right now, I could price it at $0.99c if I wanted to and not lose sleep over it. If I did that, yes there would be lot of sales, but I'm not interested in short term gains over long term damage. But that's just me.

When you start playing that game and you dig yourself into that hole, there a comes a point where you can't even throw the shovel out, let alone be able climb out.

There is another reason why the "race to zero" is not going to hit the PC as it has other digital medium, including consoles (the rights holders will never see that happen). That being, the PC is still - and will remain - the last bastion of goddamn good gaming. Nothing beats it. It doesn't matter how much money is made on mobile, consoles etc PC gaming isn't going to die overnight.

And guess what? In case you haven't looked already, there are lots - and lots - of PC games online that are selling for much, much less than normal. They're, as you might expect, crap. So any PC game developer or publisher looking to, you know, "make money", isn't going to price their game to such low levels that it gets filtered in with the crap that's already out there.

Which is exactly what happened to F2P games. How?

Well, ask any decent PC gamer (no, your mom doesn't count) how they feel about F2P games and you'd be shocked at the response. Some F2P games with established communities are still in business, but they will tell you that in order for them to make money, they have to have such a massive audience, that all they need is a few good whales (those who actually pay for stuff) for them to make money.

So even with the advent of F2P games (micro-transactions, ad supported etc), there are still non-F2P games out there and they outnumber the F2P ones. There is a reason for that. Reason being, just because you can, doesn't mean that you should.

Which is probably why the upcoming Elder Scrolls Online, like others before it, is going with a subscription (a biz model that I expect to fail inside of six to eight months) model instead of F2P.

So just because you can now set your own price on Steam - even though you always could - doesn't mean that it is going to see the "race to zero" and thus the inevitable collapse of the PC gaming scene. It's not.

Nick's having an off-day, so let's just give him a pass and move on with our day. Nothing to see here. Oh, and he's got a new book out about F2P guidelines and which, just a few days ago, I forked out $125 (!) for. So there is that.

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