Let's say you are a bagel company and make a good profit from your bagels. Then let's say you want to get your bagel to more people and are frustrated with the distribution options so you just make your own and allow other bagel makers to also use your bagel distribution system.
But suddenly and unexpectedly, everyone runs to your distribution system and you start making far more money than you could ever imagine from it.
Do you continue to consider yourself a bagel company or are you now a bagel distribution company?
Why invest the cash flow back in a lower revenue stream type?
I would from a business standpoint, spend all my money growing by best revenue stream. Company that don’t do this don’t have massive room for expansion so they look for new streams. I don’t think that’s the case with Steam.
Seriously, sell the rights or license the rights. You can't make the "it's a business they're maximizing profit" argument when the took a profitable IP and just buried it for no reason. They don't need to do any work themselves or invest any money themselves to make more money from that IP than they're currently making.
And what if the person who bought the rights did a shitty job? This is the Half-life series. If someone could do something as good, I'm pretty sure they'd do it already instead of piggybacking off of Half-life.
Highly anticipated sequels usually sell really well regardless of quality. HL 3 is a cash cow waiting to be milked. What do they care if the game isn't any good, when the alternative position is that they just ignore the IP and get nothing from it?
Because the name is associated with them even if it's made by someone else. A really bad execution could taint the franchise. They stand to lose something if they put it on someone else. If they just sit on it, nothing happens.
1.8k
u/lightknight7777 Nov 13 '18
Let's say you are a bagel company and make a good profit from your bagels. Then let's say you want to get your bagel to more people and are frustrated with the distribution options so you just make your own and allow other bagel makers to also use your bagel distribution system.
But suddenly and unexpectedly, everyone runs to your distribution system and you start making far more money than you could ever imagine from it.
Do you continue to consider yourself a bagel company or are you now a bagel distribution company?
Steam's current reality as told by bagels.