While the box game store was going through all sorts of trouble, the steam game store was developing very steadily. This was because Boss Jia generously refunded all the income from Warcraft 3 to the players for free, allowing the box game store to take off.
Some people might think that the Daqian lost a few billion USD in income, but this was a marketing technique that would be written into the textbooks of marketing in the future.
First of all, the steam game had gained a lot of support from the players due to the full refund. After all, the players of this era hadn't seen all sorts of free games and didn't know what it meant to fight for a refund, so the Daqian had gained a lot of support from the players.
But that wasn't the most important thing. The most important thing was that the points that were refunded were used to cultivate the habit of buying games in the steam game store.
At the same time, a large number of game developers were retained.
The point of keeping the game manufacturers had already been mentioned before. In order to get the money that they had to spend, the game manufacturers were all enthusiastic about joining. They even signed exclusive contracts for the sake of the huge profit of more than a billion USD.
On the other hand, the steam game further solidified the players.
First of all, the refund for all steam games was 6900 points, which was the price of Warcraft 3.
But the problem was that not all games were sold at this price. Most of the games in the steam game store were under 30 USD.
Therefore, unless you calculated carefully, you wouldn't be able to spend all the 6900 points and would have less than 1000 points left.
Many players were unwilling to give up. 1000 points were worth 10 USD. It would be a waste if they didn't spend it.
But there weren't many games that were under 10 USD in the steam game store. Even if there were, they would be low-quality games that most players wouldn't be interested in.
Therefore, topping up a bit more to buy a better game seemed like a good choice.
For example, EA's Sim City was priced at 1900 points. So if I topped up 9 USD, it would be 10 USD cheaper and I would be able to get this game that was very popular and fun.
All in all, the 6900 points allowed at least half of the players to spend a second time in the steam game store.
At the same time, the convenience of the steam game store was fully demonstrated. After all, who would be willing to buy physical games outside when they could download things at home with a click of the mouse?!
This kind of fast spending experience made many gamers who had spent twice intoxicated. From the bottom of their hearts, they believed that buying games online was much better than buying games offline.
Then, they developed the habit of buying games online.
According to the statistics, Warcraft 3 sold 89 million copies on the steam gaming store, bringing in 89 million customers.
Among the 89 million customers, 47.56 million people made a second purchase within a year, and 31.47 million people made a third purchase.
In the end, the steam game achieved 112 million registered users in 2002. There were 78.45 million basic users who bought the game once a year, and 37.8 million regular users who bought the game more than three times a year.
There were 12.47 million loyal users who bought the game more than five times in a year.
There were 3.76 million loyal users who bought more than ten games and spent more than five hundred USD in a year.
Although this was two years in the future, it was already very impressive two months after the launch. Even before the collapse of the box games, there were countless game companies that moved all of their games to the steam game store.
The steam game store's service was very good. All registered companies had a simple backend. They only needed to pass the review of the steam game store to be able to control their sales page and price settings. It was very convenient.
When the game companies entered the steam game store, they found an even more serious challenge. That was how to get the steam game store's users to pay attention to them.
The easiest way was to get the steam game store's recommendation spots.
The steam game store now had more than five thousand different PC games, but there were only twenty-six recommendation spots on the steam game store's website.
The best one was the cover at the top of the homepage. After the experience of the companies, they found that if they could get the cover at the top of the homepage, they could sell at least thirty thousand copies in a day.
Then, there were the three recommendation spots that were one level lower. They could also sell at least 10,000 copies.
As for the remaining 20 or so recommendation spots, they could be exchanged for at least 2,000 copies of sales.
In addition, there were many recommendation spots on the steam game store's page, but all the recommendation spots added up to about a hundred. It was very difficult to meet the needs of all the game companies.
How to obtain such recommendation spots was something that all the game manufacturers were scratching their heads. That was because half of the recommendation spots on the steam gaming platform were given by the editors of the gaming platform based on the game's playability after playing the game.
Although it sounded like it was based on the game's quality, in fact, the control was firmly in the hands of the Daqian. This was why no one dared to refuse Zhou Hongwei's proposal.
Because if they refused, the steam game store wouldn't do anything else. As long as the steam game store didn't give them recommendation spots, their game would lose millions of dollars in income.
In addition to these recommendation spots, there was another type of recommendation spot, and that was the discounted recommendation spot.
It wasn't that these recommendation spots were bought at a discount, but the steam game store created an event called Wednesday Discount Day. A batch of specially discounted games would be released on Wednesday. The number was fixed at fifty, and the discounts were decided by the manufacturers themselves. The minimum discount was 20%, and there was no limit to the maximum. The steam game store would then recommend these discounted games on the homepage as a means to promote sales.
Therefore, Wednesday was also known as the players' Hand Chopping Day, or Jia Shen's Day of Suffering. This was because on Wednesday, the steam gaming platform could achieve huge sales results, causing the players to chop their hands and causing Boss Jia to lose so much that he was about to cry.
Boss Jia lost so much that he was about to cry. Naturally, the manufacturers also lost so much that they were about to cry. But even if they cried, these manufacturers had to cry and give the game to Boss Jia for a discount.
However, because the number of games on each discount day was fixed at thirty, there were at least five hundred games that wanted to lose money. Therefore, how to do everything possible to get Boss Jia's favor and squeeze themselves into the list of thirty discounted games was a test of the skills of the major game companies.
It was also through these big and small recommendation spots that Boss Jia had a firm grip on all the game manufacturers. Whoever disobeyed him, he would not give them a chance to lose money or get a discount.
This was similar to how manufacturers in the future used overtime hours to control their employees. It was simply a different approach to achieve the same result!
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