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Survey: 47 percent of PC game sales are digital

Published on 30th January 2009 by Joe Martin

A new survey indicates that almost half of all PC games sales are made through services like Steam.

The data may not be totally reliable and representative, but according to a survey of more than 2000 hardcore PC gamers nearly 47 percent of all PC game purchases are made digitally.

The survey, which was run by the fine fellows over at RockPaperShotgun, was part of an effort to combat the notion that PC game sales are dying – an idea that largely stems from the fact that the sales figures collected by the NPD do not take digital sales such as Steam into account.

The results that came out of the survey were quite impressive in fact, with 93 percent of the 2000 people surveyed saying that they had bought at least one game from a digital store in the last year.

On top of that 71 percent of the 2000 said they had bought more than four games in this manner, with the total of gamers who buy only from retail stores at just 7 percent.

A bit of maths-magic then enabled the conclusion that around 47 percent of all PC game sales were made in digital formats such as from Steam, EAStore, GoodOldGames and Direct2Drive. That means that sales figures presented by groups like the NPD are missing out on nearly half of all PC game sales.

As far as PC games go then it seems that sales are being driven increasingly towards digital storefronts and further away from second-hand sales and retail stores.

How many games do you buy digitally? Let us know in the forums.

22 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

p3n 30th January 2009, 10:35

Steam's DRM is so transparent to the user who would go buy a disc thats going to hold your family hostage if you attempt to put it in your other computer?

Another thing for ISPs to complain about having to actually fulfill the contracts they sell people too...

Tyrmot 30th January 2009, 11:34

2000 'hardcore' gamers is hardly indicative of the whole PC gaming population though is it? Although I do have Steam, I only get games off there that are:

1) Steam-only
2) Ridiculously cheap on special offer

Otherwise it's boxed copy all the time.... That way it's yours forever! (Unless it requires online activation a la EA - but I avoid those like the plague)

DougEdey 30th January 2009, 11:38

I haven't purchased a hard copy of a PC game since they got rid of the awesome black boxes that they used to come in, with the cardboard sleeve.

Goty 30th January 2009, 11:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrmot
2000 'hardcore' gamers is hardly indicative of the whole PC gaming population though is it? Although I do have Steam, I only get games off there that are:

1) Steam-only
2) Ridiculously cheap on special offer

Otherwise it's boxed copy all the time.... That way it's yours forever! (Unless it requires online activation a la EA - but I avoid those like the plague)

It may not be the ideal set for a survey, but it IS necessarily better than things like the NPD study.

Tyrmot 30th January 2009, 11:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Goty
It may not be the ideal set for a survey, but it IS necessarily better than things like the NPD study.

I do know what you mean, but bad statistics is not the best way to counter other bad statistics. If someone was able to actually produce credible and comprehensive figures, people would quote those and so ignore NPD's numbers entirely... As it is, anyone looking to quote some gaming stats probably won't be quoting this instead

Bauul 30th January 2009, 12:35

There is work afoot to try to gather sales information on Digital Downloads, but (unsurprisingly) a lot of the retailers are extremely cagey about releasing their figures to anybody.

Yardstick 30th January 2009, 14:17

I am a bit suspicious of Valve and their reluctance to publish Steam sales figure. Primarily I think this is because Steam is a massive revenue generator for them and the margins are substantial. If they were to release some hard data to this effect, competitors might target them more aggressively with rival distribution platforms.

lewchenko 30th January 2009, 15:27

Oh Steam... how we love you so.

Or did.

Their prices seem consistently out of whack these days.. Take the new Dawn of War 2 for example. It's £35 online via Steam and only £25 from amazon or play. Thats £10 less plus you get the physical media and manuals !!

So Steam can kiss my A** ! Daylight robbery when you think about it (they pay no commission to any 3rd parties like GAME etc for online sales).

Silver51 30th January 2009, 16:30

My only trouble with digital distribution is ISP's bandwidth throttling. I buy games over Steam, but am worried the BTinternet is throttling my connection for it.

Bladestorm 30th January 2009, 16:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by lewchenko
Oh Steam... how we love you so.

Or did.

Their prices seem consistently out of whack these days.. Take the new Dawn of War 2 for example. It's £35 online via Steam and only £25 from amazon or play. Thats £10 less plus you get the physical media and manuals !!

So Steam can kiss my A** ! Daylight robbery when you think about it (they pay no commission to any 3rd parties like GAME etc for online sales).

Prices on steam are defined by the publisher that owns the game, not by valve (with the exception of valve's own games of course) and quite a few of them have strict rules/contracts that say online distribution must cost more than the same in a physical store, so as not to annoy the shops too much. It's very silly, but that's how it is.

-EVRE- 30th January 2009, 19:09

I cant purchase games via online stores, my bandwidth allotment of only 5gb a month prohibits that. I still need a retail packaged copy of a game.. thats why I get my games in box from Newegg.com when I order PC parts! :p

Zut 30th January 2009, 20:47

I'd rather have a boxed copy any day.

johnnyboy700 30th January 2009, 20:47

I don't download any games, mainly because my broadband speed is so pathetic coupled with intermitent power blips that any lengthy download ends up being an exercise in frustration. So I'll stick to the old fashioned way thanks.

frontline 30th January 2009, 22:17

I buy most of my games on Steam now tbh. I suspect Steam will be around long after i need to worry about owning a physical copy of a particular game. For the 3rd party titles, i generally won't buy anything that is more than £29.99 on Steam (which is normally just the EA related titles). Their January sale had some excellent bargains too. I also like the ability to just backup the entire Steam folder when getting a new hard drive or doing a windows reinstall and then copying the folder back, without any invasive DRM telling you that you're now running the software on a different PC. Compare that with a digital distribution copy of Crysis that i bought from EA's online store that now advises me that my licence to play it has expired, and despite several attempts at re-downloading, reinstalling and several e-mails to the support desk, still doesn't work (the last e-mail helpfully suggested that i uninstall the download manager....)

Volund 30th January 2009, 22:46

I buy about 80% of my games via steam, mostly on sale and because it's just so easy to get all my games onto a new hdd or computer, just download the client and tell it what to download (no bandwidth throttling here yet :D).

But if I see a better deal somewhere else, of course I'll go for physical media.

metarinka 31st January 2009, 01:47

as a hardcore gamer I have bought a grand total of 0 games on steam, I'd just rather have a physical copy for when the situation arises.

The_Beast 31st January 2009, 05:40

I'm much rather have a hard copy than a game via steam

+ my internet is so slow (I'm embarrassed to tell you what I have :()

bogie170 31st January 2009, 05:44

So what about all the other purchases on websites like play, gameplay, amazon, shopto etc....

Play is where I buy 90% of my games. Are they counting these sites too?

LordPyrinc 1st February 2009, 00:17

Monthly bandwidth restrictions suck. I am fortunate to have an unlimited wireless plan at a reasonable cost. Heck, just in the last hour and a half since my most recent connection I've downloaded over 350 megabytes, mostly trying to patch a game. I would burn through a 5 Gig restriction in less than a week with the amount of online TV episodes I watch.

Beats the hell out of dial up though. Was using a 56K modem up until about 6 weeks ago.

EDIT: 350 megabytes in that time frame was not one sustained download. I picked up a copy of Neverwinter Nights2 today and apparently the patches are incremental. Dowload a patch, then install. Download the next patch, then install. Been through 5 or 6 iterations of this so far.

r4tch3t 1st February 2009, 03:55

76 games on Steam so far, and of these only about 10 have been retail bought, those being The Orange box and Half Life anthology (which gave me CS, ricochet and TFC as well) and those were before I had a credit card. Now all my games are bought through Steam, if it's too expensive on Steam compared to retail (Looking at EA here) I just don't buy it until it is on special or something.

EDIT: Looks like a few people don't use Steam on the premises of ISPs being crap and capping/throttling them. I am sort of capped, I pay for what I use.

The_Beast 1st February 2009, 05:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by LordPyrinc
Beats the hell out of dial up though. Was using a 56K modem up until about 6 weeks ago.

That's what I have, it suck royal dick trying to download anything bigger than 10mb or visit sites with a lot of pics

I don't live very far from the city (1-2 miles to the center of town) and I still can't find any good ISP that don't charge an arm, a leg, and a foot to use there service

oasked 1st February 2009, 17:09

Steam is ridiculously expensive these days compared to the high street or Amazon, otherwise I would use it more.