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Stardock: Steam Owns 70% Of Game Download Market
According to Stardock's 2009 Customer Report, the developer/publisher estimates that Valve's Steam service accounts for roughly 70% of PC digital games purchases. Stardock pegs its own Impulse service in second place at 10%, with the remaining 20% belonging to various independent players like GamersGate, Direct2Drive, and others.
Stardock estimates that "for the calendar year 2009, digital distribution will represent approximately 25% of the revenue for a typical PC game publisher."
Other intriguing tidbits from the report include a candid assessment of Demigod's launch struggles (where the lauded online play was broken for most players for the first three weeks the game was out), details of the company's efforts to make its popular desktop software relevant to Windows 7, and a minor update on Elemental's development.
"We have had the luxury of being able to develop Elemental in a somewhat different way from our other games," the report reads. "We don't anticipate Elemental being released until mid-2010 due to our intent to take our time and release the game when we are satisfied that it is a worthy successor for the turn-based strategy genre."
What digital distribution platform do you use? Is Elemental -- in many ways a spiritual successor to the classic Master of Magic -- on your radar? Let us know in the comments.
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