Is competitive gaming really profitable? I mean, there's always gonna be more casuals than pros, so why cater to them?
Valve's two big E-Sports titles, DOTA 2 and CSGO, are really profitable. Granted, it's not specifically because they almost 100% cater to the competitive side of the games, as they do the very hands-off approach, compared to other companies that want major or complete control of their competitive scenes, i.e. Blizzard, Riot Games, and Ubisoft. Those Valve games make a lot of money because of cosmetics, as in weapon skins for CSGO, and hero cosmetics for DOTA 2. It's so much so, that Valve crowdfunds DOTA 2's The International, which is a World Championship tournament, by selling Battle Passes with cosmetics.
The TI10 Battle Pass raised the prize pool for TI10 to $40 Million, and because Valve contributes 25% of Battle Pass sales to the prize pool, that means Valve made $160 million off of that Battle Pass, with $120 million of it going to Valve directly.
Granted, even the massive prize pools are still peanuts, compared to the $$$ they make on Steam sales, but it's very fascinating to see how obsessed some players are with cosmetics. It's almost a very scary Dear Leader-esque feeling, when Valve puts out another Battle Pass, and players go full CWC-mode of "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY GABEN". Some people are even okay with all of those microtransactions that Valve has, because the base gameplay for DOTA 2, namely the entire hero pool, is free to play.
As a whole, this Crowbcat video pretty much sums up Valve making money on those said video game cosmetics, and pretty much forsaw the consumerist mentality that is in full-force today:
Also, Valve released a card game designed by Richard Garfield, based on the DOTA 2 Universe, called Artifact. That game quickly bled out players, for several reasons. One big reason was because of the excessive monetization of things in the game, with the $20 price tag to play the game, need to buy cards or packs to build decks (the buying cards part is even more blatant cashgrab, as you can only buy/sell cards from the marketplace and not trade them directly, and Valve takes out a certain % of each transaction in "Valve Tax"), and need to pay for tickets to play the "competitive" mode. That, in addition to the game being very rough to learn, due to the sheer amount of RNG (even though pro players say that the RNG can be worked around) that makes players feel that they have little to no control of the game, made players leave the game quickly, and Valve gave up on the game for good earlier this year.
I do want to know what is more pathetic in terms of consoom with video game microtransactions. Pay-to-win in things such as Gacha games (
looking at you, DSP) and Sports Games like FIFA, Madden, and the NBA 2K series, or the all-out cosmetics sales such as with Valve games. The redeeming part about the cosmetics for Valve games is you can at least sell them on the marketplace once you have decided that you no longer want them (even though you'll still lose some of the value due to said Valve Tax), but the sales get you Steam points, and not IRL money, unless you use shady third-party sale sites to conduct those transactions.
