Valve Inks Deal With Lionsgate Adding Over 100 Movie Titles To Steam Platform (hothardware.com)

MojoKid quotes a report from HotHardware: Valve took a major step in growing its Steam digital distribution platform today by adding movie rentals to the mix. The addition of movies to Steam's catalog is a first, and it was made possible through a deal with Lionsgate Entertainment that immediately fleshes out the service with more than 100 flicks. Steam is currently the biggest digital distribution platform for games, and while it has a long way to go before it can claim the same for movies, there's little doubt Valve wants to take it there. In a press release announcing the deal, Valve said Lionsgate was "one of the first major studios to license films" for streaming on Steam, which hints that it's attempting to lure other studios as well. You can view the entire catalog here.

Comments

The Twilight Series on Steam!?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's something i'll sell my sparkly csgo knife for!

Insane

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I pay $5 for a rental?

Re:Insane

[JeffSh]

i dunno. i feel the same but isnt it funny? My family ran video stores in the 90s and 3 dollars was the usual rental fee for new releases.

look at how much our value perception has changed because of technology.

also whats changed is our ability to afford minor entertainments.

Smoking Man

[PopeRatzo]

I wish Valve would ink a fucking deal to make Half-Life 3. I don't need their movies.

Re:Smoking Man

[RogueyWon]

Half-Life 3 will never happen. It's not in Valve's commercial interest any more.

Valve isn't really a games developer any more; it's a platform holder. Remember that, while the precise arrangements sometimes vary per customer, it generally takes around 30% of the value of each sale on Steam. It's putting very little money into the development of those games (hosting/bandwidth costs for the store and some multiplayer/social backend for the majority of games), but is taking a huge amount of revenue from them. By contrast, when it develops and sells its own games, it needs to front up the costs and take a lot more of the commercial risk.

This is broadly similar to how things work on the consoles. Sony and MS take the costs of hardware development and fund first and third-party exclusive titles to grow the installed base, but their real income comes from the licensing fees. Nintendo still tries to make the first-party model work, but has been struggling with it since the launch of the 3DS.

Valve has a further advantage over Sony and MS in that its platform is an evolutionary one, rather than one with major hardware shifts once or twice a decade. Once the installed base for Steam was there, Valve didn't really need to put much effort into growing it through first-party development. It therefore focusses its first-party development on new markets; see its recent investment in VR via the HTC Vive and its software suite.

But even if Valve doesn't need to make Half-Life 3, is there a reason why it shouldn't do so anyway, given the game would almost certainly be profitable?

Actually, yes...

Steam's success is predicated on wide participation by developers and publishers. The one thing that could really hurt Steam would be for a critical mass of major publishers to withdraw. EA have already taken their ball and gone home to Origin. Ubisoft has tried to draw people over to uPlay, but has had less success so far and still tends to depend on Steam for the backend of some of its games. But if Valve wants to keep the major publishers on board, then it can't afford to compete with them directly. Most of Valve's output since HL2 has taken the form of experimental or niche titles, like Portal or Left 4 Dead. For Valve to put out a major AAA shooter would send worrying signals to a lot of its major parties. So it won't.

At this point, the only real prospect for seeing HL3 would be if Valve sold the rights to the series to a third party, which is itself vanishingly unlikely.

The New Email

[SuperKendall]

It used to be said that all applications expand until they contain an email client...

It seems these days that all applications expand until they form video licensing arrangements with some facet of Hollywood.

Re:Just Me?

[zedaroca]

I'm in Brazil, "11 tiles" as well.

Leprechaun 4 movie collection
Leprechaun 3
Leprechaun
Natural Born Pranksters
Two Family House
Deck the Halls
Return of the Living Dead 3
Russkies
Leprechaun 2
Leprechaun 4: Lost in Space
Blue Mountain State: The Rise of Thadland

No benefit?

[barc0001]

Unless they're planning on renting movies for 50 cents a pop on here, I don't really see what they can bring to the table. You can already stream movies elsewhere for flat subscription fees and they have an integrated UI that works with most smart TVs and playback devices. From the screenshot of this I saw earlier today they want to charge you $4 to rent Kill Bill 2 for 48 hours and you'll have to watch it on a computer unless you've already got a Steam Box, Steam Link, or other PC with Steam installed already hooked to your TV. That's not value for money. The reason Steam is so liked with PC gamers is because of 2 things:

1. Easy game and save management where it didn't exist before, with excellent social/community integration

2. Steam SALES where you get games that are a couple of years old at rock bottom prices.

Neither of these things will apply to movies on Steam from what I see so far, so there's just no benefit to renting one there.

Where are all these films then?

[jonwil]

I only see 10 films (none of which I would watch even if they were free) when I look at the list of Lionsgate stuff on Steam.

No doubt Lionsgate is being its usual stupid self and denying Australians access to most of the films they have added to Steam (if people cant buy the films they want, they will pirate which hurts studio)

Re:Where are all these films then?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are not an American, you are not important to the studios.

Europeans in the same boat. Well, everyone not USA.

Also the prices are hilarious. I might consider that for a DRM free high resolution downloadable file, but for a time-limited streaming rental? LOL

Pi was terrible.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not trolling. Honest opinion intended to save hapless Slashdot readers who might otherwise waste time and effort watching Pi, time that could be better spent by, for example, jerking off, sleeping, picking your nose, scratching your ass, or even watching paint dry, all better and more interesting activities than watching Pi.

It is a stupid fucking movie about how the constant Pi (~= 3.14) is magical somehow, and not just the sum of an infinite series, which is what it is.

Underlying concept of the film is complete bullshit. I'm waiting for the sequel, "e" about how God created a special magic number to be the base of the natural logarithm... I'm sure it'll be complete bullshit too.

All I'm saying is, I know opinions vary, but do yourself a GIANT favor, find "Pi" in a library, check it out along with 2 or 3 movies you KNOW are actually good and worth watching, so you won't feel like you wasted the whole trip, and watch it if you like shitty movies.

When you end up hating it passionately about 17 minutes in, (counting the warnings against illegally copying this turd of a film, and previews for better films like "Hot Tub Time Machine," "Poltergeist 3," and "Beverly Hills Chihuahua," (all better than Pi, and I fucking HATED those celluloid abortions,) you won't ALSO have wasted $5 that could go to something infinitely more worthwhile, such as wiping your ass with it, after taking a runny, flaming shit!

Do yourself one more favor, and resist the temptation to rip the DVD out of the player and set it on FIRE, because the library WILL charge you more than $5, and they won't believe your DVD player did it to protect you from watching that godawful film, sacrificing itself heroically, destroying itself AND the DVD of Pi in the process.

Good luck, and happy movieing!