Lets look at how many people are logged into steam right now, in the middle of their BIG summer sale:
2.3 million
Wow etc. Lets all say how huge the steam audience is. It certainly shows how much bigger valve is than positech, that’s for sure :D. But hold on…
Zyngas IPO means some real stats on the people playing zyngas games:
148 million unique monthly players
Holy alphabeti spaghetti batman. That’s a lot of people. Even though the majority of them never give Z any money, it’s still a staggeringly good business. Granted, Zyngas profits aren’t that high given the silly value the company has been put at, but even so, lets forget the money for a moment, and look at the fact that there are 148 million people prepared to play zyngas games.
That’s incredible.
It’s just a pity that the company was founded by a guy who didn’t give a fuck about his customers, and even bragged about it. I don’t care if my next game sells 1/100th of GSB. I still won’t bundle some shitty toolbar with it.
I hate it when companies like that do so well, mostly because it sends out signals that encourage the good guys to do the same thing. That’s whats so cool about successes by minecraft, frozen synapse, world of goo etc. It’s so cool when game devs who are nice guys and genuinely love games do so well. You don’t have to be like zynga to make a career from making games :D