GameStop (Photo credit: Moe_)
Steam is the king of PC game sales, and now Gamestop confirms it. Despite the fact that, on paper, Steam and Gamestop are bitter rivals, Gamestop appears to have decided that it really isn’t worth going against the online retail powerhouse that is Valve’s digital distribution service. Gamestop has now begun selling Steam vouchers in their stores.
“We are thrilled to be partnering with Valve on this new initiative,” Steve Nix, GameStop’s GM of Digital Distribution said in a statement. “This gives even more options to customers now that they can put money in their Steam Wallet using cash, gift cards or trade credits through our convenient neighborhood locations.”
The sale of digital vouchers in brick and mortar retailers is an interesting development. It’s a way to leverage the “mall shopping” experience – the one where you browse through things you didn’t know you were interested, pick them up, mull them over and so forth – into the ease of digital distribution. It looks like a simple stopgap solution for bleeding retailers, but there might be a sustainable solution in here somewhere.
Gamestop has recently suggested that it might start selling more refurbished hardware as well, making the transition from a software retailer to a high-tech pawnshop. In that scenario, not only does Gamestop have a business angle that feels more in line with what it’s doing anyway, but physical vouchers could actually play a role in augmenting sales from other businesses.
Whatever happens, moves like this make it clear that brick and mortar is not the future of software sales.
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