Digital Distribution and Indonesian Gamers

Today, Trion Worlds announced its newest digital platform that will serve as their "game portal" and it's called "Glyph". But first of all, do you guys know what "game portal" actually means? If yes, continue to the third paragraph. If no, then please continue reading the next paragraph.

A "game portal" is a digital platform that is used as a media of distributing games digitally, at least it's main purpose is. Another way to look at game portals is like a social media where gamers can also interact with other gamers and share info and/or other "valuables" like cheats, mods, walkthroughs and some other things. But the main purpose of a game portal is still, a digital distribution media.

So, Trion Worlds wants to try jumping into the market that has already been so populated over the years with Glyph. Not that I doubt Trion will succeed but to launch it now it's kind of a suicide. Valve's Steam is of course one of the market's major players with over 7 million users all around the world. Other portals such as Gamefly or EA's Origin must be happy that they can survive.

The look of Glyph, kinda cool actually

But what's cool about Glyph, as Trion CEO Scott Hartsman states, this game portal will be "DRM free". It means that you can play games without having to be connected to the internet for the game to check if you got the game legally or not. Well, I don't exactly how that will work or what's the trick behind it, but it sounds cool. Glyph will distribute Trion Worlds games and also third-party games when it launches sometime around this year.

Nevertheless, if you're talking about digital distribution in Indonesia, it means that it's gotta be free from the beginning. Do you know what Steam is mostly used for by Indonesian gamers? Simple, to play DOTA 2. Apart from that, I doubt that most Indonesian gamers uses it to do anything else. Well, maybe play some other free games like Team Fortress 2 but to purchase games, that' unlikely.

DOTA 2, the only reason why Indonesian gamers "touches" Steam

So no matter how cool a game portal is, as long as it doesn't give out games for free, it will never succeed in Indonesia. That's exactly why online games are way more popular than console games in Indonesia. Online games are mostly free and are distributed freely too. Even if in the end they gotta spend money on cash items, as long as they can get the game for free, it won't be a problem for Indonesian gamers.

Yeah, it's a really weird mindset Indonesian gamers have. But that's how it is. Yeah, I know it's sad...