But even from kind of a more general point of view, you have services like Steam or Origin where these many purchases and micro-transactions and all these transactions we’re making through multiple companies are kind of tied to this overreaching account. Do you have lawyers who kind of look at the legal implication of where exactly you fit into that relationship?
Yeah, we have lawyers who look at stuff all the time, I’m not sure I’m answering your question directly. It’s sort of like this kind of messy issue, and it doesn’t really matter a whole lot what the legal issues are, the real thing is that you have to make your customers happy at the end of the day and if you’re not doing that it doesn’t really matter what you think about various supreme court decisions or EU decisions. If you’re not making your customers happy you’re doing something stupid and we certainly always want to make our customers happy. And I think we have a track record of having done that.
^Drag0n^ wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 22:12:
All this talk is just rubbish.
avianflu wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 15:33:
Well, we'll know in 2 years of less. Steam _will_ have suits after the sale. And Gabe will be in bermuda, having retired after the sale in which he will profit immensely for selling.
My half-serious hunch is that MS will buy Steam as part of their attempt to fully occupy our living rooms with a "unified digital media box." And yea MS has the cash for it.
Actually any number of hedgefunds have the cash to buy Steam right now, strip it of its assets over a few years, and sell it as a skeleton -- standard practice. But that's another topic!
avianflu wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 15:33:Are you going to put something up for that bet?
Well, we'll know in 2 years of less. Steam _will_ have suits after the sale. And Gabe will be in bermuda, having retired after the sale in which he will profit immensely for selling.
Well, we'll know in 2 years of less.
avianflu wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 15:33:
Well, we'll know in 2 years of less. Steam _will_ have suits after the sale. And Gabe will be in bermuda, having retired after the sale in which he will profit immensely for selling.
My half-serious hunch is that MS will buy Steam as part of their attempt to fully occupy our living rooms with a "unified digital media box." And yea MS has the cash for it.
Actually any number of hedgefunds have the cash to buy Steam right now, strip it of its assets over a few years, and sell it as a skeleton -- standard practice. But that's another topic!
Beamer wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 09:46:nin wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 09:31:
Whenever Steam is sold off for $$ (and it will)
With the money it's making and the funding it provides Valve, why on earth would they do that? Your tinfoil is showing.
Who would want it, anyway? GameStop? Best Buy? That's about it, and neither is too eager to get into this area just yet as it will erode their (already dying) core business. They're interested, in the way Blockbuster should have been interested in Netflix, but nowhere near interested enough to pay the enormous price tag.
The publishers aren't all that interested because they know it would represent a conflict of interest to other publishers and almost immediately lose value when it stops getting products as readily. That means they're interested, but again not willing to pay that enormous price tag.
avianflu wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 07:40:
Whenever Steam is sold off for $$ (and it will) there's all kinds of unpleasant possibilities. A $20 a year maintenance charge to access your games. $20 per install of network client on different computers. $20 to create a Steam account for the first time. etc. And believe me, the suits sitting around the table at Steam are already thinking about the above.
Look what netflix tried to do when it split the service, reduced the services, and raised the prices (though happily it failed at all of that). ** We already know this is what digital business can do legally to bring in more revenue on existing user accounts.** Steam is no different. There's nothing legal to stop Steam from changing the rules of access tomorrow morning and then again 6 months from now. Geez look how often phone billing rules change and nothing ever happens to them via any legal entity!
So yea, a "game on an install disk" seems extra extra quaint in the digital age but the bottomline is that owning a game disk was far better for the consumer versus the unknown of buying games off of a network client.
Beamer wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 10:56:Thats probably because they want to build a competitor at a reasonable price, not "waste" (which is how they would likely view it) a bunch of cash in acquiring the existing customer base of the biggest one on the market. I'm sure they are arrogant enough to think they can beat steam since they have the used game market pretty well sewn up, and they have a good chunk of retail console too. I wouldn't be surprised if you are right though, that they don't have the capital it would take.
So GameStop is interested in playing around in what will ultimately put them out of business, but they are not interested in buying Steam. At this point I'm not convinced they have the capital required to buy Steam.
Dev wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 10:31:Beamer wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 09:46:Did you notice that gamestop bought out impulse? They already have their own download delivery platform now.
Who would want it, anyway? GameStop? Best Buy? That's about it, and neither is too eager to get into this area just yet as it will erode their (already dying) core business. They're interested, in the way Blockbuster should have been interested in Netflix, but nowhere near interested enough to pay the enormous price tag.
I actually tried it out last week, to see if I could access my old purchased impulse games like GalCiv. I was able to access them all. Also to my surprise, I had a token I didn't spend back in the day for stardock, so gamestop gave me $7 credit for it. I was impressed that they did that, I would have expected gamestop to just say "screw it" and not credit any previous customers of stardock with gamestop credit. I picked up a cheap indie type game from gamestop with that credit.
So far (now that I've tried both), I've been more impressed with gamestop's purchase of impulse, than EA's attempt at origin.
Beamer wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 09:46:Did you notice that gamestop bought out impulse? They already have their own download delivery platform now.
Who would want it, anyway? GameStop? Best Buy? That's about it, and neither is too eager to get into this area just yet as it will erode their (already dying) core business. They're interested, in the way Blockbuster should have been interested in Netflix, but nowhere near interested enough to pay the enormous price tag.
Dev wrote on Feb 20, 2012, 13:05:
Also worth a look is the tour through the offices complete with a lot of neat pictures and descriptions:
penny arcade tour
One caption in particular caught my eye:A glance into one of the many Cabals that spring up. Any time a group of two or more people has an idea, they can move their desks to start their own Cabal in an empty room. As the project comes together, employees can join in and move their desks to that Cabal if they feel they can help outGreat for employees. Not as great for getting projects pushed out.
nin wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 09:31:
Whenever Steam is sold off for $$ (and it will)
With the money it's making and the funding it provides Valve, why on earth would they do that? Your tinfoil is showing.
Verno wrote on Feb 21, 2012, 08:55:
It has nothing to do with Steam either.
Whenever Steam is sold off for $$ (and it will)