Very cheap shot from Steam. I'm sooooo glad I haven't bought it from them and it gives me another reason why I prefer boxed. I was a really good candidate to get it earlier and like everyone I really thought they would deliver it before boxed because they were not subject to the recall.

With all the delays surrounding this imminent release, it was THEIR RESPONSABILITY to get the proper information and inform their customers. Now many have bought it believing they would play it as of today and it's not the case. They pulled the plug just a few hours before.

I only wish they receive some bad press so next time they will know how to properly be loyal to all the people who gives money to them.

You mean, some are actually willing to pay more -- sometimes double?! -- to deal through steam? I thought nerds were smart people.

Well, it's not as cut and dried as that. Steam has sales often. Some examples:

I got TF2 on a sale weekend when the current price was 30 bucks for $20. I bought Vampire Bloodlines, which goes for 20 dollars on D2D, for $10 on another Steam sale weekend. At a time when everyone else was charging 40 bucks for ET:Quake Wars, I got it for the sale price of $30. There are lots of values to be had on Steam if one is patient.

Strange, bought the id super pack an hour ago here in Luxembourg, maybe the id games are distributed by a different publisher in Germany which doesn't allow this...

Has nothing to do with a publisher. It's just ... a lot of ID games are banned in Germany, so Steam simply blocks german IP ranges.

@Flo: https://www.relakks.com. A VPN service, which has its roots in the swedish pirate party. Not very reliable technically at the moment (i guess too many users), but if you want a trustworthy vpn service provider, then take them. There are others, like http://www.trilightzone.org

If you really want to use a VPN provider, ask around, inform yourself. I just gave you two names as a start.

This comment was edited on Sep 6, 12:32.

They didn't change the release date on STEAM until 3 hours after they put up the "pre-purchase" (the game had 6 hours to go according to the timer) leading what I'm sure were many people to purchase the game beleiving they were going to play the game at the stroke of midnight PST.

I was so fucking livid last night that I wanted to smash my monitor in. I had made plans to take the day out of work to enjoy it.

I'm not sure who's to blame on this little fiasco but I hope their testicles rot off.


This comment was edited on Sep 6, 10:53.

@Kajetan
What proxy or VPN would you recommend? Any best practice?

You mean, some are actually willing to pay more -- sometimes double?! -- to deal through steam? I thought nerds were smart people.

I've seen iffy reviews thus far, but then again the first one got mixed reviews and I loved it.

The biggest complaint seems to be the difficulty; the reviewers are saying that money is nearly impossible to get, making the game a grind because it is very hard to buy the equipment you need to succeed.

While that is a head-scratcher of a design choice, if that's the biggest problem then I'm sure to get this once some modder will surely fix that flaw within the first month.

Yeah it's due to publisher's retail agreements. The publisher agrees with the Euro distributor that online sales will be sold at no less than RRP in those countries. It substantially negates the benefit of Steam.

For me in the UK, anything "published" by "independents" like Valve or Id tends to be priced at whatever they feel like charging, and at the US price to boot (just adding VAT). This means they can price to the market and pass on savings. Every time I've looked at this, steam has been considerably cheaper than physical stores and usually better (but always at least competitive) with etailers, even if this is largely due to US "RRP" being considerably lower than the UK's.

Other publishers are usually the same prices on steam as at physical UK stores at launch. At first glance this seems neutral and in some respects fair, if annoying.

However in practice Steam is singificantly more expensive than physical stores. Stores can discount their stocks whenever they want, etailers are usually notably below RRP at launch. CoD4 for example is still $69.99 [£40] on Steam, or £30 on Play.com (£35 in stores). And CoD seems to be holding up it's price unusually well, I was expecting £20-25 on Play by now.

If all games were sold on steam like Valve and Id ones, I'd buy all may games through there. Frankly I resent that half of my money goes on expenses that could be eliminated via a modern distribution system like Steam, and doubly resent that I'm supposed to pay double the price that is charged in the US for the same product.

So I'll buy the occasional superb PC title, the occasional Steam bargains but otherwise just rent for the 360.

Not here in germany...

Strange, bought the id super pack an hour ago here in Luxembourg, maybe the id games are distributed by a different publisher in Germany which doesn't allow this...

Not here in germany...

Use a proxy or a VPN service.

Not here in germany...

... at least for those who do not already own all the original games.

This is my first purchase on Steam besides HL2 and the Orange Pack. For once, we Europeans did not get screwed over with the Steam price, 27€ inclusive Taxes is incredible low for so many hours of fun.

a must buy

I bet this is another of those retail agreements. Valve aren't really to blame for the pricing and distribution mishaps befalling Steam lately - it's likely 100% at the publishers feet as they're being forced by antiquated retail agreements to not prejudice against brick and mortar.

Conan is on steam now?

Hmm wonder how much that is...$44.99.... Hahahaha.

Please. You should be able to buy this off ebay with a character already included for way less.

Buy it now prices seem to start at approx $20 shipped so I'm thinking paying 44.99 on steam is a horrible price.

Plus the game installs to something insane like 15 GB, you want to load that off steam!? It takes about 2 hours to install it off 2 dvd's from the box.

Oh and then there is the game being a severe disappointment after you get out of the opening area, lvl 20+.

I almost picked up Clear Sky at EB here in Australia last night and it was $69.95. I decided to go without until I knew I'd have some time to play it and then it became available to Australian Steam users this morning for $35.99 USD, so buying it from Steam was an easy decision. The id Super Pack was too good to pass up, too. Depends on the luck of the draw where you're located and that sucks. Still can't buy the first Stalker on Steam from Australia though.

The European release date has been pushed back because of BUGS and STABILITY PROBLEMS.

The game is available at retail in Europe and has been out in Russia for a while now. There's no disputing that the game has more than its fair share of bugs but that has not affected the European release. The US delay is related to missing serial keys and I find it unlikely that they will run of tens/hundreds of thousands of disks again - they'll just add the keys and ship it back out again. The game reached gold status (whether it should have or not) and after that it's not going to change unless it absolutely has to. Considering how buggy the original was I'd say that bar is pretty high.

NEway, the first patch has addressed a lot of the issues people were complaining about most (bandits mugging you without being able to get your possessions back)... though undoubtedly it fixes only a fraction of the bugs actually present.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Founder of the "I Hate Smiley Fitz" society

Remember: Riley has autism. He has trouble communicating, and in an overstimulating
environment, he can get frightened and run away, leaving his parents frantic. - Auburn

Did THQ's lack of copy protection make GSC Game World angry and decide to switch publishers for this release or something?

All I know is that the dispute messed up support for the original game, which is why the Steam version is 1.05 and most people are running the unofficial 1.06 patch - that means Steam users can't play online. There's some crazy workaround that involves getting the serial key from the registry and installing a pirated version of the game, though that's too much effort for me.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Founder of the "I Hate Smiley Fitz" society

Remember: Riley has autism. He has trouble communicating, and in an overstimulating
environment, he can get frightened and run away, leaving his parents frantic. - Auburn

The European release date has been pushed back because of BUGS and STABILITY PROBLEMS. German gamer's magagzine "Gamestar" couldn't really test "Clear Sky", because it was almost unplayable. The AI is more or less retarded, and the game testers were beamed to places they couldn't get out anymore by the "tour guide" (or whatever it'll be called in the English version).

So, the serial key is more or less a lame excuse for all of this. They need to finish the game, get rid of the bugs and release it in a playable form.

This comment was edited on Sep 6, 01:28.

The European release was pushed back because of the incompetent US publisher (forgot to include serial keys). The game is available at retail here but we can't buy it on Steam for over a week.

If that's the case, that's unfortunate. THQ was the publisher for the USA for the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and it didn't even have copy protection. And came with a bonus disc! Most surprising purchase I've ever made. Bought it the same day as C&C 3, which was the complete opposite experience. DVD-check to this day. Sigh.

Did THQ's lack of copy protection make GSC Game World angry and decide to switch publishers for this release or something?

I love steam steam but those prices break the deal for me .... 80$ for cod4 over here(germany), while i can get it for around 30$ anywhere else .... and will not wait an additional 10 days for clear sky when i can get it right now for half the price ... Sorry I`d love to buy everything over steam but with those prizes ......