And that's the reason i buy only budget releases on Steam. Bioshock on Steam is still listed for 55 dollar. Bioshock is available as a budget retail release here in Germany for 10 euro.

Why exactly should Steam be cheaper? You buy it at retail and that's it, you have one copy for life. With Steam you can keep that copy potentially forever and not have to worry about offsite backups and the like. A game manual isn't really worth dick anyways, it's toilet reading for most of us.

Gamers have been spoiled by the budget titles on Steam and seem to forget that game prices have fallen in the past 10 years, not risen. If you really want every game to be at budget prices then expect dev budgets to fall and some really terrible games with low production values. You think it's bad right now with console ports? Just wait and see what it would be like if everyone was a cheapskate who only bought budget bin.

...The guys at Funcom get it...

NO, the guys at Funcom dont get it.

Well there's your problem, silly...

Yeah, well... I needed someone to keep the house clean and the pets fed while I catass in front of my PC all day.

And I'll admit it - I really want one of the plush companion cubes. I really want to see if it will indeed love me.

I know my wife is too - the cases and manuals for the 500 or so PC games I own certainly take up a LOT of space in our house.

Well there's your problem, silly...

And for the record, gaming trinkets are obviously popular else the Valve Store wouldn't exist. Hermes the Headcrab enjoys his warm position resting atop my cable modem.


This comment was edited on Oct 21, 2008, 05:36.

If you completely disregarded aesthetics, unquestionably, sure, but nobody is that extreme. By your logic you don't have or never had a picture or poster of any kind on your walls as they are obvious wastes of resources with absolutely no tangible value. I'm human, though, so I decorate my room with tchotchkes like game boxes, bobbleheads, and my DVD collection.

I don't mean this as insulting but I had no idea that people still did this. I kinda thought PC gamers by and large have moved past tchotchkes and the like. I still think that there isn't much in the way of 'must have stuff' in PC game boxes anymore. I for one am looking forward to the day when all entertainment media is shipped digitally without the physical fluff . I know my wife is too - the cases and manuals for the 500 or so PC games I own certainly take up a LOT of space in our house.

Physicality aside, Steam still hasn't tackled the pricing issue.

And that's the reason i buy only budget releases on Steam. Bioshock on Steam is still listed for 55 dollar. Bioshock is available as a budget retail release here in Germany for 10 euro.

Why should i buy full price games on Steam, when they are cheaper at retail even on the release date?

I'm the opposite. Why do I want tat that I have no use for? I never read manuals and with Steam I don't need to bother with crap like installing games / patches. If companies want to push out gaming merchandise then there's nothing to stop them doing that separately. We live in the 21st century - there really is no need to waste the Earth's resources manufacturing physical packaging. What use is a box sitting on a shelf?

If you completely disregarded aesthetics, unquestionably, sure, but nobody is that extreme. By your logic you don't have or never had a picture or poster of any kind on your walls as they are obvious wastes of resources with absolutely no tangible value. I'm human, though, so I decorate my room with tchotchkes like game boxes, bobbleheads, and my DVD collection.

But Valve has to provide and maintain bandwidth for games indefinitely. A game can be downloaded dozens of times by each individual, not to mention updates - this for the entire duration of Steam's existence (which shows no signs of dying). With conventional manufacturing you push out a disc/box, pay for the shipping and you're done - patches are farmed out to third party sites and they wipe their hands clean. However, games should be at least the same price as retail. It's ridiculous that COD4 costs £47/$82 (incl. taxes) here in the UK - that's vastly more than the £20 (with free delivery) it was available for at launch.

That's also invalid because bandwidth is not nearly as expensive as manufacturing and shipping.

In a perfect country there would be a national infrastructure of high-bandwidth, public internet access, a system no different than the roads outside your door. Even without that, bandwidth is still simply cheaper. Some if not much of the cost of bandwidth is passed onto the developer (hosting isn't free on Steam, you know) but I have a hard time believing Valve's hosting fees amount to anything approaching physical distribution costs, else why would they bother with Steam at all? Somebody within the system is simply pocketing this extra change.

Physicality aside, Steam still hasn't tackled the pricing issue. A game on Steam should be cheaper, period. For the sheer amount of money saved by avoiding packaging, shipping, and retail costs, it's completely invalid to charge the same price.

But Valve has to provide and maintain bandwidth for games indefinitely. A game can be downloaded dozens of times by each individual, not to mention updates - this for the entire duration of Steam's existence (which shows no signs of dying). With conventional manufacturing you push out a disc/box, pay for the shipping and you're done - patches are farmed out to third party sites and they wipe their hands clean. However, games should be at least the same price as retail. It's ridiculous that COD4 costs £47/$82 (incl. taxes) here in the UK - that's vastly more than the £20 (with free delivery) it was available for at launch.

I never use Steam as a content delivery service and I never will so long as brick and mortar stores exist. How do you propose steam sends me the lunchbox and bobblehead I'm getting from Fallout 3?

I'm the opposite. Why do I want tat that I have no use for? I never read manuals and with Steam I don't need to bother with crap like installing games / patches. If companies want to push out gaming merchandise then there's nothing to stop them doing that separately. We live in the 21st century - there really is no need to waste the Earth's resources manufacturing physical packaging. What use is a box sitting on a shelf?

What a fucking MORON Randy Stude is. Jesus christ man that is the longest run on sentence of all time.

Problem?

Quit fucking out sourcing your shit to countries that pay 1 dollar a year for cheap labor, such as China! Bring it back home to the good old USA and you can monitor the problem more you tools.

Until then, I will be torrenting away!

Physicality aside, Steam still hasn't tackled the pricing issue. A game on Steam should be cheaper, period. For the sheer amount of money saved by avoiding packaging, shipping, and retail costs, it's completely invalid to charge the same price.

That's a valid point. The reason I believe the price is the same is because most developers are in agreement that games are underpriced at 50 bucks. If they can get the same price for a game that did not require physical media and packaging, then they are closer to getting the monetary compensation they feel they deserve. While cost and compensation are subjective, the upshot is that more developers are going to use Steam for this very reason. Aside from the physical stuff, consumers don't receive any benefit from things like packaging and retail fees, and thus by and large don't care about them. For me, physical stuff has become far less important, mostly because in recent years there has been a paucity of must-have 'stuff' included with retail purchases anyway. In my view, whether you think Steam is the bees knees or a pile of elephant dung will become moot very soon. This is the future of entertainment content delivery. Whether that is good or bad depends on your opinion of services like Steam, Impulse, and Direct 2 Drive.


This comment was edited on Oct 20, 2008, 21:02.

This annoys me to no end.

The "PCGA" is nothing but a couple nerds who wanted to create drama and pretend to lead something. Pretending they are the voice of all gamers everywhere. They aren't accomplishing anything other than making us seem like a joke in developers' and publishers' eyes.

This will amount to nothing and only hurt us in the long run.

If you want to launch something like a "gamer's alliance" itd best be something along the lines of a supreme court lawsuit for protecting the rights of consumers who purchase items of entertainment value.

And some people just want to play the game. To me, Steam is just a lot of bloat. I chat with Batman from time to time, but I just want to play some TF2 most of the time. While it isn't the end of the world, from the time I decide to play TF2 to the time I'm actually playing TF2, my regard for steam depreciates.

I never use Steam as a content delivery service and I never will so long as brick and mortar stores exist. How do you propose steam sends me the lunchbox and bobblehead I'm getting from Fallout 3?

Physicality aside, Steam still hasn't tackled the pricing issue. A game on Steam should be cheaper, period. For the sheer amount of money saved by avoiding packaging, shipping, and retail costs, it's completely invalid to charge the same price.

OK so that was slightly off topic. But the bottom line is that, DRM aside, Steam still sucks. To people like me that just want the game, Steam is a very invasive form of DRM and nothing more.

Comparing Steam with Securom is like comparing a car with an engine. One is a complete package; the other is a standalone part. Steam is not just DRM - that is only a tiny part of what it is. Steam's DRM sucks, but I think it's largely given a pass because of all of the many other things it can do. It's a digital delivery service. It's a place to download demos. It's a mod database. It's a haven for indie games. It's an auto-patching service. It's a gaming front end with tons of great features.

There ARE indeed many negatives however. They may not be readily apparent at first, but I had an issue some time back that brought to light just how annoying it can be. I had an issue with my games in Steam not updating. The FAQ said that this was a glitch that could be fixed by deleting a couple of .blob files, causing Steam to re-download a bunch of updates that would remove this problem. When it is done, it asks you to re-enter your login information. For some reason, my login info would not go through, even though it was correct. I received a message that my account had been disabled. I had to generate a support ticket and wait almost 2 days for a response telling me that it was a password glitch and I needed to reset my password. The only problem was that Steam's password reset procedure sucks monkey ass, and did not work (It asks you for a specific answer to a specific question that I did not have the answer for). So, another support ticket. Another 24 hours. Finally, after further assistance, I was able to login. But for 3 days, I was unable to play the 60 games I paid for because of a Steam glitch.

In a world with no perfect solution, Steam is as good of an imperfect solution as I have seen. But suffer no illusions - Steam can ruin your day just as well as any DRM scheme.


This comment was edited on Oct 20, 2008, 18:57.

He's got a good point, the duplication and reviewer leaks are getting pretty bad these days. You have to wonder when publishers will just say screw it and start buying up the assets to do it in-house. It would really hurt "release day" piracy at least.

To what end? If there really is a profit motive involved, in-house duping isn't necessarily any more secure than outsourcing. At least with outsourcing, there is the potential for a huge lawsuit if someone is caught filching from the dupe shop. In-house, the best you can get is a prosecution; the monetary losses are basically unrecoverable.

I'm with you on the reviewer copies, though. I'm not sure how many sales game reviews actually get you anymore, unless it's a really high-profile game and the reviews are all but guaranteed to be good. I'm not in the industry, but seeing the dwindling number of reviews referenced here at Blue's makes me think maybe publishers are being much more stingy with the free games than they used to be. That's a smart move, as far as I'm concerned.

...but unlike Stardock's stuff and their version of Steam: Impulse...

As far as I can tell, Impulse is not a Steam-like service. It's merely a distribution and patching program. I run Linux and am unable to use Impulse because of it. Nevertheless, I bought The Political Machine the other day and requested an alternate download site for the game from their customer support, which I was given. If their intent is to regulate my use of their product, they evidently need a few tips on how to regulate things properly...

Well, I'm all for piracy and love and sharing, but as soon as you start selling other peoples stuff to make a profit for yourself, you should hang from a very tall tree by a very short rope.

AS soon as people "stop making PC games" and everything is on the console... Guess where the pirates will sail then? Think everybody will just give up?

Charging 60 bucks for an unfinished POS is the real reason piracy exists. Finish the games. Make them solid. Make them good. Stop charging so much for them, and piracy won't be such an issue.

He's got a good point, the duplication and reviewer leaks are getting pretty bad these days. You have to wonder when publishers will just say screw it and start buying up the assets to do it in-house. It would really hurt "release day" piracy at least.

Well this is what makes the whole thing a bit of a joke. Given all the claims of what piracy costs the industry, it's ludicrous that games leak out any sooner than when a retail store gets hold of them. Once it's out, potential for control is limited but before that the whole process can and should be locked down extremely tight. At a minimum I'd expect publishers to conduct a substantial security audit of the plant and everywhere else in the chain.

I am not saying Securom is great, because it's not. But if Securom is so infamous, why isn't Steam?

Because it benefits gamers. It auto-downloads patches, allows you to install and play the game from wherever you like, let's you buy games without going to a store and avoids things that typically annoy me (installing games, finding patches, etc). I never notice the online restriction because I'm constantly online.

SecuROM, on the otherhand, only restricts what you can do and can lock you out of games you legitimately own. It is completely unnecessary on top of Steam and people are rightly annoyed / outraged. If you lose your Windows install then you lose an activation... if that happens too many times you lose your game and have to contact the publisher/developer/DRM creator. It does nothing to stop piracy.

As for you sharing games... that's simply not allowed. Still, did you actually lose any games? It sounds like you just had to (re)purchase them, which is only fair when you didn't own them yourself.

Steam offers many benefits, more so with the upcoming Steam Cloud features. I love it. I hate SecuROM. I think you'll be hard pushed to find people that like SecuROM when Steam is widely praised / liked.

Hardly the best quote about piracy out of that interview, Blue.

But yeah, at least he's talking some sense.

And fuck CliffyB about GoW2. Let's see if he now has the guts to call every 360 owner a thief. I think he'll shut up and go back to developing the new expansion for castrated UT2004 UT3