Interesting article on Steam

[DefRef]

Originally posted by: PingSpikeBut the traditional model is so fucked up right now I don't see why there is so much venom for the digital distribution side of things.

What's effed up about traditional distribution? The ability to install from a disc faster than downloading 8GB of data? The having something physical to show for your money? The ability to pay a hell of a lot less due to B&M sales of titles?

The latter is the killer. I bought HL2E1 for EIGHT DOLLARS at Circuit City a mere FIVE DAYS after it came out. People paid $18-$20 on Steam while I saved 60%. CC frequently has PC games on sale for $38 when they're still $50 on Steam. I picked up Guild Wars GOTY Edition for $10 on Black Friday when it was $30 (or more; can't recall) on the GW site.

If they do away with physical copies, then prices will never drop until games are a year or two old and at the end of their lives. Dark Messiah Might and Magic is $20 on Steam now, but I got the LE for $4.12 during CC's PC game blowout. 80% off and a better edition to boot.

Sorry, but digital distro is the arrangement with serious problems.

 

[Inspector Jihad]

why does steams drm bother so many people. its almost invisible.

 

[DefRef]

I'll ask this again: If EA or some other outfit was running Steam, would you people still love it with all your hearts and souls or would you be suspicious? Given Valve's own track record of lying - *cough*"Half-Life 2 will ship on Sept. 30, 2003."*cough*episodic content will allow for shorter times between games*cough* - I find the willingness to bend over and grab the ankles for Gabe Newell & Company mystifying.

 

[KeithTalent]

Originally posted by: DefRef
I'll ask this again: If EA or some other outfit was running Steam, would you people still love it with all your hearts and souls or would you be suspicious? Given Valve's own track record of lying - *cough*"Half-Life 2 will ship on Sept. 30, 2003."*cough*episodic content will allow for shorter times between games*cough* - I find the willingness to bend over and grab the ankles for Gabe Newell & Company mystifying.

Comparing EA's track record (hastily released, buggy games) with Valve's (late games, but relatively bug free) is not really a decent comparison at all. Would I like Steam as much if it was run by EA? Probably not, but that's because they would run Steam in a completely different way than it is being run right now.

KT

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: KeithTalent

Originally posted by: DefRef
I'll ask this again: If EA or some other outfit was running Steam, would you people still love it with all your hearts and souls or would you be suspicious? Given Valve's own track record of lying - *cough*"Half-Life 2 will ship on Sept. 30, 2003."*cough*episodic content will allow for shorter times between games*cough* - I find the willingness to bend over and grab the ankles for Gabe Newell & Company mystifying.

Comparing EA's track record (hastily released, buggy games) with Valve's (late games, but relatively bug free) is not really a decent comparison at all. Would I like Steam as much if it was run by EA? Probably not, but that's because they would run Steam in a completely different way than it is being run right now.

KT

Amazingly enough EA have delayed 2 big name games recently:
Spore and Warhammer Online have both had release dates pushed back. In the latest Warhammer Online newsletter they even said "it's because we're under EA that we're allowed to delay and add polish to the game".
Sure everyone hates EA for the buggy crap they put out and don't patch, but it might be that they are actually taking notice, and are trying to improve.
I'm personally not holding my breath, but it's a possibility that we should at least try and be optimistic about.

 

[Molondo]

Originally posted by: Inspector Jihad
why does steams drm bother so many people. its almost invisible.

I was wondering the same thing.

 

[KeithTalent]

Originally posted by: Lonyo

Originally posted by: KeithTalent

Originally posted by: DefRef
I'll ask this again: If EA or some other outfit was running Steam, would you people still love it with all your hearts and souls or would you be suspicious? Given Valve's own track record of lying - *cough*"Half-Life 2 will ship on Sept. 30, 2003."*cough*episodic content will allow for shorter times between games*cough* - I find the willingness to bend over and grab the ankles for Gabe Newell & Company mystifying.

Comparing EA's track record (hastily released, buggy games) with Valve's (late games, but relatively bug free) is not really a decent comparison at all. Would I like Steam as much if it was run by EA? Probably not, but that's because they would run Steam in a completely different way than it is being run right now.

KT

Amazingly enough EA have delayed 2 big name games recently:
Spore and Warhammer Online have both had release dates pushed back. In the latest Warhammer Online newsletter they even said "it's because we're under EA that we're allowed to delay and add polish to the game".
Sure everyone hates EA for the buggy crap they put out and don't patch, but it might be that they are actually taking notice, and are trying to improve.
I'm personally not holding my breath, but it's a possibility that we should at least try and be optimistic about.

Right, I do realize they have changed their tune (publicly at least), so I was commenting more with respect to the historical wrongdoings that EA has perpetrated.

I do hope they have turned things around, and the War delay is promising, but we will see what happens going forward.

KT

 

[Superrock]

Originally posted by: DangerAardvark
I'll take my game permanently backed up on Steam servers without ever having to deal with DVD's.

Exactly the reason I prefer Steam. All the DRM, CD keys, DVDs, and hassle of finding stuff is eliminated with Steam. I love being able to go to another computer. log on my steam account, and just start playing. It starts to make a bigger deal when you got more and more games to keep track of. I do with they offered cheaper, "classic" games. That would do well on Steam I think.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: coloumb

Originally posted by: videogames101
I <3 steam

me too.

However... the games should be ~$5-$10 cheaper than the store versions...

WhY? you get free unlimited re-downloads of whole game.

What happens when you lose physical disc otherwise?

 

[RandomFool]

Steam gets the love because it manages to provide a benefit to the customers and the publishers/developers. It's a win win situation. We get automatic updates, access pretty much anywhere, voice chat, friends and all the other goodies and the publishing companies get to sell their game without worrying to much about it being pirated.
Sure a few people will always claim to have bought a game because they could "try it out" but the proof is in the sales of a game (which admittedly I don't know and don't care to lookup.) But I'm willing to bet that most people who pirate a game won't pay for it.

I've almost never had issues with steam. When it first launched I actually one of the few people that didn't run into constant issues with it. I had a few but most of them were "delete client registry.blob". I never sell my games so I don't worry about that and you can always backup games in case valve ever kicks the bucket.

 

[HannibalX]

I hate Steam. I refuse to use it for anything other than the content I already have on it.

 

[novasatori]

I don't mind steam, I just don't like, as I mentioned, that you can't loan your games out or sell em.

Don't play your CS:S, but play TF2? Too bad, your friend can't play your CS:S even though he wants too, and you're not, and if you want to let him play you have to give him control of your WHOLE LIBRARY of steam games.

 

[BFG10K]

Steam represents the sacrifice of rights for convenience.

To me Steam is a hindrance, not a convenience. It stops me playing games the way I want and I dare not try to work around it in case my account is disabled.

 

[skace]

Steam has become amazing. Especially the recent additions such as the shift-tab frontend and the working friends list. Both pushed it beyond anything I ever expected it to become. Joining servers with a group of friends has never, ever been this easy and I don't think I can go back to the days of gamespy or anything else for that matter.

Plus, the auto-join features are freaking amazing. Playing on 1 server full of crappy players while you have auto join running in the background against that constantly-full but incredibly fun server just streamlines the whole process. Makes me remember the days of auto reconnecting while staring at a console and just laughing.

That was a good read also, I liked hearing about the early days when Steam was a really bad step from WON. I mean, I kind of expected they may have been sweating it a little bit, but it's nice to hear from them on how they saw the events unfold. Also, kind of funny hearing warez lingo like 0day used in the article.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: skace
Steam has become amazing. Especially the recent additions such as the shift-tab frontend and the working friends list. Both pushed it beyond anything I ever expected it to become. Joining servers with a group of friends has never, ever been this easy and I don't think I can go back to the days of gamespy or anything else for that matter.

Plus, the auto-join features are freaking amazing. Playing on 1 server full of crappy players while you have auto join running in the background against that constantly-full but incredibly fun server just streamlines the whole process. Makes me remember the days of auto reconnecting while staring at a console and just laughing.

That was a good read also, I liked hearing about the early days when Steam was a really bad step from WON. I mean, I kind of expected they may have been sweating it a little bit, but it's nice to hear from them on how they saw the events unfold. Also, kind of funny hearing warez lingo like 0day used in the article.

Exactly. I dont understand why people are going so crazy about paranoid delusions of DRM and valve taking away your games. The benefits of the unified community far outweigh the negatives. More and more gamers are shifting away from the PC to the consoles because of the online experience is so much more streamlined (on 360 at least).

I dont want to have to manually patch my game, I dont want to have to coordinate with buddies outside of the game to meet on the same clogged servers, and I dont want to dig out the damn disc just to bypass the DRM. I'll take steam type activation DRM over disc-verification DRM any day .

Two anecdotes:

I'm actually the owner of both the PC and the 360 versions of COD4. I decided to go back and play it - fire up the game, it didnt work. Oh yeah, theres a bug that requires me to have a microphone plugged in order for the game to not crash. (dont ask me, I know it sounds ridiculous). So I dig out my mic, launch the game again. Ok, I need a patch. Alright, that'll be 70mb, should only take a few minutes. Wait a few minutes, download patch...install patch. Ok, fire it up, everything is working. Now find a server. Theres one - oops, too much lag. Find another one nearby, and everything is working alright, except for the douchebag cheater thats ruining the game. Screw this - turn on my 360. Pop in the disc. Patch? 15 seconds to install, from within the game. A friend is on. Invite sent, one click, and I'm in. Pretty much lag free, and no one is cheating. And everyone is talking. It literally took me less time to turn on the 360, insert the game, DL and install the patch and get into a match on the 360 than it did *just to download* the PC patch. Despite having a raptor in my system and a decent gfx card on a well kept system, the 360 version also loads faster and runs smoother. Something is clearly wrong here.

My brother just got a new PC. Wanted to install his favorite game, SWG. Had to dig out the discs, and it took him over a half hour to install because one of the discs was slightly scratched. Installs the game, then he needs to download a *HUGE* patch. Still didnt work. Had to figure out he needed new ati drivers, but he had to call me up so I could explain how to do that. Now, granted steam doesnt have auto driver updating or notification either, but thats a feature they can easily add. His experience likely would have been MUCH smoother if he could have just DLed the latest version of the game from the start, especially considering the scratched disc. These are the kind of things steam can bring to the PC, and I'm supposed to believe thats a bad thing?

 

[tommo123]

as i understand it, if you move from one region to another, your game may not work anymore (check steam forums). that and different pricing in different regions suck! then there's the fact that the games cost more via steam than from a store.

then there's what to do with a game once you've completed it. with a physical disk you can just sell it on and recoup some cash, with steam you're stuck - unless you make 1 account for every game you've bought and sell the account on. a tad messy i think.

i have a steam account for halflife 2, CS:S etc, but would not buy a new game through steam unless it was v.cheap. i honestly think that a load of PC games that *do* buy games sell them on after and taking that right away would make people a bit more picky on what they buy.

 

[Inspector Jihad]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Steam represents the sacrifice of rights for convenience.

To me Steam is a hindrance, not a convenience. It stops me playing games the way I want and I dare not try to work around it in case my account is disabled.

wtf are you talking about?

 

[Inspector Jihad]

it would be amazing if steam could set up some system with ati and nvidia to automate graphics drivers. (optional of course so some of these tin-foil knobs don't go apeshit and say that valve is taking over the world)

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: Inspector Jihad
it would be amazing if steam could set up some system with ati and nvidia to automate graphics drivers. (optional of course so some of these tin-foil knobs don't go apeshit and say that valve is taking over the world)

Honestly though, it'd be such a trivial thing to add, yet has so much benefit, that I have to wonder the only reason that isnt built in already is because no one has actually bothered to get around to it yet. Its obviously a win-win-win for valve, gfx manufacturers and consumers. Then again, I'm still personally shocked that gfx manufacturers havent built this into their taskbar applets already, so who knows.

 

[Inspector Jihad]

Originally posted by: BD2003

Originally posted by: Inspector Jihad
it would be amazing if steam could set up some system with ati and nvidia to automate graphics drivers. (optional of course so some of these tin-foil knobs don't go apeshit and say that valve is taking over the world)

Honestly though, it'd be such a trivial thing to add, yet has so much benefit, that I have to wonder the only reason that isnt built in already is because no one has actually bothered to get around to it yet. Its obviously a win-win-win for valve, gfx manufacturers and consumers. Then again, I'm still personally shocked that gfx manufacturers havent built this into their taskbar applets already, so who knows.

especially when drivers have such an impact on game performance. i know a lot of my friends, as i'm sure all of you also have similar friends, are not tech savvy but love pc games...the don't check blogs or know when to get an update for their driver.

plus valve is already close to ati from their optimizations to giving away games with video cards, it cant be that much trouble to set it up.

 

[Larries]

Originally posted by: PingSpike
....
Patch hunting - You're already downloading your games. Massive patches that are a chore to download on dialup are pretty normal. And you've got to go search them out. And lots of games are making me go through motherfucking fileplanet all the time to get their patches! Fuckers can't even host their own bug fixes anymore.

Patches are nuts, in the old days maybe 1 patch came out because games were simpler so it wasn't so bad. Now, its actually a pretty big pain in the ass keeping your games updated! You can't just load up game X that you haven't played in 3 months and log on to the local server because now everyone has a different version. So load up your web browser, its time to go searching for the latest patch on file planet...steam takes it off your hands (for better or worse). You turn it on, it starts downloading the patches and it more or less works. It could be faster and they could do a little better job QAing the patches, but at least when you start it up it gets you do the level playing field without any thinking on your part.

....

I asked a question earlier but no reply... if I bought a game off Steam, can I just download the patch from the game company and just update it outside Steam? Will this screw up the game?

Reason I asked is I recently bought a game off Steam, and the version on Steam is a quite old version. The in-game update function tells me that I cannot patch with that version and needs to buy the game from the game company! There is no patch on Steam for this game.

So, I am now playing an older version although I can easily download a patch to update the game...

(the game is Baseball Mongul 2008, btw)

 

[BFG10K]

wtf are you talking about?

The whole mothership thing watching over my actions.

At least with regular protection I can defeat it with no-CD cracks, even Starforce. Not so with Steam, lest my account is banned.

 

[BFG10K]

it would be amazing if steam could set up some system with ati and nvidia to automate graphics drivers.

They have - it's called Windows Update.

 

[novasatori]

Originally posted by: Larries

Originally posted by: PingSpike
....
Patch hunting - You're already downloading your games. Massive patches that are a chore to download on dialup are pretty normal. And you've got to go search them out. And lots of games are making me go through motherfucking fileplanet all the time to get their patches! Fuckers can't even host their own bug fixes anymore.

Patches are nuts, in the old days maybe 1 patch came out because games were simpler so it wasn't so bad. Now, its actually a pretty big pain in the ass keeping your games updated! You can't just load up game X that you haven't played in 3 months and log on to the local server because now everyone has a different version. So load up your web browser, its time to go searching for the latest patch on file planet...steam takes it off your hands (for better or worse). You turn it on, it starts downloading the patches and it more or less works. It could be faster and they could do a little better job QAing the patches, but at least when you start it up it gets you do the level playing field without any thinking on your part.

....

I asked a question earlier but no reply... if I bought a game off Steam, can I just download the patch from the game company and just update it outside Steam? Will this screw up the game?

Reason I asked is I recently bought a game off Steam, and the version on Steam is a quite old version. The in-game update function tells me that I cannot patch with that version and needs to buy the game from the game company! There is no patch on Steam for this game.

So, I am now playing an older version although I can easily download a patch to update the game...

(the game is Baseball Mongul 2008, btw)

No you can't, which is another problem. You're SOL until a steam update is released, and if one isn't you're SOL forever basically.

 

[RandomFool]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

wtf are you talking about?

The whole mothership thing watching over my actions.

At least with regular protection I can defeat it with no-CD cracks, even Starforce. Not so with Steam, lest my account is banned.

I never understood the issue with that. So valve can see what games you're playing, big deal. You don't need a no-cd crack because steam doesn't require cds.

Also I wouldn't trust windows update with my graphics drivers. Unless something has changed they're usually pretty out of date on there.