STEAM question - not software related - but philosophical . . .

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: episodic
Back to the original question, what if every game company does this? Is that good or bad? What happens when game companies go bankrupt or stop 'supporting' games from being unlocked? I mean what if 5 years from now a game company thought that well, it is time to stop supporting version 1 of a game, only to 'force' version 2's adoption, etc. . .

At best, we don't know. This is going to be like the first time we've done anything else groundbreaking in human history - everyone is going to have to try their best, and we'll see where it leads to from there.

 

[Deleted member 139972]

Dunno. Steam is changing the way the game industry works. It's shifting the power from the massive manufacturers to the software companies. It's the American way to make things more efficient. Maybe they'll make a central gaming system for ALL game manufacturers. They should call it SkyNet.. Then hook it up to real robots with guns and.. well you get the point..

 

[sandorski]

The Steam has you!

 

[pray4mojo]

Originally posted by: jjones

Edit: I might buy the game if there were a crack available to circumvent this online activation, but I'm still not buying HL2.

i think there might be...

 

[KeithP]

Potentially, it can lead to cheaper & better games.

I remember when audio CDs first came out and many companies were singing that siren song back then. How it will eventually lead to a cheaper better product. Cheaper never happened. There is no doubt in my mind the cost savings realized by such systems will go right back to the people that made the game. I don't have a problem with that. They are free to charge what they like for their work and cosumers can make a decision to purchase it or not.

The only problem I have with Steam is that I can't resell the game. Almost every computer game I have purchased in the last few years I have played through and then sold. If many companies switched to a system that would prevent this, I would probably purchase fewer games and I would wait longer to purchase them (hoping for the eventual price drops). Another possibility would be that I might purchase a game console and give up PC gaming. Of course, similar systems will probably show up on the console side as well.

In a nutshell, the PC game industry would make less money from me if systems such as Steam became widespread. Although I did buy Half Life 2

-KeithP

 

[KeithP]

In a nutshell, the PC game industry would make less money from me if systems such as Steam became widespread. Although I did buy Half Life

Actually, now that I have thought about it a little, they would probably make more money off me. Take Far Cry for example. I purchased a used copy through FS/FT forum and resold it through the forum as well. My total cost was less than $10. However the publisher and developer didn't make anything on the sale. In fact, you could say they lost money. They lost my purchased because I bought used and they lost the purchase from the person that bought it from me. So from the initial retail sale, three people played the game so far.

I wonder how much money the resale market cost the developer and publisher for the average computer game? Eliminating that cost might be the real money maker for the companies involved.

I guess it might be better to say I would purchase fewer games and I would wait to purchase them until the price dropped a little. However, the companies might still make more money that way.

-KeithP

 

[dabuddha]

Steam is a piece of crap. Given that, I don't have a problem with it if it's an option. Making it a requirement to play a single player game you purchased at a store is just moronic.

 

[skace]

Let's take worst case scenario. Every developer creates their own client. Ok so let's say you have maybe 15 games installed on your machine right now and out of those there are 2 from 1 developer, 3 are from another, and the rest are singles. So now instead of 15 shortcuts, you have 12 shortcuts. The difference for you is minimal.

Right now steam isn't perfect. I'd say it is a good start but lacks a few huge things. First, it doesn't run very quickly and is a bit of a hog. I'd rather someone built a more compact and tighter running application.

II think that if steam was perfect, nobody would have a problem with every game coming with a steam-esque frontend. It streamlines patching and multiplayer.

Personally, I'd rather have 1 Steam program that I could buy and patch all my games through flawlessly. But I doubt that would ever exist because it would be such a gaming monopoly.

 

[Gurck]

Originally posted by: episodic

Originally posted by: ArmchairAthlete

Originally posted by: episodic

We'd all have 10 different apps running to run various games. . .

What is the thoughts on that?

Not if you just disable them from startup.

And nobody would play 10 games from 10 different groups at once.

Ok - look at it from joe user's perspective, whom you'd loose at the mere mention of disable and startup in the same sentence. . .

Joe User has a ps2 and/or xbox for games.

Originally posted by: Lonyo
Then average Joe should not be using a computer.

If the 99% of users who are "Joe User" didn't have computers, do you have any idea what we'd pay for ours? Here's a hint - Think Different Economics of scale.

F steam, btw.