[Update: The press release offered lots of confusion - the story's been updated now for clarity]
Valve are rocking the boat in a really big way, especially for PC gaming piracy. They have just announced the release of a complete collection of publisher power, called Steamworks, available to developers and publishers completely free. Valve describe it as,
“A complete suite of publishing and development tools – ranging from copy protection to social networking services to server browsing – now available free of charge to developers and publishers worldwide.”
What does this actually mean? Well, its extensive. The complete press-release is beneath the cut, as well as our explanation of what it means. And what it means could be huge.
What does it mean? It gives publishers and developers the ability to control their games in a brand new way, with Steam itself dropping in the final executable to get the game working, which could have a hefty impact on how we buy our games. And most importantly, no one’s paying Valve a penny, neither the publisher, nor the player.
The suite will allow developers to perform many of the tricks that have distinguished Valve, such as monitoring sales stats, hefty anti-piracy measures, automatic updating, voice chat, multiplayer matchmaking, social networking and even the ability to run beta testing. The possibilities this opens up for independent developers, and smaller publishing companies, could be enormous.
It’s a bit confusing what this will actually means, so here’s what we understand: A publisher can sell their game in the shops or distribute it digitally via their own system, customers install it, and then have Steam drop in the executable. It kills off day-one piracy in a single shot. Bam. Then updates will be delivered automatically for the game via Steam, and all the post-release stats and tools will be available, with Valve charging no one any money for this at all.
Does this give Valve more power? It certainly means more people will be installing Steam on their systems, and that isn’t going to hurt them. But since they won’t be responsible for distribution, nor handling money for these companies, the control seems to be firmly in the hands of each game’s publisher.
Complete Suite of Publishing Tools Available Free of Charge
January 29, 2008 – Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announce Steamworks, a complete suite of publishing and development tools – ranging from copy protection to social networking services to server browsing – is now available free of charge to developers and publishers worldwide.
Steamworks, the same suite of tools used in best-selling PC titles Half-Life 2 and The Orange Box, is available for all PC games distributed via retail and leading online platforms such as Steam. The services included in Steamworks may be used a la carte or in any combination.
Specifically, Steamworks offers:
· Real-time stats on sales, gameplay, and product activation: Know exactly how well your title is selling before the charts are released. Find out how much of your game is being played. Login into your Steamworks account pages and view up to the hour information regarding worldwide product activations and player data.
· State of the art encryption system: Stop paying to have your game pirated before it’s released. Steamworks takes anti-piracy to a new level with strong encryption that keeps your game locked until the moment it is released.
· Territory/version control: The key-based authentication provided in Steamworks also provides territory/version controls to help curb gray market importing and deliver territory-specific content to any given country or region.
· Auto updating: Insures all customers are playing the latest and greatest version of your games.
· Voice chat: Available for use both in and out of game.
· Multiplayer matchmaking: Steamworks offers you all the multiplayer backend and matchmaking services that have been created to support Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2, the most played action games in the world.
· Social networking services: With support for achievements, leaderboards, and avatars, Steamworks allows you to give your gamers as many rewards as you would like, plus support for tracking the world’s best professional and amateur players of your game.
· Development tools: Steamworks allows you to administer private betas which can be updated multiple times each day. Also includes data collection tools for QA, play testing, and usability studies.
“Developers and publishers are spending more and more time and money cobbling together all the tools and backend systems needed to build and launch a successful title in today’s market,” said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. “Steamworks puts all those tools and systems together in one free package, liberating publishers and developers to concentrate on the game instead of the plumbing.”
“As more developers and publishers have embraced Steam as a leading digital distribution channel, we’ve heard a growing number of inquiries regarding the availability of the platform’s services and tools,” said Jason Holtman, director business development at Valve. “Offering Steamworks is part of our ongoing efforts to support the needs of game developers and our publishing partners.”
Steam is a leading platform for the delivery and management of PC games and digital content. With over 13 million active accounts and more than 250 games, plus hundreds of movie files and game demos available, Steam has become a frequent destination for millions of gamers around the world.
For more information regarding Steamworks, please visit www.steamgames.com/steamworks. To find out about more about Steamworks contact jasonh@valvesoftware.com
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Well yes, it’s no evidence of course, and Bioshock was pretty hyped, but it still is an indication – it was similar with Gothic 3, which sold beyond expectations for several weeks, and which wasn’t cracked for a couple of weeks at the very least as well.
As for blaming piracy – it surely isn’t the only factor, but I am also sure that it does play a role. I often enough see figures of torrent sites due to my line of work, and the numbers are pretty scary. Games often get downloaded before their official release in bigger numbers than they are sold afterwards. Again, of course not all these people would buy the game, but even if it’s just a small percentage, it would be a not too negligible boost to sales.
This is a very intresting development.
I think its going to take some time to actually see what it all means.
If an indie developer uses this, I assume that “region locking” is optional – and if Valve does screw the pooch, then the indie developer can choose to stop using the system and roll their own replacement for whatever services they had been using.
I will not buy a Valve product (even legitimate ones) because their treatment of customers really sucks – but as far as I can tell, they don’t get “control” over other developers, but instead allow other developers to have the opportunity to be just like Valve, if they choose.
Remember, no good deed goes unpunished. Also, I hope this doesn’t cause developers to fall into the Company of Heroes trap with competing copy-protection schemes that penalize the digital-distribution customers.
It’s a clever move from Valve in terms of making Steam ubiquitous amongst gamers.
Like iTunes, even if people aren’t buying from the online store, that it is on so many people’s machines pushes out any competition.
The logo is clever.
To point out: a) while occasionally pirate groups get access to leaked pre-release software (and get very excited), most of the time they’re working off commercially released copies. It’s actually quite unusual to have pirate copies floating around before the game’s on store shelves. b) Every one of those “Steam-protected” games hit pirate sites a mere day after release.
It’s true that they don’t work quite as well as they might, though. Mods won’t work because of how Steam mods are handled, and updating is a pain – more so than with a regular no-CD crack. Still, mods don’t reliably work with other pirated games either.
Bob:
“I will not buy a Valve product (even legitimate ones) because their treatment of customers really sucks – but as far as I can tell, they don’t get “control” over other developers, but instead allow other developers to have the opportunity to be just like Valve, if they choose.”
/facepalm…
So basically your claiming your pirating of Valve games, is in fact a form of protest against their customer service. A service which you yourself wouldn’t be using, because your pirating their games. Seriously a thief’s, a thief’s, a thief, get a life before it’s too late.
RE: region locked games,
Valve’s been enforcing this for some time. Someone on CheapAssGamer.com purchased The Orange Box from overseas for like $15 and Steam banned it from his US-based account. But yeah, Steam will only make it more common (and I actually buy lots of import games…most of them compilations that aren’t available in the States).
I think region lock is total bullshit. The corporations love outsourcing labor overseas to save money, but the consumer is punished when he buys a product from overseas for less money.
Yes, can someone explain region lock to me? I don’t get why buying your stuff cheap in another country is a bad thing. It’s a major drive in the tourism industries of some countries in my region I know that much.
Sigma, look at it from the Publisher’s perspective. They want you to pay for the expensive version so they get more money. They get less money from you if you buy the incredibly cheap version from overseas. (Just send your mind back to when CoD4 was released over steam. Activision was originally selling the game at the same price everywhere, but when they discovered they could get more money from Australian consumers, they decided to make it the same price as the retail version)
Unfortunately I don’t know the details of the COD steam release, so your example isn’t a great help to me. Sorry!
Lemme give example. Computer parts in my country are near factory price because my government chooses not to tax hardware in order to promote technology growth. I used to know a guy (Australian) who came to live here for a bit and he bought lots of hardware for his aussie friends when he was going back because it was cheaper.
Now I realize the price difference in this case is due to government taxation and the hardware manufacturers aren’t seeing a profit difference but would it really be so unacceptable for people to buy Ukrainian Orange Boxes?
Cheers for Valve. I’m hoping this Blu-rays GFWLive. Well, bad analogy. I hope GFWLive goes the way of the Betamax as a result of this.
Question 42: Steam is to Wal-Mart as Microsoft is to:
Ikea?
Q42 A: Walmart.
Yeah, I get the analogy, but in the context of gaming, Valve has rocked my world and endeared me far more than Microsoft has.
Re: region locking
Buying games from poorer regions is just plain selfish. Valve can do one of two things: (a) use region locking, (b) charge $60 everywhere in the world. If we abuse region-based pricing Valve will do (b), which is *incredibly* unfair to the people in less developed countries who want to actually pay for their games.
Valve might be able to accomplish what GFW hoped to do but never did: unify PC gamers around a common platform that emphasizes unified standards.
Wide-scale tracking would allow Skyne–err, Steam, to diagnose hardware and game balance issues on the fly. Patches would then be delivered in the background, totally sidestepping shitty download sites like Fileplanet.
Through surveys, developers and publishers would gain insight into their customers’ PC specs, allowing them to design games accordingly.
Such a unified, yet ad-hoc, system would solve many problems that gamers have with the PC as a platform:
*Instead of a myriad of different, shitty server browsers, games would use the proven and effective Steam layout;
*Patches, which probably don’t reach many end users, would be delivered on-the-fly, providing gamers with a better experience and resolving poor first impressions with increasingly buggy releases.
*Stat tracking tied to a single profile.
*Better grasp of system builds so devs can resolve system incapabilities.
…
Or it could be a total dud, who knows.
And I simply cannot concieve of what information they might have that would lead them to conclude this. Dedicated warezers are not that impatient. Non-dedicated warezers are not that impatient. They’re fooling themselves, or the security industry is fooling them.
The best part is the hypothesis is a complete non starter for testing. There are a thousand factors in why Bioshock sold, it was one of the most publicised games of the year, second only to Halo 3 I’d wager. How do they decide if a sale is a possible warez loss or not? Or vice versa. And then how can they compare it to other games? Not easily, that’s for sure. The whole thing smacks of a con; the industry is obsessed with release dates, the public not so much. Give the industry a time-after-release based piracy theory and they lap it up.
Maybe I’m missing something important in this, but really I don’t think that they’ll ever reduce piracy this way. It doesn’t accord with the world I know. They’re spending all this energy on a Spartan wall that’s facing the wrong way and then slapping themselves on the back when it succeeds in failing slightly less than the last one. Sure it helps, but there’s more going on.
Valve giving away a security system should hopefully prick a very big hole in all this, even though they seem to be talking about it in the same sort of terms. Perhaps because that’s all people know.
Awwwwwwwwesome.
malkav11, that just isn’t true.
It’s true that it’s become harder to get it a long time prior to release because of how it works these days, but these people definitely get these titles prior to their launch day.
Usually it’ll only be released on or after the release day in the case of a good protection.
Folks, it’s a weird time. Yes, we have the technology now where an ordinary individual can make a retail purchase halfway around the world and have it delivered at a reasonable price.
At the same time, we have retail distribution systems that are based around countries, or groups of countries. And the consumers in those different countries have different amounts of money to spend on intellectual property.
Region-based sales/activation is important to developers because, like it or not, they have to negotiate on a regional basis. Not all developers, especially the smaller ones, can rely on a single global distributor. The assets they contain (for example, music tracks in Rock Band) often contain regional limitations themselves.
The first week is important to game retail. What I always find amusing about these debates over whether a 20-hour-game is “long enough” is that the average retail customer doesn’t play that long. Most of your sales aren’t going to go to people who finish the game. The retailer cares about selling those copies, and novelty sells, so it gets floor space. Very few games are going to get more retail exposure the second week than the first, so if the first week sales are mediocre, odds are on week two you won’t find yourself muttering “My God, Halo3 just puked all over the store!”
So novelty freaks aren’t usually “hardcore gamers”, but they’re very important for the retail success of a product. A sizable group of game pirates are novelty freaks too. With each DRM’d release, there’s a competition to see who can be the first to crack it, even if the game sucks (on the other hand, when the developers get around to releasing a patch that works, that patch is only cracked on the most popular titles). The logic runs that the overlap between the novelty freaks who will buy something in a store and those who will download it affects negatively first-week sales. And first-week sales determine retail success.
About EULAs: in the US there’s a huge difference between the validity of a EULA on a shrinkwrapped retail game and a downloaded one. When I take a game to the register, I am buying something from the store, and we both agree what that is. Neither the store nor the manufacturer can insert inside that shrinkwrapped container an “Agreement” that binds me: the purchaser didn’t agree to it!
When I purchase software via download, if I am required to agree to the EULA before completing the transaction, then I have just agreed to their terms.
A bold move by Valve. This could be a good move for the PC platform.
Just another system to be cracked, it won’t take long.
Just another system to be cracked, it won’t take long.
Someone will correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t think this system can be cracked before the game is released at least, because the game in question misses vital data that only get downloaded once it is released.
Definitely correct Lou, it will stop pre-release warez, unless someone leaks a complete exe. But stopping zero-day warez with a platform that preloads, decrypts and only in itself contains any actual protection? Someone will crack the system, and all games will then be available to pirates on release day.
However, probably only a minority of pirates would go through the trouble, so it might have a noticable impact. Here’s hoping, especially for those indie game developeres.
Yay! More mandatory online activation! And region locking! Exactly what we all need!
Get off the hobby horse, Colthor.
Well, from “the consumer”’s point of view it’s really no benefit whatsoever, is it? Quite the opposite, in fact.
You buy a game and, after installing it, you have to wait whilst it connects to the authentication server, downloads whatever bits the publisher doesn’t trust you to have on your DVD, chalks up what you’re allowed to play (and where) against your Steam account.
What if your internet connection’s down? What if the authentication servers are down? You’re stuffed, and can’t play your game until they work again.
What if Steam goes titsup.com? You’re stuffed, and can never play your game again. Unless some benevolent pirate cracks it, of course.
What if Steam suddenly decides it wants to deny you access to your games? Or charge you a recurring fee for your account? And so on? Oh yeah, you’re stuffed, or at the very least forced to bow to their demands.
A game you buy, on a disc, in a box, should work without recourse to anything outside of your control. Because how do you know those things will continue to keep working?
And the region locking – you see a cheap game on holiday, you buy it, you can’t play it. Why? ‘Cos you bought it in the wrong country. That’s all jolly well and good, isn’t it? Yes. It wasn’t a good idea on DVDs, I don’t see why you’d want to emulate it for PC games.
I love how people are still making this argument…
This would mean the death of downloadable demo’s pre release because nobody will want to release an exe which could be cracked to run the full game.
Making me sign up to a server just so I can run a game is stupid, stealing play data/information from me is also stupid.This whole thing is stupid.
Yeah, Valve collecting information on how their games are played is clearly a horribly stupid thing to do. How dare they try to improve our gaming experience!
I’m still laughing about the guy who pirates Valves games because ‘their customer service sucks!!!’. I’m curious as to which games company out there has better customer service.
As for pre-release demos, I’m pretty sure that sort of thing can be easily addressed.
AbyssUK: This would mean the death of downloadable demo’s pre release because nobody will want to release an exe which could be cracked to run the full game.
Not necessarily. I know of at least one recent title that deliberately took huge amounts of (unneeded in the demo) code functionality out of the executable for their demo for *exactly* that reason. Apparently successfully. It’s more work than just using the basic exe, but so are all efforts at copy protection.
Valve is quickly becoming my favourite developer.. creator… whatever company. This is a great step for indie folks, and really can’t hurt Valve at all.
Steam also gave me quite the quandary. It takes my favourite part of purchasing games – having the box, manual, backstory, etc – out, yet also removed my least favourite part – swapping CD’s every 20 minutes – so I’m torn between disliking it and loving it.
In the end though, it does help against piracy, yet doesn’t analy-rape those of us who simply don’t want to CD-swap constantly.
I’m going to say I’m happy with it all, but that is subject to change I guess, haha.
Can someone clear up a question of mine: If developers/publishers get use of the stat-tracking tools for free, who pays for the hosting? Can the stats be hosted by anyone other than Valve, or would developers/publishers have to pay a SteamStats subscription fee in proportion to their userbase?
Speaking strictly as a consumer (tho I work at a software comany) I buy my games well after they came out to get a reduced price, but I always buy them.
Waited til BioShock went down to $30
Still haven’t bought Orange Box for 2 reasons,
price hasn’t gone down yet
I’m in a rural area on dialup which makes using Steam quite painful
Mm. I see a fair amount of European stuff hit before American street date, sure. But other than that, it’s not that common.
*shrugs* Anyway, as a game owner, I’d much rather have games tie into Steam than use copy protection like Starforce, Securom, or TAGES, so even if it’s not that much more effective (or, in fact, winds up being less effective, the way many indie games don’t get pirated on their own, but when they go on Reflexive, a single Reflexive keygen unlocks everything.), I’d be in favor of it.
Will allow a lot more 0-day patching too. Basically it allows the developers to ship an unfinished product as long as it can be made to work on launch day.
I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.
Dean: They usually do that anyway, at least now gamers will be able to release quick fixes for their broken games as they become available, rather than a weeks worth of Chinese whispers about a patch that /might/ fix issues, leaving the gamer with a useless game for that period.
@kadayi – in all fairness, the poster didn’t admit to piracy; it may be that he/she/it doesn’t play Valve’s games at all (which is, of course, a huge loss on their part).
@The_B – ya know, some of us like playing old games. You know, multiple decades old. I don’t think there’s any question that Steam will be around in 5 years, but I’m not so sure it’ll be around in 50… and what if I feel like taking out the old nostalgia-mobile at that time? When I buy something, I want to own it… and while I do use and purchase games through Steam, that’s not to say I don’t have a reservation or two.
Yeah, what Charles Duffy said. There’s a whole lotta defunct developers and publishers out there already in just a few decades of this industry. Some of them were dominant in their chosen area(s), for a time. Which makes for a whole lot of software you can’t buy anymore (or mostly can’t), but at least people who already have it can play them (with a few exceptions). If Valve goes belly up, you might be able to play the original Half-Life if you can find a pre-Steam copy, but that’s about it. I don’t think there’s any major reason to expect them to at this point, but, well…things happen. And even if they don’t, changes of ownership or leadership happen too, and if they decide to change up their policies, people who’ve already got money invested are fucked.
I’d be lying if I said I was comfortable with either prospect. It hasn’t stopped me buying Valve games or other things on Steam, mind you. But I don’t make as much of a habit of it as I might if those risks weren’t there (and Steam version prices kept parity or dropped below retail, which they don’t, generally.)
“in all fairness, the poster didn’t admit to piracy; it may be that he/she/it doesn’t play Valve’s games at all (which is, of course, a huge loss on their part).”
There’s a lot of people that refuse to buy and play games that require Steam as long as the DRM restrictions are in place. Which is kinda funny, because such lost sales are then attributed to piracy, causing developers/publishers to use more DRM, which causes more people to get fed up, etc..
Fun fact: Morrowind and Oblivion contain practically no DRM what-so-ever, yet both sold extremely well. The strength of your DRM isnt what determines how well your game will sell. The quality of the game and the ease of which your users can play it do.
If I buy a game and can’t play it on a computer without an internet connection (or with a very poor connection), that’s not really easy, is it? Especially when you consider a broken internet connection to be the time people would most want to play a (non-multiplayer-based) game.
I fully understand what people are getting at when they use that comment, but again in all fairness – to think that Valve won’t have planned something for if Steam were ever to close are surely being a bit niave, and for them to even consider closing down – everyone knows that there are a very large number of defunct developers and publishers. But by this point it’s a lot like saying you never want to cross a road again because you might get knocked down and die. No one is trying to pretend it will never happen, but the possibility by this point is so remote, expecting the worst is being very over pessimistic to be frank, especially with Valve’s current position – they’re bigger than EA in the digitial distribution field.
Valve as a company? In all honesty, I really doubt Valve would care if people can play their games if they ever go belly up. It’s not like they’d continue to get money from more sales. Some of the more benevolent employees may want to allow it, sure, but as Steam is owned by Valve, only Valve as a company could do it, not the individual employees.
And it wouldn’t even take the company going defunct for something to happen. All it’d take is Valve no longer seeing a benefit for maintaining Steam. The servers and bandwidth cost money to maintain, after all, and if they see more losses than gains with no hope of recovering, down it goes.
This issue was bought up with Gabe Newell right when Steam started and he explained they had a software protocol in place at the time in such an event. After all they had no idea Steam would necessarily be a successful venture when they began it.
however the issue is moot tbh, because if Valve did go wobbly somewhere down the road someone like EA or Activision would snap them up just for the IPs alone. Also I’m pretty sure Valve don’t pay for bandwidth in the same way you or I do.
The EVILZ OF CAPITILIZM argument (OK, I apologise if I offend anyone by mocking it slightly there, but it’s another argument that’s very overused as if it’s a GetOutofJailFree card imo) – is flawed for one very good reason. And it involves the 13 million active users. I don’t think, no matter how big Valve get, that the voices of distain and outcry of that number of people is going to be ignorable. Companies and coporations may be seen as heartless bastards that don’t care about the people sometimes, but even from a purely buisness standpoint, ignoring a customer base that large is amount to commercial suicide, and quite frankly it’s rather niave to presume the worst of a company just because they appear to be becoming less personal than a small indie developer that they once were.
I’m fairly confident that a) if Valve went under, as Kadayi says, another publisher would buy the hugely popular IPs for cut prices, and b) if Valve -or whoever the owner was at the time- could no longer maintain through conventional means, it would always have the choice to implement advertising in the server loader, in the server browser, in the game browser, in the shop browser, in the chatrooms, on the profile pages, etc.
Yeah, I dunno…another publisher has no particular incentive to continue to operate things in the way that we expected from the original company. Look what EA’s done to…well, a lot of studios. And, again, with those companies it only boned us in terms of seeing more good games under those licenses, not enjoying the games they’d already made.
I’m also not convinced that a company’s highest priority when on the verge of collapse is going to be to take steps to make their products freely usable by their former customers. I freely concede that these are not things we likely need worry about in the next few years (at least, not with Valve. Other digital distribution options, and other games with DRM that phones home to the developer or publisher…). But I would prefer not to need to worry about them at all.