Comments on: EA Arrives On Steam, But Only A Bit

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By: Geoff

Geoff — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 14:24:52 +0000

And so it begins.

By the end of next year, EA will merge all its systems into Steam, and SteamEA’s (pronounced Steamy) battle against Actizard begins in earnest. Two years later, Google acquires them and SteamEA becomes Google Games.

Quickly trampling Actizard, they turn their attention to Microsoft. After a protracted land and air war, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, the Googmind conquers Redmons and begins constructing a tower there.

At this time, the populace begins to see the danger and fight back. Their attempts are largely in vain, until a lingering EA Securom strain deactivates the Googmind, noticing that it has now been installed in more than 5 major cities.

The irony will be lost on the scattered and desperate survivors, as they seek to rebuild society and entertain themselves with something that doesn’t require GOS to run.

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 01:39:41 +0000

Now available in Europe less the UK

By: Sacrovir

Sacrovir — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 10:01:22 +0000

It is interesting to hear that “publishers have the right to determine the prices” because this isnt currently true of physical product. Publishers can affect the price by selling it to retailers such as Amazon or Game but actually it is these 3rd parties who determine the price. Digital downloads are the only place a publisher (or developer) can determine their own price. The impact of this could be quite large, especially if a game is download only.

By: jalf

jalf — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 09:34:17 +0000

…but note that this does not require some sort of conspiracy on the part of valve, and can be explained simply by cock-up. That being the case, is there any chance the AIM can wait around until after the weekend to give all the publishers on steam (including valve) a chance to review them?

Of course not. Wouldn’t be AIM then. Anyway, they already had time to fix their cock-up. They had a beta, where people pointed out this issue, and they chose to ignore the feedback. Also even if they bring the prices back in line, they’re still screwing over the European countries with low/no VAT. Norway doesn’t have to pay VAT at all, but is charged the same price as Denmark, with 25% VAT. So either Norway gets to pay 25% extra *to Valve’s pockets*, or Valve takes a 25% loss when selling to Denmark. I think the former is more likely to happen, and I’m not convinced they’re going to fix this.

steam is based in the US. You don’t have a right to insist someone opens up a store in your country.

Irrelevant. Citizens of the EU have the right to buy products that are available in any EU country. If Steam sells products cheaper in the UK, then every EU citizen has a right to buy at that price. Itunes already got slammed by the European Commision for this exact issue, and had to change their pricing.

But of course, it’s not a big deal. Play.com offers free shipping to every EU country as far as I know. And their prices easily match the “old” Steam. So this really only affects me because of EA choosing to add their games to Steam DRM-free. That means I can finally buy Mass Effect and others I’ve been wanting to play. But as much as I’ve been looking forward to playing a few EA games, I don’t think a 40% price premium is worth it.

By: Erlam

Erlam — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 02:18:53 +0000

“the regional blocking makes little sense, unless EA has some kind of euro download system contract in place that it’s trying to protect?”

A lot of that is set up by the countries themselves. I know that releasing stuff in ‘Europe’ is often made complete hell by Germany’s insane demands. In a game I worked on hostages were not allowed to have bound hands. Thanks to Germany, we had to re-model the NPC’s.

By: RaFannie

RaFannie — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 02:16:08 +0000

So this ChuChu train only travels between US and Canada….well that sucks.

By: Dot

Dot — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 19:44:30 +0000

The thread kind of moved on past that, but, to reiterate, all EA’s titles on Steam do not have any DRM.

Not only moderators have stated that, their Steam pages don’t get the usual DRM icon all the DRM equipped games on Steam are marked with.

By: RichP

RichP — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 02:44:10 +0000

Good news for European users: A Bioware employee told Blue’s News that EA games should be available to European Steam users sometime next week, after a technical issue is resolved.

By: Krupo

Krupo — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 02:18:42 +0000

I ended up getting Stalker (damn you freebies/discounts!) for 5 bucks last night.

Man, I now have a BACKLOG of weekend-special games to finish.

My sympathies for the Australian/European pricing insanity. I guess this is the karmic retribution for you getting to enjoy cooler cars. :p

By: Dinger

Dinger — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:19:12 +0000

Frymaster: AIM, by definition, wait for nobody.
If it’s a matter of waiting for merchants to update their prices; well, they had a beta that lasted all of a week. If that’s their excuse, than they had no reason whatsoever to move into production.
It’s nice to see that Left4Dead is only 45 Euros. That would make the price hike over what I paid for it (taxes included) only 20%. I have no problem attributing all this to incompetence, but it’s difficult to imagine the configuration of incompetence that would arrive at this. No matter how you look at it, even in the best light (taking your Left4Dead example as a case of Valve being “reasonable”), it amounts to a unilateral and arbitrary price hike by switching from one foreign currency to another.
And you also know that Valve is perfectly capable of deploying software that calculates currency conversion and VAT on the fly using IP location. They have all the tools to do just that (and have been doing it for some time). That would have been reasonable. “They just defaulted to rip people off in an arbitrary manner based on whether their culture was closer to continental Europe or the United States” is so reprehensibly stupid an excuse that it’s actually better for their company image if we assume a massive conspiracy on their part.

And Dean: Valve’s “Receipts” do not have separate listings for VAT. It’s all notional.

By: Dean

Dean — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 23:38:55 +0000

If you’re in Norway, and the receipt has a separate listing for VAT on it, can you not just claim it back?