By John Walker on November 11th, 2010 at 2:53 pm.
As the trend for PC sales leans increasingly toward digital distribution, with retail stores feeling their age, there are increasing rumblings about the prominence and dominance of Valve’s Steam. Today’s MCV reports, from unnamed sources, that retailers and online rivals are beginning to get a little cross with the requirement to install Steam in games they’re selling, and threatening to boycott Steam-infused games entirely. Games, they say, that require you to install some software that makes their own stores redundant. But are their arguments sound? What’s the real reason publishers are choosing Steam?
MCV claims that “key retailers will drop titles that integrate the popular Steam service as fears mount that the service has a ‘monopoly’ on the download market.” While they don’t identify their sources, the quotes, they say, come from “the digital boss at one of the biggest UK games retailers.” Which means either HMV or Game, basically. “If we have a digital service,” this mystery boss says, “then I don’t want to start selling a rival in-store.” He continues, “Publishers are creating a monster – we are telling suppliers to stop using Steam in their games.”
Equating Steam with iTunes, industry types are expressing concern that Valve’s distribution system will have a monopoly on the market, and thus be able to start controlling pricing. Estimates (which are poorly evidenced) suggest that Steam dominates the market with 80% of sales, putting them in a powerful position of control. Of course, Valve has always maintained that the prices on Steam are set by the publishers, not by themselves.
The key issue is, if you sell a copy of, say, COD:BLOPS from anywhere other than Steam, be it in a bricks-and-cardboard-cut-outs-of-men-with-guns shop, or a rival digi-distributor, you’re selling something that installs Steam on the customer’s computer, and requires that the game be run through Steam. They’re saying they’re forced into selling their rival. This, at first glance, seems a reasonable complaint.
But what’s not being acknowledged here is the reason why games are requiring Steam, and it’s something none of those apparently complaining are offering: Steamworks. Activision or 2K has no commercial advantage in forcing players onto one source for their games, but they certainly do gain an advantage by using the DRM, multiplayer, update system, achievements, etc, that come with running their game through Valve’s grey window.
So when a rival digital distribution boss says to MCV, “At the moment the big digital distributors need to stock games with Steam. But the power resides with bricks and mortar retailers, they can refuse to stock these titles. Publishers are hesitant, but retail must put pressure on them,” he completely fails to acknowledge not only why publishers are picking Steam, but also where his own software is lacking.
More extraordinary is a quote tucked away in a boxout of the print edition of MCV, again from the unnamed digital rival, stating,
“Steam is killing the PC market and it is no wonder digital retailers are failing. Steam is locking down the market.”
Steam, if anything, is surely boosting the PC market, if it’s selling the huge quantities of games its enemies are claiming? Surely no one would make the argument that iTunes is killing music sales? It may be all manners of problematic, and utterly unfair competition, but it’s sure selling a shitload of songs. Steam may well be locking it down, and that’s an enormous issue, but what is the argument for killing it?
Clearly it would be disadvantageous to all (but Valve) if Steam were to take pricing control of distribution, to become something as obtuse and behemothic as iTunes, and there’s reason for analysts and rivals to watch it extremely carefully in that regard. But the arguments being made and widely reported today simply don’t hold up. Unless these shops and rivals can create software that competes with Steamworks, then their demands of unfairness don’t make sense. (And it’s perhaps hard to engage with the high street shops crying foul over PC games, after the derisory treatment they’ve received over the last ten years.) When the alternatives are the widely loathed Games For Windows Live, or the young and unproven Impulse Reactor, it’s no wonder the big publishers are requiring a Steam install to run their games.
11/11/2010 at 14:56 Kryopsis says:
Where were these fine gentlemen when Microsoft launched Games for Windows – Live?
11/11/2010 at 14:59 starclaws says:
Except Windows Live Games epic fail.
11/11/2010 at 15:29 mandrill says:
They were selling their limited PC shelf space to Microsoft.
11/11/2010 at 15:53 Alexander Norris says:
I don’t see how GfWL is relevant to the fact that the Steam store is being bundled with AAA games, thus making Steam grow to the detriment of all its supposed competitors. GfWL neither offers better deals than all its competitors nor aggressively pushes its own storefront. Beyond the absolute idiocy of trying to turn the PC into a closed platform with patching fees and the like and the fact that it’s just sort of shit, GfWL is fairly benign – although that’s largely down to Microsoft being idiots rather than any noble intentions, and ignoring it would obviously be a stupid move.
Really, though, I don’t see Valve discontinuing Steamworks or making any move to separate Steam-as-distributor from Steam-as-DRM-and-social-platform since its continued existence is entirely in their interests (and mostly against ours).
11/11/2010 at 15:57 Arthur Barnhouse says:
It’s funny you bring up GFWL, seeing as Steam games periodically require a Games For Windows Live installation in order to play them. Steam is willing to sell games via there system that installs a rival’s program and store, and do not require games to use Steamworks. It’s a two-way street.
11/11/2010 at 17:09 Andy O. says:
“I don’t see how GfWL is relevant to the fact that the Steam store is being bundled with AAA games”
It’s relevant in that Games for Windows has similar if not the same features as SteamWorks (Achievements, Key Code Protection, and all the other cool stuff that GfWL SHOULD of been back before the XBox 360 came out, you know back when MS was testing or updating their xbox live system?) Steam Store isn’t the problem, it’s SteamWorks, the platform that the game is running on.
It’s like you buy an XBox game, but when you load the game it connects to PlayStation Network and all it’s features instead of the XBox Live System.
In this case someone feels that Steam is costing them customers when they find out that Steam exists and is really great. So instead of fixing the problem, they are just complaining.
I think SteamWorks is succeeding because they took everything that worked in XBox Live and implemented it in a way that’s easy to drop into a new or existing game (lots of older games are now working with SteamWorks) and you cannot beat Steams digital distribution.
I don’t really have a solution for the brick and morter stores, I suggested on another site they should turn their stores into Japanese gaming centers where you can rent a kiosk, play all the games and make purchases if you want. I’d LOVE to be able to pay some money, try out a couple games and make a purchase for my console and have the game available on my console when I get home (digital push). I can do that on my PC from work, I’ll check out games, buy them and my computer at home will auto-install and by the time I get home from work, NEW GAME! The future is here.
11/11/2010 at 17:10 Kryopsis says:
“I don’t see how GfWL is relevant to the fact that the Steam store is being bundled with AAA games, thus making Steam grow to the detriment of all its supposed competitors. GfWL neither offers better deals than all its competitors nor aggressively pushes its own storefront. Beyond the absolute idiocy of trying to turn the PC into a closed platform with patching fees and the like and the fact that it’s just sort of shit, GfWL is fairly benign – although that’s largely down to Microsoft being idiots rather than any noble intentions, and ignoring it would obviously be a stupid move.”
Since the reply function failed me, the actual response is here:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/11/11/store-wars-rivals-threaten-to-boycott-steam/comment-page-2/#comment-550437
11/11/2010 at 18:05 theSAiNT says:
FYI, Steam predates XBox Live. They were pushing out CS updates on it sometime in 2002.
11/11/2010 at 19:59 Alexander Norris says:
No on both counts. The problem is that Steamworks, the DRM, comes bundled with a digital distributor’s store. When people install Steam, the DRM platform, they are then aggressively exposed to the Steam store. The problem is not that there is a DRM system out there that needs to be tied to an account and uses a client as far as the other digital distributors are concerned, it’s the fact that Steamworks means exposure to the Steam store.
As previously stated, mandatory though it may be, GfWL does not push the GfW store anywhere near as much as Steam pushes the Steam store. This is why there is no real problem with GfWL as it is right now. Depending on what Microsoft do after the GfW store relaunch, there may well be the same problem with GfWL as there currently is with Steamworks.
12/11/2010 at 07:21 monkeybreadman says:
“I suggested on another site they should turn their stores into Japanese gaming centers where you can rent a kiosk, play all the games and make purchases if you want. I’d LOVE to be able to pay some money, try out a couple games and make a purchase for my console and have the game available on my console when I get home (digital push). I can do that on my PC from work, I’ll check out games, buy them and my computer at home will auto-install and by the time I get home from work, NEW GAME! The future is here.”
Great idea
17/11/2010 at 21:08 Jason says:
You can buy games that use GfWL on Steam. So it’s not like Valve is locking the games they sell into using steamworks, unless something has changed recently. As far as I am concerned, the publishers and gamers have spoken and the retailers can shut up.
11/11/2010 at 14:58 Lewie Procter says:
The actual complaints amount to “we want to have more control over distribution, instead of Valve.”
Whichever highstreet retailer it is, they have all routinely failed PC gaming over the last decade or more, whereas Valve have successfully created what is a level playing field for all sorts of developers, and a fantastic service for it’s customers. It’s not perfect, by any means, but a lot of people obviously think Valve offer the best service.
11/11/2010 at 15:13 Tom O'Bedlam says:
There is an ocean of truth here.
11/11/2010 at 15:14 tomwaitsfornoman says:
Yeah, and it isn’t just PC gaming. What about all those used console games that IRL retailers reap 100% of the profit from? Is THAT helping the industry?
11/11/2010 at 15:21 suibhne says:
Right on, Lewie. And the comparison with iTunes is even more apt than it might first appear – because exactly the same situation pertained in that case, with the “traditional” market failing the consumer in just about every way imaginable and then crying bloody murder when an upstart came along and did their job far better.
11/11/2010 at 15:35 Alexander Norris says:
Lewie: that said, who really gives a shit about their motives?
The important thing is that Steamworks game requiring Steam installation is a pretty terrible thing for digital distribution as a whole, because it forces people onto Steam, where they can be bombarded by the better deals that Steam gets on account of being a bigger store (because it has better deals, and more money, and Steamworks releases, and therefore people stop buying from other DD outlets, which can’t afford to slash prices as much or as often as Steam because they aren’t market leaders). Short-term benefit to the consumer or not, Steamworks is a fairly anticompetitive thing, which is ultimately a bad thing.
11/11/2010 at 15:43 Mobius says:
The difference being that there are multiple big retailers with roughly the same amount of power, which ensure competition; whereas Valve is pretty much the only one with that level of power, so there’s a risk of monopoly.
11/11/2010 at 15:57 noxxit says:
Oh my gosh, Steam is controlling the PC market, Microsoft is controlling the XBOX market, Sony is controlling the Playstation market, Nintendo is controlling the Wii market. Prices are going haywire! Take cover! *hides behind a stack of sandbags*
Yeah, like my life would depend on gaming… If you don’t like a price, don’t pay it. Vote with your wallet. Problem solved.
11/11/2010 at 16:03 katinkabot says:
I don’t think you can use the blanket statement “anti-competitive business is a bad thing”. Not always. Seriously, not always. We’re not talking about Walmart and your local grocer – where the local grocer sells specialty items like gourmet cheese(yay!) and seaonsal produce and Wal-mart sells generic brand crap. When the local grocer can’t compete you actually lose something as a community – access to a specailty item. This is different. These are ostensbily large-ish corporations fighting to get a piece of Steam’s digitial distribution pie. Problem is, unless they come up with some insane innovation, it won’t happen. Steam does it best. Period.
When it comes to web tech. (generally of course) people tend to stay with what works and what is cheap. They don’t shop around just to “try something new” like a restaurant or a clothing store. There’s no incentive for them to move to another digital distribution site if they’re purchasing the same exact product but without the guaruntee of support.
11/11/2010 at 16:22 Archonsod says:
“The important thing is that Steamworks game requiring Steam installation is a pretty terrible thing for digital distribution as a whole, because it forces people onto Steam, where they can be bombarded by the better deals that Steam gets on account of being a bigger store”
Steam is regularly undercut by Amazon in my experience, and even Impulse and Gamer’s Gate can shave a few pennies off the Steam price quite frequently In fact I’d say it was a good thing for digital distributors at the moment, since it encourages people to move away from the brick n mortar outlets and onto online distribution, and once they’re used to online distribution it’s just a matter of advertising. The idea of someone being locked in to Steam is as ludicrous as someone only buying games at Game; people are people, and while the marketers would love to think brand loyalty counts for something at the end of the day the vast majority of us will go for the cheapest deal. Generally brick and mortar had a leg up in this regard because shopping around required tramping around a town centre. With digital distribution on the other hand I only need to open a new tab in my web browser.
With regards to sales, Impulse has a weekend deal every week where they slash prices on several games. Gamer’s Gate also have a week long sale every week where they slash prices on several games too, in addition to giving you cash back. In fact if anything Valve are second only to EA and Direct2Drive in offering generally crap sales, you get what, two cheap games per week?
11/11/2010 at 16:55 JohnnyMaverik says:
@ Alexander Norris
I agree that steam is a little too rigid but honestly, it’s not terrible, and it’s certainly not “against our interests”. Valve give us great value, great deals, a great service, sure sometimes it all goes a little tits up but on the whole not only is it a good substitute for brick and mortar retailers, it’s just plain better.
There just aren’t enough games with steamworks for the argument of Steam locking out other digital distributors to hold true either, the reason it’s dominant is again, because it’s just plain better. Valve have no policy against rival distributors stocking games that come with steamworks, the reason they don’t do it is because Steam is better, ergo they don’t want to send people there.
The best argument against a single console is that prices would rocket with out the competition, that may be true, but when it comes to steam, I can’t see Valve ever doing anything other than giving their customers the best possible service, a service that I have full confidence in improving immeasurably in coming years, competition or none.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t wish death upon the other digital distributors out there, I myself use GOG just as much as Steam and love both for the quality of service they provide, but when it comes to Microsoft and the Brick & Mortar retailers, we’d probably be better of with out them because they’re never going to have our interests at heart and if it’d been left to them, we’d be playing on a 360 right now, with pc gaming a fading memory.
11/11/2010 at 17:30 Mobius says:
@noxxit: That’s not really comparable. The Xbox, PS3 or Wii are all video games centric devices with a closed ecosystem. Furthermore, they were all created by their respective companies. It’s not really surprising that they have control over them. The PC, however, is an open platform.
@katinkabot: You make a good point. However, a question needs to be asked: Is Steam really the best digital service? I mean, I have been prevented from playing my games online more than once because their servers were down, or been unable to play my games offline because the offline mode was being flaky. Furthermore, when you look at the competition… Well, some of them simply look better to me. I’m thinking of Gamersgate especially: They often have prices similar to Steam, they have some DRM free games, and they do not require an always on program to run my games that requires me to go online at least once every 30 days.
But the updating system of Steam is pretty cool, I’ll give you that.
@Archonsod: You make some good arguments, but you are forgetting a very important thing: Steamwork, aka that-drm-system-and-game-structure-that-forces-you-to-install-steam. Like the article says, even if you buy your copy of, say Fallout New Vegas or cod black ops in a brick and mortar shop or Amazon, you WILL need to install Steam and use it, thus indeed locking you into Steam. And that is exactly what Valve’s competitor are complaining about.
Sure, nothing forces you to actually buy games on Steam, but it greatly increases the Steam store’s exposure, thus leading to more sales on Steam, thus making it harder for other digital services to compete.
@JohnnyMaverik: “There just aren’t enough games with steamworks for the argument of Steam locking out other digital distributors”
If those distributors wait until then to complain, then it’ll be WAY too late to do anything. Just saying.
“Valve have no policy against rival distributors stocking games that come with steamworks, the reason they don’t do it is because Steam is better, ergo they don’t want to send people there.”
Huuuuuh… No, not really. Just like one of the quote in the article says, why would they want to sell a game that gives exposure to a competitor’s store? It’s like if you bought Lamborghini but all the repairs and maintenance had to be done at a Ferari shop.
11/11/2010 at 17:55 Zogtee says:
Valve and Steam is the best thing that’s happened to PC gaming. Without it, no one would give a piss about the PC as a gaming platform today. Devs would be all over the consoles, having declared the PC dead a squillion times already.
11/11/2010 at 17:57 ScubaMonster says:
It’s hilarious that these digital retailers would want to have the same stranglehold on the market as Valve does if they were given the chance. Now they are just crying because they can’t compete. Steam is dominating the market for a good reason.
Also, while I understand why they want to boycott games that include Steamworks, they are shooting themselves in the foot. More and more publishers are choosing Steam as a form of DRM for their games that won’t upset the consumer. Their lack of AAA titles is going to kill them.
11/11/2010 at 19:20 Memphis-Ahn says:
“You make some good arguments, but you are forgetting a very important thing: Steamwork”
You know, if I owned a digital distribution store, I’d be all over Steamworks games. I’d undercut Steam’s prices and then have them take the brunt of the cost by serving up the download/support.
Sure, the price might be passed onto the publisher and then me but I’d have so much more revenue without any of the associated costs that it would be totally worth it.
Speaking of which, how much are servers going for these days?
11/11/2010 at 20:09 katinkabot says:
@Mobius – Good point. I have no personal experience with Gamersgate so I don’t feel comfortable commenting on that.
I have to say though, I have not had any of the issues with Steam you have had although I know others have. My experience with it, since its inception, has been wholly positive. It may not be the BEST serivce technically speaking but the community has rallied around it since the Half Life mod/CS days like bees to honey. In turn, Valve has supported this community immensely. Hell, they promote the mods of their own games and bundle them in with their package sales. Technical issues can be tweaked and refined. Gaining large community support? That’s an absolutely mammoth undertaking that most companies just can’t match.
11/11/2010 at 20:14 Alexander Norris says:
This has nothing to do with the intrusiveness or lack thereof of Steam as a DRM platform and actually yes, a monopoly over distribution is completely against our interests. The reason why Amazon and places like Tesco/Asda slash prices in the first place is because they have to compete with each other and with Steam. Without the competition, these places have no impetus to slash prices. You can bet yourself that sales will dry up pretty soon if Steam were the only distributor of video games in the world. Even if it’s merely the sole digital distributor, it would mean it only ever has to price-match its closest competitor rather than actively trying to get us a better deal than e.g. Amazon during its sales.
11/11/2010 at 20:51 Archonsod says:
” Steamwork, aka that-drm-system-and-game-structure-that-forces-you-to-install-steam. Like the article says, even if you buy your copy of, say Fallout New Vegas or cod black ops in a brick and mortar shop or Amazon, you WILL need to install Steam and use it, thus indeed locking you into Steam. And that is exactly what Valve’s competitor are complaining about.”
No, it doesn’t lock me in. Firstly I can buy the games from anywhere, so if say Direct2Drive or Amazon has the game cheaper I can buy it there; so I’m not even locked in to buying the game from Steam. Secondly, having Steam installed does not stop me from using Gamer’s Gate, Impulse, GoG or any other online retailer for future game purchases, so it’s not locked in there either. The only thing it does is force me to use Steam for that game, but I think it’s a pretty fair assumption that I won’t be buying that particular game again when I already own it, so it’s moot.
The only thing Steam has is the store connected to the client. I don’t really see how it’s that big an advantage over any other advertising method to be honest.
12/11/2010 at 14:01 SwiftRanger says:
The fact the store page pops up every time you launch Steam (which you have to do if you want to play a Steamworks game) is reason enough to say it’s unfair. Steam store shouldn’t be tied to Steamworks, period. Impulse does it right with their Reactor matchmaking/copy protection, you don’t even need the Impulse application for that.
It’s no surprise retailers have problems with this. Steam already took away second-hand PC sales from brick & mortar shops (which imo is probably the biggest reasons they don’t stock new PC games as much as before) and now they push a big advertising page of their own store right into your face whenever you want to game. Retailers are shooting in their own foot and have contributed to PC gaming’s demise but Steam ain’t much better than that if you think about it. They’re both evil.
11/11/2010 at 15:01 plugmonkey says:
This mystery digital distribution boss might want to consider the fact that this is the first moment I have been aware that Game do digital distribution.
11/11/2010 at 15:41 Mac says:
They don’t really – they sub it out and have a link …
11/11/2010 at 16:07 President Weasel says:
And their main complaint is that something that Valve do properly, with some thought and effort and skill behind it, is out-competing their “fuck it, outsource all that internet crap” approach. Remarkable.
11/11/2010 at 15:01 lfwam says:
We’re told again and again that monopolies are a bad thing. They’re not. What is bad is overpricing and bad service, that almost invariably follow monopolies. Yet this is not always the case. There are some monopolies that should continue to exist, and in the current market Steam may well be one of these. If Steam starts to become overpriced or difficult to work with then another company will no doubt come in and make a competitor to take a slice of a lucrative industry. But right now it’s so far in front of the competition that I really don’t mind that it’s the only choice. I’m sure that eventually it will loose its brilliance, and at that point we’ll all have to go and play on the new king, but for now it’s a chapion of PC gaming, and something to be applauded.
11/11/2010 at 15:16 Thermal Ions says:
I agree. Why should I as a customer continue to purchase from a Bricks and Mortar store, paying commonly 60-80% more to do so, stop availing myself of regular Steam game sales that dwarf the 10-20% off offered from said B&M stores, all just in case Valve abuses a monopoly and puts their prices up down the track. I’ll be so far ahead by then, I’ll still be laughing.
If comparing against other digital distributors not tied to a B&M outfit, then I’d be going without so many games I want because I can’t buy them through their stores because of region restrictions, not to mention that their sales are commonly mostly comprised of games I couldn’t care less about. Consequently, if they’re not interested in my business why would I care what they think.
11/11/2010 at 15:19 RagingLion says:
I agree.
11/11/2010 at 15:19 Bald Space Marine says:
>monopolies are a bad thing. They’re not
Wow, just…….wow.
11/11/2010 at 15:27 Rinox says:
Steam doesn’t have a ‘monopoly’ on PC gaming digital distrubution any more than Coca-Cola has a monopoly on soda. They are both towering juggernauts in their respective fields, but do not control the entire market.
11/11/2010 at 15:29 Xocrates says:
@Bald Space Marine: You know, reading the rest of the post you’re quoting might have helped. Monopolies are not a bad thing in the same that a Dictatorship is not a bad thing. They’re one of the more efficient ways to get things done provided they’re dedicated to their users and welcome to new ideas, which they almost universally are not.
Monopolies are dangerous things, but they are not, by themselves, bad.
11/11/2010 at 15:32 jalf says:
You have a strange definition of “overpriced” if it excludes Steam. When you can save around 50% of the price by buying from online retailers, I think I’d consider Steam to be overpriced.
You also make a strange leap from “some monopolies are not actively harmful (which is true), to “some monopolies should continue to exist”. Perhaps what you meant to say was “some monopolies should be *allowed* to exist (that is, they don’t need to be regulated), but what you actually *said* sounds like the monopoly should be actively *supported* and kept alive. Which is just ridiculous.
The best you can ever say about a monopoly is that it *does no harm right now*.
11/11/2010 at 15:49 Ruzzr says:
@Rixon
True!
11/11/2010 at 15:51 Sigh says:
“Monopolies are not a bad thing in the same that a Dictatorship is not a bad thing.”
Also Facism and Nazism are not bad either.
It’s just all the things that follow from them that are bad. C’mon people I am sick and tired of abstracts like monopolies, facism, and dictatorships getting a bad rap in the forums. They are not to blame, you should just point the blame at the problematic results that inevitably follow their inception. Geez it’s like people are ignorant or something. We should be able to support the institution/abstract without being associated with all of the “negatives” like intransigence, devaluation of human rights, excessive militarization, and price gouging. Grow up!
/argument
11/11/2010 at 15:53 Sigh says:
>>>>>>monopolies are a bad thing. They’re not
Wow, just…….wow.>>>>>>>
Best response here!
+5 logics
11/11/2010 at 16:10 stahlwerk says:
GabeN is (worse than) Hitler, clearly.
But, not unlike Zombie Pigs, I forgive, eventually.
11/11/2010 at 16:14 frymaster says:
@jalf:
this is where online retailers can cash in. I much prefer to have my games tied to steam – infinite re-downloads, not having to remember where I put the manual with the key on the back, etc. If a retail copy is tied into steam, (like, say, CODBLOPS*) I can buy it from a retailer at their lower prices, and still get the benefit of steam-y goodness. For what I’ve long suspected (but have no proof) are contractural reasons relating to the RRP, almost NO publishers release their games for less than RRP on steam at launch. Retailers always undercut RRP. Retailers will always be cheaper. Thus, the more steamworks games there are, the more chance I have of buying a game from an online retailer.
On a similar subject, remember that steam is in many ways a middle-man. Steam do not set prices (apart from for valve games, obviously, tho see above abouot RRP), the individual publishers do. Even if steam were the only way to buy games in the world, it still wouldn’t be a dangerous monopoly in price terms, because publishers would still be competing between themselves. (It might be a dangerous monopoly in other ways, though, because steam would have no incentive to improve, or fix bugs)
*And are they seriously saying they don’t want to cash in on the next MW2 sales bonanza? Oh wait, I forgot, they make all of their money on the second-hand market these days…
11/11/2010 at 16:37 Popish Frenzy says:
A few things:
When one thing invariably follows another you can argue there’s isnt much utility in distinguishing between them sure.
The word ‘almost’ was used a few times. This may be important.
People use soundbites to further their arguments even on online messages boards.
Some analogies, while being theoretically appealing almost invariably escalate arguments instead of / them.
11/11/2010 at 16:40 Zyrxil says:
I suppose you believe Democracy is a magic pill for governance too.
11/11/2010 at 16:58 Sigh says:
“I suppose you believe Democracy is a magic pill for governance too.”
No, but I do believe in the central tenets of “Liberalism” especially as they are expressed by the Philosopher John Rawls. Far from perfect I admit, but reasonable.
Every political system is flawed in some manner and will never convince 100% of the citizens contained within its reach, but I do believe that humans can objectively reach a reasonable consensus as to ideal forms of political organization. I am not even claiming that a single one is ideal, but actually a range of competing options that happen to have shared values.
Also the human factor influences every form of government in practice.
11/11/2010 at 17:12 Sigh says:
“Some analogies, while being theoretically appealing almost invariably escalate arguments instead of / them.”
One more thing:
Perhaps said analogy was never intended to end said argument but only aspired to be an admittedly imature but ironic commentary on the existing discussion. Even the alleged inclusion of “/argument” was thinly veiled irony. Perhaps said analogy was never intended to have any more value than the rest of the discussion.
However, dry commentry that begins with “A few things” will typically raise the value level of the ensuing discourse.
Thank you for your contriubtion.
11/11/2010 at 17:54 Popish Frenzy says:
That bit was actually referring to Xocrates’ Dicatorship analogy.
11/11/2010 at 18:21 Xocrates says:
@Popish Frenzy: True, and I apologize for that.
Though to be fair my point with the analogy was to point out that while not necessarily bad it’s not a good idea. Sadly (and by my own fault) I don’t think it conveyed very well.
11/11/2010 at 18:29 dysphemism says:
Woof. I don’t know if I’ve seen such a contentious week on the RPS boards.
Let’s clarify, as I think this is sowing some confusion:
Whether or not Valve (Steam) constitutes a monopoly is not at issue here and, believe it or not, monopolies are in many cases allowed to exist in the marketplace (are even encouraged in the case of IP and patent law). Where the legal tolerance for a monopoly ends is when they engage in anti-competitive practices, which is the issue here.
To liken it to a more widely-known case, U.S. v Microsoft, Microsoft was brought to court for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. The concern there was that it constituted, essentially, a barrier to entry for other competing browsers. In the end, though, the courts did not rule that Microsoft could not continue tying software to Windows.
To say that Steam is anti-competitive by virtue of being “too awesome” (as I seem to be reading in a couple of comments here) is not enough. Like others have mentioned, Steam does not set pricing, so they can’t be accused of dumping or price fixing. And given the Microsoft case, I’m doubtful that “bundling” software like this is considered a true threat, though I’ll admit it worries me somewhat.
11/11/2010 at 19:54 Popish Frenzy says:
@dysphemism
Straight up beast of a post! Shame it didnt come earlier really. Also obliged me to actually go look up anti-competitive practices:)
11/11/2010 at 20:00 perilisk says:
Steam isn’t a monopoly to begin with, it’s just the best in a field with numerous competitors. It gives them something to aspire to and they in turn keep Vale from getting complacent.
11/11/2010 at 20:17 Alexander Norris says:
@dysphemism — except in the EU, where they did rule that MS could no longer simply bundle IE with Windows. MS are now forced to offer up a “browser selector” when you boot a fresh Windows install, which will automatically go and download your choice of Firefox or Opera, or leave you with the default IE install.
11/11/2010 at 21:04 Sigh says:
“That bit was actually referring to Xocrates’ Dicatorship analogy.”
@Popish Frenzy
Apologies.
-Sigh
11/11/2010 at 21:06 Sigh says:
“That bit was actually referring to Xocrates’ Dicatorship analogy.”
@Popish Frenzy
Sincere apologies.
-SIgh
11/11/2010 at 21:09 Sigh says:
Reply fail.
That last one wasn’t supposed to be sarcastic, I didn’t see my reply so I made a new one. Sheesh.
11/11/2010 at 23:26 MrEvilGuy says:
@sigh
It’s nice to see Rawls mentioned on the internets.
12/11/2010 at 00:57 Sigh says:
Yeah it doesn’t happen often, but he is one of my philosophical role models…which sounds weird when you write it out.
11/11/2010 at 15:01 harald74 says:
Brick-and-mortar stores sure as hell isn’t doing the indie scene any favours, and that alone is a for me a powerful argument for Steam.
11/11/2010 at 15:01 Thermal Ions says:
Cry some more. “I’m making an inferior product, offering an inferior service, and it’s not fair. All you developers and publishers should stop making your customers happy because I might be expected to lift my game or go out of business.”
11/11/2010 at 15:02 Lobotomist says:
I wondered too. How other companies view required steam installation issue. And I agree that their claim is valid. And no company should have forced monopoly.
On other hand Steam is easy solution for players and developers.
11/11/2010 at 15:02 teo says:
I can see both sides of the argument. I hate having all my games tied to Steam but I love the convenience of it, except for the few occasions when it inconveiniences me, lending games for example. I have a fuckton of Steam games I never play that I can’t lend to anyone.
Maybe they should separate the store from the rest of the client
11/11/2010 at 15:02 MQ says:
You have to marvel at the audacity of these retail stores. With the increasing decline of shelf space given to PC games, it’s clear they favour the console side of gaming. Yet they still complain when another company comes in to pick up the market they’ve largely abandoned.
11/11/2010 at 19:09 Urael says:
It’s absolutely ridiculous, isn’t it? They’ve relegated PC Gaming to shitty little shelves at the back of the store while cock-sucking the consoles at every turn and now expect to be able to complain when Steam – a service I actually don’t like very much – comes along and does their job much better than they do. The sheer balls these guys have to make statements like that…
And as for Steam being a monopoly…I buy more of my games from Amazon. I don’t see them complaining about that particular giant.
12/11/2010 at 01:38 Anonymousity says:
Or the do you have a pre-order bullshit, they asked me that and I started buying games from the hi-fi store that always has new releases for cheaper and then I started buying from amazon.
11/11/2010 at 15:03 Seamus says:
Oh well, then. I suppose I’ll just have to buy those games that they’re going to not sell off Steam, instead.
It’s like they’re cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Absolutely retarded.
11/11/2010 at 20:03 Azradesh says:
You mean the games that they’re already not selling?
11/11/2010 at 15:03 Fionny says:
Their own fault for not moving with the times… Steam is a great platform, i dont even mind spending a little more on games to have them on Steam for downloading.
No other platform is as complete as steam.
11/11/2010 at 15:05 lu says:
i really like steam and will never shop at GAME stores after they messed up a preorder of mine a few years back why should i walk in to town unsure if they have the stock , when i can just download the fulling working pre patched game? also I have most of my (reallife) friends in my list so its an easy way of keeping in touch
as for Games For Windows Live , well its just plain awfull a pain to use offers you nothing
11/11/2010 at 15:05 Joshua says:
Retailers’ concerns aside, I’m never screwed out of playing all the software I’ve purchased when I buy in-box from retailers. I’m screwed when a digital distributor decides to flake out and their software doesn’t work. I’ve spent hours diagnosing and dealing with a Steam client that won’t install, won’t re-install after failing updates, and I’m stuck with the repair while being completely unable to access my library.
They’re not killing PC gaming, but the growing dependency on them for rights control is certainly giving it a massive black eye.
11/11/2010 at 15:06 Toby says:
Life isn’t fair. But you can make it fair if you would actually put some effort into something that can compete with steam. I say that steam has deserved it’s place in the industry.
11/11/2010 at 15:06 Commissar says:
So they want a slice of the PC gaming pie that they’ve left behind in favour of consoles?
11/11/2010 at 15:06 Om says:
But what’s not being acknowledged here is the reason why games are requiring Steam, and it’s something none of those apparently complaining are offering: Steamworks
This ties in with what I’ve heard from Paradox (who have an interest in pushing GamersGate) – its the developers, not the publishers, who are clamouring for Steam. They simply find it a very useful and handy way of updating games and verifying users.
11/11/2010 at 15:06 Pony Canyon says:
Would a boycott really have any positive effect for the rivals?
I currently use either Steam or Direct2Drive for all my digital distribution purchases. Let’s say Mass Effect 3 comes out and it requires Steam. Direct2Drive decides to boycott it. I guess I know where I’m buying Mass Effect 3, then, don’t I?
11/11/2010 at 15:38 Christopher M. says:
This goes double for people who don’t know Steam exists. They want to buy a fancy new game, walk into their favorite meatspace store, and lo-and-behold, it doesn’t exist. They now have three options: Ask the manager (“We’re boycotting it because it has Steam.” “Steam? What’s that?” “An online download site.” “Oh, cool. I’ll have to take a look at that.”), look it up on Google (“Oh, it’s available on this site called Steam. Let’s see…”), get it in another store (“Huh. This game comes with something called Steam.”), or just ignore it completely (which creates no net profit at all).
11/11/2010 at 18:44 dysphemism says:
They’re probably aware of the no-win scenario. More likely it’s a bluff to try and get publishers to drop the bundling of steamworks — even if developers are pushing for it, if the publisher believes they’ll lose sales due to a boycott I could absolutely see them caving to retailer demands. After all, it’s no skin off their noses.
11/11/2010 at 15:08 markcocjin says:
Seems to me they are only complaining about Steam because of it’s success. If it’s all about Steam’s being embedded in some big AAA games, then why aren’t they complaining about Games For F’ing Windows Live? If there was ever software who didn’t deserve being a mandatory install, then that should be it.
11/11/2010 at 15:08 Henry says:
Maybe if retailers actually stocked PC games and stopped charging ludicrous prices people would give a shit about what theyr’e saying.
People use steam because it’s EASIER, BETTER and during the sales it’s FAR CHEAPER.
They need ot quit whining because valve are providing something people want and actually try and make a good service themselves.
Steam has done nothing but improve my PC gaming experience.
11/11/2010 at 15:08 Hides-His-Eyes says:
Seems a reasonable complaint as a violation of competition rules to me; It’s absolutely as if one had to install ITunes in order to listen to a CD you’d bought.
However what B&M stores don’t seem to get is that for the PC at least, they’re shit and nobody uses them accordingly
11/11/2010 at 15:09 Jonathan says:
I’m oversimplifying, but surely PSN and XBox live have monopolies over digital distribution on Playstation and Xbox platforms. Why are they not complaining about that?
11/11/2010 at 15:48 Alexander Norris says:
Because the consoles are closed platforms and the PC is not.
11/11/2010 at 16:12 Tasloi says:
Even more reason to complain.
11/11/2010 at 16:47 gou says:
A closed platform that extends it reign of power into our open one. The arbitrary delays for the PC versions in cross-platform launches or blanket delays. The fact that before xbox gained connectivity, DLC was by definition something that was a free “thank you” but now it is a buzzword for micro-transactions
11/11/2010 at 15:09 RaveTurned says:
I popped into my local HMV this weekend. Rows of shelfspace for XBox, PS3, Wii and DS games. Precicely one square metre of shelfspace for PC, full of overhyped shitty “AAA” games completely devoid of innovation. If stores like this stopped selling certain games I probably wouldn’t notice, let alone care.
11/11/2010 at 15:12 Brendan says:
The reason Steam is so successful is because it is a GOOD SERVICE!
If anybody can offer something that does every single thing that Steam can do – huge selection of games, constant sales, great prices, review scores, friends list, groups, events, demos, achievements, cloud data, clean and simple interface, constant community interaction, options and advertising for AAA titles as well as indie titles, the list goes on – then I would more than happily give it a shot.
Until then, stop fucking whining that your rivals are better at their job than you are, you pompous ass.
Boycotting steam would be the stupidest thing any developer could possibly do. Not to mention Valve have never done anything shady with their games or developers other than giving incorrect prices to games of differing regions and stuffing up release times.
I have never heard of any developer complaining about their experience with selling on Steam. You have an instant audience of millions who browse the list of games every day, and with your game showing on the home page for weeks and the option to give specials to boost sales it’s more than lucrative for developers/publishers to use it.
Bah. I can’t wait until these clowns get laughed off stage.
11/11/2010 at 15:26 jalf says:
No, it really isn’t a “good service”. It is overpriced and has lousy customer support.
But it is convenient, it has a big selection of games, and it is widely known and has a loyal fan base. Maybe that’s all it takes in order to be considered a “good service”, but I really think they’re just resting on their laurels. They were first out the gate with a *tolerable* DD service. And since they’re the biggest, they don’t need to make it better, so it’s *still* a tolerable DD service.
11/11/2010 at 15:37 Brendan says:
In the last 2 months I’ve picked up Dead Space for $7, SupCom 2 and its DLC for $8 total, Batman AA for $15, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light for $12, Dead Rising 2 for $40, Frontlines for $5, Nation Red for $5, the entire new Monkey Island series for like $10, etc.
If you think that is over priced then tell me where you shop so I can go there. Not to mention the only issue I’ve ever had with steam was a “This game is not available offline” error. I emailed Steam support and within 24 hours i had instructions in my inbox on how to fix the issue, and it worked.
11/11/2010 at 15:47 Cataclysm says:
I agree with Jalf, I see Steam for what it is, its convenient and it has some good Sale offers, but its Regular priced games are Overpriced. Amazon are usually around £27.99 with a new PC title, where Steam is about £35.99 and even B&M shops are around £29.99-£31.99.
They offer a service no one else currently does (a decent Direct Download service) that works to a good standard and which is generally easy to use. It still has some of the flaws DD game services all have and holds a high price tag.
11/11/2010 at 16:09 apsaps says:
Publishers sets the prices. Not steam.
11/11/2010 at 16:20 Brendan says:
Well I guess it doesn’t mean much to US residents seeing as you guys see cheap games anyway, but when you live in Australia where every single new release costs > $100, Steam is always the better option, more often than not offering new games for up to half the RRP.
15/11/2010 at 05:32 Vagabond says:
Fellow Australian here. Steam may well be less expensive than EB or JB Hifi (unless you’re talking about anything published by 2K, in which case you are getting royally screwed if you buy it on steam), but when it comes to new releases you can usually do a fair bit better.
http://ecogamer.com/ keeps track of the best deals in bricks and mortar stores, and if you can wait the week and a half for them to deliver from the UK http://www.ozgameshop.com has the consistently lowest prices I’ve found for an online retailer (bearing in mind the free postage).
11/11/2010 at 15:13 Patarejas says:
iTunes analogy was bad.
11/11/2010 at 15:15 Joe Duck says:
These guys are great. They are the same ones who banished PC games from shelves it in order to give more space to Wii fits, plastic guitars and Singstar iterations.
And now they have finally realised that the reason there are less and less products going through them is because they are being bypassed. It’s not that “PC gaming is dead”, but that it turns out that PC gaming is dead for them.
So what’s a good middleman to do?
As all middlemen have done in this moment in history, they try to use the leverage they still have to force back things to the previous situation, back to the “good old times”.
Here’s one hoping they do not succeed.
11/11/2010 at 15:15 cliffski says:
Nobody ever mentions the other alternative to steam.
Not impulse, gamersgate,direct2drive,greenhouse or bigfishgames. But the developers themselves.
It used to be commonplace to go buy games direct of the developers. you downloaded an exe, no DRM, no install limit, no ‘client’ to run 24/7, no hassle, no complications.
You just ran that exe like you would run windows calculator, or microsoft word.
You can still do that, in many cases. Developers like me, 2dboy,puppygames, moonpos,pompom, winterwolves, wolffire etc etc…
11/11/2010 at 15:23 Lewie Procter says:
Nobody?
I think you could make that claim on most other sites, but not on RPS.
11/11/2010 at 15:27 Thermal Ions says:
Yes, but … let’s face it, they form a very small part of the PC gaming market, and in this sort of discussion are somewhat irrelevant.
Don’t get me wrong, I love these sort of developers and purchase games from them if they are of interest to me. Purchasing DRM free direct from a developer will generally always win out over Steam, however, usually these are games that don’t incorporate (or need) the services and benefits of steamworks etc so could be argued it’s oranges and apples.
11/11/2010 at 15:47 Lilliput King says:
I’m slightly ashamed to admit this as it somewhat diminishes one’s indie cred (and also hurts the developers a little) but I do like my games being in one place. I held off buying Fate of the World, for example, because I knew it was coming out on steam and I also knew that if I purchased it from the developers I’d completely forget about it. I know I should just keep a list of games I own along with their websites etc, but I’m just being realistic here. I’m sure many other gamers with disposable incomes feel the same way.
11/11/2010 at 16:11 Optimaximal says:
Sorry Cliffski, but that’s pretty short sighted…
I can’t think of any time pre-Steam where it was ‘commonplace’ to buy from a developers website, especially when said website was a shoddy Frontpage effort with various round-the-house non-secure payment methods of dubious legality.
Yes, the option was there, but pre-digital distribution, retail (be it brick & mortar or online shops) was where I (and many others) bought games.
11/11/2010 at 16:49 Zyrxil says:
I remember I bought Aquaria from the dev’s website when it was released, long before it was available on Steam. If you wanted to redownload the latest installer with all patches included, you had to email the distribution website they signed up with, send them your order receipt, and wait for a new link to be emailed to you. Yeah, that’s awesome.
11/11/2010 at 16:52 subedii says:
I’m with Optimaximal on this. Commonplace it most certainly wasn’t. I used to buy direct from devs, heck, still do. I bought Jets ‘n’ Guns from RakeInGrass’s website. I even pre-ordered World of Goo, largely based on RPS’s own coverage. But I’m a freaking rarity who actually keeps up to date with indie titles that I’m interested in.
Indie’s tend to make much bigger splashes when they get a big publishing deal going. The thing is, that was never really possible back when it was all about the retail model. Now that that model is online and those stores are digital, even independent developers have benefited (yourself included) from having their games also accessible on the big marketplace sites.
11/11/2010 at 17:35 noobnob says:
I am willing to sacrifice all that, cliffski, for the sake of other conveniences. I was aware of digital distribution before Steam even came around, but it was never a viable choice because the management of all the games bought online would be nothing else other than a royal pain in the ass. An unified storefront helps me and everybody else who uses such services to have our game collections well organized into a single list, be it on a client or a web page. I’ve bought a fair amount of games from several small devs, not necessarily indies, through Steam and to a lesser extent GamersGate and GoG. Games I wouldn’t even bother considering if I had to buy from each individual developer store.
Though I did buy World of Goo from the 2dboy store, I wanted to have it tied to my Steam account. It didn’t even cross my mind at the time to ask 2dboy to, somehow, tie my purchase from their webstore to my Steam account. Bought it again on Steam when I had the chance, and I don’t regret it.
I just can’t view games as mere products anymore, the “games as a service” business model is something that I intend to support from now on. If I am to support indie developers, it will be through the big DDs, even if it’s more expensive.
11/11/2010 at 18:07 subedii says:
Funnily enough, 2D Boy actually allowed WoG to be tied to Steam if you had pre-ordered.
With pre-orders you were sent a code to access the beta. They made a deal with Valve where if you input the code into Steam it would give you access to World of Goo on Steam as well.
I thought that was pretty awesome of them.
11/11/2010 at 18:13 PJ says:
I also don’t know why gamersgate gets little mention among digital distribution discussions. It’s client-less, you don’t have to be online to play, AND you earn like 5% store credit with EVERY PURCHASE, earning more when you pre-order, or refer friends to buy games. It’s definitely my first stop when buying games. They have tons on sale every week too.
11/11/2010 at 18:29 invisiblejesus says:
@Cliffski: Maybe you’re right, but a lot of people never would have known it if not for Steam. The only reason I know who you are and have had the opportunity to buy any of your stuff was because of Steam; I saw a game on there that looked interesting, googled it, found a link to an article about it here, followed it and saw an article about your views on piracy. I’d almost certainly have never heard of you or of most independent developers otherwise. Granted, if a game doesn’t actually use Steamworks features I’d prefer to get it as a simple .exe, but what good does that availability do anyone if gamers like myself never find out that the game even exists?
11/11/2010 at 19:06 Chalky says:
@cliffski
I’m sorry buddy, I would probably agree with you more if I’d not attempted to re-download GSB the other day and had to wait a day for the download link to be re-enabled. I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I wished I’d bought it on Steam. Also, what happens if your site goes dark and I want to redownload? I’ll have to download it off a torrent. Precisely the same place I’ll have to download my Steam games if Steam goes dark.
So lets face it, what’s the real difference here between these two methods? From where I stand, Steam is far more convenient and (lets face it) far less likely to vanish in a poof of smoke.
11/11/2010 at 20:08 subedii says:
That’s not really fair. What defines Cliffski’s approach there isn’t simply the fact that his game is re-downloadable, it’s that even if Cliffski’s site goes completely offline and he decides to do something else, that downloaded copy will still work. Because it’s completely DRM free.
Wtih Steam, if they ever go out of business, you’ve just lost your game collection. Regardless of whether it’s on your HDD or not.
It’s always something to bear in mind. Because whilst I may like Steam as a service, and consider this huffing and puffing by the B&M retail market to be complete tripe, Steam is still DRM. It may be largely unobtrusive DRM, but it’s still something that can limit your replaying your game one day.
Personally that fact prevented me from buying a Steam game for a long time. Years. But eventually, I just came to terms with it. As I’ve gotten older I’ve just gotten more pragmatic about gaming. There’s rarely the time or inclination to replay old classics like I used to when I was a kid. And there’s always something new and interesting on the horizon.
Given everything that I’ve gotten out of it, if Steam were to go tomorrow, I’d be sad, but I’d also be able to say “You know what? I still got my moneys worth out of what I bought, and the system they provided with it.” But I’m not under any illusions that Steam closing down could never happen.
11/11/2010 at 20:41 cliffski says:
Also, what happens if your site goes dark and I want to redownload? I’ll have to download it off a torrent. Precisely the same place I’ll have to download my Steam games if Steam goes dark.
So lets face it, what’s the real difference here between these two methods? From where I stand, Steam is far more convenient and (lets face it) far less likely to vanish in a poof of smoke.
I’ve been online longer than valve, selling games online longer than valve have existed as a company.
Just saying…
11/11/2010 at 21:00 Archonsod says:
“Given everything that I’ve gotten out of it, if Steam were to go tomorrow, I’d be sad, but I’d also be able to say “You know what? I still got my moneys worth out of what I bought, and the system they provided with it.” But I’m not under any illusions that Steam closing down could never happen.”
It’s not even a case of going out of business. Storage is not infinite. I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere down the line they start removing older titles from the service.
11/11/2010 at 22:04 Chalky says:
[i]even if Cliffski’s site goes completely offline and he decides to do something else, that downloaded copy will still work. Because it’s completely DRM free.[/i]
Which is fine in a world where people keep every single file that they download and game that they install on disk, but many people don’t. And doing so may be fine for a handful of inde games – but the idea that we would all keep backups of every installer for every game we play if they were all DRM seems rather far fetched.
In reality, if the site goes down in 5 years time then many people will be unable to re-download their game for the time it takes them to find an “alternative download”.
[i]Wtih Steam, if they ever go out of business, you’ve just lost your game collection. Regardless of whether it’s on your HDD or not.[/i]
But again, in reality, you will only lose your game collection for the time it takes you to download an official patch to remove the steam requirements or, if no patch is forthcoming, the time it takes you to download the pre-existing cracks that bypass steam for your particular game.
Given the choice between a massive distribution mechanism such as steam with so much behind it, compared to a fractured system with everyone distributing their games from their own servers… fractured seems more risky with rather slim benifits in reality. Certainly from the perspective of someone with always-on internet access.
11/11/2010 at 22:07 Chalky says:
Erm, imagine I used html correctly, and said “they were all DRM free” at the end of that first bit.
12/11/2010 at 08:27 pkt-zer0 says:
@PJ: I also don’t know why gamersgate gets little mention among digital distribution discussions.
I don’t know about others, but GamersGate has been overpriced, and used the 1$->1€ conversion from the start. So they can go piss right off. Valve at least did something about this a (long) while after they’ve added separate prices in euros.
12/11/2010 at 12:43 Archonsod says:
I usually find Gamer’s Gate cheaper to be honest, even if it’s only 5p or so. Probably depends on your location. Gamer’s Gate is certainly cheaper when paying in Sterling, Steam on the other hand tends to be the more expensive option.
11/11/2010 at 15:15 Phinor says:
Steam has been overpriced from the moment they started charging in €uros. I haven’t bought a single full priced game from Steam since that change but I do have around 10 Steamworks game all bought on release day for at least 30%, usually 50% less than the Steam price. I have bought these Steamworks gmaes from local retail shops, ordered from UK retail stores, UK online stores, bought from other digital stores (including GAME digital store and D2D) but I have not bought a single full priced game from Steam.
In my books, Steamworks adds value to the game because I can buy it cheap and I get the game into my Steam account. Now if Steam was to become a monopoly, then I’d stop buying games on release day altogether because I refuse to pay the prices Steam asks and I have very little faith the prices go down if it indeed becomes a monopoly.
11/11/2010 at 15:20 Ovno says:
The reason some games on steam are so overpriced is because publishers have to up the steam price to keep the retailers happy, take the retailers out of the situation and hopefully the price will drop.
11/11/2010 at 15:26 jalf says:
Oh really? So why are even Valve’s own games frequently cheaper in traditional stores?
(One also has to savor the irony in your statement: remove the competition, and the prices will “hopefully” drop? Where exactly would the motivation for lowering prices be?)
11/11/2010 at 15:33 Ovno says:
Arn’t valves own games published by someone else in stores or has that changed as I would have thought that such an arrangement would require a similar price fixing deal for valves games too…
(One also has to savor the irony in your statement: remove the competition, and the prices will “hopefully” drop? Where exactly would the motivation for lowering prices be?)
And the motivation for lowering prices would be that many games are sold by online retailers and other direct download stores that may not suffer from the same anti competitive restrictions and who therefore are already cheaper than steam….
11/11/2010 at 15:39 Thermal Ions says:
@jalf:
Somewhat depends upon which country you come from. I’ve never seen Valve games cheaper at retail in Australia than direct from Steam. As an example, EB Games currently advertises Left4Dead @ $59.96 AUD (http://www.ebgames.com.au/pc-147832-Left-4-Dead-2-PC) while on Steam it’s $19.99 USD approx $20.01 AUD (http://store.steampowered.com/app/550/). Even on release it was about 80% more expensive through retail. TF2 used to be 100-150% *more* expensive at retail the last time I saw it stocked.
With the Euro conversion issue that seems prevalent with most publishers on Steam and the apparently decent retail specials that pop up over there, I can see it wouldn’t necessarily be the same in parts of Europe.
11/11/2010 at 15:16 Junior says:
Well I’m convinced, I’m going to do my part this weekend, go to Game and see if I can find the PC section and buy one of the 5 modern games they stock, or perhaps one of the 20 classics they’ve got.
11/11/2010 at 16:00 Thermal Ions says:
Make sure to take a torch, emergency rations and leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find your way back from the dark recessed hole they occupy.
11/11/2010 at 17:07 JohnnyMaverik says:
To be fair it’s a bit hash to say the high-street retailers don’t support the pc when plenty of high-street retailers are still selling the classic APB… oh no wait =/
11/11/2010 at 15:17 Brumisator says:
I remember when steam was dark green…those were the days, my friends.
Anyway, when they start threatening with those kinds of demands, it’s already too late.
11/11/2010 at 15:18 Ovno says:
I look forward to this retailer backing out of pc games entirely, that way we won’t havbe to listen to the likes of them any more….
11/11/2010 at 19:13 Urael says:
Having to listen to them now is as much a tacit acknowledgement as we’re ever going to get that PC Gaming is NOT dying and, in fact, still generates some pretty envious revenues.
11/11/2010 at 15:20 President Weasel says:
Steamworks and Steam and the Steam store are parts of the same whole, but the fact that a game uses some features of Steam in no way forces a consumer with that game to buy any future releases through the Steam store.
It does, however, give them a glimpse into how convenient it is to get games from Steam, which I am sure terrifies the bricks and mortar retailers.
I honestly can’t remember the last time I bought a PC game from a bricks and mortar store. I’ll check the price in Steam, maybe another download store or two, and if I am not in a hurry to receive the game I’ll check online retailers like play and amazon since they usually have agressive pricing.
I can remember the last time I tried to buy a game from a shop – the last Dragon Age for the DS. They didn’t have any copies so I got it from Play.
One of the main problems with Steam is their secracy about theier sales figures. If they released them I think we’d find that the PC sector is actually quietly doing rather well. It’s the absence of Steam and similar sales (particularly Steam since they have such a chunk of the market) that makes PC sales figures look lower than they are for certain titles.
11/11/2010 at 15:22 Hunam says:
To be honest, of the 130 or so games I have on steam, I think about 50% of them were bought boxed or from competing retailers for a cheaper price. I like steamworks, I like being able to download my game as many times as I fucking like and I like the auto-patching service. Sure, you can’t sell them on but thems the breaks. Most other stores are much slower at downloading and have a clusterfuck of horrid DRM involved too.
I say fuck ‘em. I’m sure Tesco and ASDA et al wont mind selling the boxed products with steamworks.
11/11/2010 at 15:23 sneetch says:
It’s not really a monopoly though is it? As in they don’t actually control the PC market in any way, the publishers can simply go with other distributors and they can’t prevent others selling the games or force publishers to use Steam, they’re just the most successful service because of their features. As for them suddenly gaining control and setting prices, well that’s a bit alarmist and frankly hilarious; the publishers have always set the prices and if Steam try any such thing then the publishers can (and will) simply go with one of their competing digital and/or brick & mortar stores.
It’s not like the Xbox or PS3 where the system is closed, Steam can’t prevent you from accessing websites and other stores.
I wouldn’t really notice if my local shops boycotted any PC games, the local HMV has a single 3 or so foot long shelf underneath the PSP games for PC games, Gamestop has bugger all PC games and the Game near me has a couple of racks upstairs at the back most of which is taken up with clicky adventures and various 2 for €25 budget offers.
11/11/2010 at 15:23 pkt-zer0 says:
See, this post probably should reference Minecraft. On PC, all it takes is a PayPal link on your site, and you have the potential to make obscenely large amounts of money. Whether Valve wants it or not.
11/11/2010 at 15:43 Joe Duck says:
Minecraft is exactly, exactly what they don’t get.
Where’s the capital? Where’s the marketing campaign? Where’s the projected market share for the next 5 years? The DLC and versions 2, 3 and Gold? And more importantly, where are the managers? Who controls the appearance of things like this “Minecraft”? Who is accountable and we can put pressure on to “tap into that revenue stream”? How can they “monetize” a company of one person working in his basement?
These people are professionals with a lot of resources who pay a lot of analysts to make reports and lots and lots of Powerpoint graphs and yet they do not know how many people play PC games. Or what games they play or why. Or why would someone play a mod, or make a mod, or host a server, or go to a LAN party. It’s incredible what they do not know.
They want another simple volume oriented business, just another console. That way, they have no fuss, just another colour for PC boxes and lots and lots of the same product to sell fast.
Lots of COD or Madden or Rock Band in all platforms (marketing is cheaper this way) and away you go.
11/11/2010 at 19:05 VelvetFistIronGlove says:
Joe Duck: Very well put.
11/11/2010 at 19:16 Urael says:
@Joe Duck
Best comment of the thread right there. ‘Big Gaming’ is a business run by Ignorant Simpletons.
11/11/2010 at 15:24 Georg P. says:
Most of the actual titles I have purchased, were purchased using Steam. The only alternative I’d like to use is Games for Windwos Live Marketplace. The problem there is I can’t buy anything as my account is locked to the US and I am living in germany. There is no possibility to change this. I have even tried telephone suuport. I do not know any other digital distributor. Someone should write an article about this and not about Steam taking over the PC market if there is no alternative.
11/11/2010 at 15:24 Turin Turambar says:
Being honest, tha’s basically the point that i don’t like about Steam. I’s vaery monopoly-lke tactic, using Steamworks to tie bit a bit the pc videogame market with Steam itself, in detriment to their competitors (Gamersgate, Impulse, D2D, etc).
Every videogame sold in a retail shop or in a competitor digital shop with Steamworks is like a little Trojan horse: It will install Steam in the computer, and it has to be used to activate the game.
The problem is the union of Steam, the digital shop company , with Steam, the software to launch, play and update the game. Ideally, both things would be separated.
11/11/2010 at 15:24 Tasloi says:
They’ve been played off the field fair & square with a couple own goals to boot. No use to start crying about it now.
11/11/2010 at 15:26 Noterist says:
Retailer reduces number of PC games on shelves, effectively stops selling PC games.
Retailer sees competitor filling gap in market, digital distribution covering lack of PC games in stores, tries it’s hand, fails.
Retailer reduces number of PC games on shelves in retaliation.
11/11/2010 at 15:50 Sassenach says:
They should be careful, trying to divide by 0 might make their shop crash.
11/11/2010 at 15:28 Biggie says:
This is pure sour grapes, they look at all the sales Steam is making and they want a bigger piece of the pie. Standing up to steam has been tried and failed. Direct2Drive boycott steam by not selling Modern Warfare 2 due to steamworks integration. But given that they are now selling Black Ops, I guess they decided that some sales is better than no sales.
11/11/2010 at 15:31 _Jackalope_ says:
You can buy PC games in shops?I do vagualey recall once going into a “shop” before, there were rows and rows of PC games. But that was a very long time ago. Before you wree born.
This all used to be fields you know!
11/11/2010 at 15:31 Nick says:
These are the same retailers that give up a whole 3 inches of shelf space to PC right?
11/11/2010 at 15:37 Stew says:
You get a whole three inches? That’s impressive!
Fuck the high street, Steam meets my needs quite happily.
11/11/2010 at 15:41 Nick says:
To be fair though, its 3 inches of sims expansions.
11/11/2010 at 16:58 Matthew says:
Well, two and a half inches. The other half inch is made up of WoW time cards.
11/11/2010 at 17:45 Gotem says:
Strange, I get tons of mails wanting to also sell me 3 inches expansions
11/11/2010 at 19:19 Urael says:
@Matthew
WoW time cards? All I get in my last half inch of PC Gaming space is fucking Norton. FUCK the High Street.
11/11/2010 at 15:31 The Sombrero Kid says:
lol the brick & mortars desire to kill of the pc by choking the supply chain is what cost them their market share, they tried to damn a river of money & are surprised when it dried up on the far side & flooded the developers side with cash they used to pocket.
11/11/2010 at 15:32 Johnny deBris says:
It’s funny to note how Direct2Drive decided not to sell MW2 because of the requirement on the Steam client (and made quite a bit of noise about it), but now decided to do sell CODBLOPS even though that has the same requirement… Seems that they decided boycotting Steam may not actually be such a wise decision. :)
11/11/2010 at 15:35 sgc2000 says:
I remember ages ago that Stardock (owners of the Impulse digital store) said they wouldn’t stock Steamworks integrated games for similar reasons. They also specifically designed Impulse Reactor (their version of Steamworks) so it could be included in a game without bundling the digital store in with it.
11/11/2010 at 15:35 Quxxy says:
Dear retail game companies,
You know how you guys marginalised PC games into that tiny corner of the store that only seems to stock the four newest releases from Activision, every Blizzard compilation and two dozen shitty compilations of five year old games that never sold because they were garbage? Oh, and don’t forget the phalanx of Barbie games.
You know how you never seem to stock any of the games I’m actually interested in? Games that I’ve bought in the past like Audiosurf, Beat Hazard, Blueberry Garden, Eufloria, Flotilla, Loom, Osmos, Plain Sight, Psychonauts, Civ IV, SW: KotOR, Torchlight and Trine?
You know how every time I go in to buy anything I have to spend what feels like twenty minutes in what feels like a conversation with a bloody customs officer?
“We have four used copies and…” “No.” “Do you want to buy a subscription to Leet Gamr Magazn for just…” “No.” “How about a single issue for…” “No.” “Well, how about a Prima Str…” “No.” “Would you like disc insuran…” “JUST GIVE ME THE SODDING GAME!”
You know how you’re always advertising sales of “up to 40% off!” and it turns out the only titles more than 10% off are three year old Wii titles from some publisher I’ve never even heard of with names like “Awesome Car Racer Game!”?
You know how the games you sell more often than not come with something like SecuROM that only lets me install the game three times, requires the disc, an active internet connection, can never be uninstalled and if I lose the disc I’m screwed?
You know how for some games on Steam I have to pay 150% the price that Americans do for the exact same product, plus the cost in download quota and having my connection tied up for several days, supposedly to keep you in business?
Well, you’re losing to Steam because you completely and utterly suck at serving your customers. Valve don’t. The day you stumble away, bloodied and sobbing, from the PC market, I will cheer for joy.
12/11/2010 at 14:28 gryffinp says:
I was going to make a sarcastic comment regarding the complete lack of helpfulness that retailers have been to my PC gaming, but this says it better then I ever could. Five stars.
11/11/2010 at 15:38 rammjaeger says:
Things like this always make me laugh. Lets see, these shops are going to boycott games that require Steam thus losing revenue for the retail store and driving more people to buy the game on Steam. And this is going to help the retailer how?
Most retail shops have relegated PC games to a tiny shelf hidden in the corner of the store. Where Steam is actually providing value to the consumer. Buyers will go where they are best served, and a lot are going to Steam. These retailers need to stop stomping their feet, and instead try and come up with a better value proposition for the gamers.
11/11/2010 at 15:40 Pijama says:
Good article John, but it has a very good deal of bias here.
Although Steam is indeed the major reference of a good product and there is the added benefit of Steamworks, no matter how much hug-able Gabe Newell is, Valve is already one of those “entrepreneurial monoliths” of gaming – and that has pretty bad consequences for us gamers. Although I have no reason to believe that they are not actually out to *get* that monopoly, Valve is still treading into that territory indirectly.
Depending on the figures and which regulatory organization is observing it, Valve could be framed into unfair commercial practice already – however, given the peculiar object of the issue (digital entertainment), I doubt that any organization of that type is bothering to look and -
- Wait, I forget. Being based on the U.S., there is little hope in that regard. ;)
Anyway… This is a situation where convenience sucks. Steam is pretty much the best service around for folks like me who live outside the NA-Europe center of gaming – the lack of options and the severely overpriced retail pretty much allows Steam to reign sole.
11/11/2010 at 16:01 frymaster says:
ironically enough, in NA-Europe, it’s a pretty safe bet that the Steam price for a game at release will be higher than the store price (games always start at the RRP in Steam, while stores always undercut that so they can put their “Save £5!” stickers on everything)
11/11/2010 at 15:42 cheapo the rediculous says:
I just buy games where they are sold for the smallest sum of money. It’s that simple. Physical computer game shops have been nigh on completely fucking useless since amazon rolled into town. I sometimes go in them to smirk at the prices, laugh at the three titles they have in stock for PC and then urinate on the counter.
11/11/2010 at 15:43 Sir-Lucius says:
I’ve never really understood the idea of other retailers boycotting Steam/Steam-infused games. Sure, you’re selling a rival product, but I’m not going to NOT buy a game just because D2D/Gamersgate/Gamestop/Walmart/Best Buy or whoever decides to whine and gnash their teeth about it. I’ll spend my money elsewhere or just go through Steam directly, and then instead of maybe getting some money out of it you’re assured no profit at all. Hell, the whole reason I even started buying from D2D at all was because they had a better sale on a Steamworks enabled game than Steam did (forget what it was now). But I’ve since started buying games from them (including non-Steamworks games) that I wouldn’t have otherwise had they decided to take this whole “boycott Steam” stance.
And in the case of retail, I have even less sympathy. Unlike other digital distributors that have been focusing on promoting PC game sales and which offer alternative services to Steam, what does retail offer? Greatly diminished libraries to select from, poor pricing, and generally speaking, employees who have no idea about the product they’re selling. They have nothing to offer consumers that ANY of the major DD sources offer, they’ve focused on selling console games (and in many of the stores around where I am often times not even bothered to stock certain new releases on PC), and now they have the nerve to bitch and moan about how somebody else is doing it better than them and it’s not fair.
11/11/2010 at 15:44 Mac says:
Uter tosh – the simple issue that most people are price sensitive …
I went to Game yesterday to buy a copy of COD:BO as I have a £25 gift card I wanted to use. However, when I got there I noticed that they were trying to sell the PC version for £39.99 … given that it is £34.99 on their website for both a physical copy and a download copy, why on earth would I pay £5 more to buy it in their shop?
Retailers need to get real with pricing, and stop whining …
By the way, I buy very few games through Steam as they are always overpriced too – however, they do have good sales now and again.
The argument should be the other way really – why would people buy through Steam if you could get the same product cheaper elsewhere? And you can … people are selling COD:BO for £33, and given that it activates on Steam you have exactly the same version that Steam are trying to sell for £40.
At the end of the day COD:BO is a bad example – for me personally I do not believe that an annual update of a very derivative shooter is worth over £30, so I have not bought it. However, I do believe that retailers need to look at what their competition is doing and react to it, rather than moaning about competition.
In addition – why do they believe that the PC version should be £40? They will not let you trade it in, later like you can with the console version, so it actually has less inherent value, and no licencing costs to pay to MS or Sony – so it should be very much cheaper …
11/11/2010 at 15:45 Muzman says:
Steam might give them a convenient target but the real watershed was the internet itself. Once games started recommending and then insisting you had a connection in order to play them, the writing was on the wall.
11/11/2010 at 15:48 The Sombrero Kid says:
SMARTEST CEO in the world:
lets see the options to increase my market share are:
1.) make my own products better
2.) make my competitors products worse
3.) make my own products cheaper
4.)refuse to sell products as good as my competitor unless i can some how make them worse by stripping out services & such.
hmmm i choose 4.
11/11/2010 at 15:50 Hmm says:
That’s what I’ve been saying here for a long time, but Steam fanatics here refuse to look any further than the tips of their noses. They believe everyone loves Steam, everyone wants to use Steam, that any other option is evil.
Well, newsflash: they are wrong.
Games should not force anyone to install a shop application, which Steam essentially is. Games should use a neutral equivalent of Steamworks.
GFWL is taking the right approach – they’re getting rid of the GFWLMarketplace client, which was always separate from the game anyway, and bringing everything to the web.
Impulse Reactor works similar to Battle.net – you get multiplayer, community features, achievement, patching and don’t have to install ANY CLIENT at all.
This is the way PC games should work. Mandatory, annoying clients like Steam have no place here.
You say that Impulse Reactor is young and unproven – well, let’s give it a chance, shall we? We won’t know how well it works until SOMEONE decides to use it.
Take Shank, for example. Why is this STEAM EXCLUSIVE? Why can’t I buy it from Impulse with Reactor support?
11/11/2010 at 16:13 subedii says:
Instead of making blanket ad-hominems, it might be useful to make some valid points. Your post contains quite a few factual inaccuracies.
First off, it is possible for games to make use of Steamworks without being attached to the Steam store. There are actually one or two games that do that.
More to the point, GFWL store is very much tied to GFWL. I can access the store from in-game, and if I want to buy DLC for games, it has to be in MS Points. It doesn’t matter that they’re introducing a web based client now, the GFWL in-game store is still going to exist, as well as their separate marketplace client.
I’m happily willing to give Impulse Reactor a chance, as long as it gives me the featuresets I’m looking for. Right now, the big two competitors for community systems are Steam, and GFWL. And frankly, GFWL is tripe.
11/11/2010 at 16:15 Thermal Ions says:
Well if clients like Steam have no place here, why are they so damned popular? Could it be that they provide a significant number (yes, I’ll admit it, not all, maybe not even the majority) gamers, developers and publishers with what they want.
Oh, by the way, wake me up when a game I might possibly be interested in decides to use Impulse Reactor – I’m off to hibernate for the winter confident of sleeping undisturbed.
11/11/2010 at 21:07 Archonsod says:
Paradox are also kicking off their own community thang too, so there’ll be another one shortly :P
As for Steam being a popular client, I’m not so sure about that. I mean it’s installed on a lot of machines and I know a lot of people use it, but the question is how many people actively use the client and how many people it’s just a little icon in the taskbar for. Personally I prefer X Fire for the community thing, but I was using that long before Steam and imho it’s better at what it does.
14/11/2010 at 07:27 Quxxy says:
Here’s how I see it:
Valve aren’t evil. I don’t think they want to be the one and only service for PC games. It’s just that everyone else was asleep at the wheel for so long that by the time anyone bothered to actually try competing on service and features, it was already too late.
Personally, I don’t use Impulse because I don’t want a million and one clients on my machine. Hell, I was really furious when I found out that Batman: AA required GFWL. If I’d known that beforehand, I wouldn’t have bought it.
What I’d love to see is some decentralisation: decouple the Steam client, store and community. Make it so that I can buy and download games from the Impulse store via the Steam client and vice-versa. And frankly, given the players in the game, I’d much rather Valve be in a commanding position than Microsoft. There’s actually a chance Valve will play nice.
But none of this impacts the argument as to whether or not retail game stores deserve to survive in the PC market. As far as I’m concerned, they don’t. Dealing with the digital distribution landscape is a whole other discussion.
11/11/2010 at 15:52 FrowningEyes says:
Publishers bending over backwards for a frightened retailers is a much more frightening and realistic worry for me.
11/11/2010 at 15:53 Trevor says:
The amount of shortsightedness in this post and on this comment thread is staggering. It wasn’t unexpected in the comments of the VG247′s article about the same piece of news (http://www.vg247.com/2010/11/11/retailers-speak-out-against-valve-steam-is-killing-the-pc-market/) because they cater more to the Sun reading/console playing demographic, but reading the same type of comments on RPS, and worse, reading the article and seeing the same type of commentary in there as well, is truly disturbing.
Let me ask you this: Have you ever lent a game to a friend or borrowed one from a friend? Have you sold or traded an old game you’re not playing anymore? Have you ever bought or traded an old game you missed when it came out initially? I’ve done all of these. That is, until the rise of the Steam-ification of most of the new (post-2008) games. With Steam, that’s all gone. The same goes for other DRMs disguised as features, like Starcraft 2 (and Diablo 3, most likely) and BattleNet 2.0. Everybody seems to be dismissing that for some reason, but all the reasons I see posted here are not good enough in my opinion. So many of you are putting so much blind faith in Valve, Blizzard and their ilk. And you can’t even claim that they’re completely innocent even now, let alone after a few years when they’ll become even more fat and content. Should I remind anyone of the people banned from BattleNet 2.0 because they used trainers in single player? Or about the people banned from entire swathes of Steam games because that particular engine was banned after loading the wrong mods? The cold truth is that you have absolutely no control whatsoever over a thing you bought. It’s not even a matter of not being able to sell something you, supposedly, own anymore. It’s already an issue of being denied the use something you paid for. If you don’t find that disturbing, then I have nothing else to add. You know what, SecuROM and StarForce seem mighty fine compared to Steam right now. At least with these ones you could do whatever you wanted with the games you already paid for.
@Cliffski: Yes, I’m doing exactly that. Buying directly from the developers… when I can. The problem is that you can’t do that all the time. For example, Flotilla, Defense Grid or Audiosurf, to name just a few, come exclusively with Steam. I didn’t find any way of buying Flotilla or Defense Grid directly from the developers. I had an even worse experience with Audiosurf. I bought a retail copy and when I tried to install it it asked me to install Steam first.
Now I got to the point where the first thing I check out before buying is what DRM a game comes with and the that has veto power over everything else.
11/11/2010 at 16:13 Rinox says:
Borrowing games (to and fro) was always illegal technically speaking, though. So can’t really blame publishers for putting a stop on that. The not being able to resell or trade in old games, however, is a shame. Greenmangaming was (and is?) trying to fill that gap though, so we may still see some kind of advance in that area. Without being overly optimistic, I would put it beyond Valve to introduce user features on steam that are not aimed solely at making them more money (in the short run anyway).
11/11/2010 at 16:14 Rinox says:
wouldn’t* negation fail
11/11/2010 at 16:15 subedii says:
Defence Grid isn’t a Steam exclusive. You can get it on a number of DD services, including Impulse, or heck, even OnLive now.
11/11/2010 at 16:30 tomwaitsfornoman says:
When and how did buying and trading used games become a good thing?
11/11/2010 at 17:11 Trevor says:
@Rionx: The fact that the publishers state in the EULA that they don’t allow you to lend/borrow/rent a game doesn’t give it the power of law, thus it can’t be characterized as either legal or illegal. And a law like that, even if the publishers would love it, wouldn’t pass muster because it would gut the whole first sale doctrine first, and the concept of property ownership (and I’m talking real, cold-hard physical property, not intellectual property which is a far more airy concept compared to physical property) right after.
@subedii: You’re right about that, but you can’t buy Defense Grid directly from the developers’ site (and, thus, without DRM). That’s what Cliffski and I were talking about. The thing is that, in my opinion, it doesn’t matter if it’s Steam or Impulse or any other similar platform. As long as you have to register it to your account and make it non-transferable to other accounts, it could be tied to your DNA for all I care. Even the Green Man Gaming thing that Rionx was talking about is, on a fundamental level, nothing but what the bricks&mortar games do for console games. The only thing that would make it right would be the ability to transfer a game between accounts… even if it’s for a fee, as long as the fee is at most a few dollars/euro/pounds.
@tomwaitsfornoman: You’re confusing this with bricks&mortar stores buying back console games for pennies and reselling them as “used” at almost full price. I’m talking about people selling/buying/trading 5-15 years old games on eBay, gameTZ, CheapAssGamer etc. Now you can do that and get old titles cheaply without any intent to sell them, sell all your games because you need the money/need the space/are moving out, complete you collection etc. The reasons are too many to enumerate. If the Steam trend doesn’t turn into a passing fad, in 15 years you won’t be able to do that with today’s games. Who wins? Valve. Who loses? Everybody else, including the developers and the publishers. It is a well recognized fact (I don’t have a reference on hand, but I could look it up) that if you buy a good with the knowledge that you’ll be able to resell it at a later date, one is ready to pay a higher price at first sale than if when you buy something that you know for certain that you won’t be able to resell. And I’m not saying “won’t be able” as in “won’t be allowed” but as in “won’t have the ability to do it even if I ignored everything else”. What the bricks&mortar shops is, indeed very low, but if you were them, you would do the same, I assure you. A simple serial number for the multi-player is enough to kill that kind of action and it worked excellently for PC games with a multi-player component for a long time. Those interested in multi-player needed to buy a new copy, those interested just in single player could buy anything they wanted second hand unless they had great interest in the game to begin with. There’s nothing bad about that. It’s basic economic sense.
11/11/2010 at 17:52 Urthman says:
You list three games. One of them–Defense Grid–you can buy new in a box from Amazon right now for less than what Steam is charging (today). So that’s two games you’ve listed.
Other than those two, pretty much any other PC game you can think of can be had new or used from Amazon for less than Steam charges (outside of Steam’s short-term mega-sales). So how exactly has Steam killed the used market?
11/11/2010 at 18:10 wengart says:
Sure you can’t trade in games but I never buy games at full price so I am essentially buying them at used prices off of Steam.
11/11/2010 at 18:44 DrGonzo says:
I’ve never known any reputable shops to take PC game trade ins in the UK (not including cash converters and CEX – they still allow you to trade in you Steam games). Since my first gaming experiences of the first Command and Conquer games and the first Half Life. They all required CD-Keys to play online so shops wouldn’t let you trade them in, it was too easy to just copy the disc and write down the serial number. Stop being high and mighty in your posts, your full of crap frankly.
11/11/2010 at 19:13 Ateius says:
RE: It’s Steam’s fault we can’t borrow and re-sell old games amongst ourselves anymore
That’s a bit unfair. What about all the other DRM schemes, especially the ones with my old favourite “limited installations”? Have fun trying to re-install an old classic and finding out you’ve reached your limit. Or letting a friend borrow it and finding out it used up your last activation.
11/11/2010 at 19:16 Trevor says:
@DrGonzo:
“Stop being high and mighty in your posts, your full of crap frankly.”
Oh, well, I might very well be full of crap. Would you mind explaining why you think that? I don’t think there are any inconsistencies across my posts. If you think that using a set of principles instead of childish enthusiasm about or dislike for this and that and looking at the big picture instead of considering just the immediate implications is acting high and mighty or being full of crap, then by all means, I am acting high and mighty and I am being full or crap.
Cheerio!
11/11/2010 at 19:31 Trevor says:
@Ateius:
“What about all the other DRM schemes, especially the ones with my old favourite “limited installations”? Have fun trying to re-install an old classic and finding out you’ve reached your limit. Or letting a friend borrow it and finding out it used up your last activation.”
That’s very true. From my point of view those are even worse because they have all the downsides and none of the upsides of Steam. There are some obscure and, frankly, obnoxious DRMs that do that, among them, if I recall correctly, the ones coming with The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena and Two Worlds. Fortunately, the more successful titles that came with limited installations DRM had also de-authorization tools that you could use to claim back an used install. That was the case with Bishock, before the patch that removed the install limit altogether or EA’s Red Alert 3, Dead Space, Mirror’s Edge, Crysis: Warhead or Spore. I don’t know what happened to Ubisoft’s Far Cry 2, which came with the same limited installations DRM setup.
11/11/2010 at 21:12 Archonsod says:
” Have you ever lent a game to a friend or borrowed one from a friend? Have you sold or traded an old game you’re not playing anymore? Have you ever bought or traded an old game you missed when it came out initially?”
Not since the days of the 8 bits and games coming on tape, no. By the time the Amiga came out we just copied the games instead. Illegal, but more convenient.
” The cold truth is that you have absolutely no control whatsoever over a thing you bought. ”
As long as it’s downloaded to my system I do. Steam emulators aren’t hard to find, and in fact anyone with a bit of know how can mimic the Steam server response from their own system. The opposite tends to be true, once the data is on a system, it’s the guy owning the system who controls it.
11/11/2010 at 23:03 Kadayi says:
@Trevor
‘ Would you mind explaining why you think that?’
He already did, you just didn’t get it.
11/11/2010 at 23:24 Znea says:
I share my Steam account with my sister, and since she lives on the other side of the pacific from me it works a lot better then trading discs back and forth through the mail. Maybe I’m just doing it wrong, but I haven’t run into any trouble with it and haven’t had to set anything special up (other than changing my password to something she could remember).
12/11/2010 at 18:18 Luke says:
@Trevor
‘ Would you mind explaining why you think that?’
For me it was the bit where you decided to condemn “The amount of shortsightedness in this post” and compare the majority of contributors here to “the Sun reading/console playing demographic”, their conclusions ” truly disturbing.”
Without this yours would merely be an opinion hysterically expressed in the manner of a McArthy era moral guardian type. This, combined with your intellectual head shaking and sermoninising at people who had the audacity to express an opinion which did not match the tenor or your own lead to your hubrisitic descent into being high and mighty and full of crap in your posts.
Cheerio!
11/11/2010 at 15:53 FrowningEyes says:
Publishers bending over backwards for a frightened retailer is a much more frightening and realistic worry for me.
11/11/2010 at 15:53 itsallcrap says:
If it’s really a case of Steam vs World, I’m backing Steam – mainly because it has pretty much the least intrusive DRM you can reasonably expect in this day and age.
Excluding direct http downloads, I’ve only ever used non-Steam digital distribution for one game, which was Sins of a Solar Empire over Impulse. Sins is not available on Steam.
11/11/2010 at 16:02 Hmm says:
Steam is the most intrusive DRM out there. Period. One could argue that Ubisoft’s is even worse, and it probably is.
Stardock’s GOO? Superior to Steam DRM.
Securom? Superior, because it means one-time internet activation at worst, no bullcrap which needs to run in the background and many games patch it out completely after a while.
11/11/2010 at 16:18 itsallcrap says:
If Ubisoft’s is worse (which it definitely is), Steam is not the worst.
Securom is worse because you need to DVD in the drive, which is a collosal pain in the arse.
I guess I’ll take your word for it on GOO, because I wasn’t even aware that Stardock games had any DRM beside the fact that you had to download them using their client. Does that really count? Certainly they run without it…
11/11/2010 at 16:19 Ignorant Texan says:
SecuRom as a force for good? Really? It’s a fucking root-kit/malware/spyware copper. I can uninstall Steam, but you have to dig deeply through your registry to remove all the scattered pieces of this SONY-owned malware. They refuse to list what programs are incompatible/’illegal’ and thus, software I’ve bought will not work for reasons they will not state, other than some gibberish as to what is a null value with my soundcard, video card, my neighbors dog, etc…. And will be nonreturnable to a retailer because the box has been opened. In my more cynical moments, IE most of the time, I believe SecuRom is SONY’s underhanded attempt to drive people away from PC-gaming and into their even more draconian and restricted PS3 world.
11/11/2010 at 16:19 subedii says:
SecuROM does run in the background, it’s part of the actual executable. And frankly, I’ve had more issues with SecuROM not recognising my DVD Drive than I have had with Steam.
I don’t even see how you can even claim GOO is superior, it’s not even out yet,. Impulse as it currently exists now however, I lump in as being about as intrusive as Steam. That is to say: not very.
11/11/2010 at 16:39 Hmm says:
GOO IS OUT. Has been for a long time. Majesty 2 used it. So did Red Faction Guerilla.
As for Securom – like I said, it can be patched out very easily. So no DVD in the drive is needed.
11/11/2010 at 16:46 Ignorant Texan says:
So, publishers wake up and realize SecuRom loses them sales. After a while does not mean that it isn’t a malicious rootkit. Having to completely reload drivers and all sorts of other repair does not make SecuRom benign by any stretch of the imagination.
11/11/2010 at 16:59 subedii says:
So wait, you’re saying SecuROM’s better because you need to get rid of it?
Because that’s precisely what happened with Supreme Commander 1. SecuROM was causing so many freaking issues that GPG had no choice but to ultimately release a patch and get rid of it. Heck, Ubisoft even did the same with R6 Vegas, and you know what? They didn’t even patch it out properly, they applied a scene No-CD Hack to get rid of it. Yes CLEARLY that’s the most stable and ideal solution, and not at all problematic and certainly doesn’t put the user’s PC at risk for doing so.
Steam on the other hand, I haven’t had that issue with.
I will acquiesce however, that I did not know that GOO had been released. That was my mistake.
11/11/2010 at 18:49 DrGonzo says:
Impulse now spams adverts onto your desktop, I think it’s pretty disgusting frankly and has really put me off the service, which I used to like. How is that not intrusive? In my opinion that’s worse than DRM.
11/11/2010 at 19:31 Urael says:
@Dr Gonzo
Have you tried, I don’t know, TURNING IT OFF? I did and haven’t seen a pop-up advert since.
11/11/2010 at 21:15 Archonsod says:
“Impulse now spams adverts onto your desktop, I think it’s pretty disgusting frankly and has really put me off the service, which I used to like. How is that not intrusive? In my opinion that’s worse than DRM.”
So does Steam. Both let you opt out, the difference is Steam resets it after every update. As it does with your choices on whether to allow automatic patches of games. I put that down to laziness on Valve’s part though.
11/11/2010 at 15:54 Jorune2112 says:
On the comment that Steam doesn’t ‘price fix’ games. Apparently, that’s not true. Two weeks ago I bought an indie game directly from a publisher located in the UK (I am in the U.S.). I paid 16 US dollars for it. When it came out on Steam a week later, it was 10 bucks. I wrote to the publisher with a complaint that as an early adopter trying to buy directly from the publisher, I shouldn’t be paying more money for the product. I received an email this morning from the publisher stating that they wanted to charge more for the game, but Steam has strict guidelines that they had to follow.
11/11/2010 at 16:33 sneetch says:
Really? I find that hard to believe, they must have very complex strict guidelines as just browsing the games in the Steam indie section I’m seeing games for €2.49, €2.99, €3.99, €4.49, €4.99, €5.99, €6.99, €7.99, €8.99, €9.99, €11.99, €12.99, €13.99, €14.99, €15.99, €16.99, €17.99, €18.99, €19.99 and €22.99. I wonder what the difference between a €4.49 and a €4.99 game is, for example?
Sounds like they’re trying to fob you off.
11/11/2010 at 17:00 Thermal Ions says:
Maybe the strict guidelines related to having signed a publishing deal releasing the game at an agreed price, with agreed commission for Valve, based upon an expected number of unit sales. Valve quite rightly may require them to honour that agreement, regardless if the developer then decides to increase the price at the last minute (which in Valve’s view possibly risked reduced unit sales such that expected commission revenue would be impacted).
The dev’s might have also realised that the payment processor charges (assuming 3rd party) incurred for purchases “direct” from them plus the bandwidth costs meant their profit from these “direct” purchases wouldn’t meet expectations, thus increased the “direct” price.
11/11/2010 at 18:31 Urthman says:
Wait, so you bought a game and then later found it for sale at a cheaper price?
Just like every other game that ever existed? And this surprised you?
11/11/2010 at 20:06 Jorune2112 says:
No, not at a sale price. They were selling the game for $32 bucks at their own web site, with half-off now if you pre-order the beta product. So I paid $16. Than it comes out on Steam at $10. Please don’t simplify it. This is directly addressing whether or not Steam sets prices on games.
From the publisher’s email:
“Unfortunately Steam are
very firm in their pricing requests and we have to agree to them and
thus it went on their site somewhat cheaper than we had planned.”
I’m loathe to name the developer simply because they took the time to address my issue personally and quickly, so if you need to dismiss it, cool.
Jorune
11/11/2010 at 21:23 Archonsod says:
It depends on what you mean by “publishers”. Actual publishers like EA, Ubisoft et al can set their prices, indie devs and smaller companies have a lot less clout when it comes to negotiating.
They’re not that different from any other publisher. They want to make money, if you’re asking too much for your game they’ll walk. To be fair though, they probably know a lot more than the indie dev about the marketing side of things.
11/11/2010 at 15:55 Jethro says:
Surely by making Steam the only place to buy PC games these stores will put Valve in its place!
11/11/2010 at 18:51 DrGonzo says:
That’s pretty much how I see it going. If the shops boycott Steam then it will no longer have reason to keep it’s prices artificially high as well – if that really is why they are so high.
11/11/2010 at 15:56 Ham says:
Great, I’ll think about that the next time those fucking stores don’t have the game I’m looking for.
11/11/2010 at 15:59 Artist says:
Omg, Steam own us! HAMSTER RIOT!
Seriously, I buy most new steam games somewhere else, cos steam is ridiculous expensive! Its only good for bargains.
11/11/2010 at 19:31 Baf says:
I can’t agree about the pricing, because I don’t think I’ve ever paid full price for a game on Steam. I’ve been buying games on Steam at a faster rate than I can finish them, but entirely through their “75% off” sales and the like.
11/11/2010 at 20:22 Artist says:
Yes, “x% off” is what most persons call “bargain”….
11/11/2010 at 22:18 Baf says:
That part was understood. My point is just that they discount their games so often that their non-discounted prices are pretty much irrelevant. Calling Steam too expensive except for the bargains is a bit like saying your bedroom is a really uncomfortable place to sleep except for the bed.
11/11/2010 at 16:04 kikito says:
Let me translate:
Digital distribution boss says to MCV: “I want more money, but Valve is taking it. Because they are monopolistic.”
11/11/2010 at 16:05 tomwaitsfornoman says:
Possibly relevant: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/3/30/
11/11/2010 at 16:08 malkav11 says:
Why exactly should it matter to these companies why the games forcibly install a competing service? It’s clearly detrimental to them regardless of what benefits it may provide to the developers or indeed users. And you’ll forgive me if I don’t want every copy of any given game tied to Steam forever myself. It’s one thing if I make the deliberate choice to purchase through Steam for my own copy, something I quite regularly do because Steam usually has the best sales and a number of excellent design elements to their store and their client. But my deliberately taking the risk that they one day go out of business and leave me unable to play their games is fine. Making the game universally unplayable if that scenario should occur, not so much.
11/11/2010 at 19:59 D says:
You don’t sound like a steam hater at all, so this is not directed at you, but I want to point out to that this argument (the DOOMSDAY argument) is completely and utterly bollocks. On the PC today, we can play arcade games that were made in the 80′s and probably some from the 70′s as well. To think that the closure of Steam, Steamworks etc. would make all software hackers and crackers go “Oh well! Nothing to do about that” is far fetched. I am not worried for the future, in this respect.
11/11/2010 at 16:12 DukeBG says:
If a game is not on Steam – i won’t buy it.
Wanna sell games in your own store? Make it bugless and trustworthy. Having some freaky DRM that relies on the company store “is_purchased” check that will break (and render your digital copy unplayable) after 2 years (what? 2 y.o. game? we not gonna support that!) is an awful user experience.
11/11/2010 at 16:12 kororas says:
Steam is on a roll. That is all.
11/11/2010 at 16:13 jvempire says:
Ya boycotting will sure work when the holiday sales start!! Oh wait.
11/11/2010 at 16:16 Wilson says:
I can’t remember the last time I bought something in a physical store. There’s always somewhere online where you can get it cheaper or quicker, or both. Plus there are hardly any PC games in stores. So… meh to stores. Steam potentially getting too big is something of a concern. Hopefully other online stores will become more popular as time goes by. I’ve got games from a few different online stores (I’ve found Impulse to be solid, and have quite a few games on there) and plenty of indie games bought direct from the devs. It’s handy that I’ve got an external HD to store the installers on, but you can generally redownload them anyway.
11/11/2010 at 16:22 Frank says:
Bah, just gossip.
11/11/2010 at 16:24 Ninja Dodo says:
hahaha-ho, hum….
Seriously though.
That was funny, Retail.
In the last three years I think I’ve bought about two PC games boxed. One of them was from Amazon, the other had some nice books and things that came with. If they had been available on Steam at the time I would’ve gotten them on that…
11/11/2010 at 16:39 Cunzy1 1 says:
Anyone visited the PC software section of their nearest high street retailer?
If you can find the game you want (over two weeks old? sorry that’s ancient) it’s often more expensive. Or it’ll be second hand boo ha boo hiss ha booo.
So we aren’t given much choice and get dicked on the price? Great.
11/11/2010 at 16:46 Incolas says:
I think we’ve seen more threatening big bad wolves out there before. That said, they’re in control of the PC market and now they’re getting Sony to bend to get Portal 2 to the PS3. I wonder who will stop that. Microsoft had Apple, Sega had Nintendo, Xbox had PS3, what’s Steam’s counterpart?
11/11/2010 at 16:48 Jim Jones says:
The PC games section in my local Game is tiny (basically the top 10 games + random selection of £5 rubbish).
If they want people to buy games from them they need to support the PC properly. Last time I bought something from Game must be at least 3 years ago. Steam is a complete red herring, they are killing the PC as a gaming platform not Steam.
Anyway Amazon & Play are much cheaper :)
11/11/2010 at 16:49 John Smith says:
Here in Montreal there are no shops whatsoever that carry PC games. Future Shop, EB Games, Gamezone etc all stopped pushing PC gaming about 5 years ago, WAY before Steam had taken off. Retailers forced users to Steam, not the other way around.
Now that I’ve taken the Steam pill, I can say without a doubt, that there is no need for retail game shops. They are just there to screw people over on the second hand scene.
Do I miss hanging out in stinky disgusting stores smelling teen sweat while browsing hundreds of titles? Nope. (okay a little)
11/11/2010 at 16:51 John Smith says:
Here in Montreal there are no shops whatsoever that carry PC games. Future Shop, EB Games, Gamezone etc all stopped pushing PC gaming about 5 years ago, WAY before Steam had taken off. Retailers forced users to Steam, not the other way around. (Future Shop has a bunch of Sims and SC2 boxes, but doesnt try to keep up with pc games)
Now that I’ve taken the Steam pill, I can say without a doubt, that there is no need for retail game shops. They are just there to screw people over on the second hand scene.
Do I miss hanging out in stinky disgusting stores smelling teen sweat while browsing hundreds of titles? Nope. (okay a little)
11/11/2010 at 16:57 CTDahl says:
Besides Steamworks, Valve has been offering anouther great tool for developers and publishers: *STATISTICS*
I yet to hear of an existing direct download service that offers hard statistics of game consumer demographics in the way that Valve does it. For a fee, Valve can tell you who is buying the game, when, where, the consumer’s past shopping habits, and so on.
This probably entices publishers more then developers, as it is their money on the line and it gives them the ability for invest smartly into future projects.
11/11/2010 at 17:01 Atholearl says:
Personally I stopped using brick and mortar retailers in favour of sites like amazon/play. Far easier to get what I wanted, and a didn’t have to stare at a pathetic amount of shelf space to do it. They stopped supporting PC games so I stopped going, it really is that simple. Steam and similar services just continued my online shopping to the next level.
Steam has risen to where it is because it’s (arguably) the best at what it does. It didn’t start that way ether, it improved and fought for it’s place. It’s far from perfect, but it’s certainly one off the best options around. Here’s a hint retailers: if you want a piece of the action, don’t ignore the user base then whine later on services that replaced you are dominate. Man up and fight for your place and the user base will respond.
I’d also argue that steamworks isn’t that much of a threat to retailers anyway. Release day games are usually more expensive, and I’m more likely to order the game where it’s cheapest with steamwoks attached. It is however a threat to other digital distribution sites, and competition is needed to keep things from getting stale.
11/11/2010 at 17:03 Delusibeta says:
Ultimately, cry some more. Steamworks provide multiplayer matchmaking, server list provision, rapid patch distribution, DRM that’s liked by the majority of PC gamers, DLC sales, cloud saving and the Steam Community, all for the low price for free. Of course publishers and developers are going to use it!
Make a superior competitor and then we’ll talk.
(It’s interesting to note that this is the second time there’s been a major QQ about Steamworks from retailers, shortly after the second Call of Duty game to use Steamworks was released. Last bout of whining was shortly after Modern Warfare 2′s release. I wonder what would be their response once Activision gets Blizzard to implement Battle.net in the PC Call of Duty games?)
11/11/2010 at 17:07 Wulf says:
For all this though, the PC is still an open platform, thank goodness. I agree that it’s awkward that Stemaworks forces people into using Steam, but I don’t really mind, because Valve has never, ever done wrong by me. I’ve been using Steam since the year of its launch, when it was a barren wasteland with only Valve products on it, and I’ve watched it grow and grow. I like that they’re fairly friendly customer-service wise too if you’re at least personable, since a couple of times I’ve had ‘buy for a friend’ sales fail, which were fixed, and I’ve managed to get refunds on a couple of games when things simply outright haven’t worked for me.
Then again, this might be something to do with me being a customer in good standing, I’ve never used hacks in online gaming (a hateful thing), and I’ve never tried fraud (there are some hilarious stories about this), so I’m probably head and shoulders above most the PC audience in this respect. Despite how stupid the average PC script kiddy is though, it’s good that Valve still realises that the PC is an open platform. What this means is: They don’t care what you do with your single-player game. I mean, you could cheat horribly with single-player games, but they take the attitude that the only person you’re cheating is yourself. The worst they’d do is turn off the achievements for that game.
This is ulike, say, Blizzard. Blizzard is the sort of company that would likely turn the PC into a closed platform if it could, it would likely only allow modding through a modding suite that’s encrypted, and it already requires that mods be vetted by humans, a lot of which get cast to the roadside (this is NOT the PC way, Blizzard). Moreover, Blizzard has banned people for using cheats in a single-player game. Allow me to repeat that just to stress the fucking idiocy of it. Blizzard has banned people for cheating in a single-player game. What does that mean? If you cheat in your single-player game, only hurting yourself, you’re denied access to your game. The money you spent on buying it is lost, it’s gone, Blizzard won’t change their stance on this.
Admittedly, Valve ban, but for online cheating, and even then only under drastic circumstances, and usually because a publisher has demanded it. With their own games, they tend to not ban, in TF2 they just wipe achievements/items instead, which is a much more fair approach, so they don’t ban with their own games even for online cheating, which is bloody incredible, it’s almost too fair of them. But Blizzard? That old buzzard will ban you access from your game for using any kind of injected code, and this has nothing to do with online gaming. Blizzard is like vultures circling above, you can see them circling, and they’re just waiting for you to do something stupid, so that they can feast on your corpse.
That’s how it could be. The thing is, for all that Valve is, things could be worse.
Things could be a lot, lot worse.
Frankly, I’m glad that the reigning power at the moment actually has some sense of fairness, understands that the PC is an open platform, and actually cares about the future of our platform. That’s more than you could say about Microsoft, Blizzard, or so many others. Yes, they’re a company. Yes, they’re out to make profit. But there’s just something else with them, something where they’d fly the heads of a game’s boycott out to meet them for free, just to show them how awesome the thing they’re boycotting is.
Steam is a company, but there’s still Valve behind it. And neither Steam or Valve has done wrong by me. And frankly? It’s better than the alternatives.
11/11/2010 at 17:31 Thermal Ions says:
I think you’ll find that Valve will VAC ban for TF2 cheating, especially as VAC bans are at the engine level – so a ban in any of DOD:S, CS:S, TF2 and whatever else is on the same engine version atm will affect the others. The loss of achievements / items relates more to other Terms of Service breaches (e.g. using 3rd party idling software).
11/11/2010 at 18:12 DJ Phantoon says:
I figure we’ll be okay as long as Valve remains privately owned and Gabe Newell remains sane.
11/11/2010 at 21:25 pkt-zer0 says:
“Moreover, Blizzard has banned people for using cheats in a single-player game.”
If you neglect the fact that said cheats were map/drophacks, yeah, it’s easier to act all indignant. If you’re stupid enough to go online while running multiplayer hacks in the background, you kind of deserve the ban.
11/11/2010 at 17:08 Kryopsis says:
“GfWL neither offers better deals than all its competitors nor aggressively pushes its own storefront.”
As someone who worked on two high-profile Games for Windows – Live games and who had to sit through boring Games for Windows conferences every few months, I can tell you that you’re wrong on both counts.
When was the last time you’ve seen Halo 2, Gears of War, Viva Pinata or Age of Empires III for sale on a digital distribution site that is not owned by Microsoft? You have to admit that Games for Windows offers a fair share of exclusive high quality titles* and DLC. The ‘Deal of the Week’ initiative that was implemented several months ago is only an example of things to come once the Games for Windows Marketplace (http://www.microsoft.com/games/en-US/community/pages/gond.aspx) launches next week. In other words, not only Microsoft has desirable content that nobody else has but they are beginning to take the offensive.
This, of course, is of little relevance to publishers and yet we keep seeing GfW-L games (http://news.bigdownload.com/2010/11/03/thq-exec-hints-at-using-games-for-windows-live-for-pc-again/) to the detriment of consumers. What Microsoft gives publishers is priceless: free advertising. Like it or not, Games for Windows has brand recognition mainly to the association to Xbox Live. All GfW titles are advertised on the portal site. Moreover, whenever you see a game supporting Microsoft’s platform being advertised in a magazine, chances are it’s being paid for by Microsoft. Every Games for Windows game sold (not to mention Live) advertises the platform but the platform advertises the products. This is not something Steam can provide. As popular as steampowered.com is, it cannot equal the ‘Games for Windows’ logo on top of a row of neat boxes on a store shelf. Games that require Steam to play rarely contain references to the service at all, save a small red warning box at the back. Why is that, do you think?
To clarify, I am not in favour of Games for Windows – Live, as my first post in this thread will tell you. Nonetheless, Microsoft cannot be ignored as a competitor. If the rise of the Xbox will tell you anything is that the company is tenacious, ruthless and knows how to sell its products.
*: Yes, I know. “Halo 2, desirable title? Hahah!” and so on. The point is that until very recently, GfW-L had better exclusives than the competition.
11/11/2010 at 17:15 FrowningEyes says:
Well I definitively believe you attended GWFL conferences.
11/11/2010 at 17:28 JohnnyMaverik says:
Yea but Microsoft are still massive, massive wankers who deserve the biggest kick in the nuts that every poor soul who has sat through 45 minutes of GFWL updating after installing a game that uses the client can muster and having a fking cheek to demand we pay for a gold subscription to play bloody Gears of War online. What’s more exclusivity is not a service, exclusivity is a cheep back handed way of trying to get a hold on a market. Other than Valve’s own games they hold nothing exclusive to steam and in fact stock plenty of games that use GFWL. Why don’t Microsoft put Gears on steam? I’ll bet you anything if they had the PC version of Gears would have made them a profit and the “no Gears 2 because we lost money on the first game” argument wouldn’t hold any ground.
Fk Microsoft. and GFWL, they couldn’t give less of a crap about the pc as a gaming platform and pc gamers, the sooner they leave our Platform alone the better, and if pc gamers have any sense they’ll let them know that they’re not interested with their wallets.
11/11/2010 at 17:31 Hmm says:
I’d like MS to be ruthless and tenacious when it comes to their GFW division… because right now, it’s a joke. It’s been four years since the whole GFW initiative launched and it’s pathetic how MS handled it.
Xbox this, xbox that, xbox gets the games, hundreds of million of $$$ on marketing. GFW? Nothing. No games. It got Gears of War, but not GoW2 or 3. Halo 2, but not even Halo 3. No arcade games like Limbo or Shadow Complex. Nothing. Null. Zero. The client is still a joke – the interface, patching… awful.
The GFW team – all two guys on the team – must be a bunch of sad folks. Underpaid, understaffed, unable to get even console ports on the service. Always in the shadow of the money hemorrhaging Xbox division, which cost MS billions of dollars they’ll never get back.
11/11/2010 at 17:32 Savage says:
The trouble with Microsoft “competing” int he PC games space, is their utter lack of consistency or follow-thru. We all remember the big “PC gaming on Windows 7 is going to be revolutionized” with GFWL, but the reality is that after the initial marketing push with the Win7 launch, Microsoft once again walked away from the initiative.
The half-dozen games you mentioned (with the exception of AOEIII) are all primarily Xbox games. When you mention playing a round of Halo, no one thinks you;re about to head to your PC, do thay?
I’ll give a specific example of how GFWL on the PC can actually KILL a PC game:
My gaming community has 7 dedicated (dual quad core) boxes that host over 30 games server (Tf2, L4D, etc.) . We host game servers on the east coast, west coast, and in the UK….and our servers garner over half a million player connections per month. What that means is that fi we put our support behind a game, we generally have no problem filling a server on a daily basis.
Section 8 was a game that many of our players loved. It had its problems, but had enough interesting game mechanics for us to give it a shot with our community.
Unfortunately, the process for hosting a game server with GFWL was a HUGE impediment. Unliek nearly every other game we’ve launched a server for, it took us over TWO MONTHS to get a S8 server up and running, all due to the shoddy, bloated, piece of crap that is GFWL. Hell, I was actually told (about 6 weeks into trying to get a server up) that the ONE GUY that handled server “whitelists” was on vacation for two weeks, so they wouldn’t be able to get our license handled until then. This is on a game that was BRAND NEW and needed all the word of mouth it could get. Make no mistake GFWL KILLED Section 8′s chances of gaining any kind of PC audience.
The GFWL does not understand the concept of community support, nor with their “Xbox Live” colored glasses on, will they ever. Until they can stop trying to showhorn the PC experience into the Console box, PC gamers will continue to look elsewhere.
Can Microsoft relaunch/revitalize the service? I’m sure they can…they should at the very least have the funding and personnel to put up a good fight. Will they? I doubt it. Where M$ is failing is in trying to shape the experience to what THEY think it should be, as opposed to what their customers WANT it to be. M$ doesn’t listen to PC gamers anymore, if they ever did.
Valve does, and that’s why Valve is winning.
As for the Bricks and Mortar guys boycotting PC games, I say go right ahead, I don;t really need a copy of “Barbie Fashion Show” anyway…and if I did, I’d probably buy it from Amazon anyway. Go ahead and nash your teeth and stomp your feet all the way to bankruptcy. You are the buggy-whip makers of the 21st century, and that’s just the way it goes.
I can’t wait until physical media goes away all together, and we can stop listening to all the moaning and whining brought on by these antiquated business models all together.
11/11/2010 at 17:34 subedii says:
I don’t doubt that they are ruthless, tenacious, and know how to sell their products.
I do however doubt that they have the actual inclination to do so and truly invest in GFWL this time, any more now than they did the last three times they relaunched the service.
I think that a lot of it comes down to a fundamental conflict of interest. MS’s unfortunate but fundamental internal conflict of interest between project teams which ultimately means that they need to emphasise the 360 games market over the PC games market. GFWL has always been sidelined by Microsoft because their key games platform is the 360 now. Which leads to things like Alan Wake suddenly becoming a 360 exclusive despite originally being a poster boy for DX10, or deliberately canning projects to increase cross-platform compatibility because it “reflects poorly” on the 360 if KBAM players can consistently outperform players on a gamepad, or timed exclusives on DLC and game releases in general…
And really, this is before you get into all the OTHER reasons that GFWL does so poorly. MS keep trying to shove shove shove a system designed specifically for XBL into the PC sphere without thought, and it keeps resulting in half-measure and a community system that’s frankly, lacklustre compared to the competition that was around even before Steam. And yet, with their big revamp of GFWL (again) coming on the 15th, the biggest feature they’re currently touting is that they’re going to have an all new, web based store.
You link to MS propositioning THQ to come back to GFWL, but really, there are a myriad of problems with GFWL that forced companies like Relic to drop it in the first place (this is NOT a decision to be taken lightly, considering what a bad position it leaves the DoW2 franchise in), and precisely none of them have been addressed to date.
11/11/2010 at 17:38 Gabbo says:
So it had 360 ports and one PC exclusive title? Get back to me when the back catalogue of MS pc titles gets put up on GfW.
Half of the games I have in my Steam account are retail games I’ve tossed the key in because it’s mandatory or are Valve games (and a good chunk of those came from my old copy of Half-life1).
I don’t put my money behind one platform or another, I go where the games I want are the cheapest. Occasionally that is Steam, other times it’s not. I’m ‘one of those people’ who prefers having a hard copy, and will buy online retail when I can any way. If a game doesn’t require Steam I won’t go out of my way to add it to the client. I would prefer steamworks and the Steam client be separate, but I’m not going to stop buying pc game altogether until that happens.
11/11/2010 at 17:52 subedii says:
The Steam store and Steamworks are separate, and devs can choose to implement it as such if they so wish. There a couple of games that have done just that IIRC.
11/11/2010 at 18:01 Neut says:
“What Microsoft gives publishers is priceless: free advertising. Like it or not, Games for Windows has brand recognition mainly to the association to Xbox Live.”
“As popular as steampowered.com is, it cannot equal the ‘Games for Windows’ logo on top of a row of neat boxes on a store shelf.”
Tbh I would question the judgement of a publisher that wants to have a logo on their box that, to nearly all PC gamers, says “this product has a stinking shitstain joke of a service that will negatively impact your game experience”.
11/11/2010 at 18:05 malkav11 says:
A game that can only be purchased from one service by definition cannot be a better deal on that service than another – because there is no competition.
11/11/2010 at 18:30 noobnob says:
Kryopsis, even though the mentioned titles are high-profile, were they capable of building up an online community capable of driving the GfWL platform forward, adding value to the service itself, in the same way Steam and Microsoft’s own Xbox LIVE did?
I ask this because after reading all of the horror stories surrounding GfWL, the impression they left led me to the Games for Windows website looking for more insight and answers, and I stumbled upon the forums, which to my surprise were dead, with the exception of the support sections. I honestly expected more, but what I saw there instead was a few sane people, while the rest would just decry Steam as the devil of PC gaming, like parrots.
Even if GfWL has high profile games under its belt, after all that, I have to question if they were really enough to drive the platform forward. Betcha the GfWL team would die to have codblops tied to their platform, as anyone can see, right now, how many people are playing it and many other (non) Steamworks titles.
Additionally, the only third-party big publishers that still use GfWL on their games are Codemasters and Capcom, meaning that all the other publishers eventually lost interest on the platform and abandoned it over time.
11/11/2010 at 20:05 Alexander Norris says:
The problem is that the Steam store is advertised when you’ve installed a Steamworks game, and this is precisely what GfWL games do not presently do.
The presence or lack thereof of a big, recognisable logo on the game’s box has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that post-installation, Steamworks games result in the Steam store being advertised to people who bought the Steamworks game in the first place from another distributor. That’s the problem, not any exclusivity or branding issues.
Obviously, there’s going to be the same problem with GfWL as there is with Steam/Steamworks if Microsoft advertise aggressively from within the GfWL client and offer excellent deals once they do the GfW store revamp.
11/11/2010 at 21:31 Gabbo says:
@subedii I said steam client, not store. If I can get all the great features Steamworks provides, but not need the client running for a third party game (ie not a Valve game) then I would be fine, and this issue wouldn’t exist.
Also, which games have steamworks but don’t come bundled with steam/the store? I know of none, but continue to hear this argument everywhere.
11/11/2010 at 22:18 subedii says:
At the moment, Wikipedia only lists two known examples, NBA 2K9, and SupCom 2 for the Mac. Those as the article notes, “Valve does not make announcements about such games”, so realistically whenever it does happen, we simply don’t know about it.
It’s a similar situation with Gamespy. Quite a lot of games use Gamespy but don’t actually post that they do, or even bear the Gamespy logo anywhere.
11/11/2010 at 17:12 Andy says:
Judging from my experience this week of trying to by CODBLOPS at retail, no shops actually stock PC games anymore anyway…. I eventually gave up and gave Steam my money. So if you want to sell PC games, try stocking them?
11/11/2010 at 18:12 subedii says:
That’s crazy. You’re crazy!
11/11/2010 at 17:15 invisiblejesus says:
This isn’t entirely new news, when MW2 was released Gamersgate, D2D and Impulse (who already wasn’t selling Steam-integrated games) announced they would be refusing to sell any game that required Steam. D2D has wisely reversed that policy. It would have made sense a few years ago, when Steam wasn’t as ubiquitous as it is now, but the fact is the genie’s out of the bottle now. Between MW2, the Left 4 Dead series and the Orange Box, pretty much every PC gamer who hasn’t conciously chosen not to use Steam already has it on their PC. The damage, if that is what you think it is, is already done.
Having said that, I certainly wouldn’t object if Valve did remove the store tab from Steam, or allowed a no-storefront version of Steam to be included in games. I never actually use the store tab in the Steam client anyway and I doubt most other Steam customers do either, as the web site is much faster and more responsive.
11/11/2010 at 17:17 Navagon says:
Surely this isn’t from UK retailers? As in the stores that stock up to two PC games. Not much of a threat.
11/11/2010 at 17:35 DMJ says:
High street retailers might want to increase their shelf space devoted to PC games from “one set of shelves stocking nothing but budget games from 2002 and MW2″ as their first step in establishing more control over PC sales.
11/11/2010 at 17:45 TheApologist says:
Game might as well have sent out a press release that said:
‘our days selling PC games digitally are numbered. Thank you.’
Also, despite all the noise, I still have not seen a convincing argument against Steam. It’s convenience, its stability, and its range of services make it a good service. Arguments like ‘it’s not really a good service, it’s just convenient’ as seen in this comments thread are patronising beyond belief. People are quite capable of deciding for themselves what makes for a good service.
11/11/2010 at 17:56 Juppstein says:
It is quite interesting that some years ago everyone was laughing at Steam for trying to be an internet based distribution platform with a unified interface with no future. Today they curse steam for stealing away their own possibilities to market their games digitally.
Valve did not get big with Steam because they had billions of money or other means to shove the product down our throats (yes, I am looking at you, MS) but they became big because players (and publishers) did accept the platform and welcomed the features it gave them.
At first it was a nice way for publishers to get additional sales aside from the brick and mortar sales. But when the point was crossed when electronic sales became a real factor they started to fear Steam for what it was. The really embarassing point is that in all those years they did not move one little pinky finger to come forward with their own digital distribution solutions. “Too bad, you loose” I say.
And if I would have the choice between Steam and a mix of 10 different publisher e-distribution services I would still choose Steam, because it is easier to use for the consumer.
1:0 for Valve methinks.
11/11/2010 at 17:58 DJ Phantoon says:
Hey, will this be good for the Aussies, or will it not matter? I keep wanting to play some new games with some friends from there, but they can’t afford it because it costs way too much.
Also, what’s with your stores thinking they can act like the newspapers and be fine?
11/11/2010 at 17:59 DrGonzo says:
This is all pointless anyway though. Game don’t stock PC games, other than a few puzzle games. HMV used to stock PC games, but I went it last week and they had got rid of all of them other than a few copies of Football Manager and the Sims.
Who cares if they boycott Steam when they don’t stock PC games anyway? Seems like a pretty pointless discussion to me.
11/11/2010 at 18:01 ScubaMonster says:
Isn’t this what a free market is? Do or die. Valve isn’t using any sort of anti-competitive practices. Publishers are choosing the Steam route because of the benefits. Instantly large market and advertising just by putting it on Steam, not to mention they get some form of DRM control without angering the populace. It’s a win, win for everybody. If the competitors can’t offer a superior service, then put up or shut up. I realize that Valve is dominating the market, giving everybody else entering the digital distribution market a big uphill battle. I have no problem with this because Steam is an awesome service.
11/11/2010 at 18:04 Alexander Norris says:
Except they are. Namely, bundling the Steam store with Steam DRM in Steamworks titles.
11/11/2010 at 18:08 DrGonzo says:
I don’t see how that is anti competitive. Others can still stock and sell their games. The problem is no one else offers a decent service, that isn’t Steams fault.
11/11/2010 at 18:17 invisiblejesus says:
That’s not anti-competitive. You are still perfectly capable of going to a brick and mortar store or other digital store and purchasing games that require Steam, provided that they are offered. If Valve were to stipulate that games requiring Steam could only be sold via Steam, that would be anticompetitive, but that is not what is happening.
11/11/2010 at 18:38 Kryopsis says:
I think what Alexander is saying is that in case of Steam, the store, the service (friends, community, in-game overlay) and the DRM is all combined and comes from the same source.
Ironically this is the very reason so many publishers prefer Steam: they get a comprehensive package that gives them a distribution platform, a cheap DRM service, tools, comprehensive statistics and a strong customer base. Until other digital distribution companies start offering this (http://steampowered.com/steamworks/developmenttools.php), Steam will remain at the hight of the competition. GfW-L is the only other system that *could* rival Steam. Unfortunately, whoever wins, the customers lose.
This said, I do not have anything against Valve’s business policies and I do not think these practices can be singled out to be called anti-competitive.
11/11/2010 at 18:45 Urthman says:
Yeah, Steam is in no way anti-competitive. Installing the Steam store on your desktop is no more coercive than throwing up an advertisement in your face when you install the game. It makes it easier to buy your next game from Steam, but it does absolutely nothing to hinder you in buying your next game from someone else.
11/11/2010 at 18:53 DrGonzo says:
Why are the shops not boycotting Xbox then? It requires you to use the Xbox dashboard and go through Microsoft’s store and use their DRM etc.
11/11/2010 at 20:03 Alexander Norris says:
Playing a Steamworks game requires you to install a program that then frequently advertises deals to you on its own digital store, where (thanks to its size and profitability), it can offer you better deals than other people. This is something that actively undermines their competitors’ sales.
That is the very definition of anti-competitive.
11/11/2010 at 20:34 pkt-zer0 says:
“bundling the Steam store with Steam DRM in Steamworks titles.”
That’s kind of why they can give Steamworks away for free.
Also, you can just disable the ads if you want.
11/11/2010 at 21:35 subedii says:
Developers are not required to install access to the Steam store with Steamworks if they so desire, and there have in fact been games released which do just that: Use Steamworks without being tied to the Steam store.
11/11/2010 at 18:34 subedii says:
So leaving other companies aside, does this mean that they’re actually going to stop selling Valve games? You know, those games that are some of the biggest sellers on the PC platform?
It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out, come Portal 2.
“What do you mean you don’t stock Portal 2? You’ve got it right there on the PS3 and 360 shelves, you ought to have the PC version. It just released, you can’t be out of stock already.”
At which point buyer has two options:
a) Don’t buy Portal 2, and instead buy some other crappy game that the Gamestop clerk suggests (“would you like a copy of Barbie Princess Adventures? There are plenty of those”).
or
b) Get the game off of Steam.
Actually that’s another point. Steamworks is ALSO going to be included with the PS3 version of Portal 2 now, and quite possibly, other Valve releases on the platform in future (something that Sony themselves seem to have actually embraced, considering they had Gabe Newell himself at their E3 press conference for the announcement). So does that mean they’re going to have to drop that as well?
Enquiring minds need to know!
11/11/2010 at 21:33 Wowza says:
I’m pretty sure the PS3 version is only going to have the basic Steamworks features, not the store.
11/11/2010 at 21:39 subedii says:
And if the game gets DLC? The DLC is going to be going through Steamworks, and probably for free. As opposed to having a store case (like you can buy for the DLC for Borderlands, or Fallout 3).
Yet MORE money Valve is clearly siphoning away from beleaguered Brick & Mortar stores. Frankly, it’s sickening.
11/11/2010 at 18:57 Savage says:
Where people seem to be missing the boat on the whole “monoploy” argument is that there is absolutely NOTHING preventing any other potential competitor to steam from taking their business model and making it better.
Valve (quite wisely) took all the backend DRM, anti-cheat, and other time/cost consuming tools publisher’s need for their games and developed an integrated package they could offer those publisher’s for free in return for using their service. Exactly what is it that is preventing ANY OTHER COMPANY from doing the exact same thing?
Not a damn thing.
People argue that a Steam-supported game should’;t come with Steam store support built-in. Fine..strip that tab from the Steam client. I doubt that would have but the smallest effect on overall sales.
But…as long as we’re doing that…make sure you have EA strip all the EA store plugs from their other games and from those games respective player statistics sites as well…and make sure DICE doesn’t plug MOH in the BC2 browser….and tell Activision that I don’t need to see ads for WOW when I play SC2….etc.etc.
As ridiculous as those suggestions are, so is the idea that consumers (especially PC gamers, which are a much more discerning bunch than the console sheep) do not have the intelligence or the judgment necessary to tell if a service is serving their needs or not. Frankly, I couldn’t care less if a game I want is released on 20 different platforms. As long as I can have the convenience and ease of use that Steam provides, I’ll stick with steam. If you can build a better service, I’ll leave Steam behind in a heartbeat.
I have yet to see a single press release from Valve calling a game a “Steam Store Exclusive”. What these guys are really crying about is the marketing channel Valve gets by having Steam included in a game that they do not have access to.
SO….all the whining from the brick and mortar businesses of the world is invalid as long as none of the whiners are presenting a viable alternative. All I’m hearing now is “Steam is hurting us!”. If you can actually combine that rant with “Here is a better, more user-friendly solution”, I’m all ears. Until then, I’ll stay away from your lack of selection, poorly informed sales people pushing “backend” products I don’t need, and complete lack of any semblance of decent customer service…and you can keep holding onto the dream that physical media will always be around to keep your doors open.
If you need to see how it’s going to turn out, give Blockbuster a call.
11/11/2010 at 19:15 noobnob says:
Blockbuster? What is that? A new indie Breakout game??
11/11/2010 at 18:57 Kualtek says:
This argument, if this isn’t completely rumor, is invalid. The publishers who put games on steam already take measures to make sure the physical box carriers get a bit of an advantage. In case you haven’t noticed, games that release on steam usually don’t unlock until noon or later on steam (east coast experience here). This is the publishers choice!
I’m sure I remember reading that steam basically offers all their services for a cut of the profit of each sale. The details have always been hush hush, with both sides signing NDA’s on their business agreements so this could be complete crap.
Boycotting steam games will just end up with less sales for them. Everything about this seems like a troll.
11/11/2010 at 19:05 bleeters says:
Stores refusing to stock games that use steam? Guess I’ll buy them through steam instead, then.
I sense a possibly flaw in the plan, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.
11/11/2010 at 19:19 Ateius says:
Last time I ventured into a brick-and-mortar store I had to spend ten minutes trying to find the PC games. They occupied one lonely, dingy stand-up rack and were mostly shovelware.
I’m sorry, Retail Games Industry, I seem to have misplaced my sympathy.
11/11/2010 at 19:49 daveloft says:
@Mobius
If Steam goes down you can still play offline. As far as online, its no different than EA servers being down when I want to play BC2.
Your complaint is irrelevant.
If a game requires steamworks, then it requires steam. It doesn’t lock you into using steam for all your games and it doesn’t mean you can’t buy your games elsewhere. That doesn’t constitute being locked in to me.
Most games require something else be it DRM like SecuROM or anti cheat like Punkbusters or a social platform like GFWL. The only difference with Steam is it is a seperate executable instead of being hidden in the game.
Valve sells games that use competitors DRM, anti cheat and social platform, what do you mean no not really.
If retailers don’t want to carry PC games anymore, no worries its just another win for digital distribution.
I would love to see someone build something that can compete with steam. I like achievements, I love not worrying about my saved games, i like more easily being able to get into an online game with friends without having to create a new friends list for each game. I like being able to go a friends place and long into steam to download and play any of my titles.
Even if steam became a monopoly it doesn’t mean the prices will go up. The prices are set by the publishers and Valve only has control of their own titles.
Before steam I never bought anything. Why do people hate on great things? What are you afraid of? Or are you just pissed you didn’t do it first?
11/11/2010 at 19:52 CommanderZx2 says:
Who here actually still buys PC games at retail? Their selection is tiny and generally overpriced. I couldn’t care less if they stopped selling PC games altogether, I’ll continue to just buy them digitally or online from elsewhere.
11/11/2010 at 19:56 Tei says:
I know that tecnically brick-and-mortar store still sell PC games, but wen I visit one I see a lot of console games and very few PC games. I have never see a game like World of Goo in a brick-and-mortar store, maybe is not for sale there?
These brick-and-mortar stores are specialized in console games and used games, and I don’t buy these products, so I get my games from Steam.
Steam …. I know is DRM and DRM is morally wrong, but I am also very lazy, and lazyness is also wrong, so I buy my games from Steam that is very friendly to my lazyness.
Also, I have no sympathy for these stores and how have removed all the PC content, I feel these people hate PC gamming. I have no sympathy for then at all. I am tempted to say “can’t die soon enough”, but maybe Steam is worse.
11/11/2010 at 20:12 StormTec says:
I’m sorry, but there’s something I have to question in your post there…
DRM is morally wrong? Please elaborate.
11/11/2010 at 21:09 Tei says:
@StormTec: DRM is wrong, because the only rights that authors morally have is copyright. But authors are control freaks and want to control everything about “the experience”.. the problem with DRM is that able these people realize these freak dreams. At the moments we have not laws against DRM, so all types of abuses are possible. Like… Steam can lock you from playing any of your games because you did something “bad”, thats something authors sould not control, is beyond the copyright thing.
12/11/2010 at 08:57 Urthman says:
World of Goo was on the shelves at Wal-Mart for at least a year.
11/11/2010 at 19:58 Cynicide says:
People support Steam because they built a good platform on which to buy games, not by whining to the media and threatening boycotts. I don’t see Valve throwing a dummy spit when Dawn of War II used GFWL, they still sold it.
11/11/2010 at 19:58 Jimbo says:
Hey game retailers, you see that tiny speck on the horizon? That’s the horse that bolted about five years ago.
I used to go out of my way to shop at Game just out of loyalty – there was a time they were the only place around here that even sold games. But there’s only so many times you can show up on launch day to pick something up only to be told “Sorry, we don’t have that, you should have pre-ordered” or “I’ve never heard of that game! What is it? LOL!” before you’re forced to go elsewhere.
11/11/2010 at 20:04 StormTec says:
So they’re saying that they don’t want to stock games which push DD outlets like Steam, Impulse and GFWL… I don’t think they realise exactly how many games that would leave them with.
11/11/2010 at 20:08 Sagan says:
I’m just going to drop this link here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft.
It doesn’t even matter that Steamworks is better than GFWL, Impulse Reactor or Gamespy. The simple fact of the matter is, that Steamworks should run without requiring Steam.
11/11/2010 at 20:23 D says:
Several people have already pointed out, that Steamworks can install without the Steam store.
In addition, I’ve thought this over and have decided that the parallels to the Microsoft case are negligible.
12/11/2010 at 21:17 Kadayi says:
Steamworks has never required Steam to be installed (Valve just gave the tools to the development community to make life easier for gamers).
11/11/2010 at 20:14 Ben says:
They’re complaining because they are being cut out. As middle men they only exist if they add value to both publisher and purchaser, the internet removes that value.
In console games the retailer takes about 1/3 of the face value of the game (the other 2/3 is split between the developer and the console manufacturer), I know that one console manufacturer didn’t try digital distribution because the retailers threatened to stop selling their games.
I don’t know the revenue split for PC games but more must go to both the publisher and retailer. Steam must charge less for distribution than B&M stores AND they provide other useful services so no wonder developers and publishers are flocking to them.
Retailers are complaining because they are being killed off, anything they say is FUD.
12/11/2010 at 10:18 Goomich says:
That 1/3 is nothing. Real money are in reselling used copies, and they can resell Steam games.
11/11/2010 at 20:15 mazuko says:
You know after having read all of the comments on here everyone keeps referencing steamworks. However I have not seen anyone state WHY steamworks is being used in the first place by developers.
As an avid steam user (579 games) I am AFRAID to use pirated steam games w/ the risk of losing my account and the thousands I have spent over the years on games there. So what else does steam and steamworks provide?
Security. For the publisher.
Can you think of a better, non-user intrusive, effective set of PC game centric copy protection software?
Is steam requiring you to install steam when you play the game? Nope. it is the developer that CHOSE to use steam because it is reliable, an easy way to push out updates, has a HUGE user base, and it works. Well.
I have PLENTY of games that I purchased on steam that STILL require GfWl, so they are not limiting you. The programs that go up on steam are put up by the developer after purchasing the developer tool set from steam.
11/11/2010 at 20:19 mazuko says:
I did forget to mention.
Does anyone remember the HUGE uproar over steam when the WON servers were being phased out?
This is the same thing.
11/11/2010 at 20:36 subedii says:
Steamworks isn’t just for security. There are plenty of different DRM schemes to go with if that was just it.
Steamworks provides a complete suite of community features, and a multiplayer back end that can all be tied into your game. This provides tremendous value to the product without the devs having to devote vast amounts of time to creating their own fully functioned community systems and multiplayer architecture. Not every company has the resources of Blizzard, who can actually afford to spend years of development getting BNet 2.0 right.
It also provides developers with a huge suite of analytical tools. They don’t just know who’s buying when and where. They can also know things like how many players completed the game, which areas gave them the most difficulty, even how they tackled certain challenges in games and what choices they made. This is something extremely valuable for devs to know. Soon after Episode 1 released for example, Valve discovered that a far too large percentage of players where dying and giving up at the infamous underground elevator sequence, and they re-tweaked it to offer a few more options for the player, and make it less frustrating.
I can only imagine if they’d had those tools available back when Half-Life 2 released, Nova Prospekt probably would’ve seen some tweaks as well. Regardless, it’s a powerful set of tools, and can provide things like say, the Episode 2 Death Maps, which highlight the frequency of player deaths in different parts of the map (scroll to the bottom):
http://steamgames.com/status/ep2/ep2_stats.php
That kind of information is invaluable for devs, not just for patching, but also come sequel time when they need to design with things like this in mind.
11/11/2010 at 20:51 pkt-zer0 says:
“There are plenty of different DRM schemes to go with if that was just it.”
How many others are free, though?
11/11/2010 at 21:13 subedii says:
Fair point. But realistically, if it’s coming down to only needing a verification service, it’s not that much more complicated to setup your own system for that, which is what a lot of indie devs do. Steamworks is just the toolset, IIRC the verification itself still has to be done by the dev / publisher.
I could be mistaken on that last part though.
12/11/2010 at 13:00 Archonsod says:
I can think of plenty of better security software. You can “crack” steam armed with little more than a packet sniffer and the knowledge of how to duplicate those packets on the local host. Hard to see how Valve would know about it, if you’re connecting to them while doing it, you’re doing it wrong.
In terms of actual security it’s a joke. It’s the additional services that come bundled with it that are the main protection. I could quite easily obtain a pirated copy of say Civ V, but I wouldn’t be able to use the multiplayer, achievements or community features, and it’s a lot harder to get the DLC or updates.
In short, Steam offers a better service than the pirates. The very thing we’ve been saying publishers need to start doing to combat piracy for what, ten years now?
11/11/2010 at 20:44 Artist says:
“Insiders say Steam, run by US studio Valve, serves a massive 80 per cent of the PC download sector.”
80% – lol, american scientists discovered the lethality of unwashed socks…
Btw, I was told that Direct2Drive is still the biggest dog in the online distribution market…?!?
11/11/2010 at 20:50 gulag says:
Bricks and mortar prices are a tax on people stupid enough to walk into a bricks and mortar store.
(The last thing i bought from Gamestop was a used XBox 1 controller.)
Steam prices are a tax on people who can’t wait for a sale or must have it right now.
(But what lovely sales they are. Should I ever become immortal I might just get to play all of the sale stuff I’ve picked up.)
Oh look, online retailers undercut both on day of release and they deliver a boxed copy.
I know where my day one purchases are going…
End of the day, price is king, convenience is nice, but I’m willing to wait for a late delivery or two.
11/11/2010 at 20:55 Vinraith says:
In about 10 years, when Steam requires SteamOS™ (optimized for ValveBox™!), this discussion is going to look terribly quaint.
11/11/2010 at 21:54 Sigh says:
I think that Vinraith has a point here.
First let me state that about 75% of my games are tied to Steam. The remainder I acquired from Impulse, D2D, Retail, and Gamersgate. So I am no Steam hater by any stretch.
However after a year of buying Steam games like crazy (especially during sales) I started to wonder how I would feel if Valve made a change to their policies or to the client and it was something I didn’t like. I would be stuck with my entire game library tied to a service I couldn’t back out of. So I started buying my games from other digital distributors (but still from Steam as well). At least now if one of the companies does something crazy or unfortunate my whole game catalog is not tied to them.
Currently Valve is not evil and one could make a convincing argument that they will not even lean in that direction for years and years to come. Steam, also, is not a monopoly and not even close to it presently. However, as Steam/Valve becomes more and more of a juggernaut in the industry and if their competition becomes weakened for one reason or another. Valve (especially under new management) may start to make business decisions that many of us don’t like. It will be little things at first and some of it may be entirely profit driven as is there right…but I suspect that some future changes will frustrate a portion of the consumer base. The issue is that consumer base is locked in to the Steam/Valve model unless they want to abandon their hundreds of dollars worth of games. I am not saying that any of this is a certainty, but I am already taking precautionary steps to mitigate my losses should any of the digital distributors go awry, or bankrupt, or pull some shit like close their store down without warning for a week.
I have enjoyed and benefited from most of Valve’s changes, but recently my opinion has drifted. For instance, Team Fortress 2 is a game I no longer recognize. I gave it a shot after the Mann Co. Store update, but later I just uninstalled the game. What a pity. I know that the in-game store is popular with many, but that is not what Team Fortress 2 was about in my mind. I paid $2.50 for the game why would I pay $8.99 for a digital hat? I think the straw that broke my back was when I joined a server that was pumping out messages every 30 seconds about some item we all had to find in the level. Fuck that. Right-Click-Delete Local Files.
I know that all of this is really subjective and idiosyncratic, but I suspect that little changes like the Mann Co. Store update will start creeping into my gaming experiences…an not just from Valve/Steam. So what little games I do buy now I spread between all of the distributors. No one needs to agree with me this is just my personal reflection.
So I commend Vinraith for pointing it out.
11/11/2010 at 21:54 Torgen says:
That’s awfully tin-hattery, isn’t it? Is this before or after we are all wearing the Mark of the Beast to be tracked by the One World Government?
11/11/2010 at 22:29 Vinraith says:
@Torgen
Right, because when you give near-total market control to an individual company, it’s in their best interest to keep the platform free and open. Yes sir, there’s nothing better for the consumer than a good old-fashioned monopoly.
11/11/2010 at 23:11 Kadayi says:
@Sigh
Anthropomorphising entire organisations is soo 2005. Time to move on from ‘X company is ‘Evil’ ‘
@Vinraith
Monopoly you say? You’re familiar with this company called Microsoft and their windows software yes?
11/11/2010 at 23:20 Vinraith says:
Monopoly you say? You’re familiar with this company called Microsoft and their windows software yes?
Of course I am, which is why I’m confident that SteamOS will be along in a few years. Hell, it’ll probably be a better OS in most respects than Windows, knowing Valve.
12/11/2010 at 02:43 Rinox says:
@ Sigh
But no one made you buy a virtual hat for 8 € in any way…and the ‘find the item’ messages were only for one (Halloween) week. I’d say it’s a pretty bad example. :-(
12/11/2010 at 06:06 Torgen says:
Vinraith. Valve was “given” nothing. They built a better mousetrap, and reaped the rewards of the free market. In your paranoia, you want some government entity to strip them of the market share they have earned by being better than anyone else, for something you *imagine* is going to happen in the future.
Anyone, even you, are perfectly free to build a better system. No one is restraining anyone from building something better, and profiting from their own work.
12/11/2010 at 06:18 Vinraith says:
@Torgen
Wow, that was quite a lot of wild eyed presumption in quite a short post. Have I said anything about government intervention? Talk about tin foil hattery! I’d be very, very happy to see the market sort this one out itself, but as long as most people won’t even look at a service that isn’t Steam that can’t happen. Stamworks has been very, very effective at getting Steam onto people’s systems. I don’t see how the other services can realistically compete without becoming every bit as intrusive and obnoxious as Steam is, which rather defeats the point.
What’s most amusing, though, is that you’re even objecting to my original comment. If you’re so convinced that Steam is inherently superior to all competition, and it’s the only service you want to use, I should think you’d embrace it’s total domination of the platform.
11/11/2010 at 21:46 Kayden says:
There point is valid it does point them to a competitor as a digital distro of games but it also provides DRM, Achievements and much more. Therefore if there going to take a bite out of only one company I say lets do it to everyone and everything including like services such as GFWL, Impulse and DRM. Won’t do that? Oh that’s right because over 98% of PC games have it! To go after Steam is just them trying to stick it to the biggest online retailer and hopefully no one notices there bias view point because it is clouded in false rhetoric. I understand your losing money but it isn’t just Valves fault nor should you just go after them when you aren’t willing to take a stand against every one, the market is changing and you just aren’t happy you didn’t change before Valve did IMO. Also Gamestop and many other physical retailers refuse to carry PC games because they can make more from console games, and having lived in SD where there isn’t many options Steam gives many people the option to get newly released games when they are out when they have no other alternative.
11/11/2010 at 21:48 tssk says:
I really feel for the retailers. Especially with their more interesting service.
So for pretty much every game I’ve bought and played on Steam just worked out of the gate.
Meanwhile with my retail experience I’ve had lots of fun with
-games missing manuals or cds.
-games having the online code already activated. Either by someone whose opened the box previously or possibly, just possibly by staff.
-games not working on my hardware.
-games that just stop working for my hardware for no apparent reason. (I’m looking at you store bought The Longest Journey anf Halo.)
And every single time I’ve been shit out of luck getting any after sales service or refund from the bricks and mortar store. In fact, for the last couple of years before I stopped buying from bricks and mortar stores I knew that any attempt to get a refund or help from a games store would be met with indifference or even worse an accusation that I’d pirated the disc.
So fuck them. PC customers just got sick and tired of being patronised or insulted by retail staff. (And yeah, I know most games customers aren’t exactly a treat to deal with either.)
11/11/2010 at 21:48 sinister agent says:
What is it with the home entertainment industries? Any time one entity within one of them gets upset with another, their immediate response is to yell “they’re KILLING THE INDUSTRY!!”. They’re like a bunch of toddlers unable to form a rational argument, instead resorting to screeching, extremist accusations.
11/11/2010 at 21:52 Torgen says:
Like the article says, even if you buy your copy of, say Fallout New Vegas or cod black ops in a brick and mortar shop or Amazon, you WILL need to install Steam and use it, thus indeed locking you into Steam. And that is exactly what Valve’s competitor are complaining about.
Sure, nothing forces you to actually buy games on Steam, but it greatly increases the Steam store’s exposure, thus leading to more sales on Steam, thus making it harder for other digital services to compete.
Steam is providing a DRM solution to game publishers for free (one that is orders of magnitude less intrusive than most recent ones), and getting eyeballs looking at their site in return. If the other services do not like this, then they need to get off their collective asses and provide a better solution to the game publishers, instead of whining and hurling vague cries of “unfairness”.
11/11/2010 at 21:57 cHeal says:
This comment will no doubt be lost in a sea of argument and counter-argument but there is one point to be made here, and one solution.
Steam needs to braek its steamworks product from its retail department. There is nothing inherently wrong with having to install steam services for a game bought from say Game downloader. The problem is that once Steam service are installed, customers are hooked into a new digital downloader. I do believe Steam will eventually gain a near monopoly over the digital distributions market which would hurt consumers.
In the same way Microsoft came under attack for its inclusion of Internet Explorer in Windows, Steam should come under pressure to separate it two businesses. A simple solution is for a name change for the Customer service side (which would have minimal market effect), with a ban on cross advertising between the two and two separate log ins. This would provide little inconvenience for the users who know already what steam is but would mean a new user, logging into the steam services would remain totally ignorant of the retail business around the corner.
F**K YOU CAPTCHA!
12/11/2010 at 09:34 D says:
“The problem is that once Steam service are installed, customers are hooked into a new digital downloader.”
There is no such hooking, unless Steam happens to provide the best service. I really don’t see the problem with bundling the store with Steam enabled games. The “Store” is really just a tab in the client, that links to a specific webpage and automatically logs you in. Would you be making the same fuss, if it was just a link that opened in your browser?
The difference to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer case, is that any competing client will be free of charge and also very easy to acquire over the net. This is in contrast to Netscape, which you had to go out and pay cash money to buy. I believe that Microsoft’s design of the web API was also anti-competetive – Valve has no such ability to hinder the quality of other digital stores.
11/11/2010 at 22:01 Bret says:
So, it’s Steam Pilgrim vs. The World?
(I’m not sorry.)
11/11/2010 at 22:25 DMJ says:
Steam Pilgrim may be one of the finest names I’ve heard all week.
11/11/2010 at 22:30 Daave says:
At the risk of my comment being lost in the maelstrom of opinionated 30 years olds, ever since some lofty executives somewhere decided to run with consoles, PC gaming has been neglected by high-street stores. No platform has anywhere near the back-catalogue or indie scene of the PC and the real-estate dedicated to PC games in Game (as oen example) has dropped massively.
If the entire financial world is a giant pyramid scheme, then the only thing that matters is consumer confidence, and by Microsoft and others turning their back on PC gaming they essentially undermine confidence in the platform. Now that Valve have got a good thing going and people are waking up to this fact, the big-wigs are throwing theit rattle out of the pram because they realise they might not be backing the winning horse [end of mixed metaphors].
11/11/2010 at 22:38 Sigh says:
“At the risk of my comment being lost in the maelstrom of opinionated 30 years olds…”
And I suppose that you excuse yourself from that group? Or do you belong to an entirely different opinionated age bracket?
:-)
11/11/2010 at 22:40 Kadayi says:
Pretty much agreed. A good 5 – 6 years ago you could pop into your local Game and there were shelves full of PC titles old and new to peruse and choose from, now your hard pressed to find more than a shelf or two set over to PC titles in between the various console and ‘pre-owned’ stock. By and large bricks & mortar retailers like Game handed over the PC gaming market to e-tailers like Amazon & Play, or DD portals like Steam, or the supermarkets like Tescos (who generally sell most chart PC titles sub £25 – 30). Like most gamers I’ll go where the best price is, and it’s certainly not down at the local Game store.
12/11/2010 at 08:25 Daave says:
I’m not differentiating myself, I just think my opinion is important because it’s mine (and I’m 23). I suppose because I grew up with PCs I’m overly attached to them, maybe all our cage-rattling is no different from console fanboys doing the same.
11/11/2010 at 22:36 phenom_x8 says:
Looks like “the big fish”(aka retailers) seems to be bothered by the “growing little fish”. Isn’t this usual matter in businesses?? When you leave something, there is always other replacing your position although with very different manner!
By the way, PC Gamer aren’t like console gamer that love to rush something “new and too much hyped” in store! They tend to wait another pc gamer colleague to talk about the game they want to buy to judge is it worth to buy or not.
But in the meantime, retailers have always thought that unsold PC game on the day one of its release means its not worth to be put on shelves and quickly replace it with another “too much hyped” game title! And then, when those poor Pc gamer come to retail store looking for the game he/she wanted to buy,he/she saw nothing there! It makes him/her comeback to its home,jack up his rig and look for steam/online distribution offer!
So,who’s fault it is??
11/11/2010 at 22:40 Voice of the Majority says:
I vote for Steam.
I have stopped buying games from any other source, since I like to have them neatly lined up in one place. Patched. Taking no physical space.
Steam sales have made any bargain hunting (which I used to do a lot) totally unnecessary. I couldn’t possible play that many games.
I understand that this is stupid of me as a consumer. So is using Windows.
It is possible that the worst happens and Steam disappears. Then my entire game library will become useless. On the other hand that is happening to my older games on CDs in any case. I’m expecting that in time Steam will expand their service to GoG-like updates. When people have accumulated hundreds of games to their Steam libraries there is a ready (and huge) customer base who wants updated versions of some of good old games. In a way Steam is already doing this with the dual MAC&PC support.
11/11/2010 at 22:43 Javier-de-Ass says:
steam’s been given a free ride on retail for too long. it’s about time it stopped
11/11/2010 at 23:14 Kadayi says:
Because?
11/11/2010 at 23:17 MOOncalF says:
One day the Steam EULA could change into some hellish monster of a consumer rights nightmare and essentially write off the massive investments people can make in their Steam libraries, causing widespread horror and outrage, maybe from something Valve does, maybe from something Valve are forced to do by legislation/coersion… I *Hope* that doomsday scenario never eventuates, but in the meantime, I’ll laugh at retailers who think they have a right to a market which is nudging them further and further into irrelevance.
12/11/2010 at 00:40 Kadayi says:
As history has demonstrated, where there is money to be made there is a way (Re:Duke Nukem forever). The doom mongering mythologising that somehow short of the collapse of Western Civilisation (in which case gaming will be the least of our concerns) Steam would somehow magically disappear in a puff of smoke and take our games with it is utter bunk. Even if Valve somehow went to the wall dramatically, someone else would step in to buy up Steam, because it works and it’s a profitable venture. No ones going to buy it and then shut it down either, because there would be no money in doing that. Nor would they try and switch it over to a subscription model, because the law suits would be endless (if happy nerds can club together enough money to send Gabe Newell to Australia in less than a couple of hours, what do you think unhappy nerds can do?). If it ain’t broken, you don’t try and fix it.
12/11/2010 at 09:39 D says:
Ah yes here it is, the DOOMSDAY argument. I wrote about it earlier so I’ll be brief. Good news: did you know, you can prepare yourself for this eventuality by downloading utorrent, today.
11/11/2010 at 23:18 Psyk says:
Guys valve don’t have your best interests at heart that place is taken by your cash, they are the same as any other big company.
11/11/2010 at 23:28 subedii says:
Yes, and at current that big company is offering a better product and service than all the other big companies, which is why people go with them.
Dang, I knew I should’ve been supporting GFWL all this time instead! If only I’d paid for that Gold subscription back when they first released Gears of War, maybe I’d still have the privilege of paying for my multiplayer features today.
12/11/2010 at 00:25 Kadayi says:
You’re not possibly implying that they are ‘evil’ are you?
12/11/2010 at 13:04 Psyk says:
“Dang, I knew I should’ve been supporting GFWL all this time instead! If only I’d paid for that Gold subscription back when they first released Gears of War, maybe I’d still have the privilege of paying for my multiplayer features today.”
subedii why the shoddy insult, seems a typical RPS commentator response? valve are a massive company out for your cash thats the truth, they just have good marketing strategy. no need to bring any other company in to it
12/11/2010 at 19:39 subedii says:
It wasn’t an insult, I’m trying to show that unless you’re pointing to a different download service, you don’t realistically have any point to make.
Valve area a big company. Boohoo. Like I said, I don’t care if they are, they’re currently providing the best service, so that’s why I prefer to use them. “Marketing” doesn’t come into it. I don’t prefer Steam because of their marketing, I prefer it because the closest alternative for featuresets is GFWL, and that service is crap.
I don’t see why the possibility that Steam is preferred simply because it’s better than the alternatives is something to be considered controversial.
12/11/2010 at 00:06 ColdSpiral says:
I’ll buy PC games in an EB or Game store when they sell PC games again. I don’t really have the bandwidth for regular digital purchases, but Steam and other digital distribution services win hands down on range.
12/11/2010 at 00:22 The Truth says:
This all boils down to evolution. The future seems to be all digital distribution.
These retail stores should “adapt” and perhaps join with or create their own software to rival steam while they still have $ and assets to do so.
Adapt or die. I have nothing against retail stores, I sometimes prefer to have a hard copy DVD and box for a certain game but the digital method is far easier and cheaper. PLUS NO TAX ON STEAM!
my 5 cents.
12/11/2010 at 01:17 Sigh says:
“Anthropomorphising entire organisations is soo 2005. Time to move on from ‘X company is ‘Evil’ ‘”
I think you misinterpreted what I wrote. Nowhere in my post did I say that Valve was evil, in fact I said the exact opposite. I still actively buy products from them and check their store front semi-regularly.
However I did say that I now diversify my game portfolio by buying from a range of companies. That just seems intelligent to me. If one goes bankrupt, rewrites their EULA in a way I don’t like, or makes an unfortunate policy change then I am not stuck with them and I don’t lose my entire game catalog. That is a pure calculated risk aversion strategy…I am not claiming anyone is evil.
Also what I said is that I did not like their recent Team Fortress 2 changes. I then uninstalled the game, because that world is no longer for me. I didn’t rant on forums, make a “Hitler is angry clip”, or uninstall the whole Steam app.
I do think that, long down the road, if Steam faces little or diminishing competition in their market sector, the environment will make it easier for consumer unfriendly policy changes to sneak in and trickle down through the platform. Take Apple for example, (I own Apple products by the way and I don’t think they are an evil empire) they were able to dominate the mobile app sector and with little potent competition (though that is changing) the conditions were such that they have been slowly locking down their products like the App store or the iPad in very proprietary ways. These are not evil decisions per se, but they are just profit driven calculations that possibly impact consumers in negative ways. This is all that I am arguing. I still enjoy Steam and I still enjoy my Apple products, but I often wonder how each organization (and others not mentioned) will develop and change if no potent competition endures.
The other factor in this equation are the consumers themselves. Consumer complacency allows some of these undesirable license agreements or inferior products to exist. I am just as guilty as anyone.
So I am not anthropomorphizing the corporations I am just hedging my bets.
Good day to you sir.
12/11/2010 at 01:25 Anthony Damiani says:
I just want ONE central online repository for my games, and my friends list.
ONE.
Not two.
Not five.
Not ten.
ONE.
Anything that makes me run another client, or go elsewhere to download things has significant negative utility for me.
12/11/2010 at 01:27 Vinraith says:
Sounds like you should buy yourself a console, this whole “open platform” thing isn’t really your style.
12/11/2010 at 02:16 tssk says:
Vinraith, what if he wants to run his PC like a console? It’s his choice.
Of course as much as I love Steam for the purposes of balance I will concede this.
Present day tssk “Steam is awesome. They really respect developers and customers. I can’t ever see them turning evil.”
Early 80′s tssk “Activision is awesome. They really respect game makers and fans. I can’t ever see them turning evil.”
12/11/2010 at 02:24 Vinraith says:
Vinraith, what if he wants to run his PC like a console? It’s his choice.
Of course it is, but it doesn’t sound like the PC is a good fit for the way he wants to game. If what you’re after is a central source of games, friends lists, and everything else, with no competitors, this really isn’t your platform. Consoles are cheaper than PC’s and provide exactly the kind of functionality he’s looking for, so why pay more for a platform whose primary advantages don’t interest you?
12/11/2010 at 02:30 tssk says:
In reply Vinraith, due to several issues I stayed away from PCs for years.
I’ve returned but I am using it as a psuedo X-box for several reasons.
-It’s cheaper in the long run than a 360.
-It’s more reliable than the current crop of consoles.
-When it breaks down I can actually fix the damn thing.
And of course it has the spread of games I want to play on it.
12/11/2010 at 08:01 pkt-zer0 says:
@Vinraith: “Sounds like you should buy yourself a console, this whole “open platform” thing isn’t really your style.”
A Linux gamer, eh? Clearly a significant market force, that.
12/11/2010 at 08:40 Vinraith says:
@pkt
Yes, clearly serious gaming being restricted to only one OS immediately implies it should also be restricted to only one retail outlet. That’s definitely movement in the right direction.
12/11/2010 at 13:16 Archonsod says:
“Of course it is, but it doesn’t sound like the PC is a good fit for the way he wants to game. If what you’re after is a central source of games, friends lists, and everything else, with no competitors, this really isn’t your platform.”
It is by it’s very nature of being an open platform. All it takes is some bright spark to write an app that can manage all your games from one source, and persuade the various platform owners to open their client a little bit to work with it. There’s already a move towards it with the community features; most clients also support Messenger, how long before Microsoft realise they could use it as the basis for a gaming community client?
12/11/2010 at 01:34 M.P. says:
I’m a big fan of Valve and I hope they keep making billions, but Steamworks really is an anti-competitive practice. You’re basically buying a game that uses Valve’s matchmaking and community features, but you get funnelled into their store as well – it’s basically vertical integration, and when you’ve got such a dominant position in the digital download industry it’s clear evidence of anti-competitive practice.
I hope they realize it and separate Steamworks from the Steam store pronto, because if some government decides to sue them it’ll cost them dearly. Even if they don’t get hit with a massive fine the legal fees alone will be horrendous. All they need to do is bundle a crippled version of Steam (basically everything minus the Store tab) with games that have Steamworks integrated. It would only get installed on PCs that don’t already have Steam on them, of course, but it could be enough to get them out of trouble.
12/11/2010 at 02:46 tssk says:
But seperating Steam and the Steam store would make buying games a major hassle again. I’m all for other publishers making their own Steam alikes if they want.
12/11/2010 at 12:32 M.P. says:
Not really, you’d always have the option of going and installing the “proper” Steam client, store and all, yourself. As long as Valve aren’t funnelling you into the Steam store themselves just because you bought a game with Steamworks, without giving you an option, then it’d be much harder for anyone to complain about them.
The worst thing that could happen to us gamers is if a government antitrust suit ruled that the company had to be broken up.
12/11/2010 at 04:32 deejayem says:
We’ve had a similar problem for some years now in book selling – bricks and mortar find it increasingly hard to compete with Amazon. This has taken a slightly nasty new turn recently with Amazon setting prices for new books considerably below profit margin – they went through a period of selling new-release e-books at a loss. With a relatively new product like e-books, this sets customer expectations lower than publishers can maintain, and Amazon is now turning round and demanding publishers reduce their prices to match. Which makes publishing interesting new fiction even less sustainable.
tldr – short version is that, while it’s great Steam provides a service that no-one else does, it’s not good for the consumer long-term to have one big player setting the rules for the market. If Steam gets big enough that it can start to dictate the prices publishers sell games at, the whole industry will suffer.
12/11/2010 at 05:37 Nik says:
Steam has been a killer from the very begging. Counter-Strike was the #1 game and then over night Valve switched off WON and turned on Steam and Counter-Strike died basically over night.
I’ve never purchased a game that requires Steam. Why should I have to ‘activate’ a game I’ve just bought from the store which also submits my hardware serial numbers, running processes and other system information? Its fuckin ridiculous. Valve can get fucked!
History continuous to show that DRM just annoys legitimate customers.
Also, Value don’t write code for Linux, meaning any game that requires Steam will not work on Linux.
Yes, I am aware of WINE. WINE too can get fucked.
At lease the inventors and leaders of 3D gaming – iD Software still have their heads together.
12/11/2010 at 07:34 Newblade says:
Hardware surveys are optional. Only gameplay statitics may be mandatory.
12/11/2010 at 05:55 Greg says:
It’s about freaking time! I’m so glad these retailers finally woke up. I can’t stand Steam and its obtrusive DRM. I guess there’s truth in saying that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I love it!
12/11/2010 at 06:58 Rugged Malone says:
Ain’t competition a bitch?
Steam’s doing well because they’ve done things well.
This is nothing more than sour grapes.
12/11/2010 at 08:09 poop says:
watch out guys stores might begin to get rid of the tiny steamworks portion of the already-tiny PC games rack!
12/11/2010 at 08:40 Ravenger says:
It’s laugable when the retailers who have done their very level best to kill off PC gaming suddenly complain when they realise that the customers they turned away have found a better service to buy their games from.
I still reckon the high streets focus on used games is one of the primary reasons for the lack of PC games at retail. You can’t resell most PC games these days due to DRM, so the stores only get to sell a PC game once, while they can resell the same console game over and over making a large profit each time.
I’ve given up going into retailers to browse games for bargains now as there are virtually no PC games on display, the stock levels are virtually non-existent, and the prices eye-watering. All my games come from online retailers or Steam.
The high street themselves caused this situation by their poor support for PC gaming. It’s too late for them to complain about where the PC gaming business is going. In fact it’s only a matter of time before the consoles go the same way, and the retailers video game pawn shop business is bust.
12/11/2010 at 09:03 m_s0 says:
“As the trend for PC sales leans increasingly toward digital distribution”
Sales? These are rentals for the most part. There’s a few games you can buy on steam that don’t require it to run but that’s about it. You don’t own the games you paid for, Steam owns them and can pull the plug or just ban your account whenever the people in charge feel like it. Plus, I doubt you’ll get to keep all the stuff you bought when Steam goes under, and some day it will, just like pretty much everything else. Not my definition of what should happen after I pay for a product
12/11/2010 at 09:31 Torqual says:
PC Gaming is dead!
12/11/2010 at 09:35 Torqual says:
So many game publishers stopped to make games for pc anyway. Now there are crying for steam to concentrate the pc market in one platform. That is bigotry. When people buy software on steam its there right to do so as customers. I am not very happy with steam as one big behethmoth to control the market, but its better then having a download platform for every game i buy. Sorry for double post. I wanted to make my own post a little more constructive :).
Have a nice day (in pc gaming) and a happy weekend
12/11/2010 at 09:41 Vodka & Cookies says:
What I assume they meant by the comment “Steam is killing the PC market and it is no wonder digital retailers are failing. Steam is locking down the market.” is that Steam is killing the hardcore digital PC games retailer market not the actual consumer market.
Other online digital retailers are going to find it more and more difficult to compete the more entrenched and established Steam becomes. But were only talking about hardcore titles, lots of other sites carry casual stuff steam doesn’t and probably have numbers that dwarf anything on Steam.
It’s generally not good though if everyone latches onto one service as much as the PC fanboys want it to be Steam as the one stop shop for everything.
12/11/2010 at 10:17 Jezcentral says:
An excellent point.
Also, it is worth bearing in mind that these comments are not aimed at us, the consumers, but more probably sabre-rattling against the game developers. By raising the spectre of having their game taken off the retail shelves, they are trying to deter them from using Steamworks. The shareholders of these development companies don’t like risk, and might start to push for other forms of DRM/backend, even if there is no real threat.
12/11/2010 at 10:18 Jezcentral says:
For the record, I was quoting DJ Phantoon in my post.
12/11/2010 at 10:35 Albert Woo says:
Any time Steam is “under attack”, the fanboys crawl out from the woodwork. It’s an amazing site to behold. Steam is about control. I actually wish that any game using Steam would not be sold in a retail form at all. (ie: disc)
And what nonsense it is when the fanboys tout cloud saves and achievements as pros. Get real, get a life losers.
12/11/2010 at 10:38 Lukeyb says:
I understand that retailers are going to be annoyed. It’s like Sainsbury’s being forced to stock food that is advertising food in Tesco at cheaper prices. I doubt many retailers would have that, otherwise we would be seeing that sort of thing with supermarkets ‘sponsoring’ foods. It doesn’t happen because they know they would effectively be signing up to be exclusively sold by their sponsor as no other retailer would stock them.
So… fair enough to the retailers, have a moan, band together and stop selling games bundled with competitor products. But why should I care?
As a consumer it makes no difference to me who I buy from, I just want the cheapest product/best service regardless of the name. Back to the supermarket analogy, this isn’t Tesco muscling in on a poor little corner stool in your village, laying down a massive car park, undercutting the poor little store in every way and forcing a local business out of… business. This is Tesco going head to head with ASDA, two big faceless corporations that do not care for me, my community or the health of the industry in anyway other than what benefits them. I don’t care for one over the other, I will just use the stool that offers the best service/cheapest product. It is up to the competition to be competitive, do something that makes me want to buy from you.
Steam is the dominating for a reason. Should we have stopped them implementing the things they did years ago to stop them becoming what they are now? They’re not in the position they are because of mind control… they offered a service to publishers/distributors and consumers that we all approved of by giving them our business and custom. That’s the natural conclusion of capitalism and a free market. If a competitor popped up now that offered everything Steam did, but undercut them or did something better and Steam didn’t evolve to better that competition, eventually the new product would reign supreme. If there is a competitor product that isn’t as good as Steam then why does it deserve to stay afloat or expect consumers to go out of there way to purchase from them?
It’s not up for consumers or the industry to artificially prop up competition. It is down to the competitors to compete. If that means dropping products that are bundled with Steamworks, go for it… but I’m sure Valve will fight back someway. That is competition and what benefits us as consumers; not competitors remaining stagnant in what they offer consumers and just moaning about the market leader.
12/11/2010 at 10:40 Lukeyb says:
Yeah…. stool=store. I did that on purpose…..
12/11/2010 at 10:39 Tom says:
Steam is private so they can have total control and not disclose any information. I await the fall of Steam.
12/11/2010 at 10:41 Jason says:
@Tom
Well said mate.
forums.mariosworld.org
12/11/2010 at 11:55 Atic Atac says:
I haven’t bought a retail PC game in 4 years…and I am a huge buyer with hundreds of games on steam, gog, gamersgate and impulse. The digital distributors are just doing this better than the retailers and they are giving more smaller developers a fair chance. From a consumer standpoint: Steam are excellent, regular retailers are terrible.
12/11/2010 at 13:41 Kefren says:
I generally stopped buying physical games from shops when the back of every box started saying that they required online activation via some system or another.
“Oh look, this game looks good.” View back of box. “Oh. It’s been castrated with online-activated DRM and I have to create an account with GFWL/Steam. I’ll put it back and get hold of the DRM free version.”
My first choice was always a physical disc and box, but then I stated to question what the point of it was as that shift happened. I could still play by CD version of SS2 even if all the companies had disappeared and it was no longer on sale. If it had been an online-activated DRM version I would not be able to play my favourite game any more.
Online purhases via GamersGate have generally been problem-free. I don’t want to use other systems like Steam, and won’t buy any game that requires me to (or GFWL). Again, they are stupidly shit as a form of DRM, since you can just a trouble-free version with it stripped out. The music industry learnt this and went back to MP3s. When reasonably priced and available from decent online stores sales shoot up. Publishers should save their money and go DRM free (or at least do it twelve months after game release).
12/11/2010 at 14:55 Matthieu says:
Steam may not be perfect, but they have a good selection, which I can’t say the same for retailers where I live.
Shelf real-estate for PC games has taken a severe hit in recent years.
My local EB Games/GameStop went from having a wall-full of games to a mere dozen games.
Indie titles live on Steam. Where would they go if not on STEAM? Retailers (like Microsoft) have abandoned PC for consoles, its clear.
Prices on Steam are 10-20$ cheaper than most retailers here in Ottawa (Canada). With exchange rates and shipping, Amazon.ca cannot match Steam for me.
Steam has given new life to my PC gaming; without it, I would be playing PS3 only. Being a PC gamer at heart, it would be a sad day.
Retailers won’t get pity from me, I assure you.
12/11/2010 at 16:39 Kefren says:
Good points all. My one edit would be that in each case you could replace the word Steam with ‘game download service of your choice’. Indie games can appear on all the other services too!
12/11/2010 at 18:17 Luke says:
@Trevor
‘ Would you mind explaining why you think that?’
For me it was the bit where you decided to condemn “The amount of shortsightedness in this post” and compare the majority of contributors here to “the Sun reading/console playing demographic”, their conclusions ” truly disturbing.”
Without this yours would merely be an opinion hysterically expressed in the manner of a McArthy era moral guardian type. This, combined with your intellectual head shaking and sermoninising at people who had the audacity to express an opinion which did not match the tenor or your own lead to your hubrisitic descent into being high and mighty in your posts.
Cheerio!
12/11/2010 at 23:31 Smokedawg says:
No way i am gonna ban steam, great prices, forums and support. I love downloading games from instead of going to some some crappy, overpriced store like Game Spot. It is so convenient and Game Spot charges for what steam does for free. And don’t get me started on Windows live……….
13/11/2010 at 01:41 BobBighead says:
A Load of Bullshit. Take me, for exemple, I live in a really small town and some games aren,t available only 1 or 2 months after release. What do I do? Steam to the rescue! Download the gam and Ready to play! That’s what I like! GO STEAM!
13/11/2010 at 10:46 bgnz says:
I started my Steam account years ago. It’s only been the last year I’ve really started to love it to bits (unmetered access + broadband). Trying to “ban” Steam games now is like Sony digital music players not working with MP3. It’s WAY too late fellas!
Steam is def the lesser of two evils. Compared to GFWL, it’s a dream. I have to use GFWL for Batman: AA and GTA4, but I try to avoid online activation where possible. I don’t really miss the days of printed manuals and code wheels :)
I do wish the retailers they would band together to kill GFWL and Microsoft could go back to concentrating on Xbox. TBH I think that Microsoft abandoning the PC to focus on Xbox really DID hurt the PC market for a few years there. It’s bounced back thank to digital distribution. I can’t imagine the PC game scene today without Steam. It rocks hard!
13/11/2010 at 13:46 Kefren says:
“Trying to “ban” Steam games now is like Sony digital music players not working with MP3.”
Actually, the complaint is that games not bought via Steam are being tied to Steam accounts; not that games are sold from the Steam platform.
So it is more like Sony switching from AAC to MP3.
23/11/2010 at 06:02 Rec0n412 says:
What people seem to forget is that a monopoly has no competing product/service. In this case, if steam were to become a monopoly on distribution then steam could set pricing. As, without steam developers would have no way to distribute their material.
Going on the assumption of steam as a complete monopoly in regards to distribution, who is to say that steam WOULD NOT tell a developer “give us XX% of the profit margin or we will not sell your product”. At that point, the developer either pays steam and raises the price to keep their profit margin up or loses money due to steams “royalty/distribution fee”.
So, to end, IF steam became a true monopoly as a distribution source, then steam could set pricing.
Another issue of course, is the disadvantages that go along with digital distribution. Now, I am speaking from experience. The issue I’ve encountered is: being unable to play offline, my account being hacked, and random steam crashes.
All of those issues are easily avoided with a hard copy of the game, a.k.a. a disk and the serial key. As long as I have the serial key and disk, I can physically prove I have purchased the game. With a disk I can generally play all of my games(mmo’s being the big exception :P) offline whenever I want too. With disks for individual games, a flaw in one game that causes that game to crash will not affect any of my other games.