News Garry: "Valve is not exploiting us"

you mean like the PlayStation Network Store? if thats what you mean, really Steam already has it with the content filtering by publisher.

 

Oh that's all right then, I'll just buy stuff on the basis that there's a good chance that it'll keep on working.

Every time I bring this up some breathless little fanboy pipes up with the "but valve are lovely" line. Valve are a profitmaking entity like any other and therefore can be counted on to do do precisely and only what makes them the absolute maximum possible amount of money. If steam stops making them money, it will go, and I would expect nothing less. The idea that under this circumstance they would some how un-DRM everything is ludicrous - given the number of people who publish on steam, each of whom will have hundreds of pages of complex legalese in their agreement with Valve, the sheer administrative complexity of doing that would create legal costs in the millions and take months to achieve. I promise you, it will never happen.

For the record I believe Valve have made similarly vague allusions to having some sort of plan in place, but until it's in the EULA it's vapourware - has anyone scoured a Steam EULA for this sort of thing? Let us know if you have.

P

 

I don't know about the rest of you, but.. Aside from Valve games, I don't have any issue whatsoever starting the game without Steam.

KOTOR, Fallen Earth, VTMB - All three bought on steam, all three start without steam being even open, let alone online.

I'd say DoW2 does, too, but that I didn't buy on Steam, so..

 

Greetings!

 

For some reason this never worked for me...I log onto Steam on my new machine...nothing happens.

But if I try to play anything OFFLINE using the old steam...hey I'll start your game...after this 1 hour download for a tiny patch.

When it works it's convenient, but if you're on a relatively small broadband, it's a pain in the *rse

 

bandwidth, licensing fees, and Maintenance on serves is more expensive, and yes, eventually retail distribution cose ceast to exist for a game, with DD it is a constant expense. You are a moron if you think maintaining the servers steam requires is not a HUGE expense, do you knwo how expensive licenses are alone? I suggest you actually deal with IT like i do before spewing garbage.

 

That is just regards to the publishing, no where does he get into maintaining servers, bandwidth or licensing, thansk for trying, do come again.

 

Ah, the old, you do not agree with me so I'll insult and call you a fanboy routine? how old are you? I am no fanboy, but fact remains it is easy NOW to play steam games without steam, so its a non issue. Where is your tin hat? paranoid much? There are already ways around this.

 

Can't speak about generalisations but out of the games I own on Steam, the only ones I can't get working offline are TF2 and CS:S, HL2 and L4D both work offline (with some fiddling), and the 3rd party games I own (eg Fallout3, Bioshock), can be run from their executable, no steam required.
yay me

 

Greetings!

So, you maintain that a digital distribution model is more expensive than a traditional retail model?

You are out of touch with reality, Lepermessiah.

 

Where did you learn to read? Did I say it was MORe expensive, I said it si costly, when it comes to reality, maintaining a consistent service eventually gets a lot more expensive then a shoprt term expense, in this case being boxed distribution. Sorry, but i am not the one out of touch with reality. Licensing fees alone are massive on windows servers, as well as maintenance and software fees. Plus the bandwidth, yes, it is expensive, saying otherwise shows a total lack of knowledge for the it industry in which i work. I did not say waht is more expensive, learn to read, but neither do you or I know which one is, but, the one that is constant will always be more expensive at the end of the day.

 

You're not making sense Lepermessiah (at least it seems to be patently rubbish and I'll credit you that you actually have a point but aren't making it very well)

 

Greetings!

You forget that even on a retail based model servers need to be maintened/rented, bandwidth needs to be bought, ...

 

[rant]EXCEPT WHEN THEY BLOODY RAPE YOU FOR PAYING IN EUROS!!!!!![/rant]

 

Steams great so long as you dont pay full price for stuff (or use euros), and only haveing a single place to go for all your gaming needs on PC is fantastic.

But I have to agree that a monopoly is bad, although it is only because everything else is so dire or non-exsistant. GFWL or EA-DL? No dice. I'm hoping that Stardocks Impulse picks up some traction.

 

It is quite funny to watch people who do NOT use steam (or havent in years) argue about it and make simple fundamental mistakes about how the service works now.
Cyber-Luddites.

I wonder what they are going to do when game distribution goes 100% digital and most games are episodic or MMOs with a monthly sub, lol.

Keep up with the time, adapt or die.
If you do not like Steam do not use it, but you are stupid not to.

Yours in Steaming Plasma,
Star*Dagger

 

It would have been much easier if Lepermessiah actually knew which one was more expensive between retail and digital distribution. But since nobody has Steam's numbers we will not know yet. He just argues with the fact that it's most likely that Digital distribution is the most expensive in the long run. I guess we can all agree with that, but it doesn't help us in any way. It's actually a sad thing.

Digital distribution is a two-edged sword in this case. But most of us has known that for a while.

I only use Steam because I'm forced to to play my games. I mostly have Valve games. I only have Gmod, Audiosurf, ARMA 2 and CoD4 as non-valve games. I could just as well have those outside the Steam system.

Steam sure is nice, with it's skinned game browser and update feature. But I think it's too tightly coupled with things. And Steam itself has prevented me from playing games because it has been broken. It adds complexity to things.

As for Valve as a company I have to say this:
Valve has lost touch in reality lately. It started before the whole Left 4 Dead 2 boycott debacle, with the Half-Life 2 episodes. They believe they are very innovative (and they have been for a good while) and they also believe they have the best solution for everything. This is far from true. And I would commend them to look back at themselves and think things through for a bit. Slow down for a while. I am a fan of Valve still because they are still doing a lot of things better than others, but that doesn't prevent me from being skeptical of their moves.

 

What? Digital Distribution costs more? No, it doesn't. Think of it like a FLAC to MP3. You definitely don't get to keep everything. It works for pretty much everyone, but not everyone wants to deal with the MP3.
For those of you who seriously don't think Steam is making MASSIVE profit off of even casual 2d games, you should really examine what's going on - Steam doesn't have to beg for a certain title, the developers of the game WANT to put it on Steam.

 

Greetings!

Regarding the digital distribution versus retail costs: