News Gearbox: Valve has too much power

Thank you, you just made my night ^_^

 

Steam is too damned expensive, IMO.

They make weekend deals seem like a great deal, but c'mon, when your only overheads are server charges, it makes very little sense to charge as much as a physical disc.
Plus, $40 is something like 2000 INR, which is a little over double the amount most Indians pay for games. Make it competitive, Steam.

 

Steam has been a god send to us gamers in Australia. Most games here cost between $100 AU to $130 AU. With the current exchange rate of 0.90 US for every Australian dollar, that's over double the price that we pay for games!!!

But thanks to Steam, I can get all my game titles for under $50, usually around $20 as I wait a couple of months before buying the games I'd like to.

Lets not forget the game packs too, such as the recent THQ one. Something like, 12 games for $40!!!

 

I like the post earlier that said Steam should be a non-profit seperately run service.

Riiiiiiiight. So how do you plan for the future with fk'all money in the bank?

How would they compete with similiar technologies?

How would they be able to afford R&D and compete with something as dramatic as OnLive! ?

I get the impression your parents need to increase your pocket money maybe?

 

It really depends where you are. It's a shame they don't follow the conversion rates exactly. Plus some countries are paying other country's taxes, because Steam's service isn't localized to those countries (yet?). Plus they don't follow the economical state of thus countries. For example the European store. You just can't compare Luxembourg or Belgium to Portugal or Spain's economical state.

 

Wait a minute, Steam is and has by no means a monopoly!

There are many other online distribution outlets to use as well as the normal retail chain. Also the fact that small indies use steam and not the competition means that they are getting what they want from the system. Do you really think an Indie will approach EA for online distribution. EA will rape them senseless.

Sure there is a conflict of interest there, but does anyone have proof that they used that influence? If so steam will get sued by one of the developers!

Honestly steam is great and I can see the reasoning on both sides but most of this is speculation and hot air.

 

WOW, talk about ignorance personified, ydo you know how expensive it is mainatainignservers of the magnitude Steam needs, as well as bandwidth? Get real, its huge.

Also, Like anything look around for the best deal, no one os forcing you to buy steam, but, I do when there are great deals, and often times I bought game soff steam when they were a lot cheaper there then anything else. Its called being a smart consumner.

 

In the very beginning I doubt they intended for Steam to become what it did, and was just a way to uniformly update and distribute Valve games and HL based mods. But it was buggy as hell, and even pissed me off to the point where I stopped playing for a while because the servers were down every other day, meaning I couldn't play Counter Strike every other day. It was a joke.

But they obviously saw the power of this engine and threw more behind it, and allowed other small developers to be featured on it as well as a very easy way to reach customers in a way being a boxed game at a real store never could. Almost like an AppStore for games

It seems like people are just bitching because Valve is the first to actually get online game distribution right and are making a killing while the rest flounder around in their traditional business models.

Is there a reason other developers cant develop their own platforms if they are unhappy?

 

LOL. I was just reading the other thread on this subject and see Lepermessiah peddling out the same twaddle he is on that thread

 

Yeah, I was about to reply, then I realized there'd be no point.

 

Leper's posts in this thread all seem to be on the money?
What is it exactly that you think he has got wrong?

 

Greetings!

Digital distribution more costly than the traditional retail model.

 

Well neither of you gave any references to back up your claims either way.
I agree with Leper that running the amount of servers Steam must have to, not to mention their bandwidth and power costs must be extremely expensive.
I have no idea if that cost is comparable to the standard retail model but until you put up some figures, neither do you.

 

But Come On All you have to do is blame microsoft

$100 dollars worth of game(s)
Steam would give: 7 Games (Indie)
Miecrosoft would give : Team Fortress 2
....Tf2 Is Free Btw