(Im posting this in the forums since I can't post it like an article in the blog section.)
I remember the old days of gaming. That long gone era called 2008. Back when games were provided with their own custom installers, and were self-contained products that installed themselves separatedly on the computer you instaleld them. I like to call this era the "Installshield Era" of gaming. Back when game media only contained asset and binaries, and a registration window, when dialog box wizards ruled the gaming land, and when there weren't any remote validation hooks attached to executables. That is why, with increasing concern, I am watching nowadays the way our most amazing form of entertainment is rearranging itself, how market forces and anti-consumer tendencies are beggining to shape the new landscape of gaming, at the expense of the average gamer.
Big game releases nowadays are abandoning these old, anticuated components such as autorun main menus, install wizards, or dedicated servers, and have moved to the all encapsulating remote delivery methods of popular DRM schemes, such as Steam. By itself, Steam is convenient, fast if you have good internet connection, and easy to deploy. Many games were released in normal "retail" form, and were offered in Steam's store shortly after. Those instances however, are nowadays mostly the case with PC only releases from eastern european studios it seems. Steam's "next step" in gaming convenience is anything but that, and could mark the beggining of a new mandatory requirement for gaming in the future. More and more games are now announcing their complete deployment based around Valve's new Steamworks framework, touted as the "least intrusive" DRM scheme, "convenient" to gaemers and publishers alike, which takes care of formerly manual tasks like patching. They claim it isn't intrusive when compared to the likes of Securom or Tages. But I would like to point out that it is more than that. It's not only indeed intrusive, it's THE most intrusive DRM scheme to come along yet. The game is not at all installed or even located completely in your computer when you realize it. At least Securom installed itself after it let the installer copy YOUR game to YOUR hard drive. Steamworks' remote always-on cloud network remotely controls one of ITS game's installation, patching, running. When you start the game, you send a signal to the autenticathion servers situatied remotely from your location, and the order is sent back before you are able to game. You are asked for an authorization each time to play the games you paid a hefty premium to be allowed some few hours of playimte. It's the arcade coin-up model. We've gone back full circle, to the arcade machins of old times. It may as well place a coin slot in your computer. It's like trying the games you paid for thru a remote terminal. A service that, much like an arcade place, can close up in after hours, or at the discretion of their owners. The access to the games you are allowed to try remotely can be switched off at any moment without any explanation from the providers, and you are effectively out. Cloud based gaming, and software as a service don't look like a good idea afterall under these terms.
"Blah blah, who cares, I don't have to deal with DVDs anymore!" Maybe this is really making mountains out of molehills. Steam does have it's merits, which mostly come from giving smaller indie developers a storefront to showcase their creations without needing a traditional expensive distribution contract. Companies like Tripwire and 2d boy have been the most vocal about their praise for steam, with Tripwire saying they wouldn't be around without Steam. This piece is not an anti-steam call to arms, it's just an informational soundbyte, just to express concern about the trend Steamworks is creating, which isn't 100% in reality as advertised in the package. A steamworks game instantly becomes a steam exclusive game. That situation could become the beggining of a monopoly. Maybe this is a good time for competitors to shine.
Actually Steam is winning in the market place by having the best business model. People don't "choose" Steam any more than "the market" chose Windows over OS/2.
Steam is winning because you were forced to install it to play games you wanted -- first Valve's games and then third party games that used Steamworks. They gave away Steamworks -- a very smart move. Instead of spending millions on Securom and GameSpy they got that functionality for free and all they had to do is include the Steam client with their game.
It's brilliant and there's nothing wrong with what they did. It's certainly less shady than how Microsoft beat Netscape with IE.
But let's not pretend Steam is dominating because people "chose it". Facebook vs. MySpace? That's people choosing one or the other. But you take away just Counterstrike requiring Steam back in the day and it would be a totally different world.
Please demonstrate this "whining" about Steam being an "evil monopoly." Otherwise, please refrain from assigning false attitudes to your opponents in this debate.
I did that. Guilty as charged, and no regrets. I strongly object to the threat that Steam poses to the consumers.
I just don't want to see something that is potentially saving pc gaming turn into its doom.
So the best way for Impulse to take off is for you guys to make a wildly successful mass market game? Hopefully you guys can pull that one off somehow. If you guys were willing to take some losses, one thing you might do is start a price war- offer all games that are also on Steam at an additional 10% off, or better, give 10% credit when you buy a game that's on Steam on Impulse. No idea if that would make Impulse unprofitable (I don't think it would), but it would gain market share for a while.
Would you still feel that way if I told you that several major publishers and developers have said straight up that if Steam ever got a monopoly they would cease making PC games?
It has nothing to do with Steam. Replace Steam with Impulse or GFW or anything else and it's the same. If the PC *effectively* becomes a closed platform, then it's doomed. It has no real major advantages to developers outside of that.
There are other ways for Impulse to catch up to Steam.
Honestly, I think you're going to have a hard time gaining market share, even if you make Impulse superior to Steam in every way. It's going to take some sort of killer app for people to give Impulse a chance. I do think time is on your side to a degree, provided you can get people to keep using Impulse. It's getting people to give Impulse a chance that I'm imaging is the hard part.
Some PC gamers can be real closed minded, just check certain gaming forums where you get eviscerated for NOT being a Steam fanboy. Cliffski over at Positech got slammed hard this weekend for posting about the dangers of a Steam monopoly himself this weekend over on his blog.
Another idea I had, and please tell me you pitched this to Microsoft: Microsoft should replace GFWL with Impulse flat-out. Put the games on Impulse and have Impulse run the show. Win-win, you get the Microsoft name and catalogue, they get a service that is good enough to compete with Steam.
Another question: has Impulse's progress been slowed down by the issues with Elemental any other the past few months? One bright spot with Elemental to me was that I felt the integration of Elemental into Impulse was really well done, and I wish more games did this.
I do really think you need to implement my bug report suggestion for your games in future- maybe add in auto-generation of a forum post (awaits moderation of course to prevent spamming of mountain goats to the cooch) on the support forums? I think that would be a useful/neat feature.
I'm in agreement with everything you posted here, but I am getting the feeling you're not agreeing with me. I don't understand what makes our concerns different? If any other company than steam was threatening to become a monopoly, I would be against them too. But now - today - it's steam. Buying games through them should be a last resort for any consumer concerned about the future of pc gaming. Even if it's a near perfect solution today.
What's the point of being a subsidiary of micro$oft with no real control of what you produce?
As I said here on page 3, I won't be charmed into using a service that is required for the games I want to play. Steam isn't likely to get me as a customer after they overly complicated the file system for Forces of Corruption, the expansion pack for Star Wars: Empire at War, which made it extremely difficult to play mods with the Star Wars: Empire at War: Gold Pack from Steam, when the retail version didn't have such difficulties. I applaud Stardock for having Impluse only be required for patches not to run the game, which is an extremely cool way to do it. I am definitely glad I got Sins of a Solar Empire which led me to Impulse.
Funny, you must have gotten a different disk to me, because my disk installed Impulse. Now I get continuous popup and email spam from Stardock trying to flog me games I don't want with no option to turn it off. At least Steam allows me to opt out of all that. And here's an interesting tidbit, when I uninstalled Impulse it left components behind still registered in the registry. Why is Stardock leaving behind things and keeping them registered when I want to uninstall it? But call me a liar, I don't care.
You still obviously don't understand what I asked. You said you avoid games that are Steamworks exclusives, but will install games that are Reactor exclusives. MY QUESTION HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CLIENT SOFTWARE WHICH YOU KEEP GOING ON ABOUT!
Anyways, you sort of answered my question. Enjoy the koolaid.
I can't think of that many programs that don't leave something behind in the registry.
The popup spam is easy to turn off in preferences, the email spam is I believe also. Those things should be default off if they aren't though.
My own opinion: Reactor isn't as annoying as Steamworks. You can run a game that has Reactor without activating Impulse. You can't do that with Steam.
I just don't buy that. If some competitor had a real competitor to Steamworks it'd be one thing.
But there isn't one. The PC gaming market isn't helped by supporting inferior solutions. That just encourages continued inferior solutions. GFWL was never good for PC gaming, and going off and buying games with it because they're not Steamworks games helps nobody because it's a flat out worse experience for both the developer and the player.
When we get some real competition in this space, then I'll be interested. But right now the choice is Steamworks and a possible monopoly, or the wholly inferior GFWL & Gamespy. Given those options, I'll take Steam any day of the week.
Except that people do choose Steam all the time. Steam got going with Valve games, but it kept growing because of other games being put on it long before Steamworks existed. It was the first service of its type to gain any traction, and for quite a while was simply the best one (as anybody who looked at EA's early online store can attest).
People still choose it. Developers choose Steamworks over the alternative because its free and better then the other stuff. They might privately (and in a few cases publically) complain about that, but they use it anyway. Nobody has a gun to their heads telling them to do so, and Steam itself (by far the #1 online store) still sells games that use something that isn't Steamworks. They're picking what right now is the best solution, which is exactly the market in action.
And yes, customers choose it too. For games available in multiple places, I know quite a lot of people who want to use Steam over anything else. They like the service more then the alternatives for one reason or another (most often it seems to be because most games bought off steam pick up the overlay & integrated friends list without any effort on the users part). Once again that's nothing other then people buying it there because they want to, not because they have to.
If Steam were winning because of shady deals and by using an existing monopoly to force their way into a new market, that'd be one thing. But they're winning simply by first mover advantage and then by putting out what many consider to be a superior product. I have a hard time worrying when somebody dominates a market because of that. I mean Google is 2/3 of all search, and I don't sit up at night thinking "damn I had better use ask.com to avoid the monopoly, no matter how much worse its search results are!"
This is the most biased thing I have read in a long time.
First, for nearly all creators, pricing and size limitations aren't a problem at all. Trial can be 8 minutes or something else, it's up to the creators. The timed trial is the default one so you can save yourself the work of doing a proper demo while allowing the customer some way to try the game.
Second, of course you can't have XDK achievements and leaderboards, you are not an XDK game. It's like complaining your super free PC game doesn't have Steam achievements, it's idiotic.
Third, no AO rating it's also logical, like not been allowed either to do a Halo game, or use the LucasArts logo. Given that MS is in the end the one liable if you do something very nasty, and that nothing assures them a nasty game won't pass peer-review because they don't control approval, they have to protect themselves somehow.
Even in your dreamy PC world, some limitations also exist. You can't use IPs you don't have the right to, you may be liable to law depending on what you release and where you release it (happens from time to time in Germany and Australia), some tools may force constraints into you (depending on their licenses), and so on.
But like most people agree that the PC gives you a lot of freedom, the same happens with XBLIG.
The only real problem right now is the steady increase of big-boy publishers (who are the real problem) making their games Steamworks DRM.
As long as Impulse exists, Valve can't do anything overtly monopolistic to the publishers, cause they can always go to Impulse.
The real issue is Impulse needs to be more of a priority for Stardock in terms of improving it (I did see Brad's posts that there were delays due to other stuff).
Another thing I wish Impulse would do that could help- take Indy games such as GSB/Din's Curse etc, and allow them to, for free or for a minimal charge, like .10 per activated key or something, put their validated CD-keys from their direct sales onto Impulse. Din's Curse Demon War - I really wish the beta for that had been on Impulse, but it wasn't so I ordered direct.
Okay your a liar. Because I have never gotten a single advertisement related to my installation of Elemental.
Impulse is on the disc yes.. but its not a FORCED install. Pop up? There is no elemental advertisement pop up or impulse advertising pop up.. plus if there was you don't even have to run impulse to play elemental. So where is this mythical pop up coming from? You just keep repeating lie after lie.. so ya.. liar you are.
You asked why i would use one and not the other.. and I explained it..in detail. Not only are you a liar but when your not lying your arguments are filled with fallacies. Crawl back under your rock of misinformation and adversity to logic and do the world a favor and stay there.
InternetNerd is referring to the Impulse Now Promotions pop-up that can be turned off in Settings. This is surely harmless next to what Steam must do.
When Impulse is in the system tray, it pops up store advertising. And when I did a default install of elemental and accepted all default options it installed Impulse. And since you have to patch elemental because the release/disk version was complete and utter fail, you're forced to install impulse to get the patches to make the game runnable.
So you ARE forced to install impulse to play elemental, because without the game is complete and utter shit and fails to run.
Are you here just to troll?
Must be this guy's tune, Frogboy; if you don't like the game, then go somewhere else. Right click on the Impulse Now system tray icon and go to Settings, you can do all kinds of things there including shut off the Promotions pop-up ads. This guy is clearly one of the default settings is the only way to install games kind of guys.
Luckily, there are crack of steam games that work without steam.
Sorry, I'm not hear to troll. I've removed the last two sentences from my post. Apologies for that.
I just didn't appreciate being called a liar when in fact I am correct that Impulse installs off the disk and forces advertising on you under default settings. And in fact, I don't mean any offense by this, but I consider Impulses popups worse than Steams because Impulse popups will occur any time, not just when I use an Impulse game. I could be working on a word document and get an Impulse popup. At least Steam only presents popups when I exit a Steam game.
Note I only said the RELEASE version was crap. With that latest patches the game is decent. And you can say "go in and change the settings", yes I can, but I can also guarentee that the majority of people install software with default settings. Besides, is there a non-Impulse method of getting patches? No...... so to play the latest version of these games I AM FORCED to install and use the Impulse store front. If the patches were released outside of Impulse then I wouldn't be forced to install it.
So essentially, Impulse is no better than Steam. The ONLY difference is you don't have to run Impulse to run those games. A saving of what.... a couple of KB of RAM? Irrelevant.
Why not just turn off the notification? With Steam, you have to have Steam. Forever. To play the game. To me, that isn't a big deal. But someone who buys say Galactic Civilizations or the original Sins of a Solar Empire or a third party game on Impulse doesn't have to keep the manager around if they don't want to.
I personally think it's much ado about nothing. I have Steam running all the time anyway. I have Impulse running all the time anyway. I have Tweetdeck running all the time and so on.
Steamworks is the only viable option presently for developers who want the functionality it provides without making it themselves. I don't begrudge Steam its market share. It's not Steam I take issue with. It's Steam fans who demand we cave in on our own policies that, frankly, work very well for us.
If GamersGate or Direct2Drive feel they have to accept Steamworks titles in order to remain profitable, then that's their business. Impulse doesn't. And if Steam can eventually decouple Steamworks and the Steam store client then we'd be happy to look at adding those games to Impulse.
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