(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.
For me and others I've talked with the DRM of Steamworks isn't the issue at all. The problem with Steamworks is that you are now *forced* to use Steam and have their front end store installed. With Impulse Reactor it's just the DRM and nothing more. Impulse itself is not required to be installed and the user isn't bothered with any 3rd part software they don't want.
Even GFWL I've never had a problem with. Sure with Fallout 3 it has to be installed for that first verification but after that I can totally ignore GFWL. Heck, I never have never even logged into it.
This is not the case with Steam which forces itself on your system no matter if you like it or not. And you can't get rid of it or else you can't play your Steamworks enabled game. Again, not the case with Impulse, you can totally remove it from your system or in the case of Impulse Reactor, never had installed it in the first place.
lol "essential to daily living'. You can't eat the internet man . There are plenty of people all over the world still that don't consider the internet essential to daily living. No one in my family has a job that requires the internet to bring in income. We pay bills online, but we can go to the bank or use a check for that. When you're living on a basically fixed income that extra 50 to 80 bucks a month can mean the difference between having gas in your car or having to walk to work. Plenty of people are that way without being in a "crippling level of poverty" too, like me . I still buy 10 or 12 games a year, and I have a super gaming computer capable of running anything on the market for the next 4 years or so at least. I think there's still plenty of people around the world who would rather have a new graphics card and plenty of new games to keep them occupied for a year rather than have the internet if it came down to it. I'm one of them.
Well more and more things in life these days come with an expectation that you have an internet connection. I suspect that you may be underestimating the number of things your family use the internet for, but ultimately if you really feel that it would be only a trivial inconvenience to not have the internet then obviously that's your decision. Personally I would find it cripplng in a social and daily life capacity, as well putting me at a significant career disadvantage (home internet isn't technically required for my job either, but for most jobs it's still a very helpful thing to have).
So anyway I guess it boils down to that if you consider the internet to be an important part of daily lfe then your not going to worry so much about not being able to use your old games if you can't afford a connection. If you consider the internet to be completely optional and unnecesarily, then that's a more reasonable concern.
Hasn't Stardock done a lot for the PC in general, I am surprised that Microsoft hasn't tried to get involved with them yet.
MS wont use any service that isnt their (but they have enough cash to simply buy some current not-as-crappy-as-GFWL service).
Impulse and Steam TOS are very similar - major difference is that Steam is able to enforce TOS much more easily.
I pay 10€ per month for 16/8Mbps internet - if I wasnt able to afford internet I would have bigger problem than not playing games. Also even for those who are unemployed some basic cheap internet cost less than sending CV via mail or extra driving when looking for job - and getting job ASAP should be priority of anyone who is unemployed.
Because if they somehow manage to make a service that becomes popular then they get a larger share of the pie.
If Internet access was that cheap in the U.S. i would agree with you. But depending on your location in the U.S. a far slower connection will cost you ~50-60$ a month. Many people only have 2 basic options for internet access. Cable connection through their local cable company and DSL through their local telephone company and prices are pretty much the same either way. Outside of limited time promotional offers, and "bundle" options pricing is pretty much fixed. There are more options in some larger U.S. Cities... but not everyone lives in a large city.
Its funny that country with 10M people (Czech Republic) has more ISPs than entire USA - competition FTW!
/waiting for upgrade to 40/40Mbps/
There are a quite a few ISPs in the U.S. but due to geography consumer choice is usually limited to 2 or 3 ISPs. Competition for any one particular customer is almost non existent. The size of the U.S. alone makes it difficult for most companies to even begin to setup any kind of infrastructure to compete. Which is why you may have more options in a larger city (more potential return on infrastructure investment).. but those of us outside of major urban areas are far more limited. Add in the fact that those few existing ISPs are mainly running on old infrastructure and it means we pay more for slower connections
Its one of many areas the U.S. is behind the rest of the modern world, the politicians speak of expanding broadband access.. but ignore the fact that even if everyone has physical access..without competition access is extremely limited by economics.
Even in the heart of Manhattan my options are pretty limited when it comes to ISPs. While the city itself has a number of different ones, the options in any given neighrborhood are more limited. You can go to a library for free internet connection but your time is limited, you may have to wait in line, and it wouldn't take that many trips before the subway fare would add up to be more then internet costs.
Regarding job hunting, at least in the United States, the vast majority of help wanted ads are online so you'll never even find them without the internet. And many of them don't give any contact information except for an e-mail address.
While your right about the help wanted ads being primarily online. Depending on your level of education and chosen field your more or less likely to find a job that way. Remember a major employer in the U.S. is small businesses. Your not likely to find a help wanted add for your local coffee shop etc online (maybe its different in your area since they're all starbucks in Manhatten ). A lot of smaller businesses still rely on walk in applications. Those in these lower paid service jobs (which btw is still one of the largest and still growing job sectors) are not only less likely to be able to afford internet.. but will most likely find it less useful having it in the instance of financial hardship.
But I digress.. back to steam.. lol
Well even in the more mid advanced job fields they say your much more likely to find a job not by answering want ads but by calling up every place that hires people in your field and asking them if they have a job for you. Even that is going to be much easier with the internet though, because that is by far the easiest and most efficient way to find the people you need to call. But yeah if you want to work as a waiter or barrista you can probably wander from store to store. I've still never met someone in a low level service job who didn't have the internet though, even when they were struggling and hand a family to feed. That doesn't mean they aren't out there of course, and it may be partially a cultural thing based on where I live.
there's nothing wrong with monopoly in the name of convenience if that monopoly is accountable and doesn't act as an obstacle. some people call it standardisation. the DVD, CD and BlueRay are monopolies, as is the shape of a power socket. it would be chaos without them. what is needed is to make steam independent of any given developer or publisher.
i guess what i'm talking about is a public movement for gamers to buy steam off of valve and have it's business run democratically by it's customers, who have voting rights in how the service operates. a small fraction of the sale price of each game then goes to pay for a few staff (ie, a democratically elected president of steam) and to pay valve for maintenance.
that way no changes are made to the service without the approval of it's users, and if valve ever tanks then steam continues, and the users allocate the maintenance contract to another company.
how many of you would object to steamification if it was run like that?
I agree with first part, because even if one service had monopoly developers and publishers would still have to compete for customers money, so it would be unlikely to have negative effect on prices.
few problems with second part:
1. People (users) would vote themself money - just look at Greek government (and USA is getting close to that situation with their 1.7 T$ deficits). This works very poorly (from PC gamers perspective) for most gaming related public companies - their decisions are mostly short term based - for example EA, Ubisoft, Activision etc.
2. Who has billions $ to buy Steam from Valve?
point 1... first i simply feel it's very pessimistic. i think a better comparison is companies like john lewis, or the co-operative. if you think of the owners as small share holders, then it's in the interest of cutomer's to vote for profitability as that earns them dividends. true, none of us have millions to spare, but there are 30 million OF us, many of whom can spare to spend $100 or more a year on games. i'd recommend some sort of pledging system where users agreed to pledge $50 in advance, that would be returned if the initiative hadn't achieved sufficient numbers within a year. they have similar systems for paying for unsigned bands to record an album by getting fans to confirm to buy it. a lot of gamers are very well read and have strong feelings on this issue. look at the success penny arcade have had with child's play, for example. they've raised $9 million dollars, and that was charity, not investment. real madrid and barcelona are owned by their fans, and though they have accumulated significant debts, they have achieved great success and no one expects them to go under or sell up, largely because of the shear size of their fanbase (read: userbase). neither is spending 4.6% of the federal budget on loan payments going to sink america. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fy2010_spending_by_category.jpg
finally, it's not even necesarry for the entire company to be bought out. if microsoft had a share in steam they might be persuaded to abandon (or at least integrate) the mess that is games for windows live (which almost everyone agrees is far worse than steam, and simply divides, confuses and hamstrings the digital distribution/integration movement).
a steam that was owned by a triumvirate of valve, microsoft and users might then be able to operate in a responsible and profitable way that benefited everyone and facilitating PC gaming by providing one standardised and tri-partisan platform that everyone could agree on.
It kind of sounded like a co-op board to me too, at least in theory. In reality though I'm not sure how different it would be from a regular corporation. It would have shares owned by the public and they would determine the staff that leads it. Isn't that how every corporation works?
1. US estimate is to spend 8% of its income (4.6% of budget) on interest in FY 2010 - while interest is lowest in recorded history (part of the reason for that is that FED is buying lots of that debt as part of QE2 - at the end of QE2 FED will have over 2T $ in US debt) as soon as that stop and fed has to start selling it to open market those interests will go up. I dont think US government will be happy to pay 20% of its income just for interest.
2. While Steam has 30+M users, its hard to organize to raise billions of $ by users - I dont know of any such succesfull project. That said - I wouldnt mind to invest 10 000$ in Steam if I could expect good ROI.
3. I wouldnt trust MS to spend billions and not to expect to make demands/orders - MS is also very schizofrenic about PC gaming.
4. IMO it would be very very hard to convince Gabe Newell to sell majority share in Steam - IIRC he already turned down offers from Google, EA and few others.
I agree that result would be very similar to normal IPO.
1. Now, when Impulse is being bought by GameFuck eh... Gamestop, will Stardock sell its games on Steam?
2. Looks like non-gog version of Witcher 2 will use Steamworks http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showpost.php?p=13026222&postcount=501
Wow, good question. I still have that ordered on Impulse.
Blame deregulation for the sorry state of US internet. I mean, in NC, they've almost got the state to legalize their monopoly without any promises of future performance. Cities were so fed out with Time Warner that they were doing it themselves.
Stardock now has no dog in this hunt unfortunately. I just wish I lived in Kansas City, and they have the Royals. That should say something.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I am one of those people who have the Royals.
Enjoy your Melky-fail this year then.
My least favorite baseball player of the last 10 years.
I am pretty paranoid with steam atm. I always prefer to buy games in physical form, so that if steam ever goes down, I still have my discs and can reinstall when I want. Even though MP may be down as well, I still have my good old singleplayer and campaign modes. The Rebellion preorder makes me sad, because the Dip owners discount only applies to an online game preorder. I hope Ironclad changes that.
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