(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.
I thought the G4WL Marketplace had already died.
I rest my case.
It rose up as the undead. The same pretty much applies to everything related to both of the words "Live" and "Windows".
Impulse has now started selling SteamWorks game(s).
http://impulsedriven.com/magicka
The multitude of jokes I'd love to type would ruin the natural hilarity of this. Maybe if Rebellion gets released on Steam it will finally have a decent multiplayer base.
I am a bit confused though, it says that it "requires a 3rd party client to download, install, and play." Does that mean that you buy it, then Impulse gives you a Steam-Activation key? If so, major Kudos to the team of masterminds that thought that was a good idea.
The monopoly is complete.
Dark Day for PC gaming.
Yep, Impulse (just like D2D, GamersGate etc.) is in such case just selling Steam product key.
So much for Impulse being a competitor to Steam. This sort of thing is why Impulse being sold off to GameStop was a bad idea. A year from now, Stardock will simply have to invent yet another download platform for their products to use since Impulse will just be a subsidiary of Steam.
Yep. Works out okay sometimes, D2D sells several Steam games for less then Steam does, or includes free DLC.
And yeah, there's quite a lot of jokes to be made on this one. It took them almost no time once the "Gamestop" logo went up. Probably not so much about Sins though, since Sins multiplayer code actually works pretty well and it's just a matter of the game not being ideally suited to MP. One has to wonder if the Impulse staff reacted to being told to do that with a "finally!" or a "this blows".
I was hopeful Gamestop would compete with Steam, not collaborate. If Stardock's future titles are Impulse exclusives (this doesn't apply to Elemental but future titles), I will be much less likely to purchase them.
I wonder if Brad knew this was coming (I doubt he did personally).
Once the exclusive period is up, I'd like to see that too. No sense in staying limited to one distributor at this point.
Probably. It seems unlikely they would have wanted to keep the no Steamworks thing going forever when there's money to be made. A friend of mine in the industry said this when he saw the news:
"There's not really much internal dialogue at GameStop when it comes to choosing between pride or money."
I figured they'd be thinking something other then short-term though. Big corps and lack of foresight go hand-in-hand though. That is the complete opposite of what I consider to be Stardock's culture.
Yep looks like gog is the only DD service I have left to use thats steam free
(saw this coming as soon as it was announced, so its no surprise. Although I am surprised they did it so fast)
Wtf is the point of buying a game through impulse that forces you to download steam? May as well just buy everything on steam. Seriously.. gamestop execs have got to be smoking something strong.
Sad day when impulse has joined the "support steam or quit gaming" crowd and even sadder when Impulse itself is supporting steam..
Guess My money is better spent on a new hobby.. maybe whittling, but in order to view my carvings you have to go down the street to the other guy who whittles and get his permission.
Or maybe i'll open a paint store... and not sell paint brushes, and just send my customers to the other paint store to get brushes
Even better.. A burger joint that just sells coupons for a burger at McDs .
(sorry I was having fun with that.. you get the point though)
This move will make Impulse less needed since people will just launch their games directly with steam. Sad to see that brad wardell sold out to the biggest bidder, at least now maybe Rebellion will use Steamworks' better cloud features.
Meh, who really gives a crap so long as you can load your pc and play your games easily from one community based program. PLus don't forget updates/patches and the rest.
Do we seriously forget how much it sucks to search and download the expansions/patches/updates/mods without these carriers.
AND!@!!!!! Gifts!!! I got portal for my birthday yesterday sent to me through steam. Easiest birthday gift I ever got.
And if your a multi-game gamer like some, when u boot up, you know what your mates are playing... Oh, their playing COD4..but U NEEEED them on your DG team REALLY FAST!! how excellent to be able to message them ingame and telll the GTF over here!
And lets not forget Indie game programmers. I see plenty of cheap games available by budding next generation programmers....., without a carrier service to put them on the map, can U imagine how hard to market, press, package, distribute their game in a retail environment. These same new programmers may just one day work on....Demigod 5 ????
Where do I hope it all goes? In the future with ULTRA fast PC and net and ULTRA genius programmers, there will be minimum installation. Just login and play. anything. And if that means 10 cents a game for whatever game, or subscription, or giving them my left nut, so what. Easy gaming - get in the fast lane or go back to the 2000's with your CD rack, and multitude of CD drives in your humungus tower, turn your windows firewall on and when U get BSOD you can scream out F***KING WINDOWS 98!
Why do we still feel the need to have stand alone installations on our PC in order to feel like we get our money's worth? We are paying for ENTERTAINMENT, NOT FILES. The files are just what deliver you that entertainment.... so if you need to login and verify you're a real paying customer to play SO BE IT. Piracy does things like killing demigod.
IF Demigod was released through STEAM IMHO there would be a lot more people playing it.
For indies, cliffski (GSB creator) is starting his own community site for that, showmethegames.com but you have to be selling the game yourself to be on there.
The fact that so many gamers are reliant on one service, is potentially catastrophic. What if Valve got hacked like how PSN was hacked?
And yeah, Gamestop really shot itself in the foot long-term, for very little short-term benefit. I doubt Magicka will sell that well on Impulse- everyone already has it, and Impulse won't compete on price.
Step 1: Type Homeworld Patch into google (or lycos or whatever was popular then)
Step 2: Click link, usually the official website for the game and servers with alternate mirrors
Step 3: Download
Step 4: Run Patch
Step 5: ????
Step 6: Happiness
In the entire history of playing games on the PC, I have never had an issue finding a patch. What I do find annoying is that Steam will automatically update my games, ruining mods, gametweaks, and saves. Even if I set it "Do Not Automatically Update" Steam will sometimes decide to update anyway. It recently ruined a two week long game in Total War for me. I uninstalled the game, and will probably never reinstall it since I was so angry. If I set it to not autoupdate, exit, and reload Steam, it reset it again. It does this on several games for me. No. Thank. You.
Getting a gift card or boxed game is still better imo, and I find it irritating when people start spamming messages of "get over here and play this game with me" when I'm in the middle of another game. YMMV, but that's the fastest way to get deleted from my contacts.
Indie games being available is a plus, so no argument there. But indie games that are fun and addicting can still survive in the market, even without using major d2d services. Just ask Notch how well his game is selling on Steam.
I was going to post something even more sensationalized, logically impaired, and melodramatic than this, but couldn't come up with anything.
Why do we still feel the need to have stand alone installations on our PC in order to feel like we get our money's worth? We are paying for ENTERTAINMENT, NOT FILES. The files are just what deliver you that entertainment.... so if you need to login and verify you're a real paying customer to play SO BE IT. Piracy does things like killing demigod. IF Demigod was released through STEAM IMHO there would be a lot more people playing it.
Because with a standalone installation, you can still play your games when you want without asking permission. If I could buy a game on Steam, and archive some activation that let me install if after Steam (or Impulse) dies or changes it's system dramatically (like charging for redownloads.) I'd have a much smaller issue with them. If I pay money for something, even Entertainment, and I have to ask permission to be entertained every time I'd like to, it's annoying. It's annoying because I'm used to not having to ask permission. If you didn't grow up with
Steam is a terrible piracy deterrent BTW. It's stripped out much faster than anything short of a disk-check. All Steam does is prevent 2nd hand sales. And Piracy didn't kill Demigod. Demigod killed Demigod. I picked it up for $6 on a Clearance shelf, and am glad I didn't pay $7 for it.
People not being able to connect and play games for a couple weeks is what killed Demigod. The game was pretty fun, but there's no way a game focused entirely on online play recovers from a launch that bad. (Overly slow and small content updates from GPG were also fairly fatal. Games like that can't stay stagnant forever.)
Am I to understand the Impulse team was just forced to halt the work on Impulse Reactor? I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out Gamestop deemed the project "unnecessary" or even "utterly pointless", hence the sudden appearance of Steamworks titles on Impulse.
Sins of a Solar Empire:Rebellion will use Impulse::Reactor.
I think some Steam fans need to get a better idea of what Steamworks can and can't do. There's a lot of hype around Steamworks and it really is pretty decent if you're making an FPS. But I can't imagine why anyone would use it for a strategy game in its current incarnation IF they can use Impulse::Reactor which we can.
While I wouldn't say that Gamestop's decision to acquire Impulse was driven exclusively by Impulse::Reactor, I will say that without Impulse::Reactor there'd been no team up. It is a critical part of their strategy.
However, and I'm not speaking for Gamestop here, one discussion point that's come up is if Impulse won't carry Steamworks titles, how can Gamestop expect Steam to carry Impulse::Reactor titles in the future?
Why should Steam carry Impulse::Reactor titles? Impulse::Reactor is a direct competitor to Steamworks after all. That's sort of why your Impulse didn't carry Steam-integrated titles: because it sends consumers to a competitor's product.
For the same reason that Steam carries GFWL titles, Gamespy titles, Ubisoft always on titles, MMOs...
Steam is first and foremost a store. They want you to buy games from them. Sending their customers to someone else to buy games is bad business for the market leader when they can keep you as a customer.
Also, Reactor doesn't require Impulse running to work the same way Steamworks requires Steam. Based on what we've been told its entirely possible to make a Steam version of a Reactor game that still uses Steam for its updating and DRM, and uses Reactor for the stuff that Reactor does. So for Steam there's really not much of a problem there, particularly if updates are still pushed through Steam (in that case it wouldn't require an Impulse installation at all).
I think my industry friend's quote I posted earlier better answered that. Gamestop is in it for the money. They can make more money by selling more games, and they can open up a much larger pool of games by selling Steamworks games. That doesn't mean anything with regards to Reactor.
They can eventually maybe make more money later if Reactor takes off, but for now their calculation is that it's more profitable to sell games then have people go buy them from Steam or D2D.
A monopoly is good for steam and its users since its free to download and everyone gets connected on 1 network. Its like a arcade and games store for the whole planet free of charge. Once they start selling steam then u can complain. Impulse is headed there too. There doing well for themselves. It will will be a question of where your friends are most and what games you like to play. All is good so far unless you want to start your own version of steam and impulse and feel the barriers to entry into the market.
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