(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.
Ask an Xbox developer how many free updates they're allowed to put up. Or maybe a PS3 developer.
You definitely don't want there to be only one choice in a given market. You always want an alternative to keep the other guy honest.
If you're putting out a game on the 360 or PS3 you are forced to agree to MS or Sony terms of doing so. This is because the 360 and PS3 are completely closed platforms, *not* Digital Download providers. Nothing gets put on those consoles until their owners say so.
The same case is impossible to have for PC, it's a completely open platform. Valve has no power to say what can and can't be released for PC and how. It only has power over its own service, which is a Digital Download service with (currently) optional extras. People use it because it's easy, friendly, and convenient. Even if it is the *only* service, Valve still can't force publishers to use it, and publishers are increasingly adopting their own stores (see: EA, MS, Ubi). Even if Valve destroys D2D and Impulse (is GamersGate still tied with Paradox?), what's it going to do against the publishers' own stores? Absolutely nothing. It has no power to dictate what the publisher does - and for all its profits, EA and Ubi are still greater.
Part of the issue of a monopoly is that it is difficult (nearly impossible) for viable competition to form and sustain itself. If Valve ever gathers sufficient control over digital distribution, they may emulate many of the actions taken by past monopolies in order to prevent competition. Publishers will have to make a coordinated effort to break Steam's control, and users may side with Valve, as they have in the past. If users support the monopoly, consider that an additional barrier to entry.
There's one very good reason why take-up of Steam is so high in Australia: price. (Note below USD prices are equivalent to AUD ATM as we have currency parity).
Dragon Age II:
EB: $88
Steam: $59.99
Rift collectors edition:
EB: $108
Witcher 2 premium edition:
Steam: $49.99 (currently 10% off for $44.95)
Shogun II:
EB: $98
Steam: $89.99
Why would I bother buying B&M when I can get games cheaper on Steam? And this isn't even sale price. Wait till a Steam sale, get them for 50% off! Steam wins my patronage by being the best price. If other platforms do the same, then I'll buy from them.
I don't even know how to respond to this. You clearly weren't around during the 90s when CompUSA set the prices for games and such.
If Steam were the only viable option for digital distribution, the PC would effectively be a closed platform. Companies with their stand alone stores? Please. All Valve would need to say is that if they don't play ball they won't list their title on Steam.
Personally, I really REALLY don't like having to be in this business at all. It seems like someone else should be doing this. But if not Impulse who? Everyone else has already caved in. Luckily, Impulse has a good margin set up because of our ability to create software robots (i.e. only takes a handful of people to run it). So it's not going away any time soon and we don't have to accept Steamworks titles.
As a gamer, I like Steam. I don't even have a problem with Steamworks. And if I knew Gabe was going to call the shots forever, I would probably not care as much. But I don't know that. None of us know that. And unfortunately, those of us "in the know" are very aware of what will happen if anyone gains a monopoly.
Heck, without even violating NDA, I can tell you that Microsoft's plan for GfW was to charge developers money to release updates after the second update. That was going to be their business model. Luckily, Steam, Impulse, etc. keep that from happening.
In the long run, I don't think Steam is going to dominate. It'll become clearer as the year progresses why that's the case.
It's official. Robots are running Impulse. IS YOUR DATA SAFE FROM THE NEXT WORLD ORDER? Call 1-800-NOROBOTSINMYLIVINGROOM and demand that ALL your data is handled on paper only by human beings. Be part of the DIGITAL REVOLUTION as your ancestors envisioned it. I am speaking from you, as we speak, in the present.
/end silly
Frogboy, didn't you say just a few days ago that Impulse was SDs most profitable section? It can't be all bad.
The one thing I'd like to see Impulse do, is something you've been doing- cultivate the little guys and indie shops. Games like Din's Curse and Shira Oka. (plan to pick the latter up whenever it hits a sale).
The one thing I feel bad about is that often I'll find a game on Impulse, then follow up by going private, because I want to give the developer the full cut. Like Din's Curse and the expansion (seriously guys, Din's Curse is awesome)
I do worry about the effects of a Steam monopoly myself, and part of me thinks Impulse could be doing more/improving its service more then it has. With Elemental, the Impulse integration impressed me, which makes me wonder why you guys don't think it's ready for prime time.
Internet Nerd: try Gamersgate for Shogun 2, they have a good discount offer I think. (still have to use Steam)
One thing I've always wondered is why you didn't push for Impulse to be GFWL live with your current setup. I really think that would have ended up as a win-win potentially.
Class action lawsuits for illegal and shoddy business practices?
Price is the same as Steam pricing at GG: $89.95.
I hate regional pricing. *sigh*
You mean to force publishers to a certain behaviour, like you are trying by not selling Steamworks games?
This may work on some small indie productions but if Valve starts denying big AAA games, people will just move on and buy them somewhere else. Do you really think gamers will just stop buying the next Call of Duty or GTA, just because they are not listed on Steam? As many said before, the PC is an open platform. If publishers don't like the conditions of Steam, they will just sell it somewhre else. If publishers don't like the conditions of Xbox Live or PSN, they are screwed.
Well, according to Gabe Newell he isn't really calling the shots at Valve. Taken from an recent interview:
One thing that may or may not be obvious to people from the outside is that a lot of our decisions internally are heavily affected by people's interest and excitement in working on it. And it’s not because we’re self-indulgent employers. It’s that there’s a huge amount of information encoded in that kind of voting. So essentially creating a marketplace internally for ways that people can invest their time. The biggest danger for the company is that any one person starts making decisions for everybody else. Because even ‘super-genius Gabe’ is full of hideously bad ideas.
The easiest way for us to know I’ve had yet another really bad idea is that no one wants to work on it. When a bunch of people really want to work on something there’s probably going to be a lot of value. The PS3 for Portal 2 really came out of that. I mean, we were right at the sort of tipping point of ‘do we, or don’t we’? I personally was really excited to work with Sony to get Steam running on the PS3 because I think there’s a lot of benefits to us and a lot of benefits to our partners if we do that. But the tipping point was that guys like Vapally and Sergay totally wanted to work on the PS3 again because they’d worked on it before they came to Valve. So that was the thing that made it easy to make the decision. I don’t know if that marketplace of where you spend your time has really been discussed at Valve in the past and the public but it really influences a huge amount of our decision-making. [...]
The whole design of the company is built around people self-managing. So what we look for people who are very capable of doing their work, who are good communicators who also have experience managing large projects. The reason that they need to know how to manage large projects is that they need to know when something that they’re doing is irrelevant to other people and when what they’re doing has to be known about by other people. In other words, they have to make the decision that I’m doing something now that I have to tell other people about because it’ll have an impact on support or have an imapct about how we talk about the product. So each person essentially has to know how to run their own company even though they’re not having to make those decisions. They have to know what the side-effects are and when they should get other people involved. So for those kinds of people we really want them to be managing their own time and the most important decision they make is what it is they should be working on. So we’re really good at invention and we’re not nearly as good as sort of a hierarchical command and control system at doing repeatability and measurability. Those are the consequences of the kind of organization you make. We very much optimize towards the autonomous agent making its own decisions about what it does. So what that means is I don’t ever tell anybody what to do. I always ask people what it is that they want to do because there’s a lot of good data there. So we have people at the company who work on every product and we have other people who don’t work with anyone else at all and they’re off doing their own purely individual contribution. They’re a project team of one. And each person is expected to make their own decisions about that and to be making those decisions in the context of what can I do today that is of the greatest benefit to customers. [...]
The reason that we do that is that it’s fun for really talented people…I mean, the average person here can pick up a phone and have a new job in five minutes. We have probably 20 people who could pick up a phone and have a 20 million dollar game deal signed within a day. And they’re here because of the environment and the colleagues that they work with. That’s what we optimize for. We optimize so that those kinds of people, which people either are or are becoming, have the best environment for what they do. [...]
Source: Steamcast interview
It's true, I mean that's basically how brick and mortar stores squashed online sales for so many years, and why digital sales of games have only recently become a big business. And they weren't even a monopoly, it only took a one or two big players that make that threat to make it not viable to mess with them.
I'm also not too worried about Steam being the only option though, although it would certainly be bad if they were. There will always be bigger companies with lots of resources who want a piece of the pie as the profit from digital game sales gets bigger and bigger. But I guess it is important to note that even just as a dominant player they will still have a huge ability to influence game sales just like the big brick and mortar stores did in the day.
Interesting article about Gabe Newell/Valve/Steam
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0228/technology-gabe-newell-videogames-valve-online-mayhem.html
Valve announced last October that it was on track for its biggest year ever, with 200% year-over-year growth. Newell says that, per employee, Valve is more profitable than Google and Apple. A potential buyer was rumored to have made an acquisition offer a few years back for the Steam piece only, but Newell supposedly refused to split the online storefront from Valve's game-publishing arm. (Valve denies being made an actual offer, only confirming that it received interest in both Steam and Valve in the past.)
Various sources value the company at $2 billion to $4 billion, which is reasonable, considering the $4 billion to $6 billion valuations being put on Zynga, the maker of Facebook game hits FarmVille and Cafe World. Newell owns more than half of the business, making the Harvard dropout a near billionaire, if not one already.........
Try Desura, which will get better as time goes on. It's focus is on indie games and mods, and is entirely developer and modder-driven. Developers keep control of their projects, and the community is heavily involved. Plus, it makes it a lot easier to install mods.
Best regards,Steven.
Looks like Randy Pitchford changed his mind:
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/67528
He used to be a Steam skeptic, saying he doesn't trust Valve and called the current situation "really, really dangerous for the rest of the industry".
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/randy_pitchford_talks_borderlands_piracy_and_why_he_doesn%E2%80%99t_trust_valve?page=0%2C2
Yeah, dissapointment, I suppose DNF wont be on Impulse too now, right?
Decision was probably forced on him by 2K, just like it was Firaxis.
2K has gone on my boycott list these days.
Along with ubisoft, EA and activision.. not to mention my refusal to buy anything steamworks integrated. I'm pretty much limited to paradox, stardock and a few other lesser known companies to buy from(the list of which gets smaller every time i read the news about another smallish gaming company going under or being bought out by one of the giants).
I honestly feel like punching someone in the face right now... Brad, you're mistaken, I'm afraid. Steam isn't "going to" dominate. It already does.
Magicka was published by Paradox and its also Steamworks game...
Edit:
List of 2011 Steamworks games (from Steam forum):
RELEASEDA.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda (only STEAM version) *Drawn: The Painted Tower Apox MagickaMonday Night Combat Breach Crasher Trino Zeit² Who's That Flying?! COMING SOONDungeons (only STEAM version) *Dungeon Defenders (only STEAM version) *Homefront Fate of the World (only STEAM version) *Portal 2 Warhammer 40.000 Dawn of War II Retribution The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (only STEAM version) *Kings and Castles Brink Duke Nukem Forever Rock of Ages (only STEAM version) *Red Faction: Armaggeddon Nuclear Dawn Red Orchestra: Heroes of Stalingrad Deus Ex: Human Revolution Hunted: The Demon's Forge Rage Tropico 4 Shogun 2 Total War Test Drive Unlimited 2 (only STEAM version) *Natural Selection 2 Trine 2 (only STEAM version) *Torchlight II (only STEAM version) *DOTA 2 E.Y.E.- Divine Cybermancy Tactical Intervention Postal III Contagion
* only copies sold via Steam contain Steamworks features
Technology supremacy is fleeting. Just ask GameSpy.
I agree.
ya.. i don't get your point. Paradox isn't using steamworks for all its new releases though. I have no problem if someone wants to release a game with steamworks.. just don't expect me to buy it. As long as my battlegoats don't go to steamworks i'll be happy with paradox(only other paradox game i own is mount and blade).
Majority of titles these days are disposable anyway.. its those few titles that keep me entertained for extended periods of time that I continually support anyway. Just so happens that it tends to be smaller indie publishers that produce those type of games. I'm just lucky in that the only major development house I supported that has gone the way of steam is firaxis.
Also a side note.. alot of those games are only steamworks integrated if you buy it through steam(the ones marked only steam version) so its really not pertinent to the discussion since you can get the game without steamworks from other distribution channels.
For instance.. Dungeons.. is being sold on impulse now.. because its not steamworks integrated in its normal release version. Which by the way.. is the way I wish more companies would do it.. a steamworks version for those who like/use steam.. and a normal version for the rest of us. Those that give customers the option are certain to have more sales than one forced method.
Wow, some big dissapointments there, like Rage and brink. I think by now I should rename the title of my original article to Steam : A monopoly.
The Steam version of Mount and Blade can be taken off of Steam DRM by using the CD Key with Talewords direct download of the game, at least for both Mount and Blade games.
I have no problem with using Steam for MP games, but for SP I don't want to have to deal with it.
My boycott of 2K has as much to do with disrespecting franchises as it does mando Steamworks.
Except it isn't.
Also, may The Pink Unicorn bless Steam every given day if the alternative is GFWL or Gamespy.
Ya mount and blade is available on steam.. but its not steamworks integrated. (not sure about warband for the MP aspect though).
Something I think alot of people misunderstand is the difference between steam and steamworks API. Just because you can buy it on steam doesn't make it steamworks integrated. And as the list above shows.. some games choose to do steamworks only for the steam version of the game... meaning they plan on using other distribution channels and not requiring steam. What really annoys me is retail boxed and other distribution versions being integrated with steamworks. Plain and simple I feel if i wanted to deal with steam I would buy it from steam.. not amazon, D2D, impulse, walmart or any other distributor.
Its gotten to the point I literally have to research if a game is going to Force me to use steam prior to purchasing no matter what venue i purchase from.(other than impulse my last sanctuary) I don't want steam and no matter who adopts it and tries to force it down my throat its not happening. I'll simply take my meager business elsewhere.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
