Not that I want to wade into this thing, but laptops. People who travel will frequently have no Internet access, or absurdly expensive access only. Single player games that require online connections to work in single player mode are fundamentally broken for these people. (And I'm really not paying $10 for the airport wifi so that a single player game can go authenticate itself.)

TBS games tend to have lower hardware requirements so they're really good for being on laptops. They also don't worry about twitch controls, so you don't miss the mouse as much. It's really an ideal game for long trips.

I belong in group 3 myself, with a bit of group 1 and 2.   Then again, group 2 is irrelevant without group 3, as an alternative to Steam means you wouldn't have to use Steamworks.

 

I do think Steam is overrated, I play TF2 and that does stutter online frequently due to Steam.

 

I don't like Steamworks much either, I don't like DRM that runs every time I play the time.  That's why I crack games that I buy if I need to.  (and why I prefer Impulse/GG for purchasing)

 

The monopoly concerns- I know what the long-term cost of a closed platform is, though I suspect on the PC there will be those who would resist- such as Stardock, so those fears may be overstated.  I still think a One valve future would be crappy though.

I'm not a professional level games developer in a publically owned company with a responsibility to my shareholders to protect our companies future via methods such as DRM, such as Steamworks, which means siding with the leader in an emerging market that is slowly gaining ground and responsible for a significant portion of total Sales.


A nice thought, but completely unrealistic and uneducated.  Right now, Steam has competition with servcies like Direct 2 Drive, Impulse, etc.; if Steam doesn't offer the best deal, they won't succeed.  We're not talking about them establishing a monopoly now - no company gets to be a monopoly by raping the industry, they get there by offering sweet deals in the short term and then using their established position to muscle everyone else out of the market.  See Windows (funnily enough the founding membes of Valve are ex-Microsoft employees.  Weird.)
Are they forcing developers to use Steamworks DRM at this very moment?  Of course not, they don't have enough pull right now, but we're not talking about right now.  We're talking about a future where every major title released on the PC has Steamworks DRM because Steam is the leading Digitial Distribution platform and has enough pull to demand all Steam hosted games have Steamworks, forcing them to be exclusive Steam titles.  Once a title has Steamworks, it will not be made available via other services due to the nature of the DRM - this is a forced exclusivity deal.  Once all the major titles are shipping with Steamworks (ya know, like Modern Warfare 2, Civilisation 5, etc.) do you honestly believe it's such a stretch that Valve in their newly established position of complete Digitial Distribution dominance - and I don't mean like today, I mean when every major and non-major title is available via Steam - that every title released on Steam must carry Steamworks DRM, essentially locking the platform out?  You can release it via Impulse, however Steam simply covers too much of the market to ignore and to ensure Sales, Publishers will not have another option for Digital Distribution - it's either Steam, or bust.  Thus, every retail copy of every PC game will carry Steamworks DRM to ensure that it can be sold on Steam digitially.  This is complete, 100% market dominance and forces their competition out.  You can say it won't happen, however that simply shows you don't know your history.


I think you left your caps lock key on.  Anyway, Activision prices Modern Warfare 2 at US$60.00 and AU$120.00 at retail, despire that US$60.00 is only around AU$80.00.  Anyway, the game was released on Steam for this price, despite the fact that it's cheaper to sell the game this way due to lack of boxes, manuals, physical production costs and shipping fees.  Thus, the price is in inflated.  Now, let's take a look at today's prices.  As you've pointed out, Modern Warfare 2 is available for less than it was released.  No surprise, considering the backlash the game and it's publisher are now receiving.  If I were to purchase the game here, at my local sore, I'd pay AU$49.99.  On Steam - even discounted - I'm paying AU$69.99.  The price is inflated for the digitial version.  Why?  Because there is no competition for this game digitially.  If the game was available on, say, Impulse, the discounted price on Steam would be significantly lower as Steam tends to do (see the Unreal pack) because it has to compete with Impulse for sales as it makes 30% profit on every sale, thus the lower the price the more likely someone is to buy it via Steam.  With Steam's larger Account base, they're able to more aggressively negotiate prices with their Publishers.  With no competition, as is the case with Modern Warfare 2, the price doesn't need to compete with other Digitial Platforms, and so there is no need for price wars.  This isn't saying Steam is going to single handledly raise the price of the entire industry - that is Activision's doing - this is proof that competition benefits the consumer, even in a Digitial environment.  Steamworks DRM doesn't mean higher launch prices, but it does means less competition for your business and thus worse deals overall.


That's discounted for this weekend, not the standard price, and you'll notice that all of them are loaded with Steamworks DRM, however Steam only makes Sales Commission off of titles sold on Steam itself.  Competition in Action.  Remove the competition factor, see what happens, I'll wager my immortal soul that it's bad for the consumer.  Business 101.

I'm in Brad's 'Group 3'.  I don't mind that Valve's own titles require Steam, because that's their own platform.  I don't mind that some games are exclusives and othes aren't.  It all encourages competition, and competition is what has made this industry develop and change and produce all the amazing titles we have available to us today.  Removing that change, that need for innovation on any level in the industry only damages the future prospects for the gamers and for the industry as a whole.  I game on the PC because I like to do things my way, not someone elses.  A closed PC platform turns my expensive, high end machine into a larger than needed console where modding games is illegal and will get you banned, where wanting to be offline for whatever reason makes you a pirate and wanting to know that in twenty years, if I want to play through the games I bought today and have the ability to emulate, modify or change whatever code is needed to make sure that I get what I paid for makes you a fanboy or an idiot.  We're already stuck with Microsoft to turn the computer on and have a hope of running anything, why do we need to stick ourselves with Valve to play a game?

I don't get it, why did they didn't support Impulse distribution, if they did I would surely get it.

I got Civilization for the Ipad, and plays and feels great there, a shame this deal with Steam

So the crux of your argument is: Steam will have a monopoly because everyone will have to use Steamworks. You keep failing to point out how it gets to that monopoly in the first place, since not everyone is having to use Steamworks. Do you honestly believe publishers like Ubisoft, EA, and Activision couldn't create their own digital distribution systems if they wanted to? EA already has. How can Steam force them to do anything? Activision used Steamworks because it was the best choice, and I applaud them for it. I'd much rather have Steam than crap like Ubisoft's DRM, or EA downloader.

That's a shame, I don't shop at Woolworths Steamworks. One day, if they see fit, they might choose to release the game at a place I shop at, and I may choose to buy their game.

 

Until that day, we'll just have to respectfully go our own ways. To be utterly honest, I never did feel like the games I bought from them got decent support anyway, so maybe it's for the best.

Steam will become a monopoly by establishing itself as the clear dominant market leader of the Digitial Distribution platforms and then use this position as leverage to close the Platform by making Steamworks DRM a requirement of all Steam hosted titles.
We're seeing the biggest name titles available Digitially for the time in history, and now we're seeing those same titles locked in to Steam.  This isn't some small company using Steamworks DRM to protect their small company's big investment, this is the largest companies in the world using Steamwork's features, like multiplayer or achievements.  To use these features that clearly gamers want, they can either spent the money to develop a system themselves, like Battle.net, or simply use a pre-established one that clearly works like Steam.  In order to use Steam's featureset, like achievements, they have to lock in their game to Steam.
Once Steam has enough registered users to be able to start calling the shots, and each exclusive title like Civilisation V adds more users to Steam's books, it's extremely likely using past and present behaviour as precedent that they'll make Steamworks DRM a requirement of all Steam titles.  This means that any title on Steam won't be available anywhere else digitally and all retail titles will require Steam be installed to download and play the game, and as Steam will be the online Digitial Distribution channel, publishers won't really have much room to negotiate if they want to access the biggest number of customers - which all publishers do.  Once this happens, all retail PC titles that will also be available digitally will be locked in to Steam meaning then it doesn't matter where or how you buy a game, you'll need to go through Valve to play it, update it or mod it if they allow you to.  This is how they'll establish their monopoly.  They're well underway.


EA created a DLC store, not a Digitial Distribution platform.  Same thing for Blizzard.  Enabling customers to buy your games via your website isn't a Digitial Distribution platform.  The start-up costs for their networks for a Digitial Distribution platforms, including iron-clad licenses, legal precedents and publishing deals are immense.  Companies like Activision, EA and Ubisoft wouldn't waste money on this kind of set-up when they can begin making money instantly by signing up on a pre-established service with a large customer base that increases their profit margain per game due to the lack of costs related to the physical product.  If Activision was going to launch it's own service, it would have done it with Modern Warfare 2, instead they through their chips in with Valve wholeheartedly.

As I've already covered multiple times, at current Steam can't.  Steam is piggybacking into everyone's computer via exclusive titles like Civilisation V and Modern Warfare 2.  It's expanding the market by force.  Once it has established a large enough customer base, it'll have the volume of potential profits for Steam's partners to pu whatever kind of requirements on them they want, for example requiring all games on Steam use Steamworks DRM.


Activision used Steam because Steam needs big name, exclusive titles to push the service and Steam offered them the best deal so that it could use Modern Warfare 2 as a Trojan horse for Steam.  If Impulse, for example, had of said they'd host Modern Warfare 2 at no cost to Activision, Activision would have gone there and ignored Steam entirely.  Steamworks DRM didn't factor into the decision.
You appear to be under the impression that I think Steamworks DRM is terrible or that I'm somehow Anti-Valve or a Stardock fanboy.  I like Steam, I don't mind Steamworks DRM and I'm a fan of what ever company acts in a manner deserving of my money.  I don't like that Steamworks is locked to Steam when it doesn't have to be, and I don't like that Steam is using Steamworks DRM to establish a monopoly.

The point I'm trying to make is not that EA is suddenly going to open up a storefront like Steam and Impulse to sell other games. My point is that these large publishing companies are large. They can sell their own games digitally if they wanted to. You even confirm my point: publishing companies are currently using Steam because it's the best solution. Once it stops being the best solution, they can set up their own solution.

Installing Steam and being a Steam customer doesn't mean you can only play Steam games. It won't search for non-Steam games and delete them. This is not the 360 or PS3, where every game has to be approved by the overlords. Steam will only ever have power over its own platform, and no matter how lucrative the Steam playerbase is, if Steam's demands are too high, you can choose to not use it.

And I'm not a Steam fanboy either. If Steam went belly up, I wouldn't give a damn and would just download cracks for all the games I currently have installed through Steam, and move on to the next distributor. I am a gaming fanboy. What I have a problem with, is with people shunning a great game, in fear that they will be supporting some magical future monopoly that will never exist. Boycotting Ubisoft DRM: fine. You're boycotting something that actually exists and is stupid. Boycotting Steam's future monopoly: wat?

 

rofl, so the argument here is that you have to spend 2 extra seconds to right click / close steam?

Also, your second point is a major reason WHY steam is good.  Having no-CD patches is a non-issue as you don't need the CD to play with Steam, and it makes the game much harder to pirate, which is a concern for all game developers.

Steamworks is free for all games: "Take advantage of the platform that supports over 1100 game titles on Steam. Steamworks gives you access to a connected community of 25 million gamers and a robust world-wide network. Steamworks is entirely free."

Source: http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/

 

I don't think so. Why would they use some unknown niche digital distribution service (for free) if they can use the market leader with a superior featureset for free too?

Oh, Steam is well on the way to a monopoly in the digital distribution computer game market, make no mistake. I've been around the block enough to know when a superior distribution channel comes out with must-have goods that the usual outcome is eventual monopoly. That's why things like the FTC exists, and why a company in a monopoly position have to obey stricter laws than companies in a free market do.

I hope everyone here realizes that a monopoly merely means that an individual company has gained enough market dominance to control pricing and distribution.

Why indeed? A lot of people are thinking the same thing.

I love Steam and have no issue, 2K DRM all their games and Steam is the best and least annoying type of DRM for me so I don't really mind or care.

This is very worrying for me. I like steam, and I've bought plenty of games on it, but it's quickly becoming clear that they're intent on forcing their competitors out of the market with exclusivity deals. The end result of this will be less choice and higher prices for us - the key turning point (which may already have been reached) will be when instead of steam having to offer things to developers/publishers to get their titles on to steam, the roles are reversed and steam are offered things for hosting the titles. That then means they'll be able to demand exclusivity from everyone which in turn destroys any competition. With the competition gone they'll then be able to demand much higher prices/not do as many deals.

Platforms like impulse will have an uphill battle since as long as steam has a wider range of titles they're going to be more popular, and probably grow their customer base at a faster rate than impulse. This in turn allows them to get even more titles than impulse, and the effect just magnifies. Maybe if stardock was able to release more 'must-have' games (like SoaSE) they'd have a chance of  stopping this, but with Brad taking a break from creating games the rate of such games will probably decrease as well.

I just hope the anti-competition rules of countries where steam has servers will be sufficient to try and prevent this, but I doubt it given how far behind the times most countries legislation tends to be wrt this sort of technology.

Well, Stardock is already offering this deal to publishers with Impulse. But none had accepted it.

Roll on the floor as much as you like, it IS an inconvenience. I mean it takes 2 seconds to put the CD in the drive too. You can even leave it there, and people still  dislike it.

De gustatis non disputandum. I don't like it, and many people don't like it. Just accept it.

Wrong. Impulse DRM scheme (ont time activation) doesn't need me to do anything, while Steam in Steamworks forces me to close it. It rather proves the Steam requirement is a bad implementation as is.

 

I think Impulse can survive even a Steam monopoly.  Worst case, it ends up being Stardock Central again.

 

What Stardock needs to do:

 

a) I think they should buy out Gamersgate to get their catalogue.

Start undercutting Steam on price, even if it means eating profit.  If Steam sells something for 50 you sell it for 45- tell the publisher they'll get the royalties if it was 50, and force Steam into a price war.

Stardock isn't super-dependent on making Impulse financially successful. Their skinning software is where they get their money from, mostly, I think. Publishing games and Impulse is, I think, more of something Brad wanted to do to help improve upon Steam's concept as a competitor rather than him trying to create massive revenue and overturn Stream and make lots of monies. 

If Impulse fails and dies and eventually only distributes Stardock games, I think Brad would shrug and reduce Impulse back to just Starkdock utilities and software. It's still a nice client... 

The question becomes whether Stardock is afraid a one Valve future would hurt their way of doing business.  I honestly don't know if it would.  I wouldn't want to put out with Valve DRM on non-Stardock games though, I'd probably just move more to console gaming in that case, and buy cheap laptops and get out of computer gaming except for old games.

 

Have you considered putting say, Sins on steam, then making it use Impulse and allowing the Steam keys to be used standalone on Impulse (Mount and Blade does this)?  Was that rejected by Valve?

 

Impulse is unlikely to fail, other publishers realize the value of getting their stuff on multiple platforms (see Capcom).  This is an area Impulse NEEDS to improve on fast- and hasn't done a good enough job of IMO.  Gamersgate still has a better overall catalogue.

 

 

That's exactly what competition should look like! Stardock would get the money and (in case of a Steamworks game) Valve would have to provide download servers and support. But what is Stardock actually doing? They complain about Steamworks, lie about their Weekend Deals and refuse to sell (or even buy privately) games like Modern Warfare 2 or Civilization V. That's childish and doesn't make any sense from a business standpoint. Does Stardock really think they can somehow "hide" Steam from their customers?

 

The issue people have with having to use the CD is not the time it takes to put it into the drive.  I hate CD's because you can lose them and you can't have multiple CD's in at once.  The time it takes to put it in the drive is completely negligible.  Plus, it takes a lot longer than 2 seconds to change cd's for many people with the location of their tower, their cd's, and the load time.  The fact you have an issue with spending 2 seconds to close a process is still absurd (which you could just keep running, unless you're running Vista on 512 mb ram)

 

And I'm wrong how?  You're ENTIRE argument is that you don't want to spend 2 seconds to close a process.. a process that you don't even have to close since it idles at 6 mb.  You've proved nothing and not addressed the actual issue of why I said your second point was why steam was good.  It's because it prevents piracy like no-cd hacks, which, again, I'll type out:  Steam games do not need the cd in to run.  

A price war would be a lose- lose for Steam and Impulse.  If Impulse undercuts Steam, Steam will merely drop their prices as well.  Steam has the power to price lower and force Impulse out of business if it would come to that.  If not, it merely means both companies now have lower prices with the same market share as before.  Hopefully that made sense.. I'm on heavy pain meds and it's 7:30 a.m., need to go to sleep 

I will venture a guess that many of the people who claim they won't buy civ 5 because of steam... will buy civ 5 anyway.  How do i know this? Because its the internet, and 9 times out of 10 most forum comments are entry to a bandwagon, which in this case seems like some seeded commercial rebellion. 

 

To those who claim this is anti competitive, i can assure you its not.  2k games had many options (impulse for one), but they volunteered to use steamworks knowing full well what that entailed .  However, what this will do is allow the price to remain at the sellers discretion because there wont be competition trying to drive down prices, which is a bummer.

 

My opinion on steamworks drm:  I'd prefer no drm to it, but considering most publishers require drm, id much prefer steamworks over the other alternatives.  It seems like all other drm implementations have been draconian and completely limiting to the experiance.  Steamworks allows you to play on any computer you have steam installed to, and you can install it as many times as you so please.  The only thing you cant do is give it to a friend, which is the underlying purpose of drm anyway, they get their money, you get your game!

 

Anyway...

 

Even if stardock sold civ 5, id still buy it from steam.  I really enjoy their platform.

If they sell it for five bucks less and provide you with a key to register your game on Steam (so it has exactly the same features as a native Steam version), why would you buy it from Steam then?

 

And a big win for us customers. That's how you fight a monopoly, not by complaining and refusing to sell Steamworks enabled games.

 

Id assume the game would have the same features,  i had mentioned platform as in the steam platform.  I really enjoy their instant message (with voip mind you) and community features, achievements are fun and im an achievement whore, and it lets me access all its features while in game.  Love it!  Also, when i backup a game in impulse, reformat and re-install windows, it doesn't allow me to restore those backup images as it complains "using the wrong windows" or something along those lines, i also cant move those backup images to to other PC's and install from them like i can on steam.  To me that's a HUGE downside.

 

Impulse, you want my money for more games then sins?  Improve your platform.  Want developers to pick you up rather then the competition? improve your platform.  If you argue that developers prefer steam because of their larger number, then attract more users and give developers more incentive. 

 

Don't blame steam for having a good product, and don't blame 2k games for preferring it.

 

Besides my biased opinion's, civ games are great games. Buy it because its a great game.

I've been considering for a while whether it was wise for D2D, Stardock, and Paradox to boycott Steamworks games.

I get their point of trying to persuade developers not to use Steamworks. But I wonder if that by selling the game on Impulse, they'd actually discourage Valve from trying to gain a monopoly on DRM. The money goes to Stardock/Publisher X, but Steam gets stuck with the burden in terms of bandwidth and hosting updates. It's almost like Stardock and others would be a tapeworm- siphoning off the food but living in the host (Steam).

I'm sure publishers would be looking at the sales of games, and if Impulse and others could move a sizable percentage of it, developers would be more inclined to use Impulse Reactor as a way to pick up those gamers that refuse to use Steam.

But Brad is the ultra-rich head of a successful company, not me. I've just put out my line of thinking- perhaps he has a better understanding of the situation and sees something I simply do not. I do recognize that D2D once was willing to carry Steamworks games and has since stopped- perhaps there is truth to the fact that they're essentially signing up customers to a competitor. But I simply cannot imagine there are many, if any, gamers who have heard of Impulse but not Steam.

Though if Valve was truly interested in not squeezing out the middle-man, they could easily produce a Steam-lite to be bundled with games. While it would work as DRM in terms of authenticating games and have an overlay, the store simply wouldn't be bundled within it. I'd be pretty ok with Steam if that was the case.