I'm afraid Steam users now make up more than 90% of total sales volume by our estimates. For those hoping that there will be 'non-Steam' versions of anything in the future, it would take something fantastically major for that to occur.
90 %.... Holy crap.... that probably makes the idea of offering Rebellion on Steam one of the most profitable ones for Stardock.So I assume Rebellion did and does sell very well? 
Still, I have to ask.... what are the advantages for Stardock to enforce Steam? Are there economic advantages over just offering it on Steam instead? If you are allowed to answer that, it would certainly be interesting for the community as a whole.
Its not that I love Steam ARES, its just that it isn't as evil as some people here seem to think it is. Its just a freaking company like any other for Chrissake.
I never said it is evil. I am graduate of a business school, I know what is important and that is the money... and only the money. Of course they are not evil, they are just doing business. It is the customers who I do not understand as a majority. Again, the security of your owned copy is far less than that of a classical owned disc. Again, you rent the permission to use a car, but you pay the same as if you had actually bought it. And all of that because the rented car is possible bit more comfortable.... I just fail to understand.
What's fundamentally wrong is the ridiculous sense of self-entitlement gamers seem to have. You aren't forced to do anything- you are given the choice to abide by the terms set forth by the developers or not play. I can never fathom why people feel that it is their god-given right to play this game, and any rules or restrictions are forced upon them as a result.
You are totally right. Of course there is absolutly no right to play anything.
My point is merely:
- You buy a game disc for 50 €. You can play the game as long and whenever you want. You have no risk of lossing anything if the developer goes bankrupt.
- You buy a game on Steam/one of other similar platforms for 50 €. You can play the game as long and when the developer and Steam allow you to do so.
Call me a cold calculating economist if you want, but the second point is clearly less value for the money. So where is my discount?
The term of aquiring the game have become considerable worse on my end. Yes, you are very right, I dont have to buy it. But I reserve the right to complain about that.
You're confusing their right to do so with reality. Realistically speaking accounts don't get revoked, the only exceptions being actions that are borderline crimes anyway. The overly broad language they use is only to ensure that in these very rare cases the person losing their account has absolutely no legal ground to complain on. It's not exactly new for companies to do this to avoid problems- look at the ridiculous number of warnings on any given bottle of pills for a common example- it's just an example of the company preparing to protect themselves from every foreseeable legal inevitability by saying right off the bat they aren't responsible.
Just because it isnt done doesnt mean I have to like people being capable of it. You see one could even argue against democracy that way....
If a absolute King is only making good decisions and does never abuse his powers, the goverment is not better or worse than a democratic one making good decisions. The King could execute you, just for the fun of it. But he is not going to do it.... are you sure you like that new way
There is another concerning tendency. Media companies demand that creating a digital copy should be punished as hard as stealing a physical copy in the shop. That is remotly understandable.
On the other hand, the same companies so far enjoyed excessive freedoms from laws that protect the customer from fraud.
Yes, yet another car example. The prospect says this car has 5 gears and can go up to 200 km/h. But the car that is delivered only has 4 gears and does not go faster than 150 km/h.
Now, under the laws of most countries this means I can sue the factory for a refund or demand that the car is brought up to the standards in the prospect.
But now lets assume it was not a car, but a piece of software. It claims to support LAN Multiplayer on the package for up to 10 people.
But in reality, it does not support LAN at all.
You know what rights, I the customer have under this circumstances? None! You bought a use license, nothing more. You dont have any rights.
In short, they want the same rights for intelectual property than for physical property. I am fine with that, but then I demand the same rights.
Ohh, sorry, that would mean EA had gone bankrupt 5 years ago... because they were sued 20 billion for not delivering what they claimed one day before release.
And guess what? A lot of people aren't. I know a number of people who own steam copies of games they never would have purchased could they have pirated them.
Steam-exclusives certainly do alienate some people, but when it comes down to it, on the topic of DRM alone, frankly the system does work- which is certainly going to be an incentive for developers to go with steam
To be quite frank, they didnt really tried to pirate the games then. They instead looked for a quick way to get them.
Steams influence in reducing piracy comes 98 % from the convenience of its use. Especially for people who already have it.
Old way:
I want the game..... I could go into the city, go to the shop and then buy it there.But thats annoying and takes 1 hour at least.
Or I could download it illegally. having it "instantly" - after looking arround in the web for 5 minutes --> This option is far more lazy.
Steam way:
I want the game... I might have to register on Steam/I might login to Steam and buy it, having it "instantly"
Or I could download it illegaly.... having it "instantly"... but meh... have to look arround... check for viruses... click away annoying banner ads.... what does it cost again? Only this.... hmm.... time is money and I want to play ASAP... ahh to hell with the money, I buy it.
Never underestimate what people will do for a little bit of convenience.
DRM itself is highly ineffective and as an economist I never understood why companies spend so much money on something that does clearly not work, unless the target is to annoy the paying customers, which is downright suicidal for a company. If you are small, in the short term. If you are large, in the long term. Or why do you think EA has such a bad name and is in somewhat of a financial trouble?
Your userbase is divided into 2 general groups. The people who have no knowledge about the WWW or computers at all and the people that have a bit of knowledge.
The first group does not need any DRM system.... because they need a manual to turn the computer on in the firstplace. Some recently released games in Germany targeted the audience 40 +... they did not have any DRM with it.... guess what.... they outsold all expectations. (Of course this is due to the fact of them being very good games, too)
The second group is not going to be impressed by any DRM system. Because downloading a small exe file requires very little in computer skills. The bad news for the companies is that this group is getting larger, as average computer skills increase.
But of course you can use things like Origin for entirely different things. Like gathering valuable data about your "customers" and then selling it to the highest bidder.
So again, before I bought the game for 50 € and that was about it.
Now I pay 50 € for less, are being spied on and have to worry that somebody someday hits the red button. How high is change for that to happen is secondary, but it is always going to be tremendously higher than the old way. So again, where is my discount? Where are the awe inspiring features that justify that cost? Not there? Nice new world.
A car is physical. it can't be duplicated a hundred times and given to all your friends. Digital possessions such as games are a different matter.
And frankly if you play by the rules, you're no morel ikely to get your steam account revoked then you are to get your car impounded, towed, or the like.
Yes, the digital revolution has changed a great many things. Old certainties and business models are crumbling under both the speed and the power of change. Those companies who do not adapt in time go down. Altough according some prominent lobby group, home taping had killed music well over 2 decades ago. Or at least it killed their dreams of making another 2 billion profit a year from the same old music. We live in quickly changing times. A business model was never ever a thing for eternity in the entire human history, but the sheer speed of development is new. Nokia was world leader in mobile phones.... only a few years ago. They just missed one trend... smartphones. Today they are fighing for their very life. This is new... the speed. Market leaderships did always change, but it was usually a slow process, taking at least a decade. Nowaydays.... your famous company may go down from market leader to bankrupt in less than 5 years.
I think this is why Microsoft is so desperatly trying to make Windows 8 a mobile phone operating system. They fear that those mobile devices are the future.... and they know how brutal this market can be.
Top on Monday...
Flop on Tuesday
Chapter 11 on Wednesday...
But we are drifting off. so back to topic. Yes, society as a whole needs to find new compromises that allows both user freedom and companies successfuly selling products.
We need a new middle way, one that can satisfy both customer and companies alike. But currently the trend goes cleary in the direction of giving companies all rights and the customer none. And that cannot be good. E-books for example.... the Kindle can delete any of your books... via remote.... now tell me, would you buy a book that comes with an burn mechanism that can be triggered any time the producers wishes to? Perhaps, but certainly for a lower price than one book that has no such "feature".
I can go to court if my car has been impounded illegaly.... I have no such option for the majority of what is called intelectual property today.
Steam and similar digital distribution methods have damn near killed off the traditional box-copy sales of PC games for a reason.
For the seller it results in more sales, less expenses(nothing physical to produce), and less piracy & other abuse of the license sold.
For the buyer it results in more convenience and for most players more actual security in their ownership of the game( no disk to be lost or destroyed, you can download the game on any computer with an internet connection without having to tote said collection of disks around with you). And frankly it reduces clutter and organizational needs when you own large quantities of games.
Digital distribution is without any doubt the future. But digital distributions kills the middle man.
Sony Music.... has no future, at least not with its current business model. They are no longer needed. In time most creators will sell to the customer directly, because selling over the internet is so cheap and easy.
Naturally the middle man companies try to do whatever necessary to protect their old cash cow as long as possible. Some rumours claim that Megaupload was specifially taken down not only because it hosted a lot of illegal stuff but because Mr. Schmitz DARED to show the entire world that he - contary to the most classic content providers - knew how to make money in the time of WWW.
Now, dont get me wrong.... this guy is a gangster to some extent.
But tell me.... if I can get people to paying 30 dollars a month for ILLEGAL content.... what are the people who offer legal content doing wrong?Perhaps they dont offer anything after all or making to is tedious to use that no sane human being will bother with that?
I am a Star Trek Fan. I would love to have every episode of Voyager at home. Sadly, when the last DVD release was shipped, I didnt have the money to buy it. So I waited. Unfortunatly after my wait was over it was outsold.... only available on e-bay.... for a hefty price tag 3 times as high as the original price.
In the classic release world this was justified. Creating thousands of DVDS costed a lot of money, and you needed a reasonable customer base to justify a relaunch of any sort.
But today.... this no longer true.
One webserver, HD quality files and a shop system in front of it. Done
Monthy cost.. perhaps 200 €....
You could easily outsell those costs... probably on first day.
For a new DVD release you needed maybe 40000 or 50000 customers to bring in the costs and to make profit. Today the front end costs are far lower.... so why dont they do it?
IDK.
I however would bet any ammount of money with you that mentioned stuff is on the net.... for free.
You cannot blame piracy if you dont sell the product yourself in the market it occurs.
Games of Thrones.. this new and highly popular series.... it is not distributed into Germany. Any German who wants to see it has resort to downloading.Today, you could easily transfer those downloads into sold units. But you have to offer it first.... and of course to reasonable conditions.
1 $ for one song... does anyone remember the outcry of the music industry? Oddly enough... they are still alive today... although no DRM is there anymore.
Stardock I could see- but Valve has found such a sweet spot it's pretty safe to say they are in for the long haul. Heck, even if they did go bankrupt I highly doubt they would just have every steam user lose their entire library of games- more likely they sell off the steam engine to some other company in a last effort to recoup losses. Steam when it comes down to it is a pretty efficient bit of infrastructure that's made a name people remember- Even if by some unlikely twist of fate the sales-aspect became obsolete, it could easily be retooled to any number of uses by another company.
Who would have guessed that Lehman Brothers... and over one century old rich bank could go bankrupt? Had you told anyone the day before they did... they would have called you a maniac. As I mentioned above this market is very fast paced.
But besides that, good points in your post. 
That just sounds petty to me. I may disagree with the other side of the argument, but I don't wish a large company goes bankrupt and thousands of people lose a large investment of money just so i can say "told you show. or I suppose the direct parallel would be wishing for a situation involving the loss or destruction of their disks/serials/ect...
You are right, that was uncalled for. I withdraw my point and apologise.
Honestly at that point, I don't think there is going to be a huge list of parties that really care about you downloading the game illegally.
Yes, but I dont want to bring my car to a black market garage just because the factory that did built it went bankrupt yesterday.
you're correct in that you have less hard-cast rights- mostly in the sense that someone else has more control over your access to the game. But I feel like it's kind of insane to act like just because you lack the rights means that the purveyer of the product will or is even likely to abuse those lack of rights.
Human history sadly clearly proves that in most cases a right that cannot be enforced is usually not worth the paper it is written upon.Sure, the King may not behead you for the fun of it, although he could. Just pray he never changes his mind. There is a reason democracy is the superior form of goverment- although having many flaws of its own.
Lets say that instead of going down, Steams from now on demand 10 € monthly fee from you. If you have one game... you laugh them away, but if you have 100 games, you pay... teeth clenched, but you pay... and that is the only thing they are interested in.
When you own a physical copy of a game you cannot "do whatever you want with it". It is still copyright material, you agree to an EULA, etc. etc. There is absolutely no difference to a Steam version. You can play the game in off-line mode. You can utilize the cloud to play on a different computer. If you are not engaging in illegal activity, it's highly unlikely your account is going to get suspended, let alone banned. People are just paranoid.
Of course not. But there is nobody who can take it away from me at the press of a button.
Perhaps people are paranoid because it has happened in the past.
Windows stored the keys that allowed Microsoft DRM protected music to be played in some well unknown files and folders. Folders normally nobody bothered to back up. So when your windows went down, for what reason ever and you made an reinstall all your bought music become garbage.
The Microsoft Zune player came with DRM.... when it flopped Microsoft announced the shutdown of the DRM servers a year later. They suggested that you circumvent the protection by burning a CD.
Many people missed this announcemnt.... well when the servers went down.... their music collection again become garbage.
If all of those people just had illegally download their music they would have never any stress, any work and they could still play anything they ever aqquired.
The simple fact of the matter is, Steam is insanely popular. Someone from SD above even said they estimate it's 90% of their sales now. Of course they're gonna do everything they can to support it, and make it easier on regular steam users. That includes using SteamWorks, so that you can use your steam nickname online, use your friends list online, etc. Insisting developers not use Steam simply because you do not like it is like insisting we stop using electricity because you liked it better before it became widely distributed. Like it or not, technology has moved on, online distribution is replacing brick and mortar stores and owning physical copies of games.
Ahh, now I understand partially what features Steamworks offers.
Make sure to send that information to Valve, I'm sure they'll take it into consideration when pricing their next games.
I did.... oddly enough I did not receive any answer....
(joking 
)
They quickly backtracked when people stood up and started closing accounts but who would do that when you lose all your games? and it really pisses me off when they can change the TOS and you have no choice to accept it or again lose all your Steam investment.
That is exactly the issue. A classical bought game is a one time contract, that cannot be altered in the future without both parties agreement.
On the other hand Steam could easily introduce a 10 E monthly fee... and would get away with it because there are so many people that have well over 1000 € worth of games there.
This may easily be the longest post i have ever made but two final points:
- Dont put all your eggs into one basket. If you absolutly have to have 100 games on Steam use more than 1 account so that in case of failure you dont loose everything.
- Steams may be popular by the developers for another reason. It kills the second hand market. You cannot sell a game bought on Steam, which is actually against latest EU court judgement.
I had the stupid idea of buying Supreme Commander 2..... that you guessed it requires Steam. Well, what can I say.... the game is a failure.... and my 60 € are long gone. Back then I would have loved to sell it for 20.... at least reducing my losses. But then you cannot. So it is still there.... whenever I run Steam I see it... a permanent reminder, one that does annoy me.
