Anybody like Steam?s software business model?

When I bought HL2 ways back I was a little aggravated with the online requirements to register, but programmers have to eat too.

Well zoom forward to after Hurricane Katrina. We took 2 inches of water so other than floors and furniture; we made out like bandits compared to our neighbors. What’s this got to do with Steam? Well, as life as I know it returns, I found my HL collection missing! Great, I’m ready to try HL2-E1 and I’m thinking I need my HL2 disks, not.

I re-started my old steam account and notice that Episode 1 is stand alone. I also see that I’m able to down load my HL-2 game as paid for! Cool! The Steam application also let me back-up my games to CD - DVD or HD which I’ve done.

I now have a better attitude toward this model but still prefer the physical disks. At least you can trade some of the disks with your Buds when you sick of it? I’m willing to bet more and more companies will take the Steam model for piracy protection and hopefully saving the PC game platform?

 

you can trade your steam account just like a disk... I wish they would allow you to change your steam account name or at least un-register a cdkey with an account so you can sell or give away the key (I now have extra that i'd like to give to my friend, but its in my account with my HL2 stuff so he can't have it)...

and from what I've seen, some businesses are taking the approach of live and let live. the amount they spend on securom and other protections is not being recuperated. from an article I read from one of the senior game developers (cant remember which), he said that people who pirate the games wouldn't have bought the game if they couldnt pirate it for free. so even if you do succeed in stopping pirates by purchasing thousands of dollars of digital protection, they *still* aren't going to go and buy that game. so you might as well let them pirate it and focus your money toward making the game so awesome that people will want to buy it. putting things like securom and safedisc in the software, in the end, hurts sales.

go figure.

 

I love Steam. I wish more developers would use it. If I ever lose my Half-Life 2 installation discs, I can simply log into my account and download the games from scratch.

I'm not sure if this has been reported here, but X2: The Threat and X3: Reunion were recently re-released over Steam. The best part about this news is that neither games now have StarForce.

 

I was skeptical of Steam at first, but now I think it was a great idea. No searching for patches/fixes (all updated automatically), you can download your games as you found out (something I do frequently when I get a machine to test), plus you don't need a disc to start the game(s).

 

The downside is that if Valve ever goes down, your games go down too. I can play Fallout long after Interplay went out of business. The same won't be possible with Half-life 2.

I *really* dislike that part of Steam. Being able to download the games you've bought at will is great, but I seriously dislike the requirements that I have to activate it on *their* server.

And the actual implementation is nothing short of horrible. It's unstable, unreliable and acts up whenever a new game is released.
When I try to launch a singleplayer game, I don't think a message along the lines of "Servers are busy. Please try again later" is acceptable.

About preventing piracy, two relatively new top-selling games had literally no copy protection. Galactic Civilizations 2 and Oblivion are both 100% free of any copy protection. And yet, they both managed to get onto the top 10 sales (and in the case of Oblivion, at least, stay at the #1 spot for a good while)

So overall, no, I really dislike Steam. It's not the business model of online distribution that bothers me, I'm fine with that. Downloading games instead of buying a box is a great way of cutting costs, and ensuring faster access to newly released games. It's the restrictions that Steam in particular puts in place I hate.

When I've paid full price for a game to be played singleplayer, offline, I expect it to be playable, regardles of whether Valve's servers are having a bad day, or whether Valve went out of business 14 years ago.

 

I'm having a hard time deciding on this...
The activation of software you bought is just a waste of time. Literally, it took me about 30 min to activate HL2 the first time I bought it due to busy servers.
On the other hand I can download HL2 anytime I wish, which is great since one of my discs has a huge scratch on it after a minor accident. Plus steam updates your games automaticly and lists all new games in an easy to use list.

 

Jalf, If I read your post right your able to play any Steam FPS offline and without a disk. So if they go down, you are only out of updates as any company? This is a must for me as I travel 800 miles to work once a month! Once I'm at work we torture the WebSense server all day out of spite.

OK, I don't remeber now but you may have to sync online when restoring a back-up? Well, hope they do the right thing and unlock anything before the doors close

ID software is another winner. Once you initially register online, you don't need the ##$!!@ key disk. I have a vast collection of NO CD keys that are virus free

But 100% agree, no C.P. is best. I'm sure the Steam servers were not cheap to set up.

 

WeelyTM: I know that SafeDisc, etc. have turned me OFF of a number of games. For example, FarCry will absolutely NOT install on my desktop, even sans Alcohol. Their protection is just completely incompatible with my DVD burner. Screw it. I buy games, but I like copying them to my drive using Alcohol 120% or whatnot in order to be able to just use them without carrying a bunch of CD's around with my laptop. It's not like they actually use the disc any more, and it's just a "dongle" essentially. I haven't bought an ID game lately, so I may have to look into Quake 4 when I finally stump up the cash for an HGL-30

 

I think that the Steam business model will continue to expand and could potentially lower or maintain current prices on games, which is good for the consumer. With current games costing more and more to produce, spending less money on copy protection, boxing, and CD pressing could help keep game prices down. It seems that the games on Steam are relatively cheap.

For me, I only buy games that have an engaging online experience or experience that cant be replicated when ripped or copied. I dont really rip or copy games, but I think that providing extra's that are online or an online experience that requires a login/password or unused cd key is the answer to piracy. I dont see myself spending $50+ for a shortlived experience.

A similar strategy to what Xbox Live has done with downloadable content could encourage more people to purchase games.

 

not only are they cheap they run on pretty much every system out their (i can run cs:s and dod:s satisfactorily with a geforce2 mx400 :s) the main thing is they constantly add new and FREE material for games and relsease newer ones on a frequent basis they clearly make the gamer feel like they enjoy the business they're in. when compared to the service disaster of ea/dice for bf2 (which is w/o a doubt a very fun game) they come out looking like the best **** game developers/providers on the face of the earth

 

I personally love steam. The automatic updating is great, and with a fast connection updating and valadating before I play takes about 5 seconds. Ive downloaded many trailers, demos, and whole games through steam, its great. But I too like to have the disc, so I own HL2 and EP1 discs, just to have and display so I can see them, even though ive only used them once for the install. Plus being able to play without the disc is great, like said before if you loose it your ok, just download on a new system and play!

BTW saturnotaku, X3 is an awesome game. I would be alot further excpt everytime I try and go on SETA to make some money while I sleep my computer gets a "blue screen of death". Not from the game, from something else, ive gotten prolly 15-20 in the last week. Currently working with the Dell techs to work it out.