Valve defends PC gaming and gets Cloudy

Some of this news is a few days old but damn I love Valve. They have the cojones to say what the real state of affairs is for the PC instead of stating piracy as the death of sales for games.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/878/878144p1.html

Their main points are that to countervent piracy there are a few business models that will work succesfully. One is simply through digital distribution like Steam which has nearly doubled in users over the last year. Valve is actually close to selling more games through digital downloads than through boxed hard copies.

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/05/valve-digital-s.html

Valve is also a fan of the free games with microtransactions and thinks this is also a viable route. They also claim (which we all know) that PC are the forerfront of the game industry and are pushing the boundaries further.

Also they have announced Steam Cloud, a major new upgrade to Steam.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3168020

It allows you to keep your game saves and settings no matter what pc you log onto. It also has a host of other updates such as driver updater and system requirements checker.

 

Gotta love Steam. Not only the service but the games they make.

 

Thanks Forerunner! The cloud thingie looks good to me.

 

I love steam just with it did not take up all that memory.

 

OMG Steam is seriously f***ing amazing.

I'm waiting for the day that all games are sold through Steam.

Although boxed copies are great for the nostalgia.

 

Yep looks like we can always rely on Valve they are absolutely amazing

 

Yup. At least they stay true to the platform that made them famous unlike some other less honorable companies. I love how he states that when talking about sales for Left 4 Dead the word piracy never came up.

 

Hear hear , kudos to Valve on this.
Half Life 2 and Steam are among the best things PC gaming has ever seen.

 

Steam is awesome, I bought a boxed copy of Orange Box after getting Half Life 2 Deathmatch for free in the nVidia promotion. Team Fortress 2 is my favorite, but being able to save your game on whatever PC you play on will be nice.

 

Biggest downfall I see is if Valve goes belly up. Kind of like iTunes. You literally spend thousands of dollars in digital purchases only to see them go bye-bye once the going gets tough. Apple knows how to survive the hard times, so they're less likely to have issues, but Valve is still a young company.

 

I <3 Valve. I've bought almost all their games over the years... well with the exception of DoD: Source, I think I do.

 

now all we need is the other gaming companies to get out of the consoles bed and make a change for pc gaming, im very ashamed at companies like EPIC, Midway, and Capcom lately because of the lack of attention to the pc games and ports they have brought out.

 

Very cool links Forerunner, I had heard about the Steam cloud, but the first article had some new interesting developments as well.

Valve has a complete Steam patch ready on their end that will unlock every game in your account from Steam's DRM. Essentially, they have a panic/nuke button for when they have 24 hours to close up their company and need an instantly deploying safe switch to preserve their customers' purchases. If this happens, you will be able to keep/play your games, but you'll have to back them up yourself, Steam will no longer be available for downloading.

Hopefully Valve will never NEED to deploy the "Oh S*#$" Patch, but there is some comfort in knowing it is ready at a moments notice.

 

So basically you'll have to get on their servers during that 24 hours then to unlock everything? Hopefully there will be a downloadable patch available for some time, that will unlock everything.

Good to hear though that they have something like this, otherwise they could easily just screw the customer.

That makes me realize I better back up all my Steam stuff. Hell, HDD's are so damn cheap anymore, considering an external 500GB costs not much more than $100.

 

I think Valve is doing some great things for the PC Gaming industry.

Also, it was interesting to hear about the patch in case Valve goes belly up. I hadn't heard about that before.

 

Best phrase in the articles:

Incredible how the gaming industry as a whole can't just see that and how services like Steam are an enormous step in the right direction about this.

 

Valve really is an amazing company given its history, distribution methods and gaming titles. Here's to its continued prosperity for the thousands of FPS gamers out there (and Steam affiliate fans)

 

Valve rocks... it has Steam, and it has the most optimized games for PC out there

 

Hehe yeah. Though Left 4 dead seems a bit more demanding than their half life games, I'm very excited for it. It will run fine but many not as the highest resolutions with the 8600.

 

I still buy the boxed copies... I figure I'd spend 50$ either way so why not have the box for display or easy install with no internet? :]

Edit: Although I do wish I got the digital bioshock. I really thought id just be able to put in my retail key :[

 

yeah- valve games can be bought retail and used with steam- but non-valve games have to be bought through steam if you want to use steam with the game.

highly recommend buying the steam version of the game vs the boxed alternative, if the steam version exists.

 

I second that, there are about 15 titles I own in boxed form I really wish I could register on Steam. I can't stand carrying these 15 CDs around with me when I could just have them available on Steam!

Boxes get in the way, the only cool part is the box art.

 

Valve FTW. Piracy is just an excuse!