Michael Hartog

RE: My Thoughts on Digital Distribution

This is a response to this blog post. Go and read it first otherwise this one will make no sense at all.

Removal of Consumer Rights

I absolutely understand not wanting to lose this control. If I want a friend to borrow a a game all I have to do is lend them the cd, they play, give it back when they are done.

Instead, if I want someone to play my game I’d have to give them access to my entire account and I won’t be able to play these game myself at the time. Not to mention I don’t think steam would take this nicely.

However, on used game sales, I have sold maybe two PC games over the last 10 or so years I’ve been playing them for. It is not a big loss to me at all.

Publisher Are In Control

Totally in control. I have never, ever seen a sale on a Call of Duty game because Activision likes their money so much. However, I disagree that I can get games for a better deal in a local store. Left4Dead 2 has been as low as $33 USD, I bought it at $37 USD, the pre-order price was $45 USD and it is currently $50 USD. By comparison, it is $60 CAD at Futureshop and that price will never go down.

But that is a Valve made game, how about Red Faction Guerrilla which was released about 4 months ago for PC. $10 USD, on sale during the holidays, $20 USD standard, or $40 CAD at Futureshop.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game cheaper in a store than on Steam, but that might be a local issue.

The other side of this is that you don’t necessarily need a publisher apart from Steam. Osmos is done by Hemisphere Games which self-published the game. The link is then Hemisphere Games, Valve, then the customer where Valve replaces the normal publisher and retailer and the developer no doubt gets more money and easier access to the customer base.

DRM

DRM ontop of steam I find unacceptable. That would be games like Sacred 2 which list “3rd-party DRM: SecuROM™”. Absolutely unnecessary but not Steam’s fault.

One thing that is missed in the analysis is that steam is more than just DRM for games. It is an entire social network for gamers. I currently have 20 friends in-game with another 20 friends online. I want it to run in the background just like I want MSN and IRC to run in the background even if I’m not using them.

As for automatic patching, I greatly prefer this to the situation with Battlefield 1942. The game kept on being patched by DICE but several parts of the community split off at points. That means that in order to play with people X I had to have patch X and in order to play with people Y I had to have patch Y. The worst part? you can’t go down in order for patches so you have to completely uninstall and reinstall all these (hundreds of megs sometimes) patches to play with said lower version.

I do agree though that Valve shouldn’t have the problem of “we’re too popular” and servers start dying because they update something or put something on sale.

The other tiny bit in here is games that aren’t patched on Steam even though they are patched in retail. This is the fault mostly of publishers or archaic games. In the case of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Shadow of Chernobyl, the publisher and developer have a terrible relationship so the publisher won’t push the patch to Steam. Developers usually aren’t hindered by publishers in this regard but Valve talks to the publisher here. Many of the unpatched games are out of date. Developers might not even be able to support it if they wanted to simply because of how old they are.

Ignorance & Inflation

Sucks, but they need to show support with their wallet. I’m pretty sure it’s a similar situation on the PS3 as well. That’s not an excuse, just another example.

No Live Support? Really?

Google is having the same problem with the Android phone. It’s terrible if you’re used to calling someone up for tech support.

Summary

The problem I have relating to many of these issues is that I haven’t had any. The worst thing I’ve had is waiting 20 minutes to play TF2 after an update. I’ve never needed support. I’ve never found a game cheaper in store than on steam (and several times have bought something in a store and then there was a steam sale the next week). I don’t frequently lend out PC games. I have never been affected by Steam DRM.

I also love steam when compared to things like Futureshop and EB Games because the primary purpose of Steam is to sell PC games whereas the primary purpose of those places is no such thing. EB Games is for used console game sales and new release console games with XYZ premium content. They have the worst PC game displays I’ve seen with tattered old boxes filing up a shelf so you can’t see anything . Futureshop sells many things and still forces PC games to the “other” section.

And it’s because of that behavior that developers and publishers like Steam.