Noble Zarkon
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Gamespy servers closing, no comment from 2K
- Thread starter lindsay40k
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I wouldn't be too worried; it is in Steam's best interest to have a lot of customers. Like any sensible company, they would like to have a good reputation and many customers, even if that means charging less (and therefore making less). Valve is one of the better video game corporations; I'm far more worried about EA's intrigues.
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The White Wizard
Steam/Valve is not a publicly traded company, and can not be taken over by outside parties. Only companies traded on the stock market are at risk of a takeover.
Economics 101, yo.
Timsup2nothin
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Steam/Valve is not a publicly traded company, and can not be taken over by outside parties. Only companies traded on the stock market are at risk of a takeover.
Economics 101, yo.
IGN isn't publicly traded either, but you notice someone bought their game server operation and shut GameSpy down.
Yo
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The White Wizard
IGN put themselves up for sale. That's not a takeover. IGN was not making money. They still don't.
Valve will never sell out:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/177395/Newell_Valve_would_disintegrate_before_selling_out.php
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/ea-sought-to-buy-valve-for-1-billion-report/1100-6394880/
http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/ea-almost-bought-valve-for-1-billion/#!FH07p
I don't get the steam/valve hate here. Valve is the most-pro gaming company to appear in the last century. They support all platforms (even linux!). They have driven down PC gaming prices. They release original titles and don't endlessly rehash sequels. If you don't like Valve, you don't like PC gaming. That's all there is to it.
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Interesting that you brought up IGN. A great example of what I was trying to explain earlier. IGN owned Direct2Drive (D2D), one of the largest DD companies next to Steam at the time. I've about 30 to 40 games on D2D including Civ 4 for 10 years now. IGN sold D2D to Gamefly in 2011.
I still have my games. I will always have my games. The company may go away, but the assets don't.
It's a very simply business model..it's the now and future of PC gaming. Even if Steam decided to sell out, it would be ridiculous to think a company would just shut down a 2.5 billion+ business. That's just absurd. They might change some of the core steam apps, but the games would still be there and be yours.
Disks are dinosaurs, as is Gamespy..get over it. Won't be long before they start selling machines without disk drives.
Timsup2nothin
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LOL...Gabe Newell? As reliable sources go he's right up there with Wikipedia.
Any company CEO who says 'we will never sell' is basically saying 'when the right deal comes along I won't mind being called a liar' because there is no such thing as 'never' in business.
Econ 101, yo.
For the record Lymond I'm not opposed to digital distribution at all...I use it myself. I do make my own back-ups, because reinstallation goes way faster that way if it is needed, but it isn't out of concern about 'possible loss of games'. Steam is my least favorite digital distributor because their draconian efforts at DRM make reinstalling without downloading more difficult than GameStop, and I also don't like them because I have a gut reaction to false marketing techniques.
Here's to all the people who think CDs don't get lost, damaged or stolen
Not exactly sure what you want to say with that. I can't remembar any of my CDs ever beeing stolen, lost or damaged beyond repair. And even if so - there's a reason for the magic word "back-up"...
Noble Zarkon
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I understand the objections to Steam and I share many of them - but it has huge advantages of them. I haven't personally experienced any of these things but I know people who have - and a backup isn't helpful when you buy a new machine.
Football Manager perhaps has the best solution - a physical disk but then you can activate via Steam.
Steam/Valve is not a publicly traded company, and can not be taken over by outside parties. Only companies traded on the stock market are at risk of a takeover.
Economics 101, yo.
Sorry, but that's nonsense. Any company that has an owner can be handed over from one owner to another. You really don't need a stock market to buy a company...
Yes it's a pity to see people reading the same (good) arguments over and over again and never getting them. I don't have a problem with people not sharing or not agreeing with anti-STEAM-arguments - but not getting them, oh well...
Well, there have been budget re-releases or sales of succesfull games long before STEAM was around. Actually it's shocking how much old games cost on STEAM outside of special sales windows - compared to what my local supermarkets wants for them regularly (just an example: the older LEGO games in shops usually cost 6,99 to 10 EUR. At STEAM they usually are 19,99 to 29,99...)
Well, them I must be the living proof that your statement is wrong. I bought, played and loved PC-Games decades before I knew how to spell STEAM.
Timsup2nothin
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Yes it's a pity to see people reading the same (good) arguments over and over again and never getting them. I don't have a problem with people not sharing or not agreeing with anti-STEAM-arguments - but not getting them, oh well...
It's a validation thing. I shop here. For me to be 'right' everyone else has to shop here too. So if they present a reason they don't shop here I take it to mean 'I'm wrong'. I either have to 'prove myself' or stick my fingers in my ears and say 'lalalalalalala' until they go away.
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The White Wizard
CD's do not last forever as a medium. They have a shelf-life of 10-20 years. Next decade, you may be unpleasantly surprised to pop a cd in and find it is blank.
Wikipedia was found to have better article quality and few errors than mainstream Encyclopedias. I would trust Wikipedia over a random forum-goer because with Wikipedia I can at least check the sources.
Not everyone is in this world for the money. Gabe Newell already has his billions, there is no need for him to sell out. He's already rich.
What DRM? You just need to be online once to install the game, and you can set it to offline mode forever. That is infinitely better than the SecureROM crap Civ4 came with.
Ah. You are in Europe. You are already being shafted on game prices, due to your location. USA prices are much lower.
Timsup2nothin
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I love how Steam fans always pop immediately to SecuROM. I freely admit that Steam isn't the absolute worst DRM in the entire world ever. That's a long way from the 'it doesn't exist' pretense you are echoing...let me guess, Gabe Newell says Steam isn't about DRM, it's by gamers for gamers, and you believe it.
By the way, there is no one on earth more driven to get richer than a rich man...that's how he got rich in the first place. So if you are counting on Gabe Newell to hold on to Steam because he 'doesn't need the money' you should stop playing the 'Economics 101, yo' card, because you clearly slept through class.
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The White Wizard
No, you clearly missed the lecture on market capitalization and company size.
Valve was valued at 1Billion, 2 years ago. It's easily worth 3-5Billion now, possibly more. How many companies can actually afford such a deal, even if Valve wanted to sell? Microsoft? Google? Apple? Pretty much that is it. Most companies can not afford to buy a 5 billion dollar company. Valve is too far up the food chain now.
Lots of companies can afford to buy another for 5 billion. As a reference Comcast just paid 45 billions for TimeWarner Cable.
Is it possible that someone buys Steam in the future? Of course! But no one buys a 5 billion company and then just throws it out the window.
No one wants millions of Steamusers to lose their entire gaming collection. That would hurt the credibility of competing services.
The worst case scenario I can imagine is Steam becoming a service and effectively forcing you to rebuy games from another distributor and maybe copy a few rare titles from the pirate bay. Rebuying the old titles I still care about would maybe cost me 300 dollars. Would suck, but its not the end of the world and it's not very likely.
Is it possible that someone buys Steam in the future? Of course! But no one buys a 5 billion company and then just throws it out the window.
No one wants millions of Steamusers to lose their entire gaming collection. That would hurt the credibility of competing services.
The worst case scenario I can imagine is Steam becoming a service and effectively forcing you to rebuy games from another distributor and maybe copy a few rare titles from the pirate bay. Rebuying the old titles I still care about would maybe cost me 300 dollars. Would suck, but its not the end of the world and it's not very likely.
You don't have to buy in the steam shop (which is usually overpriced). You can buy there if you really want to support the developer and valve, but you can just as well just buy a steamkey in russia for example. Since you only buy digital goods it doesn't really matter in which country you buy and you can save a lot of money that way.
Timsup2nothin
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If VALVe actually tripled in value (or more) over the last two years the number of companies that would have the interest and ability to buy them is beyond counting, because every retailer and media company on the planet would be in the game, and plenty of them could pay five billion for a digital distribution division. Fortunately your glowing appraisal is colored by your Steam love more than reality.
Their gross sales could be expanding that rapidly (maybe), but their valuation would factor their limited market. Being the dominant digital distributor of computer games is a lot like being the dominant distributor of vegan products...the big retailers don't see enough market overall to even sniff at them.
They are trying to expand into other things, which might make them more attractive. They have certainly proven their ability to parley one successful product into launching another. You might want to consider how they dropped game making like a hot rock once they got busy in the much more lucrative digital distribution and DRM business though. If they leverage their way into the OS or console business digital distribution will probably be just as much of an afterthought at VALVe HQ.
Lord Tirian
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The think is: Steam is the only DRM that gives something in return to wash down the bitter taste, namely unlimited installs, independence from CDs, mod management, cloud saves.
If Steam would do nothing but DRM, it would be terrible. That way? It's... alright. Especially compared to the insane DRM other companies produced.
If you're fundamentally against DRM, yeah, I get your issue. If you can accept DRM as long as it's mostly seamless and unobstrusive? Steam is pretty much as good as it gets (unless you count ineffective DRM, like install CD keys, as DRM methods).
I would quite like to have an "escape clause" in case VALVe goes bust (that has nothing to do with selling out, even if GabeN is perfectly level and honest, he could be hit by a bus tomorrow and all his principles mean nothing), though.
But no DRM scheme has that at the moment, so it's either DRM or indie-only. And if I *have* to pick a DRM method (that's working for both sides), it's Steam.
Timsup2nothin
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Unlimited installs? Check.
Independence from CDs? Check.
Seamless and unobtrusive? Check, and I don't think of Steam that way in the least.
I'll ignore mod management and cloud saves because if you think those are benefits I can refer you to a couple forums where you would be eaten alive. They might be benefits if it were possible to implement them in a beneficial way, but if that's possible VALVe has yet to figure out how in many cases. Of course in VALVe style those problems are always the developer's fault.
So Impulse has all the benefits that Steam has to 'wash away the bitter taste of DRM'...and doesn't require an ad crafting gaming monitor to remain installed on your machine. They also had it first. What they lacked was a Half-Life 2 launching pad...and of course a marketing program that has any number of people convinced that Gabe Newell gave birth to those things personally and has somehow been given exclusive parental rights to them.
By the way, when you say 'unless you count ineffective DRM' you are basically voiding the whole discussion...unless you have discovered some sort of DRM that "works" from the publisher's point of view. VALVe may be doing a good job pitching Steam to publishers, but I doubt that anyone anywhere really believes it works...and if they do they should get into a different business.
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