Not just because I like being contrarian, but also because I can't stand being painted as some kind of whacko for expecting capitalists to do something to earn their money, I've got to pick this apart.
First off, regarding DRM: Tough. We as a gaming community brought it on ourselves through the active and passive acceptance of illegal file sharing. Say what you want about how information wants to be free, and greedy corporations, and how you shouldn't have to pay high prices for crappy games, and I'll come back with the Humble Bundle, where some indy game developers combined their packages and allowed you to choose your price from their download site, despite the separate price of these games being $80. You had to pay -something- even if it was just a penny, but the point is you got to decide the price. What happened? The average price paid came to less than $10, and over 25% of the downloads were stolen directly from the site, meaning not only was the hard work of the staff involved with each game not compensated for their work, but their work was stolen using their own resources and bandwidth.
Wow, listen to the RIAA's version of history 24/7 much, do ya?
I never heard of a single one of those games. I don't care if someone SAYS they're all their best-selling games, the same can be said for the huge C&C series, which I didn't enjoy. High ratings means I might give it a shot, not a guarantee that I'll like it.
Since these games were so popular, it stands to reason that many people who bought the bundle already had some or most of the games and didn't feel like paying a lot for them.
$80 may be the retail price, but don't confuse that with it's value. A thing is worth what a customer will pay.
How much effort did they spend to prove it was worth more than the electrons needed to acquire it? I wasn't made aware of any of it. Why would I get the "gotta havit" feeling when it wasn't advertised much?
Did they suggest an $80 donation, or did they just say "we sell these for $20 apiece"? With that kind of marketing, $10 apiece should make them ecstatic!
And how do you know 25% of downloaders "stole" the game? Is it possible that the overwhelming majority of those downloaders discovered the games were not to their taste? You know, grocery stores put samples out all the time, and they don't go broke because of it, they actually make additional sales from people not willing to spend $10 on a whole package of something they've never tried before. But not everyone buys. Call the cops!
How many of those were re-downloads, caused by bad connections or people who already paid just getting a copy for a second computer?
An unpaid download =/= a lost sale. Stop being so RIAA.
A low income =/= a bunch of freeloaders, it means you did a lousy job of selling me. Put ANYTHING up for sale for whatever anyone wants to pay, as long as they don't have to worry about limited supply, you'll find people will grab anything that's free even if they never actually use it. The only reason the 1 cent auctions work on ebay is because of limited supply. Offer something for a penny no one wants and it might not sell unless you also pay shipping.
I agree, there's a LOT of people out there ruining it for everyone, but what it shows is NOT that you should beat the tar out of your dwindling loyal customer base with lies and DRM schemes and haphazard agreements, it means you need to figure out how to compete with "free". Stardock has a great solution: give away the full, uncrippled game to get people hooked, then require paid registration for updates and add-ons; only the people who would've bought the game use your bandwidth. I hate subscription models, but those work too, when done right. Special treats in the form of physical objects work well (collector's tin, autographed manual, whatever).
There are tons of ways game makers can make money without raping their customers or addicting them to things and then forcing crap down their throats to get their fixes.
I think it's been made clear that Steam costs more than it's worth, but here's an illustration.
I used to drive a truck. My company bought into some fly-by-night directions company. Made it all but impossible to get good directions to where we had to make deliveries. The old system was accurate and darn good, but because someone got sold on that new system, us drivers had to contend with an unnecessarily tougher job that took longer to accomplish trying to get hold of usable directions. It was supposed to make the drivers' lives easier, but no one asked us if it did. They bought it because on paper it looked like there was a savings to be had, but in reality there were a lot of hidden costs. Experienced drivers got frustrated with it and quit. Then the influx of less-experienced drivers needed higher insurance costs and got in more accidents. Everyone made more late deliveries, wasted more gas trying to find addresses, more customers were lost due to declining service level, etc. A disaster. If they hadn't already been ripping off their drivers, they'd've gone under.
Steam is the same bill of goods. It had a short term savings, but in the long run it's going to lose money due to increasing customer frustration, just like using increasingly invasive and destructive DRM is like skeet-shooting your customer base. Maybe in Microsoft's case where you had like 99% of your users not paying it was okay to burn half your user base to get the other half to pay up, but the losses on game piracy aren't that big.
If I don't like Civ5, can I get a refund? Can I get my computer restored to its original condition before installation, with Steam fully removed too? Can I get back the 24+ hours of my life it'll take to download and install the game? I'd say it's all a big NO. So I'm not interested in Steam either.
