lol, I know this guy!
Answer to people who wondered why 2K use Steam even for retail...
- Thread starter Rebel44
- Start date
Unless you have knowledge of how it worked then what you say is hearsay. Steam might have provided everything for free, knowing that they would reap rewards by having Steam installed with every copy of Civ. Hell, it might even be saving 2K money by them not having to host patch files.
And in the end, the game still costs $50 and it would have cost that amount with or without Steam.
I don't love or hate steam overall. I installed it awhile back when Empire TW forced me to. Personally I feel Steam was the best thing that came out of that just due to the fact Steam has some great deals from time to time which I took advantage of and I'm not a fan of the game really. However that said if I was in this guy's shoes I'd be pretty pissed off. I remember waiting for a couple of big titles to come out and searching forums for street date breakers. With a little luck sometimes you won and got a game early. To me it wasn't about any sort of bragging rights on forums or anything it was usually due to time and the hassle for me to go out on a Tuesday (usually) after work to pick up a game (in the days before digital downloads).
Since I'm on the other side of the coin for this one since I pre-ordered from D2D I won't be looking for a retailer that broke the date, but I do think it is a bummer that even if you have disk in hand you can't play. Had I not preordered I would've liked hunting for the game to get some weekend game time in... to bad that option seems to be going away.
Since I'm on the other side of the coin for this one since I pre-ordered from D2D I won't be looking for a retailer that broke the date, but I do think it is a bummer that even if you have disk in hand you can't play. Had I not preordered I would've liked hunting for the game to get some weekend game time in... to bad that option seems to be going away.
Steam is free for download by anyone. There is no fees anywhere. Whats wrong with being forced to run steam? It doesnt take up any resources, you can close the tabs, it comes up instantly whenever you want it up.
tom2050
Deity
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2005
- Messages
- 5,516
Again, Steam requires that you purchase a 3rd party monthly-fee service (or borrow someone else's) in order to install the game. Much better is the DRM that only requires it to get updates. Anyways, everyone should be able to figure out what I'm talking about. Because of this, Steam rates #2 in the least intrusive (or consumer friendly, or w/e you want to call it) DRM method.
But I suppose a good point is that people can't play it yet; although if I bought it from Walmart early, I would probably be pissed for a minute that it doesn't work. Just think, Civ 5 sitting on your desktop and it doesn't work yet (many consumers don't follow these things like we do; they don't know)!
But I suppose a good point is that people can't play it yet; although if I bought it from Walmart early, I would probably be pissed for a minute that it doesn't work. Just think, Civ 5 sitting on your desktop and it doesn't work yet (many consumers don't follow these things like we do; they don't know)!
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2001
- Messages
- 30,085
Moderator Action: The discussion is getting a bit close to advocacy of piracy for my liking - posts deleted.
Besides - this is off-topic.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
Besides - this is off-topic.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
Cite or redact. I've been using Steam for a dozen+ games and I have not yet to pay one cent in any monthly-fee service.
sosueme
Muckraker
I like the way Steam lets me legitimately install a game on multiple computers without requiring me to carry around a game disk or take a risk on an unofficial no-CD alternative. It makes doing things like throwing a game save on a network share and then switching from desktop to laptop simple. I got used to using it for Torchlight a while ago, so I'm not really too concerned about needing it for this too.
sosueme
Muckraker
I think he means internet access
If one would need internet just to install the game, just go to a library!
But obviously I don't need to tell you this.
j51
Blue Star Cadet
Afforess
The White Wizard
u think steam provide digital distribution and copy protection to 2k for free? sounds like a poor business model to me ... and the game doesnt just cost $50 ... that depends on where u live
IdleEnergy
Chieftain
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2010
- Messages
- 80
To be fair, 10 years ago, the only way to pirate games was via the sneakernet.
10 years ago? Pshaw, remember 20 years ago when the original Sim City came with that too-dark-for-photocopiers-of-the-time paper with 4 obtuse symbols paired with a city name. And they gave you these 4 symbols and you had to search the whole list of annoying symbols (all boxes with some portion of them filled or uncolored) and type in the corresponding city name? Or X-Com: UFO Defense where you had to type in a multi-digit code that appeared on a particular page of the manual?
Those were obtuse and annoying anti-piracy measures.
Steam is fairly light and non-intrusive. As for where Steam makes money: it's low[er than bricks and mortar]-margin, high-volume and the fact that it gets free advertising for sales from YOU. If you have people on your friends list they can see what you're playing. I've had friends buy games I was playing just to "check them out" because they saw I'd put a lot of time into it in a particular week.
EmpireOfCats
Death to Giant Robots
Yes, this factor is very real.
Also, and this is what I really, really like about Steam, you have all kinds of demos in one place. Download them, test them, throw them away again -- or not. Then, you buy the game. I couldn't be bothered to go out and hunt them down demos down on the various game company websites (Civ would of course be the exception). This way, everybody wins.
Agent Roo
Chieftain
If you take $50 as the base price, Valve take $20-$25 as their % of the sales price for selling through Steam (30% has been bandied about, but I think that is a special deal for indies and Valve take 40%-50% of AAA titles).
If you buy through a retail outlet, the sellers take at least $30 as their % of the mark up. Retail stores have to spend more than digital downloads on such things as a shop, then there's the middlemen and warehousing that the physical products need to move through.
That's the point that particular poster was trying to make, just didn't do it very well.
Buying through Steam would be cheaper if it weren't for price fixing forced by the retail stores. Personally, I'd be giving the retail stores the finger by releasing a AAA title that is cheaper on Steam due to the lower costs.
As for piracy, the key is to prevent pre-launch piracy. Generally it takes about 3 days to crack a title and free it from any DRM measures. HL2 was the first title for a long time that wasn't cracked until after it's release thanks to very robust encryption.
Or the dreaded "Enter the tenth word of the sixth sentence in the third paragraph on page 128 of the manual to continue." that was used at the start of a game (and in a few games) randomly during game play. Now that was annoying!
But, I suppose that was the best anti-piracy measures they could come up with in those days...
One really strange one that I remember (from the early 80's, I think), that required you to put a (supplied) sort of plastic "mask" (that hid most of the text, but revealed a sequence of letters) over a portion of a requested page of the manual and enter the letters still visible. That was a difficult one, as, if you were even slightly out in positioning the "mask" the wrong code was revealed.
So, to me at least, Steam is a breeze. A once off internet connection to register the game is a dawdle and let's face it, which serious (or causal) game player in this day and age doesn't have an internet connection?
Riffraffselbow
Chieftain
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2009
- Messages
- 46
To recap the point I was making in my deleted post: If you don't like steam, that's a shame. You have several options:
1) don't buy Civilization 5. Vote with your wallet.
2) send petitions to 2K. If they got 10,000 handwritten letters, they'd listen for Civ6 (or "Civilization 5: Milking the Fans", the inevitable expansion pack)
There are others, but one of them is verboten (see above), and I'm too lazy to list some of the others.
I'm just tired of how every time a game franchise I love gets a new release on steam, people cry about it, claiming Valve be stealing their data, or that Valve is suddenly going to turn evil, steal their games, and take candy from their babies.
http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/publishingservices.php
This is Steam's page designed to sell the concept of using steamworks to publishers. One of the things I love about Valve is a rational, forward-looking approach to why piracy is a problem and how it can be fixed:
Compare this kind of philosophy to stuff like Starforce, or to individual games that kind of took matters into their own hands, like the FIFA Manager series. Pirated versions of the FIFA Manager series exist, but they intentionally don't play properly. Yes, they spent dev time coming up with a clever way to gimp their game when it's cracked.
Sorry but thats worst case scenario, in a controlling country. Steam is a mixture of DRM, social apps (friends etc), a good multiplayer system, steam cloud, and a store with amazing deals every so often.....
I don't see where that leads to the result your talking about, others will try things like Ubisoft have tried and their sales have been killed off, Steam is that happy medium in the middle, Also Valve have confirmed that if Steam was ever at risk they would release patch system that removes the Steam requirement from all games you own, so they'd just be launchable offline permenantly...
Yes in theory if people idleally stood by the worst could happen, but generally like most things you find a balance, Steam is that balance, it offers security to the game devs securing day one goes un pirated. And it offers quality service to the players. Also Valve are massive Mod junkies so Steam will never be something that stops modding, thats individual companys choices like Segas with TW....
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