[RD] Games as a Service

[hobbsyoyo]

I think you may be a little bit of a cheapskate, Hobbs.

I'm not working full time. I can't spend much outside of the budget for the moment.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I was looking at my Steam Trading Cards (I still have no idea what they're for) and I noticed that the "sell" button was greyed out.

You must have a Steam purchase that is between 7 days and a year old with no recent chargebacks or payment disputes. Steam Support cannot remove this restriction.

I'm just trying to figure out why they'd put in that kind of restriction to begin with.

 

[cardgame]

That used to be in mine as well but it was removed when I signed up for 2FA

 

[Gorbles]

They put it in to incentivise 2FA, which I had to enable recently. Hate it, hate their buggy 2FA, hate that the Android app still sucks, and as a developer itself the list of peeves I have about Valve who literally roll in money just gets longer.

 

[Arakhor]

That probably works fine until your phone throws a wobbly and resets all its data. I was locked out of my SWTOR account when that happened to me.

 

[Gorbles]

I recently couldn't get into Steam because the push notifications stopped working. Steam then locked me out for multiple login failures (because they timed out), and then twenty minutes later my phone was spammed with unending, but now useless, push notifications.

There are better 2FA implementations, and there are worse ones, but Steam's is not one of the better

 

[Arakhor]

I now feel dreadfully British for committing "throws a wobbly" to text whilst also thinking nothing of it.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Is Stadia going to die?

It didn't have a strong launch and this was one service where it would have instilled a lot of faith in the tech had it been a relatively seemless launch. On top of bugs and other issues, it doesn't seem to be living up to the baseline specs either. Sure, they've got room to grow and billions to potentially throw at the problems but I feel like Google is very fickle about sticking with big projects that don't meet with huge success in short order.

I have seen next to nothing on the service in the gaming press either which isn't a good sign though I admit I don't go looking for Stadia news.

 

[MaryKB]

I don't even really know what Stadia is

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I think it's a game.

I think it's a game.

EDIT: Google Stadia. Streaming platform for games.

 

[Synobun]

It was always going to fail so long as the majority of the gaming world lives in an ISP ghetto. Even intranet streaming is garbage due to interference and crappy routers. I have no idea why people thought it'd be a success. Even Remote Desktop has delay and lag still, and people are trying to stream HD games? No way that's accessible to the majority of gamers.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

It was always going to fail so long as the majority of the gaming world lives in an ISP ghetto. Even intranet streaming is garbage due to interference and crappy routers. I have no idea why people thought it'd be a success. Even Remote Desktop has delay and lag still, and people are trying to stream HD games? No way that's accessible to the majority of gamers.

I actually mentioned something like that in an email to Ross Scott (who made that GaaS is a fraud video I posted earlier). That online-only and streaming really sucks for those in the parts of the world with a crappy internet connection, including large swathes of North America. I think he brought it up somewhere, possibly in the aforementioned video, but my memory is failing me at the moment.

 

[Takhisis]

Is Stadia going to die?

I hope so. During my Internetless week I tried alternative methods of access to the Internet and found that Google has decided to lock me out of my own accounts without any valid explanation so screw them.

 

[uppi]

It was always going to fail so long as the majority of the gaming world lives in an ISP ghetto. Even intranet streaming is garbage due to interference and crappy routers. I have no idea why people thought it'd be a success. Even Remote Desktop has delay and lag still, and people are trying to stream HD games? No way that's accessible to the majority of gamers.

In the cities, the problem is not so much the ISP, but the reliance on the crappy concept of wifi for mobile connectivity. If you run a cable to your computer, you should be able to get enough bandwidth and decent latency for this. But if you have a cable-limited system anyway, you might as well spend some extra on a decent graphics card instead of buying this service.

Maybe if you are lucky enough to be near an empty 4G (or 5G) cell and have the data plan to cover for it, this could be interesting.

 

[Takhisis]

If you run a cable to your computer, you should be able to get enough bandwidth and decent latency for this.

That's not enough. Down here in South America the distances are huge and even with a direct (cable) connection it's impossible to play except maybe with people in the same city or region. Playing with people outside the continent has proven inviable, except back when I played GunBound.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

I now feel dreadfully British for committing "throws a wobbly" to text whilst also thinking nothing of it.

It's OK, sweetie. I get it.

 

[Zardnaar]

Netflix for games short term is probably going to be something like gamepass. Pay money download games from selection.

I use gamepass and EA access. EAs not great but it's only around $25 a year. Being able to play Mass Effects without having to dig out my 360 is great.

More or less stopped buying games now.

 

[Takhisis]

Netflix for games short term is probably going to be something like gamepass. Pay money download games from selection.

And then have them removed at random when Netflix decides to pull the game?

It's OK, sweetie. I get it.

I think that your concept of ‘dreadfully British’ might be slightly different from Arakhor's.

 

[Synobun]

The distributor is rarely the one who decides to remove something from the library. The rights holder is.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

The distributor is rarely the one who decides to remove something from the library. The rights holder is.

I found this: https://www.pcgamer.com/10-reasons-games-disappear-from-steam/

Apparently one game...ran out of keys, which raises a lot of questions.