Why All The Hate?

Although Bliz and Activision continue to function as independent design and programming teams, they're one company, which is what matters when determining who owns what.
 
G-Max said:
LOLWUT? Vivendi owns Activision Blizzard. Activision Blizzard runs WoW. How can they possibly have nothing to do with each other?

Correction: Vivendi Games merged with Activision Blizzard. Vivendi Games was a subsidiary of Vivendi Universal, now known simply as Vivendi.
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Ah, right. Vivendi never comes up in anything about Activision-Blizzard so I'd forgotten exactly what happened.

EA bought Westwood, forced them to release Tiberian Sun before it was finished, produced the completely nonsensical Red Alert 2 and C&C-in-name-only Generals, then liquidated Westwood and drove the entire C&C franchise into the ground with the increasingly horrible Tiberium Wars, Red Alert 3, and Tiberian Twilight. What has Activision done that could possibly compare, aside from breeding a generation of CoD-tards?
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That is hardly unique to any one publisher, most of the big ones do that. Capcom, EA, Activision, NAMCO-BANDAI, SEGA, etc.

Both Activision and EA have bought up numerous Studios and then shut them down or run them into the ground and both of them are extremely greedy. However, in the last few years Activision has really 1-upped EA. They produced way too many Guitar Hero games and killed of the series and developer because of it, Call of Duty's quality continually drops with each release, mediocre map packs, and general greediness over caring about developing good games.

Activision also only has a few games it now publishes really, mostly crappy shovelware TV/Movie games, Prototype, Call of Duty and Blizzard's games. Most of their non-Blizzard good developer studios were shut down or gutted (Infinity Ward lost most of its lead team members and developers a couple of years ago because they didn't like the direction Activision wanted to take the CoD games in and they are currently suing each other).
 
But CoD was always crap, and what serious gamers ever really cared about Guitar Hero anyway?
 
Let's say Robert Kotick manages to one-up EA by himself. Which is no small feats.

And as much I hate Steam, Origin is even worse, and EA is ten times more suspicious than Valve to abuse the information it datamines on your computer.
 
The first two Call of Duty games were pretty good at the time, and Call of Duty 4 still has competitive play and was a good (although far from perfect) game. The series immediately went downhill from there.

I didn't play Guitar Hero myself but Rock Band was/is lots of fun although I only liked playing the guitar for it. I don't miss the Guitar Hero series but it is just an example of trying to pump out too many sequels too quickly and killing a series and that Activision only cares about profits, even more so than EA.

EA hasn't given up on regaining the position of "most popular publisher to hate on" though.
 
Maniacal said:
Steam does have serious competitors, and they all follow the same price gouging for Aussies.
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1. Overpriced games in Australia. (Sad smilie)
2. Lot of boxed games I have arent supported/ redemed through steam
3. No Stat tracking for non-steam games

maybe next sale someone can gift me the games in exchange for some Paypal reinbursement ?
 
Akka said:
I don't remember saying that Steam ruined the "gaming experience". I said it trampled over consumer's rights.
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But getting your rights trampled implies that you can't wnjoy games as much because of it. Plus, if you boycott Steam you might miss out on some games you would really enjoy and to me that seems like something that wouldn't make gaming as fun.

You could start Steam and play the game already installed, yep.
Could you have installed a game requiring Steam ? No, because it requires Internet connection.
Does Steam datamine your info on your computer ? Yes. Your argument may be "I don't notice" or "I don't care", but that's not an argument about Steam not being invasive, that's just stating a fact about you not caring about.
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The only data I have noticed Steam collecting is my purchase history so they can recommend games to me. If they are collecting more data that I'm not aware of, I welcome you to provide proof of it. If you do that then I would probably swing around to your way of thinking since I am completely against the collection of personal info without consent.

Can Steam deactivate your game at will and is the EULA stating they can do it ? Yes. The fact they don't do it is one thing, but the fact they CAN and have the theorical RIGHT TO is not something I'm willing to consider as meaningless or not worth being mad about.

My point about people being "sheeps" is that people don't care about their consumer's rights being trampled upon as long as it's convenient and/or they don't notice.
Steam is choke-full of things that should never happen, but people don't care because they are just (for now) a minor annoyance, or something they don't realize/care about (see the first part of my answer above about datamining or ability to deactivate the game, it's exactly what I'm talking about).
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I think the real reason people are okay with it now is because on the surface it seems to be not that invasive and the issues with it are minor right now. Add the convenience factor into it and I believe it just boils down to the consumer believing it is a fair trade-off. If Steam becomes more invasive in the future or starts abusing the rights granted to it in the EULA, the consumer will "rebel" against it as they have done before (an example of which I will explain further down).

The slippery slope is based on minor inconveniences adding up. Ubisoft and Blizzard are already pushing for permanent Internet connection. With the growing majority of people having access to cheap and permanent broadband, they can make seem this new push as another "minor inconvenience". And so on.
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They can push for it all they want but it won't happen and the consumer will stop buying their products if they try to implement it. This was proven when EA released Command & Conquer 4. Command & Conquer 4 required a permanent connection even for single player, and because of that the sales for that game were absolutely abysmal. EA tried to blame the development team and fired all of them, but when people were asked what they hated the most about the game, it was the permanent internet connection that was brought up. This shows me that teh average consumer is not as ignorant to the issue as some people think and if these companies go too far the consumer will let them know by not purchasing their products.

What infuriate me is the casualness with which people shrug about their consumer's rights, just because it's only a "minor inconvenience", and how much they seem to not care about where they are headed (violating privacy seems pretty major to me, and it's becoming more and more pervasive, with more and more people saying "I don't care").
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Like I said above, I don't think it's that they don't care, they just see it in its current state as a fair trade-off. Now if Steam and other DD services become more invasive or abusive, then we will see a decline in their usage and PC game sales will once again tank like they did a decade ago.


Can you explain me how you link "caring about your rights" with "fighting against science" ?
For all the accusations about how I'm not nice, this scream pure, raw, ad hominem to me.
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Yeah, it wasn't the best analogy, but it was all I could think of at the moment. My reasoning was that the Catholic Church was standing against progess and, for better or worse, Steam is progress in the PC gaming industry. I guess a better analogy would be protesting the development of nuclear weapons. The technology is there and it will go forward despite protests, so instead of trying to do away with it altogether, your efforts would be better used trying to turn the negative into a positive.

Yeah, it's pretty much the same concept : people being treated as children by a company, and accepting it.
Sorry, Valve isn't my dad, and I don't intend to ever let it becomes him.
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The best thing I can equate it to is how they would deal with problems in the Army. Basically, the idea is that once one person screws something up, they ruin it for everyone else. So because a few people decided to abuse their Steam account, Steam took "group punishment" measures to dissuade people from trying to use their account in a dishonest way. Do I agree with that method of dealing with an issue? No I don't, but I do see why they did it. And since it hasn't negatively impacted me yet, I don't worry about it. The day they start cutting my access for no good reason, is the day I will rejoin the ranks of the anti-Steam crowd.
 
Commodore said:
They can push for it all they want but it won't happen and the consumer will stop buying their products if they try to implement it.
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I guess you haven't looked at what blizzard is doing with Battle.net 2.0 then. SC2 requires you to login if you want achievements while doing singleplayer, D3 will flat out require a login to battle.net to play at all.
 
Thrawn said:
I guess you haven't looked at what blizzard is doing with Battle.net 2.0 then. SC2 requires you to login if you want achievements while doing singleplayer, D3 will flat out require a login to battle.net to play at all.
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But SC2 still has an offline mode, and I guarentee the sales for D3 will suffer in sales because of the permanent connection requirement. The sales will still be good since it is such an anticipated game, but they won't be as good as they could have been otherwise.

I also think Blizzard can get away with a lot more than other companies simply because they put out games that people really really want to play. I mean just look how crazy people went when SC2 was finally announced.
 
There'll be a fair number of people getting it for free as well, through the WoW annual pass.

I actually feel like that sort of online authentication is going to become far more normal than it is now, especially as internet infrastructure improves over time. Developers will probably look to it as a method to combat piracy, even if it doesn't really work.
 
Commodore said:
But getting your rights trampled implies that you can't wnjoy games as much because of it. Plus, if you boycott Steam you might miss out on some games you would really enjoy and to me that seems like something that wouldn't make gaming as fun.
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The first sentence doesn't make any sense to me. What is the link between consumer rights and game enjoyment ?
As for the second, no. Ironically enough, the more they push DRM, the more they make what DRM are supposed to fight the best alternative.
The only data I have noticed Steam collecting is my purchase history so they can recommend games to me. If they are collecting more data that I'm not aware of, I welcome you to provide proof of it. If you do that then I would probably swing around to your way of thinking since I am completely against the collection of personal info without consent.
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I'll refer you to the millions of threads that popped up when Civ5 was announced on Steam. Some of them had a quite detailed info about it (there was also the thread explaining how Steam in offline mode still try to connect to the Internet and still download/upload data if it can).
I think the real reason people are okay with it now is because on the surface it seems to be not that invasive and the issues with it are minor right now. Add the convenience factor into it and I believe it just boils down to the consumer believing it is a fair trade-off. If Steam becomes more invasive in the future or starts abusing the rights granted to it in the EULA, the consumer will "rebel" against it as they have done before (an example of which I will explain further down).

They can push for it all they want but it won't happen and the consumer will stop buying their products if they try to implement it. This was proven when EA released Command & Conquer 4. Command & Conquer 4 required a permanent connection even for single player, and because of that the sales for that game were absolutely abysmal. EA tried to blame the development team and fired all of them, but when people were asked what they hated the most about the game, it was the permanent internet connection that was brought up. This shows me that teh average consumer is not as ignorant to the issue as some people think and if these companies go too far the consumer will let them know by not purchasing their products.
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The first part explains exactly why I'm mad both at Steam (it describe how it is abusive) and at the people who support it (because they support it, and as such make it a viable platform, which makes it spread and hence indirectly affects my own consumer situation).
The second part is, in my opinion, wishfull thinking. The very principle I denounce with the slipery slope argument is that people are progressively used to have less and less rights.

Look at this very thread. Some years ago, requiring your game to connect to the Internet to play would have been totally unacceptable. A fear years later, being required to be constantly online would have been totally unacceptable. Today ? The first one is seen as "unintrusive", and the second is gaining ground (first it was Ubisoft, that took a lot of flak about it, but still managed to sell a lot of Assassin's Creed II ; now it's Blizzard with Diablo III, and people barely protest).

No, as much as I would like it, I don't believe people will "revolt". I think they will simply do what's happening right now (some saying "it's not an issue", some saying "it's bad"), but with the limite each time a little farther toward a "consumer-treated-like-a-children" with no rights.
Yeah, it wasn't the best analogy, but it was all I could think of at the moment. My reasoning was that the Catholic Church was standing against progess and, for better or worse, Steam is progress in the PC gaming industry. I guess a better analogy would be protesting the development of nuclear weapons. The technology is there and it will go forward despite protests, so instead of trying to do away with it altogether, your efforts would be better used trying to turn the negative into a positive.
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Your analogy is, simply said, biased and loaded. You equate Steam with progress, which is already a way to dishonestly twist the discussion to make it appear as a rift between "progressive minds" and "backward minds".
HOW is Steam progressive and positive compared to non-abusive systems ? I'm pretty sure that the part you will list as progress (let me throw a wild guess : digital distribution ?) are not what I'm battling against (DRM, data-mining, removal of consumer rights).
The best thing I can equate it to is how they would deal with problems in the Army. Basically, the idea is that once one person screws something up, they ruin it for everyone else. So because a few people decided to abuse their Steam account, Steam took "group punishment" measures to dissuade people from trying to use their account in a dishonest way. Do I agree with that method of dealing with an issue? No I don't, but I do see why they did it. And since it hasn't negatively impacted me yet, I don't worry about it. The day they start cutting my access for no good reason, is the day I will rejoin the ranks of the anti-Steam crowd.
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Except we are not in the Army, we are not a unit, we are citizens and consumers, and "group punishment" is simply TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.

And the day they start to dare cutting your access will be the day you will have become powerless to stop it (or even worse, you will see it as "normal"), because they will have each time moved the "acceptable limit" a little bit farther, and each time you will have said "it's no big deal".
Commodore said:
But SC2 still has an offline mode, and I guarentee the sales for D3 will suffer in sales because of the permanent connection requirement. The sales will still be good since it is such an anticipated game, but they won't be as good as they could have been otherwise.

I also think Blizzard can get away with a lot more than other companies simply because they put out games that people really really want to play. I mean just look how crazy people went when SC2 was finally announced.
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SC2 requires an Internet connection to be activated, and requires to be connected once a month to Internet to keep the game activated.

Another little step toward removing the consumer rights. Another little step that is probably seen as trivial and not worth being mad at.
But they add up, and add up...
 
That doesn't have anything to do with Steam or this thread... EDIT: Read further on that page, heh heh heh :D

here are extremely few other developers who should even be trying something like this and I think that DF can pull it off. Hopefully there won't be a bunch of indie devs getting inspired by this though.
 
Sorry for resurrection of this thread. D3 will require permanent internet connection? Then I'll kiss a goodbye to it. So much that I like to play Civ5 and get Iphone, I just hate to depend on something. I like to be free. Also the fact that steam failed me reinforce my hate on it and the like.
 
Isn't D3 a multiplayer game?

Yes I know you can play it in single player, but even in D2 single player I played with a server character so on occasion I could multiplay (beating Diablo solo was always difficult for me- I could do it, but I'd use a ton of rejuv potions)
 
Multiplayer is cool and all but D1 and D2 have had very good singleplayer portions and many people don't really care that much about the multiplayer (if at all). Even though we've moved beyond Dial up the only real reason they are pushing the always-online for the SP is for their stupid item shop.
 
Steam has done more for indy companies, and niche genres, than just about anything else - flash gaming might be the other 'savior', and that's a bit of apples vs. oranges.

For that alone, I love Steam.
 
Steam is great. there is no real-life shop that has that many games to offer, and does so many sale actions. Or keeps your games up to date and lets you take easy screenshots (fraps is rubbish unless you pay)

I still often buy discs, but thats just because i like to have things in my hands, together with the manual that i read while its installing.

Now Origin (from EA) thats crap
 
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