Round 4 of Would you use Steam for Rebirth thread

[Jumee]

Sad to tell you Rusky that your or my Steam account and those of all other Steam users are actually not "worth" anything.

If you really think your account is worth 1300 $, try to sell something from your account or the whole account.

have you actually ever re-sold your CD? IMO this is not an argument, and when he said worth he just meant that he spent a lot of money on it, and also I have to agree with him in a sense that in my hometown finding a legal CD for a very long time was close to impossible. And finding games like X - still impossible.

EDIT: slightly re-worded

[rusky]

Sad to tell you Rusky that your or my Steam account and those of all other Steam users are actually not "worth" anything. You own nothing with Steam. They only granted you a personalised limited usage right which you rented by subscribing to their service. That happens with all these account binding services and this is why I have set myself a limit of 5-10 € for a subscription on these platforms. Although I have recently and also because of this thread decided to buy only independent titles for less than 10 € on Steam either. This thread has made me aware that by supporting publisher based titles through Steam, even if only as a sale or budget title, I am feeding the machinery in an unhealthy way. Although the DeusEx 3 deal on Steam today is tempting, but I say thank you, no thank you! The Steam-only publishers totally lost me as a customer.

If you really think your account is worth 1300 $, try to sell something from your account or the whole account. Sure you could sell the whole account, but you are not allowed to do so and if Steam noticed that you sold it, they will close the account.

This is also why I would be willing to give up my oh so precious Steam account (60+ games) every day if only we all could have a better system the other day. I lose nothing because I own nothing on Steam. Anything I "buy" on Steam gets worthless the moment it is bound to my account.

As has been pointed out, I merely wanted to show that I have spent quite a bit on various games, not that I hold some kind of "deposit" in Steam games.

In fact, whenever I buy a game I do so for it's entertainment value, and I never think about whether I will be able to resell it 10 years later, so for all intents and purposes whenever I buy a game, regardless of whether it is a boxed copy or Steam or w/e, it becomes "worthless", because I never intent to resell it.

I don't know about you but I don't consider my gaming collection a financial deposit.
Steam makes it easy and convenient for me to get and play the games I want to play *now*. I couldn't care less what happens 10 years later, and I sure as hell don't look to my games for anything other than entertainment.
If you are a collector and enjoy having various games in your collection then boxed editions are perfect for you, and even for Steamworks games (like X Rebirth) there will be boxed copies.
Yes they require Steam, but, as specified in the Steam license agreement, if Steam were to ever shutdown, all of your Steam games would be playable without Steam so your boxed copy would not lose any value at all.

[NUKLEAR-SLUG]

Although I have recently and also because of this thread decided to buy only independent titles for less than 10 € on Steam either. This thread has made me aware that by supporting publisher based titles through Steam, even if only as a sale or budget title, I am feeding the machinery in an unhealthy way. Although the DeusEx 3 deal on Steam today is tempting, but I say thank you, no thank you! The Steam-only publishers totally lost me as a customer.

Whether you buy AAA titles or stick purely to buying Indie only Steam still gets its percentage cut either way. That's kinda like saying you don't support sweatshops so you won't buy clothes produced that way but you'll still buy trainers. The only way to not ' feed the machine' is to not feed it at all.

[quase]

Slug, you have stated various times that it is not Steam making the conditions. I am standing against the publishers and without buying their titles they should notice. I do not really have a problem with digital distribution though, only with the way it is done most of the times on Steam.

I have no problems with independent developers using Steam because it is a big platform and it suits their needs. They usually do also not force additional DRM on top of it and in the best case their games can be played without Steam anyway, even though they've been sold over Steam. For a full price title by the big publishers, I expect a lot better service and especially account-freeness for the cut they take away from the developers.

If you feel games are like movies or music just a service, you will love the streaming services like Onlive or browser-based games which will be the future of gaming anyway. I for one rarely watch movies on TV or listen to music from the radio. Music-wise, I buy CDs mainly from independent artists as well. It doesn't bother me to do the same thing for games too in the future, if the industry insists on their trading conditions, even if I have to order these games directly from the developer.

[TBV]

If you are a collector and enjoy having various games in your collection then boxed editions are perfect for you, and even for Steamworks games (like X Rebirth) there will be boxed copies.
Yes they require Steam, but, as specified in the Steam license agreement, if Steam were to ever shutdown, all of your Steam games would be playable without Steam

If you are correct about this then I may be swayed. I do want a manual
too though; perfect reading material for the smallest room in the house.

My only worry then is how Steam will behave in the meantime. But I suppose
as long as they have stiff competition we wont progressively see their game-cloud moved
to ever-cheaper servers.

[Deleted User]

Yes they require Steam, but, as specified in the Steam license agreement, if Steam were to ever shutdown, all of your Steam games would be playable without Steam so your boxed copy would not lose any value at all.

I see no mention of that in the steam subscriber agreement. All I see is that any risk of using steam is entirely the users.

Here is the full agreement.

http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/

As for a manual, you will get a PDF file. I am sure I read somewhere on the forums that whether or not you will receive a printed manual with a steam tied physical retail package is entirely dependent on the publisher. I personally doubt you will get a printed manual.

[rusky]

Yes they require Steam, but, as specified in the Steam license agreement, if Steam were to ever shutdown, all of your Steam games would be playable without Steam so your boxed copy would not lose any value at all.

I see no mention of that in the steam subscriber agreement. All I see is that any risk of using steam is entirely the users.

Here is the full agreement.

http://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/

As for a manual, you will get a PDF file. I am sure I read somewhere on the forums that whether or not you will receive a printed manual with a steam tied physical retail package is entirely dependent on the publisher. I personally doubt you will get a printed manual.

You're right it wasn't in the agreement, I just remembered seeing it mentioned somewhere.
I can't seem to find where though but for what it's worth I found this:

http://web.archive.org/web/201006050629 ... stcount=28

And also,

Extracted from the Steam Subscriber Agreement, section 13(C,2):

"In the case of a one-time purchase of a product license (e.g., purchase of a single game) from Valve, Valve may choose to terminate or cancel your Subscription in its entirety or may terminate or cancel only a portion of the Subscription (e.g., access to the software via Steam) and Valve may, but is not obligated to, provide access (for a limited period of time) to the download of a stand-alone version of the software and content associated with such one-time purchase."

In other words, Valve MAY publish stand-alone versions of the Games on Steam (maybe DRM-free, like the ones from GoodOldGames) so you can have the install files without validation. But it depends on the developer/publisher; Valve could decide to publish their games, but (for example) Id, Ubisoft or Lucasarts could decide to not publish them.

[X2-Illuminatus]

Yes they require Steam, but, as specified in the Steam license agreement, if Steam were to ever shutdown, all of your Steam games would be playable without Steam so your boxed copy would not lose any value at all.

I see no mention of that in the steam subscriber agreement.

What rusky wrote pretty much sounds like the content of the Egosoft FAQ article What happens to my Egosoft games if Steam goes out of business?

As for a manual, you will get a PDF file. I am sure I read somewhere on the forums that whether or not you will receive a printed manual with a steam tied physical retail package is entirely dependent on the publisher. I personally doubt you will get a printed manual.

As for the manual:

That depends on the kind of edition. The first edition of the "boxed" versions always had a printed manual until now. While the final decision is made by the publisher, I don't know a reason, why this should change.

Source (See last question and answer)

[Deleted User]

Thanks for the source X2, I knew I had seen this info on the manual somewhere before.

Yes they require Steam, but, as specified in the Steam license agreement, if Steam were to ever shutdown, all of your Steam games would be playable without Steam so your boxed copy would not lose any value at all.

I see no mention of that in the steam subscriber agreement.

What rusky wrote pretty much sounds like the content of the Egosoft FAQ article What happens to my Egosoft games if Steam goes out of business?

As for a manual, you will get a PDF file. I am sure I read somewhere on the forums that whether or not you will receive a printed manual with a steam tied physical retail package is entirely dependent on the publisher. I personally doubt you will get a printed manual.

As for the manual:

That depends on the kind of edition. The first edition of the "boxed" versions always had a printed manual until now. While the final decision is made by the publisher, I don't know a reason, why this should change.

Source (See last question and answer)

Just to clarify the FAQ for what happens to my Egosoft games if steam goes out of business, see this one - the one that states no guarantees are in place:-

http://www.egosoft.com/support/faq/faq_ ... &version=0

[angrytigerp]

Thanks for the source X2, I knew I had seen this info on the manual somewhere before.

Yes they require Steam, but, as specified in the Steam license agreement, if Steam were to ever shutdown, all of your Steam games would be playable without Steam so your boxed copy would not lose any value at all.

I see no mention of that in the steam subscriber agreement.

What rusky wrote pretty much sounds like the content of the Egosoft FAQ article What happens to my Egosoft games if Steam goes out of business?

As for a manual, you will get a PDF file. I am sure I read somewhere on the forums that whether or not you will receive a printed manual with a steam tied physical retail package is entirely dependent on the publisher. I personally doubt you will get a printed manual.

As for the manual:

That depends on the kind of edition. The first edition of the "boxed" versions always had a printed manual until now. While the final decision is made by the publisher, I don't know a reason, why this should change.

Source (See last question and answer)

Just to clarify the FAQ for what happens to my Egosoft games if steam goes out of business, see this one - the one that states no guarantees are in place:-

http://www.egosoft.com/support/faq/faq_ ... &version=0

We do not guarantee to release further "NoSteam" executables when patching or updating our games, but should Steam cease operations entirely we would endeavour to ensure that such executables were available for all of our games.

The text specifically offers no guarantee when patching or updating, as in they're telling everyone waiting for nosteam patches because they don't like Steam that it's probably not going to show up.

However, the second part of the statement makes it seem that, barring something physically preventing them from doing so (e.g. Egosoft goes out of business themselves), they would release such an executable if Steam went down. They can't explicitly say "we WILL release such", because if they failed to (again, due to unforeseen circumstances e.g. a game industry crash where both Valve and Egosoft collapse), then they'd be lying to the consumers. It's just covering their ass.

[Kor'ah]

While dial-up and steamworks isn't exactly a good combo and those users will be left behind. Let's face it. A dial-up connection and any good game released in the last few years isn't going to work out well in itself. The current full X3:TC patch would take around 15 hours to on a good dial-up connection (4.5-5.0 kb/sec) to download. I don't think the new game is going to go back to the days of sub 20MB patches.

So a dial-up user is going to be screwed anyway by just how things are these days. Steam or no Steam.

[Rabiator der II.]

While dial-up and steamworks isn't exactly a good combo and those users will be left behind. Let's face it. A dial-up connection and any good game released in the last few years isn't going to work out well in itself. The current full X3:TC patch would take around 15 hours to on a good dial-up connection (4.5-5.0 kb/sec) to download. I don't think the new game is going to go back to the days of sub 20MB patches.

So a dial-up user is going to be screwed anyway by just how things are these days. Steam or no Steam.

A single player game should not need an internet connection at all for playing. Considering patches, you have a point for new games, but after a few months most games are patched enough to be played "as-is". Even from Egosoft

This said, I wonder if it would be possible to make a "Steam-optional" executable. As in, it checks for Steam on startup, and if Steam is available, it does the usual updating. If not, it displays a message "Steam unavailable, running in offline mode" and does that.
That might be a way for Egosoft to provide a "non-DRMed" version and still use Steam for the update service.

[Nova Scotia]

While dial-up and steamworks isn't exactly a good combo and those users will be left behind. Let's face it. A dial-up connection and any good game released in the last few years isn't going to work out well in itself. The current full X3:TC patch would take around 15 hours to on a good dial-up connection (4.5-5.0 kb/sec) to download. I don't think the new game is going to go back to the days of sub 20MB patches.

So a dial-up user is going to be screwed anyway by just how things are these days. Steam or no Steam.

I have done as much as 700 megs on my dial up and all of my X patches on dial up.
Patches are one time annoyance for dial up.Steam is an everyday annoyance for dial up and best reserved for shopping and multiplayer games with broadband access.
Single player games can live perfectly fine on dial up

IMO

[Slashman]

A single player game should not need an internet connection at all for playing. Considering patches, you have a point for new games, but after a few months most games are patched enough to be played "as-is". Even from Egosoft

But how would you obtain them 'as is'? You'd still need it patched to that version. Unless the player plans to wait for a re-release that is up-to-date out of the box, the problem of obtaining patches still exists.

I waited til Skyrim hit 1.3 before I bought it, but the box would still contain 1.0. If I had a slow connection and got the box, I'd still be fubarred...Steam or no Steam considering the relatively buggy nature of Bethesda games on release.

[Slashman]

I have done as much as 700 megs on my dial up and all of my X patches on dial up.
Patches are one time annoyance for dial up.Steam is an everyday annoyance for dial up and best reserved for shopping and multiplayer games with broadband access.
Single player games can live perfectly fine on dial up

IMO

Why would it be an everyday annoyance if the game wasn't getting patched everyday?

If dial-up is fine for patches of up to 700 megs(and I commend your patience), then unless you're patching everyday, I'm not sure how it would be an everyday annoyance.

When I was on dial-up, I'd try not to download anything over 100 megs.

It would be annoying in the sense that you couldn't play the game until it was patched, but once it got past the point where patches were frequent, I wouldn't think it would be an everyday thing.

[Deleted User]

We do not guarantee to release further "NoSteam" executables when patching or updating our games, but should Steam cease operations entirely we would endeavour to ensure that such executables were available for all of our games.

The text specifically offers no guarantee when patching or updating, as in they're telling everyone waiting for nosteam patches because they don't like Steam that it's probably not going to show up.

However, the second part of the statement makes it seem that, barring something physically preventing them from doing so (e.g. Egosoft goes out of business themselves), they would release such an executable if Steam went down. They can't explicitly say "we WILL release such", because if they failed to (again, due to unforeseen circumstances e.g. a game industry crash where both Valve and Egosoft collapse), then they'd be lying to the consumers. It's just covering their ass.

I appreciate what you are saying, but nevertheless, the consumer requires the third party (steam) to run the game. Should the third party (steam) fail you are being given no guarantee that the product will continue to work.

[the old one]

It realy amazes me how people see things,as an example the post office you would not allow the a rep from the post office to come to your house to check if you open your mail properly and read it correctly.You do how ever allow steam to dictate when and how you get patches and also to check in with big brother to make sure you are a good boy or girl.the old one

[Slashman]

It realy amazes me how people see things,as an example the post office you would not allow the a rep from the post office to come to your house to check if you open your mail properly and read it correctly.You do how ever allow steam to dictate when and how you get patches and also to check in with big brother to make sure you are a good boy or girl.the old one

So do you also live somewhere where the postal service doesn't check whether the items you send or receive in the mail are, in fact, legal? I should move out to where you are so I can finally get my deliveries of grenades, poisons and illegally modified firearms without all this sneaking around I have to do now...

[Argonaught.]

It realy amazes me how people see things,as an example the post office you would not allow the a rep from the post office to come to your house to check if you open your mail properly and read it correctly.You do how ever allow steam to dictate when and how you get patches and also to check in with big brother to make sure you are a good boy or girl.the old one

So do you also live somewhere where the postal service doesn't check whether the items you send or receive in the mail are, in fact, legal? I should move out to where you are so I can finally get my deliveries of grenades, poisons and illegally modified firearms without all this sneaking around I have to do now...

Customs check the post not the post service itself

Anyway, I think what the old one may be saying is better explained here:

1984

or maybe here:

Equilibrium

Handing over money for access to an item I can never hold in my hands just feels like robbery to be totally honest.

On the whole Steams a good idea, but there's no guarantees for my items with them should they fold.

I just like my physical games library too much to start buying Airware ones from Steam.

Hardcopy in hands and updates from steam i have no problems with though.

Argo.

[strude]

It realy amazes me how people see things,as an example the post office you would not allow the a rep from the post office to come to your house to check if you open your mail properly and read it correctly.You do how ever allow steam to dictate when and how you get patches and also to check in with big brother to make sure you are a good boy or girl.the old one

My post office hasn't required me to agree to any terms or conditions to that effect, so the point is..... pointless