Part three of Steam debate - split and archived.

David Howland · Post by **David Howland** » Tue, 20. Mar 12, 19:42

Come come EmperorJon!
Allow me to clarify, the steam clients are the victims here, especially the ones addicted to a game under a different purchase system and then having their choice of supply removed.
So I hope when YOU referred to using steam as genocide you had Steam's management in mind and not the clients.

NUKLEAR-SLUG · Post by **NUKLEAR-SLUG** » Tue, 20. Mar 12, 21:06

quase wrote:I tell you why, because they can and because they have created an artificial monopoly on the digital distribution. Retail copies are in competition to other retail stores, so the publisher may suggest a price, but the retailer is free to set it otherwise to gain an advantage over another competitor. Bad luck for us that the publisher is dictating the price on Steam one might say.

Bad luck perhaps, but that's the way business rolls. If they think they can get you to pay a given price for their product then that's what they'll charge. It's down to the consumer to decide for themselves if they feel that price is worth it to them.

As far as Steams monopoly goes, if you can even call it that as there's absolutely nothing stopping anyone else from setting up a competing service which is exactly what EA have done with Origin then, yes they've got a headstart in providing a digital distribution service, but that's because they put the time and effort in first to building up the service while everyone else was still doing things the old way. So if they've got a greater market share then good for them, they managed it through their own efforts.

Steam however, despite having the greater market share, does not own the games they sell. There is nothing preventing any developers selling their games through a different outlet should they car to do so and some in fact do while still utilising Steams service. (Example. Vessel as provided by you who sell direct as well as on Steam.) If there is gravitation to Steams digital platform it is because developers are choosing to go with Steam because of the quality of service they feel they're getting compared to other alternatives.

quase wrote:Vessels was on the front page (maybe it still is) and was on Steam sale even on its release, still you have missed it. Could happen of course, but that only shows that the general attention of a game by simply putting it on Steam is a bit overrated....

...What you saw here is the best, cheapest and in our modern day probably also the most effective kind of advertising. I certainly won't do this for Rebirth though.

Either I missed it on the promo pages or the advert didn't catch my eye. Same difference. I have seen Stacking tho (on Steams promo page recently) didn't really grab my interest tho, and I have also seen and own SPAZ (again via Steam promo) so clearly their ads do work!

While we're swapping game tips tho, check out SpaceChem sometime if you happen to like the cerebral thinky puzzler type game. Simple to learn, gets bastard hard later on tho but most satisfying when you eventually figure a problem out. (Available on Steam!

)

I'll dispute your theory that your way is the best to advertise. Steam ads potentially hit 30 odd million people. Word of mouth is always good too, but unless your doing some *serious* posting of a day you're not even hitting even remotely close to what a Steam ad could do in terms of marketing.

Slashman wrote:I don't know why people have lost saved games. They aren't even stored in the Steam folder. I believe they are stored in My Documents in an Egosoft folder.

He's probably referring to the Steam DiD system which doesn't quite work for some people. However given it was a largely experimental thing by Egosoft anyway that's probably not really a legitimate issue. It's certainly not something that prevents people playing the game normally.

David Howland wrote:Come come EmperorJon!
Allow me to clarify, the steam clients are the victims here, especially the ones addicted to a game under a different purchase system and then having their choice of supply removed.
So I hope when YOU referred to using steam as genocide you had Steam's management in mind and not the clients.

Seems to me I don't feel very victimised and if anyone here is addicted to a particular purchase system (disk) and feeling withdrawal systems from having their supply removed then it would appear to be you.

quase · Post by **quase** » Tue, 20. Mar 12, 21:22

Slug, I was not talking about a monopoly by Steam (which could easily be broken by the big publishers if they want, see Origin), but an artificial monopoly created by the publishers themselves.
At least for purely digitally distributed titles there is no competition in the price because the prices are dictated by the publishers. The different digital distributors are not in competition which each other as long as they let the publishers decide the price the games are sold. Maybe this could be changed if Steam would have to buy a number of keys from the publishers for a certain price and sell them, while other digital distributors can or have to buy them too from the publisher. This way smaller distributors would even have a small chance to break Steams market share. Right now no other independent digital distributor could or would want to compete with Steam (the few there are specialise on niche products, GoG.com for old games, Desura for independent games), except for the publishers themselves because they actually already have the product that will be sold.

Anyway, no competition, controlled and restricted markets by account binding and artificially installed region locks is bad for the customers in the long run! All this, the Steam system is standing for. Mark my words.

Falcrack · Post by **Falcrack** » Tue, 20. Mar 12, 22:07

Just popping in here to say that this whole hundred page thread (combined with about 500 pages that preceded it) is ridiculous. Steam is fine. I have a ton of games from it. Never had a problem accessing my games from it. The extremely vocal tin-foil hat types make a big deal about it, and based their objections on all sorts of philosophical arguements, but all in all I've been nothing but pleased with Steam as a digital distribution platform.

Maybe I'll pop into this thread when it reaches 200 pages to repeat what I just said.

NUKLEAR-SLUG · Post by **NUKLEAR-SLUG** » Tue, 20. Mar 12, 22:11

quase wrote:Slug, I was not talking about a monopoly by Steam (which could easily be broken by the big publishers if they want, see Origin), but an artificial monopoly created by the publishers themselves.
At least for purely digitally distributed titles there is no competition in the price because the prices are dictated by the publishers. The different digital distributors are not in competition which each other as long as they let the publishers decide the price the games are sold. Maybe this could be changed if Steam would have to buy a number of keys from the publishers for a certain price and sell them, while other digital distributors can or have to buy them too from the publisher.

Of which there are many publishers. I think you'd have a hard time trying to show that they've all banded together into some price-fixing cartel.

What you're proposing tho would require government legislation to accomplish and would actually hurt smaller distributors. Look at the situation now with large supermarkets for example. They have colossal buying power that enables them to purchase stock in quantities that allows them to sell it at prices that significantly undercut smaller retailers.

The same would apply to big digital retailers such as Steam/Origin that have the financial muscle to buy a large number of 'keys' from a publisher at a discount. A luxury a smaller distributor would not have.

shadowrunner85 · Post by **shadowrunner85** » Tue, 20. Mar 12, 22:21

Falcrack wrote:Just popping in here to say that this whole hundred page thread (combined with about 500 pages that preceded it) is ridiculous. Steam is fine. I have a ton of games from it. Never had a problem accessing my games from it. The extremely vocal tin-foil hat types make a big deal about it, and based their objections on all sorts of philosophical arguements, but all in all I've been nothing but pleased with Steam as a digital distribution platform.

Maybe I'll pop into this thread when it reaches 200 pages to repeat what I just said.

i agree with you. I myself was very reserved against steam, but when I first got it I cant understand how I could have lived with out it.

I'm an old school gamer, me and my old school friends still meets sometimes to LAN, and with steam it's just plug up and start playing, with out steam there is at least 5 hours wasted on problem fixing.

Deleted User · Post by **Deleted User** » Tue, 20. Mar 12, 23:25

NUKLEAR-SLUG wrote: It's not the actual EULA itself that people are objecting to, it's Steams ability to actually enforce that exact same EULA that they've been so casually clicking 'yes' to all these years in the comfortable assumption that they could just ignore whatever it said.

I would like to see you stand in line and say you have never lent a friend a good book or an album, taped a cassette or used a burner to make a backup of 'data' you purchased a licence for at any time in your life, without first signing up to an account binding system.

angrytigerp · Post by **angrytigerp** » Tue, 20. Mar 12, 23:34

Falcrack wrote:Just popping in here to say that this whole hundred page thread (combined with about 500 pages that preceded it) is ridiculous. Steam is fine. I have a ton of games from it. Never had a problem accessing my games from it. The extremely vocal tin-foil hat types make a big deal about it, and based their objections on all sorts of philosophical arguements, but all in all I've been nothing but pleased with Steam as a digital distribution platform.

Maybe I'll pop into this thread when it reaches 200 pages to repeat what I just said.

All they'll do is simply say "yeah you got lucky, lots of people have Steam issues". Not that this is an improper sentiment; saying "I got Steam to work" is just as anecdotal as "Steam gave me viruses", both arguments present scenarios which may or may not be true in an attempt to prove their point.

Realistically, any opponent of Steam claiming that it is unworkable, presents problems, etc. need only look at user statistics. Now, if you can provide even 1/5 the number of, for example, today's maximum users (5 millionish) having issues, well, a million people is hard to argue. The fact is, though, that issues with Steam are few and far between, and any argument that its technical issues (what few there are) are so insurmountable as to prevent you from using it are quickly stifled by the fact that millions of people have somehow managed to get it to work reliably.

The stronger "anti-Steam" argument is simply the 'ethical' one of not wanting to provide business to Valve -- and that is your prerogative as a consumer. But just like I don't want vegetarians screaming at me whenever I choose to eat meat, I don't want anti-Steam gamers to post paragraphs of text telling me how stupid I am, how I'm violating some moral code of theirs, how I'm a part of the system, etc. etc. That, unfortunately, is the vast majority of anti-Steam posts I have seen in this thread, with a few people (Quase most notably) being a bit less rhetorical and raising the issues of Steam's business model, which I will admit can have issues with many people.

But to be frank, the posts that amount to "stop liking what I don't like" and nothing more, as presented most notably by David and the-old-one, really serve to bring nothing to the discussion except demeaning of Steam users and to, several times even within the same day/night, showing off just how much they hate Steam. We get it, guys. While David will inevitably go "OH BUT IF I STOP POSTING EGOSOFT WILL CENSOR ME", in all honesty, this thread has been LESSENED in value towards anti-Steam sentiments because all Egosoft sees is you and your few 'allies' (for lack of a better term) whining like little children and posting more than anyone else (steam-neutral and pro-steam) while having fewer members than anyone else, while dozens of unique users have all chimed in in the thread saying that they have no issue with Steam. If your position were as strong and widely-held as your posit, then there would be dozens of people here posting how much Steam sucks, even just dropping in to make one post saying "Yeah, I'm against Steam!" like the aforementioned Steam supporters (and such as the two people just above this post).

fox jumps wrote:
NUKLEAR-SLUG wrote: It's not the actual EULA itself that people are objecting to, it's Steams ability to actually enforce that exact same EULA that they've been so casually clicking 'yes' to all these years in the comfortable assumption that they could just ignore whatever it said.
I would like to see you stand in line and say you have never lent a friend a good book or an album, taped a cassette or used a burner to make a backup of 'data' you purchased a licence for at any time in your life, without first signing up to an account binding system.

That doesn't change the validity of Nuklear's point... at all. The publisher couldn't track you down before, that didn't change the legality of your actions.

EmperorJon · Post by **EmperorJon** » Tue, 20. Mar 12, 23:39

Yeah, I consider "They can actually ENFORCE the legal contract between you" to be an odd point. Well done, they can. If you were only agreeing to a contract because you thought it could never be enforced you'd be pretty surprised if they tried!

Falcrack · Post by **Falcrack** » Wed, 21. Mar 12, 00:19

I would be curious to know if there is a correlation between political affiliation/ideology and whether a person is inclined to be pro- or anti-Steam. I'll bet there is.

TEKing66 · Post by **TEKing66** » Wed, 21. Mar 12, 01:16

I am sure there is Falcrack.

Then there are those like myself.
Stuck with dial-up for internet.
Being pushed to use Steam if I want to play any new games.
Then having to deal with the installs and updates over said dial-up.
Or, having to travel for a half hour to do the install or update.
Only to turn around and travel back home, and then finally be able to play a game. A Steam free DVD was never this kind of a hassle.

And before anyone mentiones it, Yes I have checked into satellite, wireless, DSL, cable,...etc. The answer has always been the same, "Sorry, but we do not service your area at this time. Please try back in the future."

I'm starting to think: (Game price + (gas&time x number of updates)) = Is it really worth it?

DJC · Post by **DJC** » Wed, 21. Mar 12, 03:17

TEKing66 wrote:I am sure there is Falcrack.

Then there are those like myself.
Stuck with dial-up for internet.
Being pushed to use Steam if I want to play any new games.
Then having to deal with the installs and updates over said dial-up.
Or, having to travel for a half hour to do the install or update.
Only to turn around and travel back home, and then finally be able to play a game. A Steam free DVD was never this kind of a hassle.

And before anyone mentiones it, Yes I have checked into satellite, wireless, DSL, cable,...etc. The answer has always been the same, "Sorry, but we do not service your area at this time. Please try back in the future."

I'm starting to think: (Game price + (gas&time x number of updates)) = Is it really worth it?

I simpathise with you. Steam is in effect somwhat discrimitating, if you dont have it you dont play oh well. I have known steam since the begining (Half life 2, no not the orange box long before) it was such a disaster then (Steam not the game) I never even finished the game. I was on dial up at that time and I deleated it all and never went back. The sad facts are this is the way of the future. I HATE steam ( as well as other similer gaming platforms), but we are a minurity and don't count. when there is money to be made or saved it just to bad for the consumer. so now I have steam again and I am still continuing to have issues. I liked the good old days you buy a game and you play. all this other #$&@ is for the birds.

For all of the people that think this is limited to a small group of people guess again. there are many who just except it as " Thats just the way it is" and never say a word!

angrytigerp · Post by **angrytigerp** » Wed, 21. Mar 12, 03:36

DJC wrote:I liked the good old days you buy a game and you play.

Really? Because I remember the "good old days" being having to track down patches, files, and reinstall 50 times to get some games to work.

You're looking through rose-tinted glasses if you're suggesting that all technical issues are a product of digital distribution. Either that, or you didn't really play games in the "good old days".

DJC wrote:For all of the people that think this is limited to a small group of people guess again. there are many who just except it as " Thats just the way it is" and never say a word!

It is the expectation of the vocal minority to expect that they are speaking for some hidden majority. It serves to validate their argument. Produce 30% (as per the poll above) of all Steam users, past and present, who have had egregious issues that dwarfed anything before Steam (e.g. have NEVER had ANY technical issues BEFORE Steam, good luck with that one) and you'll convince me. Whereas I can PROVE I'm in the majority by simply indicating the public numbers for Steam's userbase.

And there is quite the difference in "accepting it the way it is" and actively having issues with Steam, the way you make it sound Steam makes gaming impossible even for people who don't have insufficient network capabilities. A few pages back I mentioned my movie-loving grandfather who refused to ever get DVDs until only a few years ago, does that mean that when he finally moved on from the VCR and accepted that no one made VHS tapes anymore, he suffered for it? No, while he had to "accept it the way it is", that by no means meant that he spent every moment afterward resenting his forced resignation to the new standard, it simply means that he moved to a different standard. So before you start saying "ah, but how many of your millions of users actually enjoy Steam?", that doesn't change the strength of my position whatsoever. Even begrudgingly, they have enough trust to use Steam long enough to be counted among many other users in a tally, and so they aren't suffering from issues as severe as you imply you and your 'silent majority' do. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but face it -- you really are in the minority with the technical issues.

Just because people move to Steam and are initially opposed to it does not mean that they will harbor a lifelong hatred of it. Indeed, there are many people I know both as Steam friends and in real life who did the "just this once" for a Steam-requiring title, and then realized that Steam was actually really nifty and now have nice big libraries. Call them victims of consumerist brainwashing or whatever you wish, but if that's the angle you're going for, then welcome to the U.S., home of capitalism, you must be new here.

fairywhipper · Post by **fairywhipper** » Wed, 21. Mar 12, 03:45

ere up guys, we made past 300+ pages, coooool

anyway for you steamers, still not solved my problem:
still cant play anygames i brought on disc, even through i joined steam, and installed on computer with activation. as steam has started downloading patch even through i told it not to. now i cant play them till i finish downloading which i cant do because, no data bandwidth, my allowance is still less than 500mb. each patch is greater than 1gb.
and dont tell me to move my entire rig to someoned house.

steam sucks for me, and i dont care, i just want to play my games when i want, how i want, without intereference. no wonder pc gaming is dying. i do more gameplay on android than pc now because i can play when i want without steam interfering.freedom of choice, not tied to third party, if they are, i dont want it. so all the money i saved not having to upgrade my pc has brought me a android tablet and still change for my dinner... yes you can play without interference.

steam sucks for anybody without unlimited highspeed internet, people like me, so stop trying to steam press me into something which is useless. if rebirth is steam only, then i will not be around for it. i will be in a sauna getting steam.

DJC · Post by **DJC** » Wed, 21. Mar 12, 04:07

angrytigerp wrote:
DJC wrote:I liked the good old days you buy a game and you play.
Really? Because I remember the "good old days" being having to track down patches, files, and reinstall 50 times to get some games to work.

You're looking through rose-tinted glasses if you're suggesting that all technical issues are a product of digital distribution. Either that, or you didn't really play games in the "good old days".

Well lets see then. I have on my shelf about 200 games that That I have kept. Of these I can pick out at any time and not worry about a forgotten password or bad conectivity or sight under repair try letter or well I could easley go on. I have kept these since I started playing on a pc in 95 but I have been gaming since around 84. So Unless you were playing before they even had games I am not sure what you are refering to.

I never stated there were no problems with the "old style" But when you had a problem you could call and talk to a real person who actualy knew what they were talking about. instead of getting the endless run around and guessing game in hopes they will find the issue before it messes up your pc. Half the time I have to solve it myself today. So you wanted to pull rank?

TEKing66 · Post by **TEKing66** » Wed, 21. Mar 12, 05:03

I too have far more game not on Steam than are on Steam.

None of those games have given me any where near the issues that my Steam games have. Not even close.

So, I'm sorry, but I fail to see where Steam is a benefit to me as a consumer. And, yes, I am speaking from personal experience.

That, my friends, is really the only fact I need.

Slashman · Post by **Slashman** » Wed, 21. Mar 12, 05:14

fairywhipper wrote:ere up guys, we made past 300+ pages, coooool

I think we're trying for a Guinness world record or something.

anyway for you steamers, still not solved my problem:
still cant play anygames i brought on disc, even through i joined steam, and installed on computer with activation. as steam has started downloading patch even through i told it not to. now i cant play them till i finish downloading which i cant do because, no data bandwidth, my allowance is still less than 500mb. each patch is greater than 1gb.
and dont tell me to move my entire rig to someoned house.

There isn't an easy way to solve your problem apart from doing exactly what you said you're not going to do. On a first install, Steam will require you to be updated to the latest version of the game. It won't fully activate a game that is not updated to the latest version on its servers. No real way around that. But people have been having some success with the offline mode. Even some folks who swore they'd never use it...like apricotslice. YMMV.

steam sucks for me, and i dont care, i just want to play my games when i want, how i want, without intereference.

In your situation, I can see how it would be a problem. It just doesn't work that way without updating at least once.

no wonder pc gaming is dying.

Yeah...and it's going really fast too. It's only been dying for the last 2 decades. I better hope I can get another 186 hours out of Skyrim before it completely collapses. All these publishers that are starting to push PC releases again and paying attention to the platform must be just plain crazy!!!

strude · Post by **strude** » Wed, 21. Mar 12, 05:21

DJC wrote:I never stated there were no problems with the "old style" But when you had a problem you could call and talk to a real person who actualy knew what they were talking about. instead of getting the endless run around and guessing game in hopes they will find the issue before it messes up your pc. Half the time I have to solve it myself today. So you wanted to pull rank?

Yes I suppose that was good, if you happened to live in the country in which the game's publisher resided. The rest of the world had to call international rates for that service. Support forums are now available globally, at no cost other than internet service. There's no reason to believe that the people servicing tech support forums are any less knowledgeable than that same person on a phone. The forum method offers the advantage that a player can find a solution to their problem without even needing to wait on hold then talk to the support staff. They can find others who have reported the problem already and implement the same solution.

Needless to say, back then the technology for automating voice call services was limited and expensive, so nearly every company had a real person to answer calls. These days, most companies, not just video game support, have automated systems. Some companies even advertise that you can talk to a real person as part of their service, that's how rare it is.

David Howland · Post by **David Howland** » Wed, 21. Mar 12, 09:06

Oh for the good old days!
When you looked forward to taking your new X game disk out of the box. A slight tremble of excitement as you slid it in the drive and a few minutes later the game was installed a welcome message on activation (wot dad you mean you didn't have a week battling with Horrid Steam and their scary, interfering, Big Brother malware to get it to work? No son, this was in the days before DRM when you paid you money and the game was yours!). Yes you got an invitation from Egosoft to visit their friendly site, where they updated your game to the latest patch offered you their fantastic bonus pack. Then bliss, you could actually turn the internet off and play the game whenever and for how long you wanted. Only turning the internet back on to visit the friendly, helpful people on the ES forums to chat about game progress.
Haaa, those were the Golden Old Days, before Egosoft took their orders from Steam!
Sorry dad, you must be dreaming, surely life could never have been simply that good?

angrytigerp · Post by **angrytigerp** » Wed, 21. Mar 12, 09:16

David Howland wrote:Oh for the good old days!
When you looked forward to taking your new X game disk out of the box. A slight tremble of excitement as you slid it in the drive and a few minutes later the game was installed a welcome message on activation (wot dad you mean you didn't have a week battling with Horrid Steam and their scary, interfering, Big Brother malware to get it to work? No son, this was in the days before DRM when you paid you money and the game was yours!). Yes you got an invitation from Egosoft to visit their friendly site, where they updated your game to the latest patch offered you their fantastic bonus pack. Then bliss, you could actually turn the internet off and play the game whenever and for how long you wanted. Only turning the internet back on to visit the friendly, helpful people on the ES forums to chat about game progress.
Haaa, those were the Golden Old Days, before Egosoft took their orders from Steam!
Sorry dad, you must be dreaming, surely life could never have been simply that good?

Well, considering you're pretending that no one ever had any installation issues EVER before Steam, and considering I have had many installations in the past (the "good old days") where some error code popped up that I had to go look up, then find out there was some .dll that I needed that wasn't installed for some reason, or advised to reinstall the game completely and see if that fixed the problem, etc.... So you're allowed to provide all these stories about how Steam had issues for you, and we're all supposed to believe it, but my own experiences with installation issues before I even knew Steam existed don't count? Man, I give up, you win the debate. How can I compete when your strategy is "I'm right, you're wrong, here's some hyperbole about what may happen in the future, and fallacies about the past, that prove my point!"

And you're still laboring under this delusion that Steam controls Egosoft -- it is a publishing outlet. Egosoft is more than capable of reneging, but choose not to because it's actually a great deal for them, your BS notwithstanding. I've seen new, AAA titles on Steam for 60 bucks, yes, but I've also seen them for 50, or 40, dollars, because the developer chooses their price. Not that I, nor anyone else, will convince you otherwise -- you're sure that you apparently know better than companies worth millions, tens of millions, of dollars, with hundreds of employees and, I would hope, a fairly competent board of directors (provided that they're not, you know, out of business). They should bow down to the wisdom of David Howland, master prophesier and economic analyst, whose combination of precognition for the future of Steam and ability to magically see what publishers' deals with Steam are despite them being confidential enables him to see see a truth hidden to the world at large.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

Part three of Steam debate - split and archived.

Victims!

Re: Steam-ok?

Re: Do Not Worry!

Good Old Days!

Re: Good Old Days!