[Grizzly]

we've been telling him that for a LONG time.

YOU ARE DUMB 2

Seriously though, crying about the only thing keeping PC gaming alive just doesn't...strike me as very wise. If you lose Steam you know where PC gaming is going next, right? It's called OnLive and it means the death of modding and all we hold dear. All this whining about Steam just seems so short-sighted when the alternative is so terrible.

So you assume that, if we lose steam, some sort of alternative does not crop up? You are completely unuware of all the alternitives to it being available right now, and some of htem perhaps even before steam? How was PC Gaming dying when steam showed up? How did it save us? Was there anything needed to be saving? Was it not one of those things that could have destroyed PC gaming all together when it first 'got into mainstream' with the release of Half Life 2 (horribly irritating glorified copy protection)?

[The E]

The thing about Steam is, it's arguably the first DRM scheme that actually works. Not in the sense of it being uncrackable, but in the sense of it being acceptable to both consumers and producers. Steam does this by being a steady revenue source for developers, and by delivering added features to customers through Steam sales etc. Now, in principle, services like Impulse and Origin do the same thing, but Steam has the advantage of being nearly ubiquitous. A large percentage of gamers have Steam installed, and use it every day.

Was it not one of those things that could have destroyed PC gaming all together when it first 'got into mainstream' with the release of Half Life 2 (horribly irritating glorified copy protection)?

In hindsight, bundling Steam with HL2 and then expanding it into a full-blown games retailer was a pretty good move. That way, Valve was able to leverage the HL2 install base.

Then there are other reasons. Just quoting from the wiki article:

--Steam currently holds an estimated marketshare of 70% on digital distribution sales.
--Games purchased on Steam give producers a higher revenue (70% of the purchase price go to the publisher), thus ensuring that PC gaming remains a profitable income source

This is what saved PC gaming, given that PC games have a rather limited retail shelf life.

[AtomicClucker]

The thing about Steam is, it's arguably the first DRM scheme that actually works. Not in the sense of it being uncrackable, but in the sense of it being acceptable to both consumers and producers. Steam does this by being a steady revenue source for developers, and by delivering added features to customers through Steam sales etc. Now, in principle, services like Impulse and Origin do the same thing, but Steam has the advantage of being nearly ubiquitous. A large percentage of gamers have Steam installed, and use it every day.

Was it not one of those things that could have destroyed PC gaming all together when it first 'got into mainstream' with the release of Half Life 2 (horribly irritating glorified copy protection)?

In hindsight, bundling Steam with HL2 and then expanding it into a full-blown games retailer was a pretty good move. That way, Valve was able to leverage the HL2 install base.

Then there are other reasons. Just quoting from the wiki article:

--Steam currently holds an estimated marketshare of 70% on digital distribution sales.
--Games purchased on Steam give producers a higher revenue (70% of the purchase price go to the publisher), thus ensuring that PC gaming remains a profitable income source

This is what saved PC gaming, given that PC games have a rather limited retail shelf life.

And also explains why some of the big publishers (cough, cough, EA) are scared of it. Giving power directly to the producers and stripping the publishers of substantial leverage is a good way of cutting out an intrusive middleman.

[Grizzly]

The thing about Steam is, it's arguably the first DRM scheme that actually works. Not in the sense of it being uncrackable, but in the sense of it being acceptable to both consumers and producers. Steam does this by being a steady revenue source for developers, and by delivering added features to customers through Steam sales etc. Now, in principle, services like Impulse and Origin do the same thing, but Steam has the advantage of being nearly ubiquitous. A large percentage of gamers have Steam installed, and use it every day.

Was it not one of those things that could have destroyed PC gaming all together when it first 'got into mainstream' with the release of Half Life 2 (horribly irritating glorified copy protection)?

In hindsight, bundling Steam with HL2 and then expanding it into a full-blown games retailer was a pretty good move. That way, Valve was able to leverage the HL2 install base.

Then there are other reasons. Just quoting from the wiki article:

--Steam currently holds an estimated marketshare of 70% on digital distribution sales.
--Games purchased on Steam give producers a higher revenue (70% of the purchase price go to the publisher), thus ensuring that PC gaming remains a profitable income source

This is what saved PC gaming, given that PC games have a rather limited retail shelf life.

Hmm. One can also say that this effect was due to the increased digital distribution. Or not?

(But that's a good point. A lot of awesome games which more or less depended on word to mouth advertising would not have thrived without steam. It should have been around in the FS2 era .)

[Sushi]

I think the point being made is that digital distribution has injected a lot of vitality into PC gaming. Most of the other digital distribution platforms only exist because Steam proved the model was successful. At any rate, Steam "made it big" first, so they get the credit.

[MP-Ryan]

Anyone whining about Steam simply needs to install a game that requires the Games For Windows Live client, and they should come to the conclusion that as a digital distribution and copyright protection platform goes, Steam is pretty ****ing awesome.

As for the *****ing about games requiring an Internet connection - piracy screwed that pooch long ago.  Face it, any modern mainstream game you buy now from anyone other than the smallest indie studios is going to have SOME FORM of online activation.  It's become a fact of life.  If you're really so opposed to Steam being online all the time, switch it to offline mode.

As someone who plays TF2 semi-competitively, an integrated, smooth, continuously updated, and non-intrusive client is a godsend (Goodbye MS Zone and GameSpy, you ****ty infiltrators of earlier online matchmaking, you will NOT be missed).  And it's gotten to the point where the only physical game disc I've bought in nearly 4 years is Starcraft 2 (because it's not on Steam).

That, and Steam sales are better than any sale pricing anywhere else if you time it right.  I picked up 6 or 7 major titles (among them, Mass Effect 2, Fallout 3, BioShock 2, Company of Heroes Gold, and Dead Space) for less than $60 not all that long ago.  Good luck doing that in a store.

Thanks, I'll keep Steam.

[karajorma]

Or you could just install Impulse instead and get all the good effects with less of the bad ones.


The x is awful so y must be good cause it's not as bad argument is seriously flawed.

[StarSlayer]

Or you could just install Impulse instead and get all the good effects with less of the bad ones.


The x is awful so y must be good cause it's not as bad argument is seriously flawed.

So your saying your promotional statement for Impulse is flawed?