Hey there sean. I was pleasantly surprised when you brought up the topic again about Valve and their interesting business practices. Like you, the way Valve is handling their Steam platform really aggravates me, and I’ll try to explain it the best that I can.
Although there are other online distribution platforms out there (Xbox Live, gog.com, Blizzard, Apple’s App Store), Steam is the only one that gives me a sense of dread every time I try to use the platform. To this day, I’ve been trying to figure it out, and your recent post about how Valve is going about this business model gave me a clearer picture as to why I don’t like it as much: Unlike the other platforms I’ve used, Steam really feels like a sleazy middle-man that keeps heckling me to make sure that I have all of the proper paperwork signed before I even start up one of games I bought from him. The reason why I say this is that every other platform I’ve used makes this entire process as transparent as possible; Blizzard and gog.com make sure that all of your digital purchases are done through a web browser, and then you download an installer from your personal account from their website, and at this point, gog.com never bothers you again about that game; heck, you can use the same installer on different PCs if you wanted to!
Now while Blizzard asks for your logon information for every one of their games since world of warcraft, I don’t really mind it as much for whatever reason. I’m guessing that’s because Blizzard took great pains to make sure that whatever DRM features they implemented are not some random icons and windows hovering on your desktop that feel out of place like how Steam does it. They also made sure that even the logon screen is part of the game as well:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8Mo6mFyE6g
Apple’s iTunes/App Store and Microsoft’s Xbox Live Marketplace are also two online distribution platforms that I don’t mind interacting with either, especially ever since Apple finally convinced the music labels to allow people to redownload all of their songs they already purchased through iTunes around 3 years ago. Like with Xbox Live and Apple’s ecosystems, they really get out of the way of things that you already purchased; games that you’ve bought directly on Xbox Live give you no issue when playing them offline as long as that was the 360 used to purchase and download said game (and Microsoft gives you some leeway in case that 360 breaks down by allowing you to transfer usage rights of said game to another 360 with a 1-year cooldown effect), and Microsoft also made sure that the experience doesn’t feel as dull as how Steam implements it with all of the bells and whistles they used for the menu transitions throughout the entire process. Ditto with purchases on Apple’s iOS platform; you can browse whatever you want and the moment you make a purchase, the only thing that pops up is a password confirmation if you put the iphone/ipad/ipod to sleep or haven’t interacted with the online store for awhile to make sure that someone else isn’t making those purchases for you. I know Apple tried to implement a system similar to Xbox Live and Steam called Game Center, but based on all of the stuff I’ve purchased so far, most games don’t force it upon you and even when it does, it’s mostly transparent and doesn’t require you to do anything for it to activate. Also, games purchased on the Mac App Store feels like buying games on gog.com as after you purchase it, the game just downloads and there isn’t some third-party application running in the background making sure that you bought your copy legally.
Now if I were to post my concerns about Steam to the forums, I’d get trolled by everyone else there and be told that if I don’t like the platform, then don’t use it. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to follow through with this statement as there’s a few games I’d really like to play because they’re only available on that platform (The more recent Ys games come to mind since I can’t seem to find my Japanese physical copies anywhere in my house) due to the sheer inertia of other major game developers and publishers trusting the platform to put their games on there.
There’s also one final concern that needs to be addressed about Steam as well: although most people would agree that the games on Steam go through bulk price cuts on part of Steam’s game catalog is a good thing, it raises a hidden issue that most people don’t realize: most of these sales reveal the true prices of what these games are worth, while several others are forced to reduce their value of a game when they can clearly charge more because of the caliber of the game in question (like Ys: The Oath in Felghana) and will treat the game as a title that they believe isn’t worth much of their time because they bought said game with a bunch of other cheaper games as well.
I haven’t had much interaction yet with great old games (which I should probably change), but the impressions I get from them have been excellent. You buy the game from them, and they get out of the way. Wonderful.
I’ve REALLY liked how Blizzard handled their digital distribution. You talk about the online code thing of games after WoW (Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3), and I can see where you’re getting at with that. What still amazes me is when I searched and found my dusty copies of Starcraft and Warcraft 3 buried in bookshelfs or under my bed or God knows where, where they might have been for years, and just typed in the CD-KEY and BAM! I then owned a digital copy of the game. I thought that was amazing. Any other company, such as Nintendo, would try to sell me the digital copy instead of allowing me to use the hard copy I already had. I could take the code I had for this PC game CD I had buried for years and download and play a version downloaded from the net on a Mac! Without me paying anything! This is how digital distribution should work. For example, digital distribution for the game consoles should allow you to buy the game and play it on any console without buying the game again. Since the license is Internet bound, the hardware of the consoles is irrelevant. But we know the game industry isn’t smart enough to adopt something common sense like this.
I agree COMPLETELY with you that the Steam sales reveal the true cost of the game. There is a reason why people have all these games bought from Steam which they never play. They didn’t get a SALE. Their low interest is why they could only pull the trigger when the game is on sale. Now that they have the game, they don’t want to play it. It is because the game never had much value to them anyway.
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