PC game piracy examined

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: chizow
Ya, obviously you don't care about the future of PC gaming or you wouldn't advocate such myopic views. Of course Blizzard is an excellent example since they've always had one of the most effective forms of DRM, Battle.net. The writing is on the wall, if you haven't read the article or the various interviews published over the last few years you won't know just how grim the situation is. Various quotes from devs @ Tweakguides

The situation is fine, 1 article and a handfull of naysayers are meaningless.

Originally posted by: chizow
And again, that viewpoint is fundamamentally flawed because it assumes the majority of users will actually an encounter a problem with current DRM schemes, when in reality, they will not.

How about you look around this forum? Theres plenty of people with problems with DRM, and the people with limited activations, they will likely encounter problems with it later on. DRM is a cancer on gaming and it needs to be cured.

Originally posted by: chizow
The people who are "smart enough to avoid paying" for that garbage aren't doing paying customers any favors, just as people who steal anything aren't. Ultimately they drive up costs and may ultimately result in a discontinuation of product or service.
And again with Sins, read the article. It was pirated at the same ratio compared to sales of more popular games. Just because the Stardock devs choose to ignore pirated copies instead of lost sales doesn't mean piracy wasn't an issue for Sins of a Solar Empire heh.

Well how can you know those pirates would have bought the game anyway?! You dont! I know what pirates think like, i know plenty of them and i agree with stardocks conclusion that they wouldnt have bought the game anyways.

Originally posted by: chizowAmazing, someone would go through all that effort but finds uninstalling to regain an activation tedious! Just goes to show you cannot reason with unreasonable minds.

15 seconds in paint VS countless time uninstalling all the DRM activation schemes. How do you remember which ones have activation? You dont! It dosent say on the box damn... Oh well better uninstall everything to be safe. You totally ignored my point about the trend so ill bold it. Its the trend to use this DRM thats the problem, few games use activation now but if this crap catches on many more will in the future and you can be damn sure the publishers wont club together to make uninstall/removal methods easier with some integrated app that does it all, it will be a tedious process of uninstalling every game indivudually.

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: Anubis
no its more of an examply of why we need better games

ill freely admit i used to priate games all the time, hell i didnt pay for a PC game from whenever doom came out till 2003 ish (max payne 2 wa sthe last PC game i played that is not an mmo) which is when i gave up on PC gaming for the most part

THE GAMES ARNT EVEN WORTH STEALING ANYMORE

So someone who is so out of touch with reality that they're quoting $60-100 prices for games is a good example of why we need better games? LOL.

This seems incredibly hypocritical from someone who cries anytime someone takes a crap on WoW and gladly pays $15 a month for an MMO, but isn't willing to spend on non-online titles. Just helps prove my point. Tie content to a credit card or form of guaranteed payment and piracy rates will go down.

i wasent quoting him on his 60-100$ assessment of gamne prices but his bit on COD and whatnot being piles of shit, because they were, i am willing to spend money on non online games, they just arnt any worth buying or stealing for that matter ATM

Ill be the 1st person in line for SC2 and D3 because they are pretty much gaurenteed to not suck. There has not been a game like Max Payne or Deus Ex in forever, hell not a single FPS game out today can compair to Unreal Tourny and that came out in 2000

and FWIW i have not actually paied for wow in almost 2 years, people keep giving me gift cards for xmass/birthday and free months for getting people to join and all that

 

[ZzZGuy]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: ZzZGuy
How about me with a laptop, which I bought so I have something to do out in the middle of nowhere. You honestly want me to take anywhere from a 40 minute to 2 hour bus ride, then pay $20 in cab fair carrying a item that is likely to get me mugged if I do any amount of walking around just so you can not call me a pirate when I uninstall a game (I'm under the impression you require a internet connection)? Then there is the issue of royally screwing up my OS which I have done in the past. Oh and how about that 10 day ET phone home BS EA tried to pull? So my answer to you is go F. yourself.

Screw the impact on others, I AM the one affected and I speak with my wallet.

Uh, what does your laptop have to do with any of this? Honestly if you're worried about getting mugged wallking around with a laptop you've got bigger issues than DRM or my opinions. News flash: every year people get struck by lightning, eaten by sharks and hit by cars. I guess we should avoid going outside, swimming, or walking altogether.......

There's nothing wrong with speaking with your wallet, if you don't think a game is worth buying then don't buy it. Just don't steal it either. If its worth stealing then obviously you assign some value to it, so you should pay for it.

Go back and re-read my post.

-Edit- Just to clarify a few things, I use a desktop at home and a laptop when I travel to work for months at a time (in between now) where there is a good chance I will not have internet access or it is not worth the trouble and cost. Some places I stay will have internet booths, there is also internet/gaming cafes but taking my laptop to town is major PITA, and see mugging comment. I speak of getting mugged because of the laptop back pack which I use to carry it around.

 

[Nik]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: Anubis
no its more of an examply of why we need better games

ill freely admit i used to priate games all the time, hell i didnt pay for a PC game from whenever doom came out till 2003 ish (max payne 2 wa sthe last PC game i played that is not an mmo) which is when i gave up on PC gaming for the most part

THE GAMES ARNT EVEN WORTH STEALING ANYMORE

So someone who is so out of touch with reality that they're quoting $60-100 prices for games is a good example of why we need better games? LOL.

This seems incredibly hypocritical from someone who cries anytime someone takes a crap on WoW and gladly pays $15 a month for an MMO, but isn't willing to spend on non-online titles. Just helps prove my point. Tie content to a credit card or form of guaranteed payment and piracy rates will go down.

Walk in to your local Best Buy and try buying Rock Band 2 for less than $100. When Guitar Hero Aerosmith came out, it was $100. You're really starting to irritate me :|

Besides, MMO replay value and content VASTLY outweighs the less-than-a-day replay value and content than an off-line game. $15/mo is an awesome price for everything you get with an MMO.

The only person out of touch with reality here is you.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: PhatoseAlpha
Why, exactly, are we discussing this at all, anyway? Really, all this DRM talk....in the end, it's just ignoring the actual problem of the failure of the government to enforce standing criminal codes. Can the DRM, and start funding police enough to criminally prosecute individual down loaders.

It would take an amazing amount of resources to have standard law enforcement handle piracy. A much more likely scenario would be similar to what happened in the music industry where ISPs were charged with the task of policing their networks. The problem is the PC game industry does not have a vocal and well-funded lobbying arm like the RIAA to protect its interests and go after individual offenders.

But why is it the industry's burden to carry? It's the government's job to enforce the laws. These guys are paying taxes, just like the rest of us. If someone broke into my house and stole my stuff and the police said "Sorry, we don't have the resources to do anything about it", the only question would be do I buy enough shotguns to protect the neighborhood myself or enough shotguns to take out the government.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Maximilian
The situation is fine, 1 article and a handfull of naysayers are meaningless.

Its actually dozens of article and 1 extremely comprehensive one that shoots down all the BS excuses and disinformation about piracy to-date. There's more than a handful of naysayers but the ones who actually make the games are the most vocal. Just like the consumer has the right to vote with their wallet, Devs have been voting with their platform choices and release date decisions.

How about you look around this forum? Theres plenty of people with problems with DRM, and the people with limited activations, they will likely encounter problems with it later on. DRM is a cancer on gaming and it needs to be cured.

You mean threads like this? Include me as one who has never had an issue with DRM. The problems with DRM are grossly overstated, and while they're not completely bogus, most people will simply never know their installations have any DRM at all. I've said numerous times that DRM need to be changed so that's its more effective and that activation limited installations can be a real problem, but that doesn't equate to a free pass to pirate if a game contains said DRM.

Well how can you know those pirates would have bought the game anyway?! You dont! I know what pirates think like, i know plenty of them and i agree with stardocks conclusion that they wouldnt have bought the game anyways.

ROFL. Just as I'm quite positive any petty thief that steals anything isn't going to come back in 2 hours to pay for it out of good conscience. But I'm sure you do know how pirates think.....

Its not real hard though to isolate their MO. They pirate games because they don't want to pay for them. They already have the preconceived notion that the game will suck in order to justify not paying for it to begin with. Regardless of whether or not they derive any enjoyment at all from playing the game, they will say that it sucked just to reinforce their excuse for not buying it to begin with. Its really a pretty elementary form of psychosis, a condition you'd often try correcting in children.

15 seconds in paint VS countless time uninstalling all the DRM activation schemes. How do you remember which ones have activation? You dont! It dosent say on the box damn... Oh well better uninstall everything to be safe. You totally ignored my point about the trend so ill bold it. Its the trend to use this DRM thats the problem, few games use activation now but if this crap catches on many more will in the future and you can be damn sure the publishers wont club together to make uninstall/removal methods easier with some integrated app that does it all, it will be a tedious process of uninstalling every game indivudually.

If they offer an option to uninstall that's great, if you find it too tedious then you shouldn't complain. You're also ignoring the titles that release patches that remove DRM or CD requirements and in the case of Bioshock, remove the DRM altogether with no action required whatsoever. Just as you don't know what kinds of DRM are installed in games, you may never know it even existed if it removes itself after a given time period.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Anubis
i wasent quoting him on his 60-100$ assessment of gamne prices but his bit on COD and whatnot being piles of shit, because they were, i am willing to spend money on non online games, they just arnt any worth buying or stealing for that matter ATM

And there's nothing wrong with thinking that but I'd say there's clearly an overwhelming majority of people who would disagree with you. Regardless, if you're not going to pay for a game you do not have a right to steal it to reinforce your preconceived opinion that it sucked.

Ill be the 1st person in line for SC2 and D3 because they are pretty much gaurenteed to not suck. There has not been a game like Max Payne or Deus Ex in forever, hell not a single FPS game out today can compair to Unreal Tourny and that came out in 2000

And both SC2 and D3 will employ effective DRM whether they suck or not.

and FWIW i have not actually paied for wow in almost 2 years, people keep giving me gift cards for xmass/birthday and free months for getting people to join and all that

But you still clearly enjoy it and would pay for it if you weren't getting time paid for right?

 

[lupi]

don't know why you all are still arguing with that tool. he's nothing more than a shill for the worst example for a softwaare publisher out there, although I have to admit not including the full cdkey in peoples package is an extremely effective drm.

And both SC2 and D3 will employ effective DRM whether they suck or not.

I wouldn't bet much on that statement if I were you.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: lupi
don't know why you all are still arguing with that tool. he's nothing more than a shill for the worst example for a softwaare publisher out there, although I have to admit not including the full cdkey in peoples package is an extremely effective drm.

And both SC2 and D3 will employ effective DRM whether they suck or not.

I wouldn't bet much on that statement if I were you.

I'll bet our rights to post on the topic of piracy on AT, how about that?

 

[Skunkwourk]

Whats wrong with online authentication every time you want to download a patch (aside from not wanting to patch your game I guess)?

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: lupi
don't know why you all are still arguing with that tool. he's nothing more than a shill for the worst example for a softwaare publisher out there, although I have to admit not including the full cdkey in peoples package is an extremely effective drm.

And both SC2 and D3 will employ effective DRM whether they suck or not.

I wouldn't bet much on that statement if I were you.

Yeah its a waste of time, this thread should be locked, chizow is clearly just baiting people for amusement.

 

[Pacemaker]

If installing a new radio in your car had a 1% chance of breaking your car to the point where you would have to rebuild it, would you buy it? If a car had a limit on the number of times you could start it, would you buy it? If a car had to phone home every time you started it (forcing you to only be able to turn off your car in an area with wifi), would you buy it?

I really wonder why PC games don't sell well. I don't pirate games, but I also will not buy one that has restrictive DRM without some benefit to it (Steam for example).

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

.....SC2 and D3 are both multiplayer centric games. That's pretty much effective DRM any way you look at it.


And it 50% of all cars on the road were stolen, you'd be looking at some damn nasty requirements on starting a car. Especially if the cops turned around and told the automakers they didn't have the resources to do anything about it.

 

[Nik]

Originally posted by: lupi
don't know why you all are still arguing with that tool. he's nothing more than a shill for the worst example for a softwaare publisher out there, although I have to admit not including the full cdkey in peoples package is an extremely effective drm.

Hey, as long as your customers keep buying your stupid Madden games, you can fuck all of your customers over all you want just to spite a few pirates, right?

 

[skace]

This article is comprehensive, yet by page 4 if you haven't figured out an obvious slant then you're not looking hard enough. He can claim not to have a bias, but if he doesn't then he is completely ignorant and not up to the task this article presented him. Just read his DRM section if you want to see him miss the bus completely.

 

[BladeVenom]

Originally posted by: PhatoseAlpha
And it 50% of all cars on the road were stolen, you'd be looking at some damn nasty requirements on starting a car. Especially if the cops turned around and told the automakers they didn't have the resources to do anything about it.

Cops don't have the resources to do much about auto theft. Automakers don't care since the more cars that are stolen, end up being more new cars need to be sold. Peeling a column is a lot easier than removing the dashboard, but look how many cars put the ignition lock in the column. It would seem they make most cars easy to steal on purpose.

Comparing intellectual property to real property is silly. You end up with bad examples like the one you used.

 

[mindcycle]

I just finished reading the whole article and there is some pretty good data and ideas there, but it's still rather biased even though he is trying very hard not to be. That's ok though, given the scope of the article and the difficulty of gathering information I can't really blame him.

IMO, this is the most important thing said in the article...

Lower prices on digital distribution. Instead of making sure that digital copies match retail copies in an effort to protect retail distribution, accept the transition to digital distribution by lowering prices to realistically reflect the lower costs, potentially increasing sales due to the greater convenience at a lower price.

this as well..

Don't blindly support Steam. Steam is a good digital distribution platform, but at the moment Valve has an effective monopoly on digital games distribution. In the absence of a real competitor, prices will remain high and Valve will have no incentive to pressure publishers to both lower digital prices and remove redundant DRM on Steam-protected games.

Digital distro could make a huge change in piracy percentages if prices were lower. IMO, prices need to reflect the actual product you are purchasing, or rather "renting" when talking about digital downloads. Which leads me to the main topic he fails to mention in the article. SecuROM and other forms of DRM that are trying to hinder the used market. Install limits and tying games to online accounts are solutions to get rid of the used market, and for me that's a problem.

I pretty much agree with all of his practical solutions, but he needs to add one to the publishers side. Which is to get rid of install limits, and if it's digital distro, make sure the purchaser can either sell the game or simply not charge as much as a retail copy.

One of the many reasons consoles gaming may attract more gamers is because there is such a strong used game market. While it may not completely revitalize the PC market, it could help, and isn't that what we really need here? More incentive to purchase games, not more roadblocks.

Overall though, it's an excellent article and i'd suggest reading through the whole thing if you haven't already.

 

[skace]

Completely disagree with lowering prices on Digital Distribution. Lowering prices on digital is a long term goal, not a short term fix. By keeping prices fixed, Valve is growing it's catalog at an extremely alarming rate, all sorts of publishers are hopping on. This is because they are playing by their rules. If Valve were to lower prices prematurely, they would lose those publishers. Basically, lowering prices would be the best way to destroy Steam, change it from a serious mainstream competitor to retail shelf space and turn it into a nitch product used only to buy Valve games. Lowering prices is what buyers want, but it is not necessarily what is best for Steam - and honestly what I want is what is best for Steam because I'd like to see it taken seriously some day.

Think of it this way, competitively priced products allow Steam to draw 3rd party publishers/developers. To them, this is like Microsoft being able to attract 3rd party developers to the Xbox 360 - absolutely crucial to it's success and everything else is minuscule in comparison.

As for blind support of Steam, in the digital distribution business Valve is bar none. Now while I wouldn't tell anyone to blindly support anything, I don't necessarily agree that Steam support is blind. They had to earn most of our support from an audience of people, that for the first several years said "WON is better, what is this shit?" So the support? Yea, they've earned. I know we might be creating a monopoly, but frankly if the competition can't step up the plate, what can you do about it. I'd rather see an excellent product rise to the top than 2 mediocre ones. If Valve someday gets fat and lazy then let a new comer step in, although I think Microsoft and EA will be enough for them to worry about.

I started writing a lot of direct complaints about the article, but honestly it's exhaustive. I don't agree with his attacks of "circumstantial" evidence regarding DRM. I cannot believe for a second he even supports Starforce. It's like reading a good piece on Christianity and then having the writer support televangelism on the last page. What a crock of absolute shit. I've seen, with my own eyes, Starforce destroy a machine. And I still do not know how to uninstall SecuRom, I spent an entire day googling how to uninstall the fucking thing. If you want a bias article there is no logical way you can back DRM in it's current incarnations, it's devious and warlike in nature. It's an "us vs them" mentality with the consumer being on the wrong side. And yes, Steam is leaps and bounds above the other systems. I cannot believe he couldn't figure that out on his own. He's obviously never installed a Starforce game and had it ask him to reboot his fucking machine before playing it. Reboot my machine? Are you serious? For a game? He also doesn't mention how much the community had to push before the Starforce uninstall tool was released, he acts like it was present from the get go.

The problem with his lack of circumstancial evidence in regards to DRM is that he didn't address any of the cases where: someone suspected DRM, downloaded a crack for the game and then had it work fucking beautifully. That's pretty hard evidence. Sure, I don't have 3 cases listed off the top of my head and I'm not apparently not putting the work into that he did his original piece but I'm positive it happened. I know there are many scenarios where people recieved CDs they couldn't read because of the DRM or because their CDrom wasn't supported. Again, I'm sorry no one took historic notes for this guys sake, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

He also manages to argue the point that he believes Starforce and Securom are frowned on more because they work. Which makes absolutely no sense since anyone and everyone could point out to you that pirates have had absolutely no trouble removing these security measures from their rips. This is what usually frustrates buyers the most - they are suffering yet the pirate is not. How is he so daft on these points?

 

[mindcycle]

Originally posted by: skace
Completely disagree with lowering prices on Digital Distribution. Lowering prices on digital is a long term goal, not a short term fix. By keeping prices fixed, Valve is growing it's catalog at an extremely alarming rate, all sorts of publishers are hopping on. This is because they are playing by their rules. If Valve were to lower prices prematurely, they would lose those publishers. Basically, lowering prices would be the best way to destroy Steam, change it from a serious mainstream competitor to retail shelf space and turn it into a nitch product used only to buy Valve games. Lowering prices is what buyers want, but it is not necessarily what is best for Steam - and honestly what I want is what is best for Steam because I'd like to see it taken seriously some day.

I don't see how it's a short term fix. If anything it's a long term fix that could generate more profits as i'd imagine more and more people would be comfortable buying digital copies if they were reasonably priced. Right now I opt to buy boxed copies of games as they typically cost less than through Steam (go figure).

He also mentions in the article that there are way more retail copies sold vs digital. I wonder why that is.. IMO, the solution is to lower digital prices and sell more copies. Would you rather have 100 people paying $30, or 10 paying $50? Plus once they buy the first Steam game, there is a good chance they'll continue to buy from Steam. It may take a bit to generate as high of profits as they do now, but it will be better in the long run and have a greater potential of making a lot more money. ..and really, how much time would it take? Once people got word that you could get a game for substaintially less through digital download, they'd flock to it. I think Valve is afraid of it because the big guys would back out. I say fuck em. Valve will sell more copies of their own games and then the big publishers will come back once they see that's where the money's at.

 

[PsharkJF]

In my mind, pirates are nothing but leeches.

a) You're leeching the game itself developers and/or publishers.
b) You're leeching blood, sweat, and tears from the people who actually DO the cracking of the games - you know, the people who might actually know something about SecuROM's internal workings.

Just because you know how to use BitTorrent and you know a site to go to doesn't exactly mean you're making any kind of statement. In fact, the statement you're making is "I'm nothing but a complete leech."

Skace: I'd say Starforce worked. Assuming the article's argument about the game not being pirated for a whole year is true, if you went to game developers and told them you could stop piracy for a year on their product, I'd think they'd sign a contract right then and there.

Besides, I think you're missing the point. The point isn't stopping the pirates from cracking the game, nor is the point to stop people who know what BitTorrent is, the point is to stop the piracy much like copying floppies back in the day. And that, I think, it does rather well. Due to the nature of the internet though, it only takes one smart dude and then 50,000 of his closest friends get it, too. Which sucks, because quite honestly, they don't deserve it.

Also, just because one computer pukes on Starforce isn't the whole story. It means it's a normal program. Wierd things happen. Like why exactly I get 37.5 FPS in TF2 in DX9 looking at certain reflective surfaces.

edit: About the retail/digital price issue: I'd think Valve would love to lower prices, but I would guess contractual obligations with the distributors prevent them from doing so.

 

[skace]

Originally posted by: mindcycle
I don't see how it's a short term fix. If anything it's a long term fix that could generate more profits as i'd imagine more and more people would be comfortable buying digital copies if they were reasonably priced. Right now I opt to buy boxed copies of games as they typically cost less than through Steam (go figure).

Look, it's very simple, here is the time line:

- Valve unpegs their prices from shelf prices and lowers them across the board.
- EA turns around and says they are no longer publishing any games for Valve, whoever publishes their games elsewhere says the same.
- Ubisoft pulls their games from Steam, Other large producers follow suit.

End result: Cheaper Valve products and some independent developers on Steam but a massive loss of catelog and no longer a viable substitute to retail stores. Other, significantly inferior digital distribution companies get all of Steam's lost business and eclipse it as the primary medium.

I'll say it again, cheaper digital distribution is the long term gain, not short term. Short term gain is the fact that Steam's catalog has been so successful at getting not only many developers/producers on board but also lots of recent new titles as well. This is a huge gain if you look at the history of Steam.

 

[skace]

Originally posted by: PsharkJF
Skace: I'd say Starforce worked. Assuming the article's argument about the game not being pirated for a whole year is true, if you went to game developers and told them you could stop piracy for a year on their product, I'd think they'd sign a contract right then and there.

Besides, I think you're missing the point. The point isn't stopping the pirates from cracking the game, nor is the point to stop people who know what BitTorrent is, the point is to stop the piracy much like copying floppies back in the day. And that, I think, it does rather well. Due to the nature of the internet though, it only takes one smart dude and then 50,000 of his closest friends get it, too. Which sucks, because quite honestly, they don't deserve it.

Also, just because one computer pukes on Starforce isn't the whole story. It means it's a normal program. Wierd things happen. Like why exactly I get 37.5 FPS in TF2 in DX9 looking at certain reflective surfaces.

edit: About the retail/digital price issue: I'd think Valve would love to lower prices, but I would guess contractual obligations with the distributors prevent them from doing so.

You can't stop casual piracy these days without making hardcore piracy more difficult. The piracy groups are the ones who have ultimately made it accessible to the casual crowd, in combination with bit torrent. Why would the casual pirate care whether - before the product was ripped - it had securom or starforce? They don't. Because their rip has neither. Casual piracy is occuring over the internet these days, it isn't occuring with people swapping disks. Just look at his numbers, they all came from BT. If someone can figure out BT and get a rip, the pre-rip security is completely irrelevant. And yes, Starforce took some time to crack initially, however once it was cracked it became irrelevant -- although I do recall their was initial means of cracking the games they were just more difficult for the average user, the large gap was making those methods easier for people (CloneCD and the like). Just like an encryption scheme is only good until it is first cracked and then is completely worthless. This argument has been made time and time again, basic CD checks have been enough to stop casual piracy at the CD swapping level for some time now. Above and beyond that is not casual piracy, it's targeting hardcore.

The difference between Starforce causing your machine to crash and something else causing it to crash is the level of instability. Starforce could put your machine into a constant BSOD state basically 100% stable to completely unusable until the product was removed.

Starforce was ugly. Anyone who doesn't agree needs to rewind the old clock on memory lane back to the time it was used. Every game that utilized it had worse PR than Spore because of the damage this system was causing to machines. I happen to have plenty of games with Starforce on them that I don't even play anymore because I don't want to risk putting Starforce on my Vista64 machine, that's how painful it is.

Also you're missing other parts of the argument, as is the author. Not only do these protection schemes cause issues with installing the game. Often they cause performance hits. The time it takes to launch the game, load, and sometimes even affecting FPS. There has been many games where a simple cracked EXE greatly increased performance in game. Face it, this article is largely biased in the DRM piece, it's sad too because he had the chance to create a very well balanced article and completely blew it.

 

[skace]

And how come he didn't talk about the price of hardware? Are you telling me someone paying $3000 for a machine versus someone buying a $400 Xbox360 doesn't come into the eventual software budget? I mean if we are going to find reasons for piracy doesn't that matter?

Also, what about his ridiculous 200 million game capable machines? Does anyone actually believe that? Just look at the Steam survey for much more realistic data, face it, most of the Geforce products are not game capable - they are borderline deceptive marketing. Especially when he uses Crysis as a talk point, one of the most hardware-restrictive games on the market. Everyone knows that Crysis' specs were half the problem with why it didn't take off - it could have been the next BF2 but it wasn't (the crysis wars component is certainly there). Companies like Valve and Dice know there is an important sweet spot with software, hardware and looking good, a line you have to balance on. Blizzard knows this too, just look at WoW. All of the successful companies walk a fine line between looking presentable and being runnable yet this topic never comes up in his piece, how come? Because it makes more sense than half the shit he discusses? Even Id Software needs to realize that they had a better formula for scalability back in Quake 1 than they did in Doom 3. Granted, Doom 3 was pretty scaleable, not in the same manner as Quake 1, they were smart back then, they came out with a game that ran a lot of software and looked good (for the time) and then scaled it forward via upgraded engines, which is exactly the same idea Valve took with HL2, where they made incremental engine upgrades for the expansions. It doesn't matter how good a game looks, if it crosses the line into prohibitive and difficult to run, it will live a short life.

 

[mindcycle]

Originally posted by: skace
I'll say it again, cheaper digital distribution is the long term gain, not short term. Short term gain is the fact that Steam's catalog has been so successful at getting not only many developers/producers on board but also lots of recent new titles as well. This is a huge gain if you look at the history of Steam.

Ok, so how do you meet a long term goal without making short term changes? I don't see Steam prices going down, do you? If anything prices have gone up.

I'm not suggesting they drop the axe right away, but there has been no evidence they plan to lower prices whatsoever, now of in the future.

 

[skace]

Originally posted by: mindcycle
Ok, so how do you meet a long term goal without making short term changes? I don't see Steam prices going down, do you? If anything prices have gone up.

I'm not suggesting they drop the axe right away, but there has been no evidence they plan to lower prices whatsoever, now of in the future.

Valve should, in order:
- Grow the catalog
- Turn Steam into a standard
- Become a producer (They've already begun with small mod studios such as the L4D, I see this as a trial period almost for bigger things)
- Start recruiting developers
- Then drop prices once they feel they have enough clout to do battle with the big boys.

Alternatively... as companies such as EA begin pushing their own digital distribution and it appears they might drop prices, Valve would have to make the first move then to play the game. I'm not sure EA would attempt something like that, but they might.