Steam gets almost all the PC games sales now..How do you feel about this ??

[Fred]

I think most of my recent purchases were from greenmangaming, and in terms of steam being overpriced for new games I dont buy em

Especially when you can wait a bit and pay sooo much less. Sleeping dogs 2.69, Spec Ops 3.50, Driver San Fran Delux 3.74, Batman AC GOTY 4.99

Why pay more?

 

[Antar Bolaeisk]

? best service? Just what are we getting from Steam that we actually need?

I was happy paying my money and taking home the big box game with manual, discs, posters, reference card and other stuff inside.

Thats it. I dont need anything else.

I also remember playing pc games before patches became common. They just worked...


Seems to me Steam is a bit like the salesman telling you - you need that new car he is selling and you can only buy spare parts from him because of all sorts of spurious reasons but most of the reasons suit him, not you. Your life just becomes more difficult and controlled...by him.

Before this...you were free..

Sadly that mostly disappeared before Steam was on the scene, games were being sold in DVD cases with little to no manual. By 2003 around here it was also becoming more difficult to get PC games in shops unless it was a brand new release or The Sims. Would it be nice to have it back again, probably but I doubt I'd buy them simply because I now prefer having my games delivered digitally.

We don't get anything from Steam that we couldn't do without but in terms of the competition they do offer a lot of bonuses, for example:

Pre-loading: No more queuing at midnight to get that highly anticipated game (note: more games need to offer this). This one isn't for everyone but for those who enjoy being first on the scene it's excellent (when it doesn't fall over).

Steam Forums: Again not absolutely necessary, there are plenty more forums out there and the Steam forums aren't exactly renowned for their intelligent discourse but I've found them very useful in the past when having a problem with a game be it running the game or getting stuck at a particular point. It's nice to have everything in a single location without having to trawl through Google results.

There's other items such as the library management, the chat client and online game matchups but these aren't unique to Steam (although I prefer Steam's implementation to Origin's [surprise, surprise says you ]) that in my opinion makes the whole gaming experience that little bit easier and more convenient.

Of course, there are downsides as well, the price being the obvious one (though as others have pointed out you'd be mad to pay Steam's prices when the option is there to shop around), the lack of anything physical for those who enjoy getting the box and, as seen in the other thread, the inability to sell on used games (again something that was dying out before the advent of Steam).

For better or worse this is the way that the market has gone and Steam, due to the fact that they focused on the customer rather than more and more restrictive DRM like the other publishers, are the best provider in that market.

Interestingly enough Gabe has mused on possibly stepping Valve away from Steam and turning it into an almost free for all which to me doesn't sound like an evil company trying to corner the market and take all your money.

Edit: Okay, the timing thingy doesn't work on the embedded video, skip to about 43:20.

 

[chaparral]

I also remember playing pc games before patches became common. They just worked....

Patches has always been common for PC games for as long as I can remember

Just look up for patches for old PC games like quake 2 / sin / red alert as an example..
I used to get a lot of my patches and game addons off the PC gamer mag cover disc back then..

 

[MissChief]

Trying to find the latest patch for a game that wouldnt be getting hammered so your download runs at 20% of your bandwidth was always a bit of a lottery. Steam has fixed all that.

I agree with Fox though, digital distribution was supposed to result in lower costs and therefore lower prices but as usual it meant RRP pricing and a bigger cut for the publisher. The fact that you can still buy a boxed retail copy for cheaper than steam tells you it wasnt about cheaper prices, it was only ever about getting a bigger cut.

 

[Sin_Chase]

Steam gets almost all the PC games sales now.

Source?

 

[Moothead2]

People seem to think that because many new releases use Steam as DRM these days that all these games are bought directly from Steam which isn't the case.

 

[[TW]Fox]

due to the fact that they focused on the customer

What?

 

[MeMeMeMe]

Interestingly enough Gabe has mused on possibly stepping Valve away from Steam and turning it into an almost free for all which to me doesn't sound like an evil company trying to corner the market and take all your money.

That's an amazing video, and especially the bit about turning steam into more of an open network. It fits very well with what I know of the valve philosophy, and how differently they view the games industry than every other distributor.

 

[Strife212]

Steam actually offers you a service when you buy a game on it though, which could justify the higher cost.

They store the game files on their servers and allow you to access them at any time.

 

[AWPC]

XBL charges for game patches....

Someone please explain which game patches these are and how much they cost ??

XBL charge $40k per patch to fix either XBLA or full retail games. I think they get emergency fixes free but anything else is the $40k. This was done to stop buggy games being released too early. It does not apply to GFWL games the patching was always free on that but they have to go through the GFWL certification process which is a hardware QA lab (same people who run the Xbox lab) this has been known to take 6-8 weeks as they often find bugs which mean the patch needs more work but GFWL is retired now so its unlikely to be an issue in future.

Back on topic yeah Steam having a monopoly is a terrible idea everyone else has thrown in the towel MS never even bothered competing in the first place & Win 8 App Store is never ever going to rival Steam. The 30-40% cut Valve take from Steam transactions will become a bigger issue in the near future its too much.

 

[MURDEROUS G]

? best service? Just what are we getting from Steam that we actually need?

I was happy paying my money and taking home the big box game with manual, discs, posters, reference card and other stuff inside.

If I buy a game on Steam it is available to me immediately and I can play it almost instantly. I don't have to go to a shop to get it or wait for it to arrive in the post. It will be continuously updated and patched forever, as soon as the patches become available and with no input from me. I can uninstall and reinstall any game whenever I want with a couple of mouse clicks rather than having to dig old DVDs out of the cupboard. The platform allows for communities to develop around each game so I can find people to multiplayer with easily if need be, and in some cases it also allows for seamless addition of user-created content. Frequent sales with massive discounts mean I can buy recently released triple-A games for ridiculously low prices.

If none of this matters to you then fair enough but it evidently matters a great deal to everyone else which is why everybody has flocked to the service - welcome to the free market.

In short, the reason Steam gets all of the business that I used to give to brick-and-mortar retailers is because it is much, much better in almost every respect. The only glaring flaw is the customer service which I admit is poor, but in the nearly ten years I've been on Steam I've only had cause to contact customer support once and that was due to a mistake that was entirely my own fault (bought the wrong version of a game).

I also remember playing pc games before patches became common. They just worked...

Games have come along ever so slightly since then. Most of them are works of such massive technical complexity now that post-release patches are going to be a requirement. The evolution of the industry has necessitated this; Steam just makes it a less painful process.

Seems to me Steam is a bit like the salesman telling you - you need that new car he is selling and you can only buy spare parts from him because of all sorts of spurious reasons but most of the reasons suit him, not you. Your life just becomes more difficult and controlled...by him.

I've been PC gaming for longer than I'd care to admit, and with Steam being what it is right now, buying, installing and playing PC games is easier, cheaper, and more convenient than it has ever been. I feel like you are looking at the past through extremely rose-coloured glasses here because claiming that Steam has somehow made gamers' lives more difficult is silly.

 

[npjnpj]

No doubt about it: it's a bad thing! A monopoly is never ever good.

Some of the pro-arguments flying about here astound me:

Make a desktop directory and put all your games shortcuts in there, you have the same thing as the Steam folder minus the pretty pictures.

A large collection of physical game CDs and DVDs fits comfortably and accessibly into one desk drawer if you store them in slim jackets and chuck away the boxes. If you're really pushed for space then scan the manuals and they take up no physical space at all. Most of them are PDFs anyway nowadays.

Surely it's not that difficult to install a game by using Autorun or clicking on an install.exe or autorun.exe. Oh, that's double-click, of course. Very strenuous! And mentally extremely taxing.

Any update can be run manually (and should be). Praising all automatic updates and thereby accepting that anything can be installed on your PC is just plain lazy. Can be a right pain if you're into modding as well.

Steam is doubtlessly a good company but who can guarantee for how long! No monopoly in a free market was ever created by starting out being a bar-steward. That's phase two. First you make nice.

Everyone is quite rightly wondering and complaining about where the little shops and retailers have gone that have been replaced by gigantic chain stores. Yes, well! It's the same thing here but everyone is happily participating in exactly the same development. Because of all the deals that force everyone else out of competition. And they can only do this by hiking up the prices of other games, exploiting people's laziness to buy them regardless.

No doubt that at this time Steam is a great company with great service and offering great convenience, but any company is mainly there for profit. What if they decide to sell at some future date? Or merge with EA or Ubisoft, for instance. Large company takeovers are happening all the time. Car companies, movie companies, banks, insurances, even game development and game publishing companies. But not Steam, never our Steam. They're family and they'd never do that to us!

Any public protests are always ignored if such a thing occurs. The delights of rampant globalization. And the announcement always happens just a few weeks, if not days before the actual deal is done. Sometimes even only after the fact.

Which of the large and great companies of 20 years ago is still around and recognizable? And in 20 years time? Do you think things won't have changed? Or only for the better? That goes for Steam too.

Reading some of the answers here is like watching sheep going to the slaughter. But then again, that's just human nature and seeing economic history being ignored.

Personally I have a ton of Steam games, but all as physical media and only registered through Steam and purchased through high street retailers or by mail order. But that's all.

I'm sure that this'll get some of the Steam high priests here upset, but I suppose I'll just have to live with that.

 

[snowdog]

The reason I like steam is because it is hassle free and I want my games in one place.
It is the closest thing that came to illegal downloads, no stupid optical media, no cd checks, have any average game downloaded and ready to play within 15 minutes 24/7, etc...
My steam library is the same across all my devices...

It's still a lot of shortcuts, just in the Steam client instead of on the Start Menu or something.

Except, install 350 ( or hell, even 20) games from retail is a tedious process you have to sit through. Install 350 ( or just 20) games on steam is clicking the game, clicking install, 2 or 3 more clicks, and done...

No need to sit through the download process, no need to press next, no need to type in any crappy cd key ( instead, if a game needs one, which it mostly doesn't, you ctrl-c and ctrl-v it...). You let your games download, do whatever you want to do, like watch a flick, come back, and all done...

I see it as paying for convenience, I've installed hundreds of games in my life ( seeing as I have 214 games on steam alone and played hundreds before I even had steam). I can't be bothered to go through a game setup now, it's just plain annoying, I want to click download/install, go away for a while/do something else, come back in 15 minutes with the software ready to use any time of the day ( or in the case of old games, within 2 minutes of buying it)... No searching for it, no dvd's, no Blu r d's, no clicking next 10 times, no typing over cd keys, you get the point...

 

[npjnpj]

Ah, that's just what I'm talking about, thanks for the example. You're prepared to sacriface everything for the sake of convenience. Is that really wise?

Perhaps sometimes it could be a good thing to think a bit, move a bit, and sometimes even get on our chubby little legs and waddle out to the high street. Just to make sure it's still there.

 

[MURDEROUS G]

Some of the pro-arguments flying about here astound me:

[..]

A large collection of physical game CDs and DVDs fits comfortably and accessibly into one desk drawer if you store them in slim jackets and chuck away the boxes. If you're really pushed for space then scan the manuals and they take up no physical space at all. Most of them are PDFs anyway nowadays.

[..]

Any update can be run manually (and should be). Praising all automatic updates and thereby accepting that anything can be installed on your PC is just plain lazy.

I'm happy for you that your time is worth so little that you can spend it scanning the manuals of your entire game collection page-by-page, and keeping a library of hundreds of games constantly updated by checking developers' websites on a daily basis and manually installing all relevant updates. Some of us prefer the convenience of the alternative and it has nothing to do with being lazy, it just means we don't consider our time to be worthless.

Steam is doubtlessly a good company but who can guarantee for how long! No monopoly in a free market was ever created by starting out being a bar-steward. That's phase two. First you make nice.

[..]

No doubt that at this time Steam is a great company with great service and offering great convenience, but any company is mainly there for profit. What if they decide to sell at some future date? Or merge with EA or Ubisoft, for instance. Large company takeovers are happening all the time. Car companies, movie companies, banks, insurances, even game development and game publishing companies. But not Steam, never our Steam. They're family and they'd never do that to us!

[..]

Which of the large and great companies of 20 years ago is still around and recognizable? And in 20 years time? Do you think things won't have changed? Or only for the better? That goes for Steam too.

This is a stupid argument, sorry. Of course things will have changed in twenty years' time. This is no reason not to take advantage of an excellent service in the present. If you're seriously trying to say that people shouldn't patronise a good company because you don't know that the company won't become bad later, then by this logic nobody should ever purchase anything, from any company, ever.

edit:

You're prepared to sacriface everything for the sake of convenience. Is that really wise?

Could you please explain why you believe people are choosing to "sacriface [sic] everything" by playing games on Steam?

 

[npjnpj]

My trepidations are explained in the post above.

Our opinions differ, and that's ok. Perhaps we should all get together in a few years time and see where we are. Possibly my fears will have been proved groundless, but I doubt it. I admit that I'm quite the pessimist where these things are concerned, but looking around now and seeing how we got there I believe proves my point.

 

[snowdog]

Ah, that's just what I'm talking about, thanks for the example. You're prepared to sacriface everything for the sake of convenience. Is that really wise?

For anything pc related, yea. It's my hobby, I'm willing to spend big bucks on it...

Perhaps sometimes it could be a good thing to think a bit, move a bit, and sometimes even get on our chubby little legs and waddle out to the high street. Just to make sure it's still there.

I've got work, the pub ( or other stuff I like to go to) and uni for that.
In my free time I want to be a lazy **** and the reason I work my arse off and spend probably way too much time at work compared to uni, is because I want to be lazy in my free time.
High street, meh, if you like shopping... And chubby legs, mine are anything but chubby.

A large collection of physical game CDs and DVDs fits comfortably and accessibly into one desk drawer if you store them in slim jackets and chuck away the boxes. If you're really pushed for space then scan the manuals and they take up no physical space at all. Most of them are PDFs anyway nowadays.

I'm lazy, I throw away crap away only when I have people over, or better said I only clean my room if I have girls over, other times I'm a slob, dishes everywhere, cans everywhere, I do my washing the moment ALL my clean clothes run out ( which is often after 3-4 weeks), in fact, when I ran out of socks last time, instead of looking and washing my old ones, I ordered a 24 sets of new ones instead...

Do you really think I can be bothered organising and keeping my games organised, especially if I buy one every week or other week on average ?

Any update can be run manually (and should be). Praising all automatic updates and thereby accepting that anything can be installed on your PC is just plain lazy.

What is wrong with being lazy in your free time, I work and pay so I can be lazy, I can show you numerous examples but suffice to say, I gladly go to work extra so I can be EXTRA lazy at home...

 

[npjnpj]

Wow, you're exempt then. Ever thought of getting a butler and a maid?

 

[snowdog]

Wow, you're exempt then. Ever thought of getting a butler and a maid?

Ha, if I could I would...
Perhaps some day .

But with good motivation I can be not lazy, but that doesn't apply to anything PC related. I've installed enough stuff for others, on my own pc, I gladly pay quite a bit extra for convenience...

 

[TommyV]

I'm lazy, I throw away crap away only when I have people over, or better said I only clean my room if I have girls over, other times I'm a slob, dishes everywhere, cans everywhere, I do my washing the moment ALL my clean clothes run out ( which is often after 3-4 weeks), in fact, when I ran out of socks last time, instead of looking and washing my old ones, I ordered a 24 sets of new ones instead...

The socks part made me laugh, lad!