Steam. Hating over?

Conecpts very good.

However, one thing I just can't understand, is why it costs more money to buy online. There's no postage, no handling, no box / disks, etc. and yet games seem to be more with Steam.

Also hate the localisation rubbish - why can we not buy certain games. I remember Beyond Good & Evil being on there a few weeks ago yet it was only for North American customers. Also the prices are in $'s not £'s so you have to convert it then the bank adds there own little rate on (yes I know you can use PayPal) but it's still a pain.

Don't get me wrong it works nicely and sometimes you can get really good prices, I just hate the fact that being in the UK means we get robbed by most online services (including iTunes).



M.
 
kaks said:
I see that Crysis has been announced for Steam. Hopefully this is EA testing the service out and will launch more titles on it.
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I would've thought it has nothing do with EA, it's down to the developers making a deal with Valve to publish their game on Steam. I really I can't see how a publisher making a deal with another publisher to release their games makes any sense, seems like a lot middlemen to me.
 
m4cc45 said:
However, one thing I just can't understand, is why it costs more money to buy online.
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It's probably a combination of...

1) Developers & publishers striking deals which protect the value of high street/mainstream sales. If Steam prices undercut physical prices at launch, software retailers might suffer. Ok, nobody's here's going to get their violins out, but most titles are still sold through standard retail means, and new releases ar eimportant for sales targets. So it's probably only fair (in commercial terms) to try and keep the playing field level.

2) More importantly... the convenience premium! I've bought several things via Steam on impulse, not because they were a great price. You also get to pre-load most releases and play them the day/moment they're released. So Steam has to be seen as a premium service for impatient gamers. Clearly that's working, because the service is growing.

The only way to encourage lower prices is for everyone to stop using it. :-)

Andrew McP
 
tbh steam never bothered me only use it to play my HL games so *shrugs* it does that so im happy have been for a while.
Why did people hate it ?
 
I was right to hate Steam at first because I was not allowed to play the game that I had paid for and waited oh so long for.

Now that Steam works properly (most of the time) I think it's excellent but I still remember the frustration of it simply not working properly at first, and I was not the only one.
 
Adsta said:
tbh steam never bothered me only use it to play my HL games so *shrugs* it does that so im happy have been for a while.
Why did people hate it ?
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when it first came out, it got really hammered by people downloading content on it

a lot of users had slow download speeds through it, failure to connect etc

now it rocks
 
Andrew_McP said:
It's probably a combination of...

1) Developers & publishers striking deals which protect the value of high street/mainstream sales. If Steam prices undercut physical prices at launch, software retailers might suffer. Ok, nobody's here's going to get their violins out, but most titles are still sold through standard retail means, and new releases ar eimportant for sales targets. So it's probably only fair (in commercial terms) to try and keep the playing field level.

2) More importantly... the convenience premium! I've bought several things via Steam on impulse, not because they were a great price. You also get to pre-load most releases and play them the day/moment they're released. So Steam has to be seen as a premium service for impatient gamers. Clearly that's working, because the service is growing.

The only way to encourage lower prices is for everyone to stop using it. :-)

Andrew McP
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Probably also contributing something to bandwidth costs to keep steam running.
 
As has been said..

When steam came out it was a bag of crap. Buggy as hell, regular crashes, regular content server outages, crap download speeds, games not working, off-line mode really buggy, friends not working for well over a year, server saturation, and so on.

Now, five years after release, it's a fantastic product.
 
i hated it to start with
spent my money on half life 2 and to make it work i had to sign up to there service.
That was years ago now i just live with it.
 
It's still a very clunky piece of software at times, especially on startup. But I wouldn't go back to disc games now. In fact, I wish every publisher would give them games to Steam. Yes, EA! That means you. Ubisoft deserves a smack for restricting its catalogue to America only.
 
Tom0 said:
I hate Valve, spent hundereds on games I cant play, or get support off them for.
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wtf.gif
 
So it's £14.99 for the boxed version inc booklet & postage but the steam version is more expensive?
doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever, give me the DVD every time, how many ISP's in UK don't now have download restrictions if you need several gigs in one go ?
 
Burt said:
Have always liked it, although not sure how they justify some of the prices they charge given you could often get a hard copy for the same.
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This is my only major gripe with Steam - given that there's no physical production costs, no publisher / retailer / supplier to take a slice of the price, they can still be a bit greedy with pricing.

I know they must have a fairly beefy infrastructure to keep the whole thing running, but I still reckon they fleece you a bit sometimes.
 
dbmzk1 said:
It's too expensive for new games and it is annoying having to open it to play single player games. For those reasons I never buy anything but games not available anywhere else on there and never will. It's also still got a few annoying bugs. Generally it's a good piece of software though and probably the best of its kind.
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My thoughts echoed exactly....

  1. Some prices are extortionate - however there are some bargains to be had
  2. Don't like having to use it for some single player games - but not a huge issue
  3. It is the best of its kind - but then their isn't much competition

In respect to point 3, they should be commended for making a relatively polished product despite having no competition, but it might also explain for the less than competetive prices.
 
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