Devs Respond to Steam Exploitation Claim

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The big difference here is that no one is FORCING people to distribute on steam. Apple's app store is much worse because it's THE ONLY way. they have blatantly said before that you are NOT ALLOWED to make apps that compete with the phone's inbuilt functionality (apple's 'apps'), hell, you can't even release apps that are the same as apps apple is thinking it might add to the phone in the future!!

and yet the app store is considered God's latest gift to man!

so yeah, there are bigger things to worry about than steam.
 
[citation][nom]Kelavarus[/nom]...Impulse gets away without all that crap. I'm definitely going Impulse from now on.[/citation]Never heard of Impulse before so I just check them out. I search for a few of the most popular games of the last few years: Bioshock, Left 4 Dead, Orange Box, and Crysis. They have none of those. Then I looked through their action games list and the pickins' were slim. I'm sure Impulse has its virtues, and my intention is not to bash them, but c'mon - Steam has almost all of the best titles!

 
My only issue with Steam is not really an issue with Steam but the publishers who use it. I've seen price differences of up to 30 USD between the Steam US and Steam AU stores for the same game. this is obviously to prevent publishers cannabilising their massively overpriced retail sales here, but it's still stupid from the consumer's perspective because there are no shipping or inventory costs, no import taxes, no GST, no store profits on top, no exchange rates etc and yet it's still far more expensive.

Only some publishers do this though, not all.
 
I agree with the exposure for the little guys statement, there are a lot of games I have never heard of but have given a look at on Steam (that I never would have). In addition, I see no unfair advantage towards Valve's own products, as they put out sales ALL THE TIME for all games out there. Every weekend you can find some great deal at 50, 60, 75 percent off the normal price. My biggest gripe with online distribution systems like Steam of Direct2Drive, is that I want to buy my games from a very stable distributor. I really do not want a digital-only form of a game that I pay for, and the service/developer goes belly-up, then where is my game then?
 
The problem is not the prices of the individual downloads the problem is the percentage of that payment going in to valves pockets.
We now see problems with record company's who claim to have losses while there balance suggest otherwise and on the other hand we see artists that get 0.10 USD per sold unit.
Allowing this is why we don't have CD's for 5 USD at release.
Initially this might seem fine but as with the switch to CD's DVD's and right now blueray (and from PS2 to PS3 for that mather) prices rise for various reasons but hardly ever fall back down again.
Meaning if we let them take this part of the pie now it will be hard to stop them later on ... even if the part gets bigger and bigger.

Again for all media including downloads you guys pay a price in USD while we in europe pay in Euro's wich in itself is no more then logic however a game that costs 60 USD (40,59 Euro) costs 60 Euro here (88,70 USD).
Thats not only fucking with all euro clients its also another 28 USD that can go straight in to the pockets of valve (yes i know they pay taxes but nowhere near 28 USD).

Letting this happen is equal to agreeing with this type of market control and thus is creating a position where the big guys rule them all.
 
I was against steam at first, years ago. I like the idea of having my own copy...etc. Though, they have 100% won me over, simple, clean interface. I have my WHOLE collection of games to any computer I go to, instead of dusty CD's. Basically, at this point, if steam offers a game I want, I would 100% get it on steam over driving to a store. Furthermore, I'm surprised he took the "stifling small developers" route, considering if you look on steam, ALOT of it is indie games.
 
Having used Steam since its incarnation from VALVes headquarters, I have the ability to say I have been through it all. Ups and downs.

Its a great service. People say its slow but I installed Windows 7 Ultimate clean from Vista and was hitting 3-4MB/s which is around the peak of my internet service can do. And really thats not very slow....

There were a few downs when it was early software with bugs and such but those have all be delayed.

A lot of the pricing issues arrise from the publishers themselves. Rockstar sells the GTA complete pack with GTA and GTA II included but those games are available from Rockstars website for free. VALVes games tend to go with the retail price.

While not being able to resale a game to a shope or a friend is a down, who really cares? Any game I don't want later I will buy retail, minus a VALVe game. Most every game I have gotten on Steam I replay now and then. And even with retail its getting harder with all the limited activations and such companies put on their games now.

Plus most of the Steam versions of the same games tend to come CRM free, especially EA games. Whats to hate there?

As for the little guys, I have read plenty of companies that were small time companies that used Steam as a distributor only and ended up selling more than they would have alone and still kept their name on the game instead of having someone elses.

A good example is Killing Floor. Was done by a small studio who made the mod for UT 2K4. With Steam they got so much coverage and even had nice advertisements when you exit a game. They got so many sales and even got compared to VALVes own L4D game wise.

That right there is not exploitation. Its called helping the little guys succed in a world run by EA.
 
[citation][nom]nelson_nel[/nom]This is obvious... Where were these thoughts X years ago? Also, Steam started off as a bane of existance. It was not always a "pleasure" to use. I still would rather not use it.Still, Valve are the clear winners because THEY GOT THERE FIRST and stuck with it!!!! But I guess that's what is considered unfair in today's "can't beat em, ween 'em" society.If you advocate for Steam, think about how alike they are to MS in this situation and see if your still an advocate or not. It'd be interesting to know.[/citation]


And much like Intel, IBM and many other companies.

Thing is that if you get there first wont always win. Sometimes its having the easier and better product. Steam, to me, is better than most of them out there.

Its easy to use, seems to use very little in system resources (for me at least) and keeps me from worrying about my CD/DVD for the game or the paper with the serial number.

MS is the same way as it is the easiest to use. MS was not the first to have a OS to the PC world but theirs was the easiest to use plus they had IBM pushing them along with Apple back in the day.

In that relm, having more than one OS is much to complicated. If you had 5 major OS makers and had to know every aspect of how they worked to get a job you would never be able to. Having one OS to know and a few for specialty skills is fine.

I still advocate Steam. its just really nice to have and until it kills my PC or VALVe rips me off I will. And thet have yet to.
 
The only Steam games I buy is the indies, the rest is so bloody expensive on STEAM I. The rest I buy on post order ib the physical version.
 
I do like Steam and what it offers but I still don't use it much.... It's mostly sour grapes from someone hacking my f***ing cd key for collectors edition of HL2.... Now I don't get to play HL2 because I didn't keep the damn receipt.

No it wasn't due to poor security, I had changed my password 3 times within the past 2 months (completely random passwords) and I was using zonealarm, avg, all the free crap, etc.

/rant
 
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