Valve CEO discusses BF3 not on Steam

[KalXen~SPARTA~]

PCGamer interview w/ Gabe Newell (Valve CEO)

[NoScream~SPARTA~]

Some people like it, some don't, what I like is that everything is changing, what ever we think is good or bad, it always changes. I personally don't like central no option suppliers and that goes for stream as a supplier because you need their manager to be running so it can verify the software. I also dislike their term & conditions imposed on all users, you paid for the title but some how it technically is not yours when you read the small print... go figure....

 

I support Dice/ EA hosting their own products giving all users the same updates on the same day.

[Rooster90]

Yes Viper, we know. You're in a rather small minority I'm afraid. Not like Origin's ToS are any different. You don't "own" any games you buy through that service either.

[NoScream~SPARTA~]

Yes Viper, we know. You're in a rather small minority I'm afraid. Not like Origin's ToS are any different. You don't "own" any games you buy through that service either.

 

Well it's hard to say how big or small the support for steam is, as they don't publish sales figures. Regardless, what we do know is that some big titles are not going to be there on 'Steam'. EA is the worlds biggest publisher of titles. Steam has some 30 million registered accounts, but how many are in use or active... How many game players in the world of 6 billion people.... google est. around 75M U.S. pc gamers (24%) (120M total inc console) from a population of 310M US Citizens. Taking that as a percentage globally (not accurate) would mean from 6B there be around 1.4B potential gamers on PC.

 

Just a thought.

 

http://store.steampowered.com/stats/ Steam has around 3.6M users peak.

all figures are researched from google.

[KalXen~SPARTA~]

Why does it matter? Competition is good for the users so the service providers stay on top of their games. The only thing this article really is about is how the industry is shifting:

 

1) First you had brick/mortar stores selling boxes.

2) Then you had online services like Steam acting as the middle man with virtual stores and no box. Steam, etc. You even have some brick/mortar who offer this as a service: Gamestop, Bestbuy, etc.

3) Now we are seeing the individual game publishers selling their games direct. EA Origin, etc.

[Rooster90]

The thing that worries me the most about a publisher (EA in particular, since they are the largest) selling their products direct is now they have absolutely zero competition/reason to lower prices in the digital market. Despite the huge amount of savings selling digitally through Steam or other services, prices for new games have stayed the same. This has usually been attributed to publishers and their physical retail deals, giving digital games little edge over the competition outside of convenience. If it were up to Valve I'm sure new games would be far less expensive, but they don't control the prices, publishers do. And now EA has all the power in their hands, since they can offer hundreds of new games each year exclusively through their service on their terms. EA does not have a pretty history when it comes to engaging in fair business practices.

 

True competition would be to offer their products on all distribution platforms, but offer a better service and better prices/deals through their own. But we all know EA will never do this. They'd rather take over half the game industry's products and funnel it exclusively through themselves. Eliminating distributors isn't competition, it's a late-game power grab. Origin isn't horrible, but its no Steam. And contrary to popular belief, you do have to have it running during your games. Had to have it on for the BF3 Alpha.

 

The whole "restrictive ToS" with Valve is a line of total BS from EA. To this day, nobody but EA have any idea what they're talking about. Valve doesn't even know what part of Steam's ToS is restrictive. There's some speculation that it has to do with DLC, but that's BS too since plenty of other developers offer DLC through Steam as well as other platforms without a problem. It's EA simply making up an issue out of nothing as an excuse to get people to buy through their service instead. They couldn't find it in their empty souls to offer good, clean competition, so they do things the dirty way as they always have. What's worse is that they know no matter how much it pisses off their customers and builds resentment, people will still buy it. People who say they will boycott the game are lying to themselves.

[custard~SPARTA~]

The way games are bought and sold is not competition as long as there are two or more more games for sale. The biggest factor in price is quality of game, look how long COD4 held it's sale price and for how much.

[Rooster90]

And look how many pirated it, and it's later versions....

[custard~SPARTA~]

If we agree that all games are pirated to some degree that still doesn't make any difference to competetive pricing. I am not steams biggest fan but I do appreciate it's become a very useful tool and the games that are fully integrated into it like L4D2 make my gaming experience better. I disagree that any game not sold on the steam platform will be any more expensive and or be any more difficult to purchase, update or play. EA will have a bigger profit margin by selling there games on there own digital download platform and not via steam, I'm more concerned that things like 'battlelog' will work at launch than were my copy is going to come from LOL.

[custard~SPARTA~]

Soz having reread it post are you suggesting COD4 was not a good game that it didn't sell in huge numbers and held it's price for an incredibly long time?

[Batwing~SPARTA~]

Competition... Services... Communities... Platform....

 

.. Big Words .. but what is the bottom line?

 

For instance, you do not own Arma2 Combined Operations... You look on internet, because internet is "your friend" and you find:

 

1 - On BiStudio (SProcket) is for sale at $17.97

2 - On Steam is for sale at $29.99

 

#1 is a "retail download" --> all patches are universal internet downloads, you get a copy on your hardrive, you can make a DVD of it

 

#2 is a "Steam version" --> you get patches when Steam is patched, the copy maybe is on your hard drive, maybe not; you cannot make a DVD of it

 

Besides that price is different, you can choose.

 

I don t care where you buy, because I am not "against" Steam. My point is You Have a Choice.

[Rooster90]

@Custard: Wasn't suggesting CoD4 is a bad game and didn't sell well. But it did remain very overpriced years after it came out. Especially with an annual franchise like CoD, older games should almost immediately be put on sale and drop 20 dollars (or more) in price, just like old sports games do. EA puts out a new Madden game, FIFA, what have you and all the previous years end up in bargain bins for 20 dollars or less each year.

 

" I disagree that any game not sold on the steam platform will be any more expensive and or be any more difficult to purchase, update or play. "

 

I didn't say any of those things. Origin is OK for what it does. Never suggested it would make a purchase more difficult, harder to update, etc. Inconvenient, but not hard. What I did suggest however is that EA now has the vast majority of the games market in its clutches and if it so chooses, it can simply deny their games to be sold on any other platform save their own. It's not so much the profit-margin excuse that bothers me. Every company has a right to make a profit. But I doubt seeing many, if any, sales on their system. I'm basing this on their track record and on the EA Download store, which is what Origin is just re-skinned. With so much control of the market, what reason would they have for lowering prices? If there's nobody to compete with, there's no reason for them to. They certainly wouldn't do it out of kindness or love for their customers. History has taught me that. They'd rather you uninstall the game, forget about it for a while, or get a new computer, try and re-download it only to have their customers re-purchase it because when you bought it digitally, your "right" to dl the game expired after the first year of purchase. I'm not making this up.

[GySgt~SPARTA~]

Just another way for the user's not to have control over the product they payed for....and if the service ever goes down the people running off steam are screwed...because they rely on that program to play..