“Publishers don’t give a shit, they don’t care what happens to the customer. Which is the crucial point, because Steam do,” the director of “a fledgling Steam rival” told the site. A fledgling rival, eh? Direct2Drive, perhaps? GamersGate? Impulse, maybe?
The criticism of Steam – an online multiplayer platform and digital shopfront run by Half-Life developers Valve – doesn’t stop there.
“I’ve fought hard for my customer, and never before have I had to give my customers away. Steam is killing the PC market and it is no wonder digital retailers are failing”, the unnamed director continues.
“Steam is locking down the market.”
See, here’s where these digital competitors have it wrong. Yes, it’s hardly an ideal set of circumstances that a single company is effectively taking over the mainstream PC downloadable market. More competition would be good for everyone. But there’s a reason Steam is so dominant: it’s the only service that’s doing things right.
The sooner competing services quit bitching and start putting together comparable platforms where you can shop, play and communicate as easily as you can on Steam, the sooner we’ll take their criticisms as something more than just sour grapes.
As for the bricks-and-mortar retailers, there are reportedly fears that selling boxed copies of games that include mandatory Steam integration is only going to encourage customers to not only shop online in the future, but shop with Steam, which is a competitor to these own retailer’s digital shopfront ambitions.
As a result of this, “two major retailers” in the UK are threatening publishers that they will cease stocking games that include such a requirement in any form.
Retail threatens Steam ban [MCV]
Republished from Kotaku
hexagram
Friday, November 12, 2010 at 7:28 AMIf retailers reject selling games that integrate with steam they will lose the very last chance at which to grab my custom. Not only that they need to start pricing (for the Aus market) more competitively than what they are, its ridiculous that we are paying over $100 for the so called AAA titles when they are not any where near that overseas.
Sites like ozgameshop and D2D is where my money is going at the moment but if they didn’t offer steam integration with their titles i wouldn’t shop there either. People can hate on steam all they like but it is so damn convenient in all the aspects already mentioned in this article.
Kraiden
Friday, November 12, 2010 at 7:55 AMI still buy boxed games, mainly because I hate downloading them and using up my data quota for the month. Besides, I’m a sucker for physical copies.
Leigh
Friday, November 12, 2010 at 8:10 AMThat and when Steam first came out; it was pretty unusable for the first few years because it had sooooo many bugs.
The worst thing of all is that they forced all of the existing WONID player base (HL, counter strike, etc) onto steam; which then hardly worked and we couldnt play the games they paid for.
So now they have a really good system; but back in the day – pretty sure everyone hated them!
Roland
Friday, November 12, 2010 at 8:33 AMI don’t know why Game retailers are up in arms. from the looks of things us PC games are a dying breed… Just look at the distain the developers Treyarch showed their PC base by bring out a laggy poorly ported version of Call of Duty Black Ops.
The Console club will carry them through I’m sure.
I love Steam, lose a hard drive or upgrade no more dramas of looking for all those CD’s or DVD’s to install. Just intall Steam, log in and download all your games. Love it.
Michael
Friday, November 12, 2010 at 9:49 AMYour post actually illustrates some of the reasons I dislike Steam. It is taking PC gaming off the shelves and out of the minds of the mass market. Developers won’t spend money on quality PC games but will only do el’cheapo ports of the console game to make a few extra bucks on the side. Soon they may not even go that far.
Ve
Friday, November 12, 2010 at 9:24 AMIt’s kind of funny, I’ve never bought a game through steam but I have a fair few on my steam account. (all bought through physical stores, obviously).
I suppose I will get portal 2 via steam when it comes out but mostly when I buy a game it’s because I like it enough to invest in the shiny shiny collectors edition which is one thing steam can’t really do. (DLC is NOT physical game merchandise no matter how you look at it)
But with the boom of consoles games and trade-ins (which game stores make a heap of cash on) I find it difficult to believe lack of PC game sales is sending them out of business. In fact most of the game stores here have maybe half a shelf of PC games if that and then walls and walls dedicated to console games.
Johl
Friday, November 12, 2010 at 11:28 AMDoesn’t the increase in digital distribution just force the prices of physical copies down? And I doubt game developers care much about the physical stores, seeing as it would be far cheaper to just sell their content digitally.
Michael
Friday, November 12, 2010 at 9:27 AMYep, I’m a Steam hater. It maybe OK for people with unlimited broadband data and a fast connection but Australia’s slow and limited broadband makes Steam a pretty costly use of your broadband plan.
What I hate most though, is being forced by Publishers to using Steam to play retail games. Buying a retail game with Steam usually guarantees before you can even play it you have to go through mandatory patching and mostly these patches are *huge*, sometimes almost as big as the whole game. WTF? You buy a game on disc only to have to almost download the entire thing again online? Playing the game ‘as sold’ is impossible without hacking it and I’m pretty sure this would be against Australian Consumer law as well; just nobody has bothered to take them on.
In my non-legal view, that would mean, the game ‘as sold’is not fit for the purpose for which it is sold, ie; to play.
I don’t buy Steam games retail anymore because of the hassle and neither do some of my friends. It’s annoying to buy a retail PC game and taking a day and a large slab of my download limit to get it running.
If your go into any games retailer the PC game section is disappearing. I like PC games but Steam is killing PC gaming for everyone but the hardcore PC gamer. As much as this demographic may hate the casual gamer they need them to keep PC game developement viable.
Ve
Friday, November 12, 2010 at 2:06 PMInternode have un-metered steam in Australia, just FYI. They are probably not the only ones so if this is a huge problem for you, you may consider switching to a better ISP. :)
Noother
Friday, November 12, 2010 at 2:36 PM@Michael
I’m in Australia, far outer western Sydney (near blue mountains) and I’ve no trouble using Steam. While I still do order physical copies of some games for collectors editions, other ones I just buy through Steam, can pre-load before release then play it when it is ready. Also the prices are much much cheaper then even other online shops and store fronts. I’ve got a pretty standard internet plan (Naked DSL with iiNet) which gives me over 200GB of downloads (recently upped several times). I have something like a 9-10Mbit connection. Even if my line was slower I’d still have no problems.
Will
Friday, November 12, 2010 at 9:30 AMI used to hate steam back in the day. It was like a virus almost.
Now its the best thing ever. spend so much more money and pretty much hardly pirate games now because Its so damn convenient and cheaper to buy online. pfft as if id want to drive to a store. that’s just ridiculous lol.
Im pretty sure that a huge amount of people bought MW2 on pc. Installed steam, realised how amazing it is and never walked back into a physical store.
Biderjum
Friday, November 12, 2010 at 10:17 AMI was put off online gaming when steam came out, I stopped playing CS, TFC etc as steam ruined them.
Sounds like they have sorted out all the issues now, good to hear, but I prolly wont go back their games
jd
Friday, November 12, 2010 at 10:27 AM“PC games are a dying breed”
WoW, Starcraft2, BioShock… yep definitely dying.
Ever seen a good RTS on a console?
Anyway, it’s not like bricks and mortar game shops have some moral right to exist. If they’re providing an inferior product at a higher price then they’re going to lose custom. Welcome to economics.
It’s like the music publishers. Sorry, but if you’re selling water in the desert and it starts to rain you can’t just ban rain.
Andrew
Friday, November 12, 2010 at 11:37 AMThats about the best metaphor Iv ever seen for the “onlineization” of media!
Michael
Friday, November 12, 2010 at 11:47 AMWoW has been out forever, Starcraft 2 granted, the point being quality PC games are getting further and further apart. Yes RTS generally suck on the consoles but they have mostly had their day too and been left to the hardcore gamers. I doubt Valve and Blizzard by themselves will be able to sustain PC gaming forever.
The retailers don’t have a moral right to exist but they should at least have fair competition and having the competition’s Steam mandatorily embedded in products your trying to sell is hardly fair. Retail PC games suck because of Steam not the absence of it.
Contrary to your view Steam is cheaper, mostly it is not. You can get many games out of the EB bargain bin cheaper than on Steam. Not mention Steam inflating the price to Australian users over that paid by US users.
j03w
Friday, November 12, 2010 at 12:32 PMI bought most of my game from steam
they’re much cheaper from retailers
even cheaper with current USD AUD exchange rate
I just have to let steam download the game during off-peak time that is
and since none of the retails offer mac game (or I couldn’t find them)
steam is an only choice for me anyway
Blake
Friday, November 12, 2010 at 1:03 PMAnd steam do things really really wrong.
The best example is difference in pricing, us Australians pay through the bloody roof for games! It really is bad, its terrible.
I do hope that steam will die, but it wont :(
Simon Reidy
Friday, November 12, 2010 at 1:50 PMWhen you’re on ADSL 2 with an average transfer rate of 12mbps, and have a 150GB to play with each month, Steam is your friend. I’m not gloating, just saying that downloading for me is no problem.
I haven’t bought a physical game in a couple of years now. Steam is so much more convenient and the specials they have are amazing.
Paul
Monday, November 15, 2010 at 11:52 AMI love steam. Its made the whole process of buying and keeping games much simpler. Autoupdates, Patching, friends lists, cross game chat all great with steam.
And dont hate steam for the inflated prices they are charging Australians for retail. You can bet it comes back to Aussie Bricks and Mortar stores refusing to stock boxed copies unless steam matches their price.
Just paypal a friend overseas and get them to buy and gift it to you for the cheap price ;)