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Author Topic: To Steam Or Not To Steam  (Read 18290 times)

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Bongo Bill

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Re: To Steam Or Not To Steam
« Reply #60 on: February 07, 2009, 05:42:31 PM »

Normal DRM represents a considerable loss of features (even when working as intended) without any added functionality to make up for it. Steam DRM represents a loss of a few features (must play a game while in online mode at least once before you can play it in offline mode; can't resell or give away games after purchase). However, it adds so much functionality that I consider it a substantial net gain for the buyer.
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Brentai

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Re: To Steam Or Not To Steam
« Reply #61 on: February 07, 2009, 05:55:03 PM »

But the reasoning you gave was that they used other, worse methods of copy protection.

As an example.  First thing that came to mind because that's happened a couple times recently.

Quote
If you'd said "What if I lost or scratched my disc?" you may have had a point (or not -- without copy protection, you could just make a damn backup), but you didn't, you talked about code wheels.  You framed it as an issue of one method of copy protection versus several others rather than an issue of copy protection versus no copy protection.

...I'm not upset, but this is going to make it sound like I am.  I'm going to try and phrase it as neutrally as possible.

If having a casual discussion with you requires as much effort and semantic structuring as talking to an Infocom parser, nobody's going to want to have a casual discussion with you.

...Well, except all those people who like enjoy yelling at Infocom parsers, I guess.

We'll see where that goes, but in the meantime the best video game example we have of what happens if you take away all accountability is... yeah, what they just said.

Why is it the best example?  Why is it a more valid example than, say, The Witcher or Fallout 3?

Fallout 3 uses SecuROM for CD verification.
Atari-published copies of The Witcher use TAGES.  Verified from other sources.  Would be neat to see how the clean copies compare to the Atari ones, but that's far from a controlled experiment.

PC Gaming had hit a real slump for a while there, but made an amazing turnaround in the last few months.  Some combination of real AAA releases, growing irritation with the state of the consoles (wtf ps3 still costs my life savings?) and a price drop in PC hardware has kicked the market right halfway up the anus.

I'd like to see some numbers to back up the notion that the PC games market is in better shape than it's been for the past few years.

Hmph.  I tried to get monthly figures but all I could pull up was a deluge of articles last month about the sharp drop in revenue on a yearly scale.  Almost nothing of note came out for the PC between January and September, so that was kind of a foregone conclusion.  

...you know that might be what's actually killing PC gaming.  Just a theory.

I mean christ, I worry that not owning an original Game Boy Advance will put me up shit creek without a paddle. Why? Because if the world goes to a Fallout 3 style hell, I'd need a battery operated hand-held as opposed to everything these days just plugging into a power-socket. Now I need a fucking personal generator to pass the time in Apocalyptica. Thanks, technological progress!

You'd rather have a device that relies on unrenewable chemical resources than one that can charge itself on wind, solar, water, or any other type of power you can build an adapter for?  Get out of my party, I'm taking the dangerously fickle mutant.
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Doom

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Re: To Steam Or Not To Steam
« Reply #62 on: February 07, 2009, 06:11:23 PM »

Fuck you! All you have to do is go through my obnoxiously long side-quest to unlock my amazing(ly moderate) combat prowess!

Besides, Batteries are trade goods! And can be kept hidden! This lets me play the GBA in my quiet times every so often while maintaining a good clip of movement! Good luck basing your entertainment and the degeneration of your sanity on finding available sources of water, especially when you have to flee from the radscorpions!
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Thad

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Re: To Steam Or Not To Steam
« Reply #63 on: February 07, 2009, 06:49:06 PM »

How? The platform is account based, what games you own tied to that account. That is the extent of the copy protection, except with pre-loaded Valve games which are encrypted until the release date.

But you can't copy the files straight across to a new system.  Again, you're reliant on Valve for your games to run five years down the road.

I guess you could allow the passing of ownership rights freely between Steam users, but there is no way any developer or publisher would agree to that, and I'm not sure I agree with the idea myself.

These are the same publishers who would make resale of physical discs illegal if they could, and who, as noted in other threads, have been toying with wonderful ideas like requiring an account registration to complete a game.

Point one:

This debate is not nearly as cut and dried as the RIAA/MPAA ones. The best defense those folks get is always related to the necessity of their survival. But with Steam, a good number of people are arguing NOT JUST that that Steam is less harmful or that they need to survive, but that their business model actually brings many positive benefits to the consumer.

Already covered.  The benefits of community and convenience are independent of whether they let me own the games I purchase from them, and there is absolutely no contradiction or cognitive dissonance involved in praising one while damning the other.

Point two:

I wonder if any of you would be happier, if you just thought of Steam as leasing a game rather than owning it.

I'm willing to call it that if the people "selling" me a game are.

Regarding the demise of Valve: So, have none of you been paying attention to the internet for the past, oh fifteen years or so? You have noticed that once something is old enough, it almost always readily available for free? Right?

If Valve died tomorrow and didn't release shit, I'm sure a few folks would have the code for most of their games reverse-engineered and available for Steam-free server-and-local use faster than you can say 'Chapter Eleven'.

As Doom points out, you can pirate their games right the hell now if you want to.  That's not what I'm talking about.  I'm talking about LEGAL options.

"Of course you could just pirate it if you want to" should really be taken as read.

...I'm not upset, but this is going to make it sound like I am.  I'm going to try and phrase it as neutrally as possible.

If having a casual discussion with you requires as much effort and semantic structuring as talking to an Infocom parser, nobody's going to want to have a casual discussion with you.

Also not upset, but...you said something that wasn't actually what you meant and you're acting like it's MY fault for assuming it was.

Fallout 3 uses SecuROM for CD verification.

Yes, but it's a fucking joke and you can get around it simply by changing the shortcut to point to the EXE on the hard drive.

Atari-published copies of The Witcher use TAGES.  Verified from other sources.  Would be neat to see how the clean copies compare to the Atari ones, but that's far from a controlled experiment.

I didn't know that, and find it quite annoying coming from a company that's as anti-DRM as CDProjekt.

Though it opens up the point that big publishers get veto rights over independent developers.  And of course one of the benefits of Steam is that it is the single best way for an independent developer to get wide distribution and recognition at this point.
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Bal

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Re: To Steam Or Not To Steam
« Reply #64 on: February 07, 2009, 06:51:20 PM »

Your comments on my post aren't wrong here, they're just shit I don't care about even a little bit.
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Thad

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Re: To Steam Or Not To Steam
« Reply #65 on: February 07, 2009, 06:59:13 PM »

And that seems to be a recurring theme here.

And frankly the "I'm okay with giving up my rights because I'm not using them" attitude bugs the shit out of me.

I hate to slippery-slope it, but while Steam's DRM model isn't an especially nasty one, it's part of a much bigger, very well-organized effort to redefine copyright and strip away consumer rights.

First sale doctrine is a right, and while I don't feel as strong about it as TA (again, I bought a Steam game once and might buy more if I ever deplete my "to-play" stack enough to justify it), I'm not willing to concede that right just because I don't personally make a habit of selling used games.
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Mongrel

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Re: To Steam Or Not To Steam
« Reply #66 on: February 07, 2009, 07:02:50 PM »

I demand an iron for thread icon.

DEMAND.
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Bongo Bill

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Re: To Steam Or Not To Steam
« Reply #67 on: February 07, 2009, 07:07:26 PM »

Steam is a service. Access to games sold via Steam are part of that service. I accept this.
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Bal

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Re: To Steam Or Not To Steam
« Reply #68 on: February 07, 2009, 07:10:24 PM »

I can play my steam games on as many computers as I wish, and that's all that matters to me on that score.

If I felt I had rights here that were being infringed I'd be more angry about it, but the fact of the matter is that there is no PC reselling market. Also, and this is probably a matter for a different thread, but the right to resell property has difficulty standing up in the face of the digital medium, where there is no material property, and no guarantee of sale rather than copy.
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Brentai

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Re: To Steam Or Not To Steam
« Reply #69 on: February 07, 2009, 07:17:23 PM »

Fallout 3 uses SecuROM for CD verification.

Yes, but it's a fucking joke and you can get around it simply by changing the shortcut to point to the EXE on the hard drive.

...so I'm guessing it's not a false choice between CD keys and physical disk checks, then.

Atari-published copies of The Witcher use TAGES.  Verified from other sources.  Would be neat to see how the clean copies compare to the Atari ones, but that's far from a controlled experiment.

I didn't know that, and find it quite annoying coming from a company that's as anti-DRM as CDProjekt.

Well as I was careful to point out, it came from Atari, not CDProjekt.  But yeah, it's total unforgivable bullshit to find hidden DRM - background service-type DRM no less - in a product which was loudly claimed to not have any.  I'd put it on my "to seed like an asshole" queue but in this case the developers opened up an alternative so I don't find it necessary to punish them as well for once.

Quote
Though it opens up the point that big publishers get veto rights over independent developers.  And of course one of the benefits of Steam is that it is the single best way for an independent developer to get wide distribution and recognition at this point.

...and you automatically get hooked up with a DRM scheme that most people have already accepted as reasonable, so bonus there.  In theory if you were a really progressive developer you could set up your own damn resale scheme.
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Mongrel

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Re: To Steam Or Not To Steam
« Reply #70 on: February 07, 2009, 07:40:29 PM »

Steam is a service. Access to games sold via Steam are part of that service. I accept this.

Yeah, I think as previously mentioned this is key.

I mean I understand Thad's attitude about not giving up your rights. There's a valid point in that. But I pride myself on being a practical man. If all that needs to happen to make my objections go away is for me to just call Steam something else, then it becomes purely an issue of sematics. That's a world of difference to something that is actually doing real harm, no matter what name you hang on it.

To expand the idea of looking at Steam like a rental, lease, or carnival funhouse (i.e. a charge-per-ride), you can see the doctrine of renting or leasing has as much validity as the doctrine of first sale. Both are valid business options. And you can argue that Steam use carries a higher level of rights than does renting, since you pay a one-time fee and have no usage constraints for the duration of the company's existance. That's a pretty fucking favourable rental contract. It's favourable enough that it may be a new form of posession, something between the limited rights of loans or rentals, but less permanent than true ownership. In this case, the only thing Steam is guilty of doing is misrepresenting itself. Certainly that's objectionable, but it's a different complaint than one about DRM.

On the other hand, it doesn't matter what label is applied to invasive DRM like SecuROM, it's still going to fuck up your shit.

The crux here is that Steam is operating like a (mostly) sensible and conventional business, trying to engage the customer, build good loyalty, and sell good products that people want. Whereas the RIAA/MPAA/anyone else whoring DRM have basically chosen to actually go to war with their customers. In those cases, the relationship has ceased to be a business one, between a producer and a consumer, and has instead morphed into something absurd, with a greater resemblance to to a gutter brawl between two cockney pickpockets who've simultaneously caught each other than thing else.

Fear of new distribution models cuts both ways. Perhaps Steam-type applications are the way of the future, or are at least part of it. If it turns out in the long run that this model is being abused, it will generate discontent and we will fight against it then, in the same ways that SecuROM is fought now, with information and our wallets. That's capitalism at it's finest. The only thing that could prevent you from fighting against Steam-esque distribution models in the future, is if this is banned somehow. And you know who to blame then? Your goverment, not Valve. If you really think that your rights of first sale and ownership are so insecure that Steam represents some kind of irrevocable first-stage slippery slope toward the re-definition or removal of those rights, then your problem isn't merely an exploitive corporation, it's much much bigger.


*I swear I will hit the first smartass who quotes Martin Niemöller
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Brentai

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Re: To Steam Or Not To Steam
« Reply #71 on: February 07, 2009, 08:20:00 PM »

I don't see quietly accepting that I'm paying the same price to rent something as own it as the solution to the issue of my rights.
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Rico

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Re: To Steam Or Not To Steam
« Reply #72 on: February 07, 2009, 08:28:17 PM »

But you can't copy the files straight across to a new system.
Uh, yes, you totally can; something which you can't do with most if not all traditional Windows game installs, even.

I've been thinking a bit about solutions to not being able to sell your Steam games, as that is the only real bit of DRM inherent in the platform (I don't recognize the one-time-at-first-launch online check as DRM; I find it analogous to going to a physical store once to buy your physical game; I've made heavy use of offline mode and it works flawlessly).  The best solution I had off the top of my head was to enable a peer-to-peer file transfer for sold games so that Valve wouldn't take the double-hit in bandwidth from abusive Internet chain-trading.  It's something that's relatively hard to map to digital distribution: You have the right to sell your physical copy of the game to a friend; you don't have the right to go to a game store, give them your copy and make them give it to your friend for free when he comes in next week.
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Bongo Bill

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Re: To Steam Or Not To Steam
« Reply #73 on: February 07, 2009, 08:48:07 PM »

I don't see quietly accepting that I'm paying the same price to rent something as own it as the solution to the issue of my rights.
Steam isn't a rental, though. It is just about the second-closest thing to physical-product-style ownership that can be had for an entirely digital good. (The closest is something like Good Old Games' model, which just gives you unlimited downloads of a conveniently pirateable installer. This is about as realistic a business model as putting a pile of stuff by the side of the road with a jar of quarters and a sign that says to please pay for whatever you take, and it only works because GOG's only expenses are hosting [which is much, much cheaper than what they charge], marketing, and updating the compatibility of the games. If they had to invest the full development budget in each of the games they sell....)
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Mongrel

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Re: To Steam Or Not To Steam
« Reply #74 on: February 07, 2009, 09:16:35 PM »

I don't see quietly accepting that I'm paying the same price to rent something as own it as the solution to the issue of my rights.

You're not.

If you purchase a Steam game, you should be doing so with at least a basic understanding of the Steam business model.

If the game is proprietary to Steam or Valve, then that IS the game's form. There's no secret "CD Hardcopy" version somewhere. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that all new games must use classic distribution models. We're sorry. This roller-coaster does not have a take-home version you can build in your backyard. You want to ride the ride, you need to cough up the three dolla here and now... and you must be taller than, uhhhh... oh, let's say... Kazz.

If the game you want is available elsewhere, in a complete hard-copy form (i.e. Amazon, mentioned earlier), then you may make the choice as a consumer to take your money elsewhere.

Now, if Steam is telling you you own the game in the classical sense, then you're correct in calling that a lie. But exactly as I mentioned above, that's a different issue.
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JDigital

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Re: To Steam Or Not To Steam
« Reply #75 on: February 07, 2009, 09:31:20 PM »

I'm an obsessive hoarder who never re-sells anything. It'd have to be a single-player game that I've thoroughly and definitively beaten. Even then, I'm not sure I'm saving any money by buying and then then reselling a physical copy at a shop, after factoring in postage and transport.
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Burrito Al Pastor

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Re: To Steam Or Not To Steam
« Reply #76 on: February 07, 2009, 09:43:41 PM »

First sale doctrine doesn't enter into it. First sale doctrine applies to the data, not the license to use it. I'm violating my EULA if I sell you my World of Warcraft account, but Blizzard doesn't mind if I sell you my CDs. I don't see why that should be otherwise; Blizzard owns the game, and if I was worried about selling my account, I wouldn't have agreed to their terms of service, and thus wouldn't have bought the game.

The only reason we say that we've "bought" a game is because it's much simpler than saying that we've "purchased a transferable data disc and nontrasferable indefinite-duration conditional usage license." If that's an important distinction, somebody can set up a wordfilter.
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Büge

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Re: To Steam Or Not To Steam
« Reply #77 on: February 07, 2009, 10:22:59 PM »

Brentai complains about Thad getting on his case for semantic mistakes and misuses the word "theory" in the same post.

I can't tell if that's irony or not.
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Alex

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Re: To Steam Or Not To Steam
« Reply #78 on: February 07, 2009, 10:40:02 PM »

This is about as realistic a business model as putting a pile of stuff by the side of the road with a jar of quarters and a sign that says to please pay for whatever you take,

I saw you take that without paying for it!



I'm with Bongo Bill though.  I'm okay with the service Steam provides, but mostly on account that nothing better exists to date.

Edit: needs real english?
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Ocksi

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Re: To Steam Or Not To Steam
« Reply #79 on: February 07, 2009, 10:53:15 PM »

agreeance is not a word.

also bongo bill's point is somewhat silly.  people actually use that business model to some some substantial degree of success.  that's just the bagelman, but radiohead did it, canadian pop artist siberry uses it, restaurants (these exist elsewhere, too.  just a convenient example).

this will not work for all companies, products, or businesses, but it has definitely proven itself to be a perfectly viable way of operating and to some extent proves that people will value a good product enough to pay what they feel is a fair price for said, no matter of requirements to do so.
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