People keep pasting this link to me so I thought I’d post my feelings towards it.
I am more than happy with the cut I get from Steam. Yeah of course more would be nice – but the cut isn’t anywhere near that low that it would turn me off selling through Steam. Maybe I’m a special case because GMod has sold so well – but I know that Introversion nearly went under until they got on Steam (Although flushing all the money out of the company at the end of the month is probably asking for trouble).
Should Steam be it’s own company? What difference does it make? It’d be the same Steam, run by the same people, probably from the same office. It would change nothing.
Should Steam get competition? Yeah sure competition is always good, but I can’t imagine anything will ever overtake Steam now. Steam is doing everything right, there’s no need for an alternative. Not to mention the amount of money we all have already invested in the games we own in Steam. Steam IS the PC gaming platform. As a consumer I don’t want to have different digital distribution software installed for every publisher.
I think steam’s pretty awesome
Impulse is always an option, but it’s not really popular like Steam is.
(impulsedriven dot com)
There are alternatives. Gametap for example offers a similar service, if not Identical. There are probably others.
From a user side though, I love steam, I’ve tried Gametap and EA’s equivalent stuff and Steam’s just easier and less invasive.
They are the game company that saw how to sell games with DRM the right way. I love not worrying about stupid CDs and there keys.
You’re right, Steam IS the PC gaming platform.
I think Microsoft are massive tools to not make a similair system (why Microsoft? Every gaming pc has windows.) But they only care about the xbox so fuck them.
STEAM is all we need, and so much more :D
Agree. That is all.
I can actually understand this. If a huge game is released on Steam yet it’s not made by Valve then Valve get some of the profits which go into their own pockets however, I imagine Valve would still receive money from sale profits anyway because what they’d do is have shares in the ‘new’ company.
Steam is the best PC DRM ever. Impulse will NOT take over.
Also, they are pretty much stealing ideas now.
- Steam powered
- Impulse driven
See the similarity?
Steam is the win. I sometimes buy games on there instead of pirating them because it is so much better.
A monopoly (or a large majority) is only a problem because it’s very easy to exploit the consumer. But if consumers are happy with the service and are NOT being exploited, why would they care about competing services? Chances are they aren’t going to come close. I know I don’t care about Impulse or Games for Windows Live.
I will cum like a pro when Microsoft stops Games for Windows Live.
http://www.direct2drive.com/ is doing pretty well to, i like the crap ton of games on sale for 5 dollars currently.
http://www.direct2drive.com/ is pretty badass to, so many games on sale for just 5 dollars some even bundles.
It’s not like competition doesn’t exist, it just isn’t very good. That’s no reason to hate Valve/Steam. I’ve liked steam since half-life 2 came out. It’s nice, simple, and does its job well.
Steam CAN go on your nerves from time to time so that you say “omg Steam sucks, i hate it”. But that is often just temporarly, just like when people rage when Garry updates Garry’s Mod and it breaks some Addons etc.
So what? They will still keep playing GMod since it’s part of Software that it get’s updates that makes troubles here and there.
I like Steam and want to keep it (even the stuff with the Steamworks API is still a bit stiff there, but at least it goes in the right direction)
Steam’s great, I think that the interview in that link was targeted at Steam through Jeleaousy, but I could be (and probably am) wrong.
@10 Yeah, I lol’d at it first time I read it. Steam is much better anyway and more successful.
Well some people seem to that Valve initially went to Microsoft and a few other softwares company proposing the model of Steam and asking if they have any sugestion, and Microsoft just said: that is UNPRATICABLE (this was year 2000/2001 AFAIK), and them Valve made Steam and perfected Steam and now some people are trying to copy Steam and even microsoft created their system for online distribuition of games.
All of this info i remember reading from an interview with Gabe Newell and someone else from Valve :).
Randy ftw.
I think now Steam has gotta so big, it should think about giving smaller dev’s a bigger cut.
But yeah, Steam is awesome.
Thank you for taking an INTELLIGENT stance on this whole Valve exploit ordeal.
Steam is definitely one the best programs ever made for the PC.
If Steam were it’s own company, it would be rid of a lot of the conflicts of interests that might be there.
Steam could innovate on features which may not align with Valve’s. Right now, they can pull guys off the Steam team to work on other projects, something they couldn’t do if they were two separate entities.
I’m a bit late with this, but is that lesser spike in the Garry’s Mod sales graph between 12/23/2008 and 1/5/2009 from the time that Zeno Clash expansion was released?
Steam is awesome. Too bad the currency convertion most of the times is a fucking bitch for me as a Dutchfag.
I can get every single “big” release cheaper with a case, cover, booklet and shipping to my house. Some of the “small” games are cheaper as well, but it get’s worse when the prices are higher.
@23 No one even knows how much the cut is, how can you say that?
Valve’s cut is oversizized, all thay need is to take what thay need to run the bandwith.
#31 No.
And bandwith is damn expensive.
@31 Whaaa? Why would a private company want to do that?
I’d like to take what I earn from a job, not just enough to eat and live in a bedsit.
Perhaps we need some form of open standard for digital distribution, with a network of distributors each like steam. That way any company could produce a steam-like client and clients could use it on the network, but you’d be able to access every distributor you want using just the one client. Kinda like how you can make your own internet browser if you know how and can go to any page on the web.
But in the end this is how capitalism works… If you want competition go and make another digital distribution network and stop whining. Valve aren’t being evil and forcing every competitor out unfairly, there are plenty of companies out there who could wade into the digital distribution market and give Valve some good competition.
Let’s not forget that there ARE a substantial number of competitors, but they simply aren’t as good as Steam. If they started offering better services/value etc than steam or steam declined in some way then they will pop up and take its place, that’s how it works.
With Steam, you’re paying for the community as well. The community is a huge turn on. Word of mouth within the community, the noninvasive announcements of sales and products.
For a consumer, I think Steam is probably the best games platform. It is faster and more simplistic than others — yeah it’s not perfect and in some respects worse than similar systems elsewhere (like Xbox Live and the ‘Gamerscore’). The availability of games has really sky-rocketed in recent years, and the fact that larger publishers are signing up, for instance EA, gives me hope that Steam is pretty good value.
Also, while Steam takes a fairly substantial cut; There aren’t many other platforms that allow such a simple and powerful way to reach one of the largest communities and demographics.
“As a consumer I don’t want to have different digital distribution software installed for every publisher.” The only other digital distribution softwares is EA Download Manager if I’m correct, and that software is absolutely horrid. I think it requires you to have 10GB free when installing it and it must be installed in program files. The program itself is like 10mb.
The only other proprietary download system i mean, like valve having steam, EA has EADM.
@A-gun. Yes thats one major point Gabe made with steam when it was fist introduced was that people are less likely to pirate when there is a good service.
I’d of course prefer an open system, an open digital distribution platform that is publisher agnostic. Stores don’t exclusively sell a single publisher’s wares, and imo neither should online stores. Of course this isn’t going to happen, but it would be nice all the same.
Good interview from an insider, it’s old but new if you never read it. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/the-last-of-the-independents-
Problem with steam is, that even if you buy a non-valve game, it always runs throught steam. which means that all of valve’s games do not apply to the gaming comunity that doesnt have internet.
Couldn’t agree with you more Garry,
I still remember the times we were all playing on WON, through serverbrowsers like the All Aeeing Eye and Gamespy. People were constantly complaining about the arrival of steam. And to be fair, it was shit in the beginning (You’d had to manually import all your valve games into steam which 99% sure resulted in errors)
Nowadays I can’t imagine using anything else, all my games are stored nicely in steam, buying a new game is done in 2 minutes, and the additions they made (achievement system, steam cloud) is simply excellent.
I understand the position of developers who would made more money selling their product independently, but fact is that you immediately reach a huge public of gamers through steam. This might compensate for the “loss”.
p.s. I feel akward if there is no steam logo in my systemtray.
All Seeing Eye that is ;-)
Yeah Steam is doing it well, but I don’t feel any need for anything like what Steam does. A platform on top of a platform, to support what? Selling games? It doesn’t bring much ease in to anything for the end-user, but brings a lot of money to Valve. I’d rather not pay for nothing, but that’s just my opinion. Or are there any very useful features that are simply invisible to the end-user?
I much prefer Stardock’s impulse to Steam. Faster downloads and I never HAVE TO run it? Way better than steam in my opinion
The only complaint I have about Steam is their 1$=1€ scam.
Seriously… dollars are worth shit and get worse every day.
OOh yes, no linux support from steam…. but eh..
well who ever thinks windows is the only way to play pc games you are wrong my friend on steam uses ubuntu to play his games and his game loads in around 6 or 8 secs and he downloads everything really fast but the support isn’t really there but wine does the job
im talking about garrysmod when i say that
Most of steam games are rated platinum or gold for WINE support. Which means that they most likely run without problems.
I wish Steam would let us install our stuff wherever we wanted. I mean, why should we have to dedicate an entire partition to Steam? I want the freedom to install games wherever I want. Aside from that; no complaints.
I wouldnt say that steam is exploiting small developers but steam is definitly exploiting non-US customers and this is why steam sucks.
steam started out a pile of worthlessness but overtime valve unlike their competetors learned from their mistakes cant say the same for EA and other companies in the like.i mean look at EADM it is a pile of crud.
point is steam has compition but is the best of all of them because they choose to suite the customer rather then nickle and dime us.
1Euro is NOT 1 dollar. I never bought a game from steam since they invented this system.
I think they should be separate, that way my Steam can get hijacked but not my games.
Its a pain when that happens and I know a few people that still don’t have their accounts back because the ones who stole the account bought something and registered it to that account, enableing them to recover it back.
on my website how do i get CoBlitz or any other free service to work
@81 What a great place to ask!
Methinks Randy Pitchford is simply jealous of Valve’s success with STEAM.
they don’t explain the exploiting at all
seems like bullshit
@84 Did you even read the interview?
I think Steam is a pretty cool guy, eh makes pc gaming easier and doesnt afraid of anything.
Reguardless of what valve do charge for their service, the general opinion seems to be that it’s better tha a lot of other places.
There is a conflict of interest in that they publish and dev, but as Tripwire pointed out, it’s not just valve. It’s probably safe to leave them at it, unless they actually do something wrong.
I think the reason microsoft isn’t trying anything like steam is that they’re worried about more lawsuits. I read an article a while back on win 7s LIVE game integration, where they heavily implied it, though can’t remember the actual article.
Anyway,t hey’ve gotten into enough trouble by trying to provide people the convenience of a preinstalled browser and media player, even though they went the extra mile to make them extra dodgy, to encourage people to use 3rd party apps.
Garry, get your mouth off Gabe’s cock, and quit kissing Valve ass. Maybe if you had a woman you wouldn’t have had time to make a mod for children that enjoy putting models in compromising positions. Anyway you’re a homo, you don’t deserve anything you have, and I hope you die of AIDS. Cheers bro.
Wow lol, that one fucked up comment you posted someguy :(
FP IS DOWN ONCE AGAIN
My friend bought Osmos off Steam, while I bought it off the guy’s site… Of course the Steam version had DRM, though mine had none. Hell, it didn’t even ask for a serial key to install. As long as people get a decent cut out of the sales, I won’t have a problem with them.
Update your blog more regularly.
JBMod rules, you niggers.
New post already.
effing post more.
wE NEED M0AR UpdaTES GARRY!
Wow really, update your fucking blog. 10 days?
He is going to go on vacation soon, loads of planing.
Why can’t he make a post about his vacation?
I don’t think their goal in this article is to change Steam, but merely give the controlling rights of Steam to a company that isn’t owned by VAlve.
(So Steam Software™ would be a separate entity from Valve).
In theory, it would still operate the same, you would just see less Half-Life based news posts (Like the GORDON FREEMAN NEEDS YOU for the gamespot voting).
IMO, Valve DOES have a monopoly but does anyone have the right to take that away from them? They created Steam, why would they give it away? Stop bitching when a Company does the right things.