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Nice to see i'm not the only one sick of this. How many games have you played lately that could be described like this "The graphics were great but the game sucked"? Games, especially FPS, have been stuck in "Halo Mode" for too damned long. Hell they even took a big shit on DNF by making duke just another 2 weapon Halo clone.

Give us something cool dammit! Smart AI like the first Far Cry, funny story and cool weapons (kitty bomb anyone?) like No One Lives Forever I&II, cool damage models like in Soldier Of Fortune I&II, hell even randomized level design like in Nosferatu!

Looking over my PC while there are a ton of new games there are several old ones that I keep coming back to, the ones listed above along with Sacred and Divine Divinity (for my Diablo hack and slash fix),Freelancer and Freespace (for my Star Wars pilot fix) and the FPS listed above along with F.E.A.R, Blood (tons of humor and 80s horror references) and Redneck Rampage (who don't like having a titty gun and dynamite arrows?) simply because i'm so damned sick of "Call Of Honor: Halo Of Killzone Edition, now with extra expensive DLC"...its just boring, its boring, levels are all straight lines, they suck. How sad is it that games like DN3D and Redneck have more expansive levels with things to do than a modern shooter?

BTW for those sick of the same old Halo crap you might want to check out Good Old Games for some classic gaming goodness. All DRM free, they always seem to be having a sale, and many will run on Linux as well. When you are bored to tears with the crap that has been coming out lately give GOG a spin, show the devs there that having great games DRM free is the right strategy.

Sorry, bad link. gog.com

Really, the only company I trust with digital distribution these days is GOG, who don't use DRM in any of their games

While looking at the details of some of the recent sales and additions, I found out that at least some of the games do

Sell the game for under $20 without DRM...

http://www.gog.com

(No conflict of interest; just a happy customer.)

There are enough old games out there, which I haven't played yet, available cheap and without DRM, to keep me occupied for another few decades. It's not like they succumb to bit-rot. Unless I'm obsessed with seeing the same muddy brown environment rendered with a gazillion polygons, why should I pay to play the latest blockbuster when there are a hundred classic games with more substance and storyline to keep me entertained?

What about non-DRM'd digital media?
GOG.com sells old (and not so old) games without any DRM. Buy, download, backup as you like. No need for soon-to-be obsolete physical media.
Digital media does not NEED to be DRM-encumbered.

DRM free Good Old Games (gog.com): Good Old Games

Not intended as an advertisement, just a comment from a satisfied customer. GOG scratches my itch for old games, and the lack of DRM makes me more comfortable about the purchase.

Thankfully http://www.gog.com/ is filling some of that gap (legally and with reasonable prices).

Sadly it won't happen, and here is why: Both Windows and OSX support DRM, Linux don't, its just that simple. More and more of the titles on Steam have DRM on TOP of Steam, so all those titles? poof, gone. can't offer those. So already you've fractured their market. Then of course you have all the "phone home" games, and of course steam itself which is DRM, and we have seen how there is a VERY vocal group in the Linux community that thinks ALL DRM is the most evil thing ever created and thus will go out of their way to publish as many hacks and cracks as they possibly can as soon as it is released.

While i personally would love it if Linux would have a butt simple, easy to use game service like Steam right now the community is split in two. On the one side you have the followers of RMS, who believes that ANY software without the four freedoms is the spawn of Satan, and then you have Torvalds who is more of a "just make it work" kind of guy and isn't militant, hence why he kept the kernel GPL V2. But as long as RMS and his followers hold so much sway I seriously doubt you will have such a high profile DRM service like Steam on Linux, just too much hatred for DRM in the community.

Anyway while it isn't Steam for those Linux guys that would like some cheap games to play Good Old Games has a list of games which run on Linux and of course all are DRM free, enjoy.

If you don't mind DIY check out the AMD barebones on Tigerdirect. you can get some crazy cheap nice machines there and most can be easily upgraded to 6 core down the road. my own machine has gone from an Athlon dual to a Phenom II quad and after Xmas i'll be 6 core bound and all it'l cost is the chip. I picked up a sweet HD4850 for $50 and while they are definitely hot runners (I added a nice aftermarket cooler) the framerate is top notch. And of course if you run Linux AMD has opened up their drivers so they are getting better by the day.

Oh and you might enjoy this page at GOG of games that run great on Linux. Personally I prefer Win 7 myself but the nice thing about GOG is there is plenty to choose from and dirt cheap. Hell many of them will probably run on your netbook. I'm sure my AMD Brazos netbook would probably run everything there but who'd want to game on a 12 inch screen?

But definitely check out the sales at tiger. Now that the new F1 socket is out the AM3 machines are cheaper than ever and lets face it, games haven't been CPU bound in quite awhile. plus if you are into programming I hear OpenCL is gonna be big and being able to split the load between CPU and GPU has to be pretty cool from a programming perspective. And you just gotta love being about to get a fully loaded X6 for less than $400. just add a sweet GPU and you'd be blasting away!

Did you buy it on Steam or GOG? http://www.gog.com/en/support/the_witcher_2/_b_product_faq_b_

With digital distribution bringing unit costs to zero one can sell at an impulse buy price and rake in mountains of cash, simply by not being greedy twats.

This.

I probably own 25 games from http://www.gog.com/ and another 15-20 from Steam which I mainly bought because the price was somewhere south of a Big Mac and fried. I probably only played Cannon Fodder for 2 hours or so, but for a couple of dollars I couldn't care less.

I also buy a lot of older PS3 games second-hand, the most recent being Oblivion and Bioshock 1+2 (total cost: £12). I think by comparison the last full-price "AAA" title I bought was probably Half-Life 2.

I generally avoid games that involve microtransactions but I think they are perfectly valid as a business model provided they don't affect game balance. In the words of the bloke from Extra Credit you should allow players to buy convenience, but not power. If I can pay to level faster or get gear more easily, that's good...if I can pay for items or abilities unavailable to free players, that's bad.

It's available on gog.com for $5.99.

No, you should go buy DN3D from Good Old Games and have some real fun.

Grab Manhattan Project as well, while you're at it. A different genre, but it's still a Duke game done right.

Yes. I was expecting something that was a pretty average game with a decent feeling of nostalgia. It sounds like this is an incredibly bad game that's superficially similar to Duke3D, but without any of the things that made the game fun at the time. This is quite sad, because Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project was a lot of fun. If you haven't played it, gog.com has it for $5.99: I got it for $2.99 in their christmas sale and played it all the way to the end - lots of fun and exactly the kind of humour and gratuitous violence that I remember from duke3d, without the need for achievement for picking up your own shit (read the review: that's really in DNF).

Same with Wing Commander. These games (both space flight/combat) were very fun,

*cough* GOG *cough*.

GOG recently (about a week ago) signed up EA. It's currently the only one up there, but there you go.

I haven't played any game since that felt as free and fun to play as WC and Descent. There was some close-to-fun stuff in one of the Startrek space combat games, but trying to use capships as space fighters isn't as fun (it's more strategy "target weapons, engines, etc.") Though I believe it could be done much better, the "StarTrek" name is detrimental since startrek doesn't use fighter craft in combat. (Star Wars on the other hand does, but Star Wars games are so pigeonholed to the "StarWars" universe that you don't get any 6DOF here either.)

Might I recommend Freespace and/or Freespace 2? Sounds like they might be exactly what you're looking for, and with the Freespace 2 Source Code Project the graphics have gotten a very nice upgrade (though both those games still looked good years after their initial release).

I haven't played any game since that felt as free and fun to play as WC and Descent. There was some close-to-fun stuff in one of the Startrek space combat games, but trying to use capships as space fighters isn't as fun (it's more strategy "target weapons, engines, etc.") Though I believe it could be done much better, the "StarTrek" name is detrimental since startrek doesn't use fighter craft in combat. (Star Wars on the other hand does, but Star Wars games are so pigeonholed to the "StarWars" universe that you don't get any 6DOF here either.)

Might I recommend Freespace and/or Freespace 2? Sounds like they might be exactly what you're looking for, and with the Freespace 2 Source Code Project the graphics have gotten a very nice upgrade (though both those games still looked good years after their initial release).

and if you don't want DRM crap and actually own the games, check out gog.com. I picked up Syberia there plus a handful of other games (9 in total) for less than $30.

JigJag

Nonetheless, this game is already on several torrent sites, so it's not as if the DRM worked in the first place.

As others have mentioned here, this game was always available without DRM if you bought it from GOG.com. Presumable it was this version that got pirated. Even if it wasn't that version, I doubt that they paid top dollar for the best DRM solution if they knew that they would abandon it so soon.

I just noticed something annoying. When you go to the page that I referenced above from an Australian IP address, you end up paying over US$75 for the game. Bloody region crap! I wont blame GOG for this too much, as I am sure that it is just part of their deal that they can't undercut the official distributors in other regions of the world. At least they say:

Since the AU price is almost $26 more than the price in USD, weâ(TM)re giving you a $26 USD credit to spend on GOG.com.

Which is fine for me, but if you are not interested in old games then it would be annoying. Finally, Aussies get a cut down version of the game due to our stupid ratings system because our government will not trust us. Oh well, at least GOG trusts us to enter our details correctly on the account settings page...

Given the number of breaches in various companies that have led to information being compromised, I think the better question is why do we let them store more information than absolutely necessary? There's no legitimate reason for Sony to be storing that information for most users. One could make a case for those that pay for PSN Plus, but for people who only buy a game now and again, there's absolutely no reason for them to store it. It's not that hard for people to type it in again.

I mean for heaven's sake, if GOG doesn't need to store credit card information to stay in business, why does Sony?

And after 5 years or so EA will shut down the servers because they are bankrupt/bought out/waste money and all your games are worthless. There is an easy solution to this: Don't buy DRM'd games. There are plenty of games with don't have DRM and they cost much less, too. Like in http://gog.com/ Or just buy a older game for 10$ and apply a no-cd crack. You won't miss much, I just saw Crysis for just 5 Euro.

Just because somebody sees through the lies you're telling doesn't make them pro-piracy. It just means that they're in touch with reality. Any pirate that's likely to pay for a game will do so whether or not their is any DRM. Claiming otherwise is just disingenuous.

And if they weren't going to pay for the game anyways, it makes precisely zero difference whether or not they pirated the game as the developer isn't making any money either way.

The precise limit to any harm is on the basis of idiotic publishers like EA and Ubisoft that assume that they can force pirates to pay for software regardless of what it does to paying customers. And retailers like GOG who then have a harder time convincing said idiotic publishers to allow them to sell the games.

That's a bad argument. Indie games with or without DRM face an up hill battle just be seen. Now, if you start looking at major publisher releases, then we might settle it. Besides Mr. Gog seems to be doing fine selling mainly on being DRM free.

DRM only (marginally) benefits one party, and it is intrusive to varying degrees depending on the method used. It does strongly resemble malware those respects. If I got a piece of malware on my computer that required that I connect to the internet or worse, pop a specific disc into my computer every time I ran the program, I'd be pretty pissed.

A little off topic, but did anyone see they recently added Realms of the Haunting?

Well I am big Duke Fan, to the point that once we heard it was finally coming out a friend and I got Duke3D working over WAN which I will share today. Firstly pick up a copy of Duke 3D Atomic Edition (i like this website http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/duke_nukem_3d_atomic_edition) I think the game is in open licensing but not 100% sure. Then download Tunngle from http://www.tunngle.net/ which is a WAN VPN thingy that allows you to play Local network games over the interweb. Install, Start Tunngle, Full screen Duke select network game and you now have multiplayer Duke3D in 2011 (if the game lags its because your internet connection has a high ping time) Side note I hope they keep capture the babe in the new game, could be fun but something tells me it is going to get patched :/ Luke

Incidentally (or, maybe, not ?) GOG is doing a promo this weekend on Kalypso games, including the Creatures series: http://www.gog.com/en/promo/kalypso_games

Heh, made my buy Creatures series from Good Old Games. This weekend they actually even have them on 40% off sale.

No Star Control II? Bah!

That's crazy, get all 3 at gog.com for $5.99

Or you could just get them on GOG. They're even on sale this weekend for $6 each.

Heh, made my buy Creatures series from Good Old Games. This weekend they actually even have them on 40% off sale.

Don't forget Good Old Games: http://www.gog.com/en/frontpage/! They have a great collection of old PC classics and I'm pretty sure the older titles are updated to work on newer OS's. There are plenty of games on here that work with Linux, as well. Also, everything is pretty damn cheap, so you don't have to spend a lot of money to legally own these classics.

There's standing up for a "free" internet and then also making sure that people can't easily steal web video content with a simple click. NO business in their right mind would agree to something like that.

Several businesses in related fields already do, and do fine. All my paid for ebooks are from http://www.webscription.net/ which does not employ any kind of DRM. I've bought a ton of games from http://www.gog.com/ which are all without any DRM (I've also bought some games with online activation, but no Steam because even the one free game I have from them insists on half-updating itself from time to time and then refusing to run until it can finish its online verification process).

While it's certainly possible that DRM-free business models are not applicable to every kind of company or market, I think it's quite wrong to categorically posit that no DRM means that that a company by definition is not going to be viable merely because its content can be more easily copied.

I'd say several reasons, and not just nostalgia. 1.-It was one of the first games (and there have been few recently) that threw in copious amounts of pop culture references which was fun. IIRC Bruce Campbell tried to sue for all of his lines they blatantly ripped.

2.-It was one of the first 3D shooters that didn't take itself seriously and this age of CoD MoH WWII "lets storm Normandy AGAIN!" we really really REALLY need that. Realism is fine occasionally but it is a game and games should be above all FUN with a capital F. That is why I have been recommending "Just Cause 2" to my friends, as it is the most unrealistic GTA style game ever created, and it is refreshing to be pulling moves that would make Batman yell "bullshit!". I'd love for me some Duke Nukem total insanity like guns that shrink bad guys so you can squish them like little bugs. Crazy is fun!

3.-Yes there was the crude sexist humor, but that was part of the charm because old Duke was supposed to be a throwback. He was a classic action hero, a Rambo mixed with Terminator and spouting Bruce Campbell style (or often just Bruce Campbell's) typical action hero smart mouths. It is like in Last Action Hero when Arnold does Shakespeare "To be or not to be.../castle explodes, Arnold lights cigar/... not to be". that would be a classic Duke scene, and despite all the games focusing on "the cinema experience" they seem to lose the attitude in favor of realism, but attitude is fun!

I could go on, but you get the idea. Sometimes it is just a blast to have some good mindless destructive fun while being rewarded with smartmouth attitude in classic action hero fashion. It is the same over the top attitude that made Evil Dead or They Live cult classics. If you don't own it Good Old Games has the original Atomic Edition for just $6, works on XP-Windows 7 X64, even runs on Linux, and has all the mods linked below it (including the high res mod, must have IMHO) all in one handy spot. Try it and enjoy some mindless sexist fun today!

Not how quickly I got downmodded for daring to put MSNBC in the same sentence as Fox? this place if so leftist it ain't funny, not that I care as I'm a "common sense" centrist which sadly doesn't have a party anymore, as BOTH sides have become so rooted in dogma and bullshit they both stink to high heaven.

As for games you really need to try what I do, I use a combo of Good Old Games and Amazon. GOG is the "anti-DRM" game site with ALL the games being completely DRM free, no activations, no need for cracks, no discs, nothing, and with Amazon it is simple to see if a game has activation bullshit by simply looking at the comments. If I look at the comments and see "GFWL! Don't buy!!" I simply walk away, as my experience with GFWL has been nothing but bad.

Finally I'd say even the BBC is starting to have more spin than I'd like, look at how quickly they jumped on the "Lynch wikileaks!" boat even though some of the leaks showed us fucking over the Brits (by selling the Russians all the data we had on British missiles to get them in on START) so frankly now for world news I go with al jazeera. Kinda sad when the only thing that is nearly spin free is the Arabic broadcasts, but from what I've seen their news is pretty much "boots on the ground" reporting what they see as opposed to the talking heads telling us what to think which has become the norm in the USA.

Last year, I got Beneath a Steel sky for my iPhone. It was the first graphic adventure I ever played to completion.

Without the aid of nostalgia, I can honestly say it's among the ten best games I've ever played. Anyone who loves a good story should take a look into adventure games. You can actually own it for free just by signing up at GOG Highly recommended for anyone wanting to give it a spin.

I recently purchased Myst, since I missed it the first time around. My machine back in the 90's wasn't up to the task. A ton of classic graphic adventure games on GOG.com! Worth checking out for those who missed the classics the first time around. Cheap too!

Yes, it does work in DOSBox. Gog.com sell it, so it must.

Hey, what do you know! Having a look at that page, I just spotted that I bought it from Gog. I don't remember doing that! Well, I'm off to play a game.

If you want to buy and play "classic" games, you'd have much more luck getting them from Good Old Games, since they put the work into tweaking them to work with modern machines.

In that case you should try Good Old Games -> download all the games you bought DRM-free, back up the installer files, re-install anytime you want, re-download anytime you want.

http://gog.com

No need for an internet connection and authentication once you've downloaded the installer files, unlike Steam.

You can get Arx Fatalis at Good Old Games for the required data files

I'll add another "legal user gets screwed" anecdote to yours showing why this crap sucks: Older Games. My older games play just fine on Windows 7 HP X64, hell thanks to MSFT's backwards compatibility they work without a hitch. What DOESN'T work is the &*^%*^&%*&%^* ring 0 DRM garbage! If you are lucky all you get is classic "insert disc" even though the disc IS inserted, and if you are not? Well lets just say I hope you have a dual boot or a very recent backup, because the ring 0 crap will turn your OS into a crashing unstable nightmare.

WARNING: Many of the older SecuROM and Starforce ring 0 "drivers" WILL NOT UNINSTALL ON X64! which means if it makes your OS an unstable mess you better be able to dual boot to rip it out from another OS, or be ready to restore from backup. Their "uninstallers" hosted on their websites DO NOT WORK ON X64, yet their garbage ring 0 DRM crap will happily try to jam its X86 buggy poo code right into your X64 kernel. What fun! How they are allowed to get away with that kind of behavior I don't know, because it IS malware, no different than Sony's rootkit or any other nasty your would pick up from the web. Can you uninstall it? Nope, just like malware. Does it cause instability? Yep, again just like malware. Finally do you have to have detailed knowledge of its inner workings just to remove it, such as which reg keys to toss or which hidden files are buried deep in system folders? Yep, strike three and you're out. If it walks like a duck and quacks it is a fricking duck folks.

That is why I pretty much shop exclusively at Good Old Games now. I like to be able to replay a game I liked, not just shitcan it because I have a new OS or the company doesn't "support" it anymore. With GOG there is NO DRM, NO phoning home, No limits to how many machines I can install it to that I own, NO limits to how many times I can redownload it and NO *&^%$*&$*& "Game Client" or other BS I have to run in the background just to use what I fricking paid for. If you haven't tried them they are having a massive holiday sale with nearly 300 games on sale, many of them half off their already cheap prices. They have something for everyone, shooters, RPGs, flight sims (including IL2 with all the expansions built in), puzzlers, platformers, you name it. So support the company that actually treats you like a customer and not a criminal, buy from GOG. This is a classic example where we can "vote with our dollars" and show companies that placing their games on GOG is a wise move. Oh and all games have been tested on X64 as well as X86 so no troubles! It all "just works" OOTB, but if you do run into a glitch their forums are top notch. Enjoy some DRM free gaming today!

I'll add another "legal user gets screwed" anecdote to yours showing why this crap sucks: Older Games. My older games play just fine on Windows 7 HP X64, hell thanks to MSFT's backwards compatibility they work without a hitch. What DOESN'T work is the &*^%*^&%*&%^* ring 0 DRM garbage! If you are lucky all you get is classic "insert disc" even though the disc IS inserted, and if you are not? Well lets just say I hope you have a dual boot or a very recent backup, because the ring 0 crap will turn your OS into a crashing unstable nightmare.

WARNING: Many of the older SecuROM and Starforce ring 0 "drivers" WILL NOT UNINSTALL ON X64! which means if it makes your OS an unstable mess you better be able to dual boot to rip it out from another OS, or be ready to restore from backup. Their "uninstallers" hosted on their websites DO NOT WORK ON X64, yet their garbage ring 0 DRM crap will happily try to jam its X86 buggy poo code right into your X64 kernel. What fun! How they are allowed to get away with that kind of behavior I don't know, because it IS malware, no different than Sony's rootkit or any other nasty your would pick up from the web. Can you uninstall it? Nope, just like malware. Does it cause instability? Yep, again just like malware. Finally do you have to have detailed knowledge of its inner workings just to remove it, such as which reg keys to toss or which hidden files are buried deep in system folders? Yep, strike three and you're out. If it walks like a duck and quacks it is a fricking duck folks.

That is why I pretty much shop exclusively at Good Old Games now. I like to be able to replay a game I liked, not just shitcan it because I have a new OS or the company doesn't "support" it anymore. With GOG there is NO DRM, NO phoning home, No limits to how many machines I can install it to that I own, NO limits to how many times I can redownload it and NO *&^%$*&$*& "Game Client" or other BS I have to run in the background just to use what I fricking paid for. If you haven't tried them they are having a massive holiday sale with nearly 300 games on sale, many of them half off their already cheap prices. They have something for everyone, shooters, RPGs, flight sims (including IL2 with all the expansions built in), puzzlers, platformers, you name it. So support the company that actually treats you like a customer and not a criminal, buy from GOG. This is a classic example where we can "vote with our dollars" and show companies that placing their games on GOG is a wise move. Oh and all games have been tested on X64 as well as X86 so no troubles! It all "just works" OOTB, but if you do run into a glitch their forums are top notch. Enjoy some DRM free gaming today!

I used to be one as well - after being burned enough times I never bought a game without first getting a working cracked version. Then that became too much of a hassle. Fortunately about the same time as publishers started switching to DRM there has also been a rise in good games being sold without DRM or copy protection (high profile examples: Good Old Games, World of Goo, the Humble Bundles and the Indie Bundles). Now I don't even consider buying a game unless I can use it on my own terms.

Isn't GOG great? You can gift games to your friends, the prices are crazy cheap and even cheaper now that they are having their Xmas sale which IIRC lasts until the 27th, all the games work on BOTH x86 AND x64, and NO DRM AT ALL, no phoning home crap, no stupid ring 0 drivers that can break your OS, oh and for the Linux guys out there they even have a list of games that work on Linux so you can even give games to the FLOSSie in your life. You can redownload ANYTIME you wish, they have tons of extras like wallpapers, avatars, all kinds of cool stuff you get when your purchase, and their forums are top notch, with everything from walkthroughs and mods to tutorials on just about everything in a game.

So please, if you care about PC gaming, spread the word about GOG far and wide. Tell your friends, family, post on places like /., anyplace you can spread the word. Because the ONLY way we are ever gonna do anything about the nasty DRM infections, and yes they ARE an infection, as a repairman I can't even name how many virus like symptoms I've traced back to bad DRM schemes, is to vote with our $$$ and GOG lets us do that. With GOG I keep all my games on a TB USB drive, I can carry them with me when I visit family, and even without a connection it all "just works". I was always a "CD and a box" kind of guy but GOG really changed my tune. I have NEVER had a more easy or satisfying purchasing experience online.

Oh and be sure to sign up for the newsletter. They will not send you anything but notices about sales and new releases, and their sales are killer. I mean where else can you buy everything from Far Cry to Rise of the Triad, and with nearly all the games under $10, and many under $5? With that Xmas sale now is the time to load up on games! Well I wish everyone a Merry Xmas, I'm gonna kick back and enjoy me some fragging courtesy of GOG!

I'm sorry but I think you're wrong, and here is why: We PC gamers enjoy one of the largest catalogs on the planet and thanks to Windows backwards compatibility I can play games from 20 years ago to games released yesterday. There is also a great wealth of places where one can get quality titles, even AAA titles, for quite cheap, such as the Good Old Games Xmas Sale where nearly 300 games are marked down, many half off. This not only makes for a truly staggering amount of choices, but it means that even guys without tons of disposable income such as myself can literally have dozens of games installed we haven't even gotten around to trying yet.

That means the indie developer really needs to find a way to get noticed, the "pay what you will" model does that. Hell I just paid $5 each for Evil Genius (damned fun BTW) and Unreal 2 SE, so some indie guy I never heard of trying to sell me a game for $20 doesn't stand much of a chance. Sell me a fun game for $5? Not only will I remember the guy, I will happily spread the word to friends and on places like /. just like I like to plug GoG simply because they have great prices with NO DRM and great service.

Everything has a price, and the price of the ultra low barrier to entry for PC games means an endless sea of games put out every year. Some good, some bad, but most frankly never even get heard of and die alone, not because of the game itself, but simply because trying to be heard with the endless shouting of a bazillion other developers is damned near impossible. The "pay what you will" model helps a developer starting out or who has a game they think is good but just not getting exposure to get that much needed foot in the door. any marketing type will tell you the hardest thing to do today is build a brand with so much media vying for our attention. This new model gives a chance for the little guy to do EXACTLY that, and without having to accrue a ton of upfront costs like advertising, as the gamers will do that for you. Seems like just good business to me.

Exactly. One of the nice things about PC gaming is there is NO shortage of good cheap games, which means you can't royally screw PC gamers on price unless you are talking a just released AAA game, and even then it better be good or word of mouth will kill sales quick.

For an example of cheap games for the PC look no further than the Good Old Games Xmas sale where there is 290 GAMES ON SALE with most of them half off! I just picked up Unreal 2 SE, Spellforce Platinum Edition, and Evil Genius, all for just $16 and change. This let me snatch up some games I missed the first time around and at dirt cheap. Oh and ALL work on X64 as well as x86 and NO DRM!!!

So I have to agree that it isn't so much about the "perception" that the low price brings as much as it is we PC gamers have an abundance of choices, which means you have to offer better prices if you are an indie. Of course the flip side of that is the low barrier to entry, as the consoles can be quite high when it comes to SDKs, and then there is securing a deal, which Nintendo doesn't even allow garage outfits, do they? With PC gamers we frankly don't care where a game company resides, hell make it in your basement. Make it good, give us a good (preferably cheap) price, and as in TFA you CAN make good money. Sure you probably won't become the next EA, but you don't have to act like asses like EA either.

How so? Maybe they actually provide good value for your money. While I haven't bought any old games off of Steam, I do often buy old games from Good Old Games like for example Redneck Rampage Collection and Blood I & II.

By buying them from Good Old Games not only do I get DRM free gaming, but I also get OOTB support for both X86 and X64 on XP - Windows 7 with ZERO hassles. in fact what turned me on to GoG was trying to get my original Redneck Rampage disc to play on Windows 7 X64, which was a royal PITA to set up and configure DOSBox with. With GoG it was as easy as 1.-buy game and download it, 2.- install game on X64 via "clicky clicky next next next", 3.-Play game full screen on windows 7 HP x64 with NO glitching or hassles.

There are plenty of us out here that will happily part with a few dollars to have the bullshit and hassles removed from classic gaming on modern OSes. With most of the classics at just $5 (and often less than half that on sale, like the $5 I paid for both Blood I&II) to me it is WELL worth that trivial amount not to deal with hoop jumping and trawling forums for tweaks and fixes when I can just install and play. Oh and for Linux guys check out the GoGMixes, where they have such topics as perfect for Linux Netbooks and Open Sourced Games. Well worth throwing them a couple of bucks for hassle free gaming IMHO.

How so? Maybe they actually provide good value for your money. While I haven't bought any old games off of Steam, I do often buy old games from Good Old Games like for example Redneck Rampage Collection and Blood I & II.

By buying them from Good Old Games not only do I get DRM free gaming, but I also get OOTB support for both X86 and X64 on XP - Windows 7 with ZERO hassles. in fact what turned me on to GoG was trying to get my original Redneck Rampage disc to play on Windows 7 X64, which was a royal PITA to set up and configure DOSBox with. With GoG it was as easy as 1.-buy game and download it, 2.- install game on X64 via "clicky clicky next next next", 3.-Play game full screen on windows 7 HP x64 with NO glitching or hassles.

There are plenty of us out here that will happily part with a few dollars to have the bullshit and hassles removed from classic gaming on modern OSes. With most of the classics at just $5 (and often less than half that on sale, like the $5 I paid for both Blood I&II) to me it is WELL worth that trivial amount not to deal with hoop jumping and trawling forums for tweaks and fixes when I can just install and play. Oh and for Linux guys check out the GoGMixes, where they have such topics as perfect for Linux Netbooks and Open Sourced Games. Well worth throwing them a couple of bucks for hassle free gaming IMHO.

Speaking of *finally* buying games you pirated in your youth, GoG.com is having a huge 50% off sale for a good bit of their catalog.

Bingo! Give that man a ceeegar! I quit playing multiplayer years ago thanks to 'nigger nigger faggot faggot' crap and the final straw was having to spend more time dealing with my routers and my ISP thanks to some little snot griefer that decided to DDOS me because I actually stomped his ass in MechWarrior 4. Every few years I'll fire up one of my recent purchases that has multiplayer to see if they have ever fixed the bullshit, and what do I get? Foul mouthed teens, griefers, and aimbots, not to mention the total psychos that have made game X their entire existence. You kill one of those and he'll "suicide bomber" you every time you get on, and continue until you quit.

I have nearly 3 dozen games installed on my system right now from Bioshock II going back to No One Lives Forever 1. How many do I play multiplayer? ZERO. I usually buy myself at least a game or two every month, how many of those are multiplayer only? ZERO. Last one I got was Enemy Territory: Quake Wars given to me by a clueless relative. I played it a whole 30 minutes and then stuffed it in a closet.

Say what you want about MSFT but one of the nice things about Windows is thanks to backwards compatibility there are literally thousands of single player titles out there I have yet to own and play. If EA or any of these other publishers want to be morons and spend millions on arena for cussing kids? Well I can just shop Good Old Games until they come to their senses or die out to be replaced by publishers with a brain. Lets be honest folks: Most of these companies idea of "multiplayer" is the same old DM and CTF bullshit we've seen for over a decade, and which appeals only to foul mouthed kids from what I've seen. If that is the future of gaming? They can keep it.