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What is your opinion on abandonware games? A lot of people share old ROMS of games online - games just like these books, in that no one knows who owns them, or if they DO know who owns them, the owners don't support them, and have no intentions of producing them.

What once was old is new again... these companies are starting to sell old games again, through systems like Nintendo's Virtual Console (Wii), Steam (Windows), GOG (Windows), or GameTap (Windows 32-bit).

Steam is already actively stopping it: "you may not transfer games you already own" as stated here.

You can buy it, once you use it, it's yours... forever! You can't give it, you can't donate it, you can't sell it. Game over, man! Game over!

http://steampowered.com/steamworks/

X-com UFO defense, circa 1993. It featured 320x240 (256 color) VGA graphics

<pedant-mode>
Actually, it was 320x200.
</pedant-mode>

On a side note, you can buy it on Steam today for $5, or the complete set of X-COM games (TFTD was just as good, and Apocalypse was very deep in its own way) for $15 (it's region-specific, sorry; I'm not sure if you can get access to that outside of North America). Which may be part of the problem for those new fancy titles...

X-com UFO defense, circa 1993. It featured 320x240 (256 color) VGA graphics

<pedant-mode>
Actually, it was 320x200.
</pedant-mode>

On a side note, you can buy it on Steam today for $5, or the complete set of X-COM games (TFTD was just as good, and Apocalypse was very deep in its own way) for $15 (it's region-specific, sorry; I'm not sure if you can get access to that outside of North America). Which may be part of the problem for those new fancy titles...

So let me get this straight -- you want to discourage, not copying, but loaning?

The parent was talking about casual copying. If a game did not implement CD checks, then it could be loaned out, installed, then returned--no copying required. I think it's fairly obvious why game devs prefer users buying their products instead of borrowing them from a friend.

But if anything, this opens up new markets -- game rentals, and used games. And it does drive up the value of a game, if you know it can be re-sold.

Used game sales aren't good for the original developer. If a game is bought for $50, then resold four times for $10-30 each time, how much does the original developer make? $50. Epic Games has voiced their opinion on the issue, and has taken measures to discourage the practice (unlocks/DLC).

The supposed purpose of DRM is to "keep honest people honest", by preventing things like actual copyright infringement. But your comment does tend to indicate the true purpose of DRM -- to prevent people from doing perfectly honest things (like lending) that you'd rather be able to charge for.

I don't disagree with your statement that DRM can have ulterior reasons. However, lending is not always honest. With a book, possession directly implies access. If I loan out a book, I can't read it until it's returned. Software is different; It's dishonest to loan out my copy of Office 2007 to my friends to install, if can still use it.

If you're already forcing them to be online, why do you need to limit the number of saves? Just don't allow more than one person to be online at once.

The point of limiting saves is to create a finite resource, which discourages sharing. Users wouldn't have to continuously be online--only if they want to save their game. Is it an inconvenience to users? Yes. But it is somewhat compensated by the "resume anywhere" feature, while "one user at any time" is only a stick.

And hey, I can lend games on Steam. I just have to lend the whole account at a time, and if I lend my account credentials, I risk losing the account. That's really all the incentive I need -- to limit the number of saves on top of that really serves no purpose, other than to save you disk space.

Actually, that's against the Steam EULA:

You may not reveal, share or otherwise allow others to use your password or Account.

The solution I recommended is better. With Steam, loaning is an all-or-nothing proposition. You can't play one game while a concurrent user plays another, even if you legitimately own both. This is not an issue if a game+saves is tied to a key instead of an account.

So how much was the commission on the I am Rich" I guess he'd lose the most...

Come to think of it, it was discussed before, that most people don't use many of their apps after the first few days, maybe even first few hours.

So, let's say there's a game on your iPhone, what would be the expected total time to finish it and get bored with it? I bet less than 90 days. So you can basically have a free game: download, finish, refund. It's golden!

In the world of "proper" computers, when was the last time you could get a full refund for a software after 90 days? In digital downloads, I don't think it ever happened. Of course, most of the time the developer cannot be sure that the person didn't make a copy of the software and send back the original copy (that is controlled in the iPhone's little walled garden). But e.g. Steam would be similarly in charge of your software - and offer no such refund...

So, if it's in the contract, well, not much to do about it. If you get bitten (more refunds than sales) think again next time how you sell your app or maybe how to make a better one that peopel actually wanna keep! If still make money, give thanks to the mighty Steve that he let you keep some, and the users don't exploit the possibilities handed to them... ;)

I have this problem too, with a lot of games. However, as far as I can tell its actually the choice of the game developers. Some games (including all the Valve games) do support this ability (namely, these) but a lot of them don't. I really wish Spore supported it.

The only flaw I have with Steam is that they dont allow you to tie activation keys to your account.

They do for some games, such as Unreal Tournament 3.

Others such as Crysis, Fallout 3 they do not however.

See here for a list of games you can do it with: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7480-WUSF-3601

Awesome. So you need a connection that's faster than what most people have to play games at lower resolution than most PC gamers (and many console gamers) do.

Most, but not all. Looking at the Steam Hardware Survey (the best I personally know of, but please cite better ones if you know of any), 1024 x 768 is only 1.5% less then the leading screen res of 1280 x 1024 (23.87% of results). Personally monitor will do 1600x1200, but I rarely run games at that resolution anyway.

Either way, I'm agree that it'll be interesting to see if this actually works in the real world as advertised, and how the 'average gamer' likes it.

Oh yeah, and it'll blow my bandwidth cap in about forty hours.

Well the magic is maybe they will peer up with some larger ISPs, offering special 'OnLive' service (for a small fee of course..). 'OnLive' could colo with that ISP and all the traffic stays local to that net. Maybe it would some day become just a no-fee value add.

As for b/w caps, not having to live with them, I'm spoiled I suppose; So I'm sorry for those that are stuck with them because their ISP hates their customers.

This is another method of control, just not DRM.

DRM - digital rights management.

per wikipedia (which may not always be reliable, but this sums it up very nicely):

"Digital rights management (DRM) refers to access control technologies used by publishers, copyright holders, and hardware manufacturers to limit usage of digital media or devices."

Furthermore, if you read something like the steam's brochure...

http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/SteamWorksBrochure2009.pdf

The implied reason they claim its not DRM is because its not locked to your hardware. Since when has DRM ever been defined exclusively as a system of locking content to particular hardware? Steam doesn't get to redefine DRM just so they can say their DRM isn't DRM. Talk about marketing doublespeak. Don't fall for it.

their ban policy is very publicly stated here.

That isn't their "ban policy". That isn't a policy at all. this is their policy.

The only way you can get banned is if VAC gets you banned.

Really? Because their actual policy above doesn't say that. Here's a complaint from someone being banned not after cheating but after a credit card chargeback.

their ban policy is very publicly stated here.

That isn't their "ban policy". That isn't a policy at all. this is their policy.

The only way you can get banned is if VAC gets you banned.

Really? Because their actual policy above doesn't say that. Here's a complaint from someone being banned not after cheating but after a credit card chargeback.

And it looks like we got a liar on our hands. Aside from the obvious issue, that of Steam being for-profit and banning a consumer isn't good for business, their ban policy is very publicly stated here. The only way you can get banned is if VAC gets you banned. If you get VAC banned you can't transfer CD-Keys to another account (which contrary to popular antagonist opinion you actually can do normally) and can't play on VAC secured servers. You can still play online on a non-VAC server, you can still play single player. Just make sure you aren't playing on a PC that has an aimbot/wallhack or any other kind of cheat that the VAC system (which is fully automated by the way) can actually detect. So be sure your friends who may have access to your account or you may have used their computer to play don't have any hacks either. Oh, and you can check your VAC status at any time to see if you are in good standing or not. If you see a message like "STEAMID IS BANNED" then you got *SERVER* banned which means you need to talk to the server admin, not Valve/Steam. If you are in "good standing" and banned from several servers, something like Punkbuster got you. Point is, VAC bans do not happen at random. And they take a while to process because they want to be sure before they ban you. Never mind you can still buy video games when VAC banned and can still play the games as long as they aren't on a VAC server (so you could play say Dawn of War 2 without issue if you got banned for using an aimbot on CounterStrike). Anyone saying otherwise is full of shit.

Nothing in the article or press release says you are unable to run two *DIFFERENT* games on two different PC's at the same time.

Except that's exactly how the steam system works. You can't play two different games on two different PCs online at the same time.

This article isn't even "new" its just rebranded marketing rubbish. Instead of those vacuous linked articles. Read the actual brochure:

http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/SteamWorksBrochure2009.pdf

Its pure unmitigated rubbish. CEG is DRM despite what they claim. And if CEG is linked to steam authentication, (which it *is*), then you've got to log in to authenticate each time you play.

Worse, now if you and your son both have a steam account, and both own a copy of left for dead, you have to install it on the computer twice, because you can't play his copy, because each copy only works with one account. At least hard disk space is cheap...

Since the lot of you seem to be philosophizing on a goddamned press release, and an article about the press release, here's something with at least a little more info: http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/SteamWorksBrochure2009.pdf

3rd page confirms most of what I was thinking. So really they're just strengthening their existing paradigm of 'one user, any machine.' Which I'm perfectly OK with, because if they can draw more publishers into that line of thinking, it keeps us away from the Bioshock debacle and other similar issues.

I have to laugh, though, at their attempts across the page to describe Left4Dead's matchmaking as 'Quick and Accurate.'

http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/SteamWorksBrochure2009.pdf

"Instead, CEG works in tandem with Steam authentication, enabling content access based on user accounts"

In other words, it still requires the server to be there.

Now after the weekend is over and it has been more than a week already, the players count has dropped rapidly. Nice warmping up for old game but it just didnt last. It should be updated regularely to keep people's interest on it. http://store.steampowered.com/stats/ (Click link view stats per game)

If you purchase the Unreal Deal Pack on Steam for $39.99 you get the following:

Unreal 2: The Awakening (Reg. $9.99)
Unreal Gold (Reg. $9.99)
Unreal Tournament 2004: Editor's Choice Edition (Reg. $14.99)
Unreal Tournament 3 Black (Reg. $11.99)
Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition (Reg. $9.99)

That's all 5 Unreal games for $16.96 less than you'd pay for them at the normal Steam price (total $56.95), which is already heavily discounted. Of course, if you just want Unreal or Unreal Tournament, you can get it for $9.99 and be happy. No monthly fees!

Only 100 truly active servers? The peak players for today (maybe Friday?) was 17,754.

http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

On the back it has statements saying that both GFWL and Steam are required, as well as logos on the front of the box. As with what another poster said: Steam can be run in offline mode once it's been installed and activated. And the reason you didn't see an icon is because it doesn't install one to the desktop when it downloads through Steam(at least I've never seen one) because you have to run the game through Steam

I can't say why it took so long to install Steam unless it needed a really large update to run and it downloaded that as well. Steam has always installed extremely fast for me. It seems you're not the only one with the issue(really long install times), many other people have the same problem. Here's a FAQ from Valve on how to install from the DVD:
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1783-EYZN-9672
And another link in case you have problems:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=806897
Those are more for people who are encountering the problems and not someone who has already returned it ;)

You can create an offline only GFWL account, which doesn't require any of your information. It's not very obvious that you can do this, but you can.

I do agree with you though, the Stardock/Impulse approach is much better and I've been very please with them. I've never downloaded anything from them, just physical copies. I really like that you don't need to activate unless you plan on using the online component. I think other companies should move toward this since I'm tired of the draconian DRM associated with many games. I do my research to ensure this DRM isn't present in any game I'm thinking of purchasing, I personally will not allow them my money to further what I feel is customer abuse.

I like Steam and feel it's a great service. It does have it's flaws however(the main one having to be online). But Steam is way better than the alternatives(SecuROM). Though I do feel they should take the route of Stardock/Impulse and allow single player/offline play without being online.

On the back it has statements saying that both GFWL and Steam are required, as well as logos on the front of the box. As with what another poster said: Steam can be run in offline mode once it's been installed and activated. And the reason you didn't see an icon is because it doesn't install one to the desktop when it downloads through Steam(at least I've never seen one) because you have to run the game through Steam

I can't say why it took so long to install Steam unless it needed a really large update to run and it downloaded that as well. Steam has always installed extremely fast for me. It seems you're not the only one with the issue(really long install times), many other people have the same problem. Here's a FAQ from Valve on how to install from the DVD:
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1783-EYZN-9672
And another link in case you have problems:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=806897
Those are more for people who are encountering the problems and not someone who has already returned it ;)

You can create an offline only GFWL account, which doesn't require any of your information. It's not very obvious that you can do this, but you can.

I do agree with you though, the Stardock/Impulse approach is much better and I've been very please with them. I've never downloaded anything from them, just physical copies. I really like that you don't need to activate unless you plan on using the online component. I think other companies should move toward this since I'm tired of the draconian DRM associated with many games. I do my research to ensure this DRM isn't present in any game I'm thinking of purchasing, I personally will not allow them my money to further what I feel is customer abuse.

I like Steam and feel it's a great service. It does have it's flaws however(the main one having to be online). But Steam is way better than the alternatives(SecuROM). Though I do feel they should take the route of Stardock/Impulse and allow single player/offline play without being online.

Steam pricing in Europe went from good to poor after they decided to implement the 1 € = 1 $ pricing scheme around new year.

This happened at the same time that they introduced the € as currency for everyone in Europe but UK residents, even for countries that do not use the euro. There's a long topic of complaints and documentation about this on the Steam forums.

Up until this change I would usually buy from Steam since it was cheaper or the same price as any other place, with the digital distribution as a bonus. Now I'll only buy from Steam if there's no other option available.

Despite Valve's reputation as an open company, there's currently been no official comment regarding this change.

Most weeks, it pops up in their RSS feed, though for some reason there was no entry for World of Goo.

I bought a physical copy of the first Half-Life back when it was released. When Steam entered the picture, I registered Half-Life to it, making the CD-Key useless since at least the online portion of the game was now completely tied to the Steam account. Then I forgot my Steam password and was unable to recover it - for five years. So I couldn't do much with the boxed copy of the game I had, nor could I access it through Steam.

However, a week ago I suddenly remembered my Steam password, and installed Steam to see if my account was still alive. Not only did I find Half-Life associated with the account, but also several commercial mods and two expansion packs that I had never bought. All of these automatically downloaded/installed with just a click of a mouse. Turns out that the commercial mods/expansions were awarded at some point for free to those who bought Half-Life before Steam existed. On top of that I noticed the (apparently long-running) NVIDIA and ATI campaigns on Steam, through which you get a couple of games for free if you have their graphics card, most interestingly for me Half-Life 2: Deathmatch. And all of this works flawlessly through Wine on Linux.

All in all, I must say I'm quite impressed with Steam, as long as you don't lose your account credentials.

I bought a physical copy of the first Half-Life back when it was released. When Steam entered the picture, I registered Half-Life to it, making the CD-Key useless since at least the online portion of the game was now completely tied to the Steam account. Then I forgot my Steam password and was unable to recover it - for five years. So I couldn't do much with the boxed copy of the game I had, nor could I access it through Steam.

However, a week ago I suddenly remembered my Steam password, and installed Steam to see if my account was still alive. Not only did I find Half-Life associated with the account, but also several commercial mods and two expansion packs that I had never bought. All of these automatically downloaded/installed with just a click of a mouse. Turns out that the commercial mods/expansions were awarded at some point for free to those who bought Half-Life before Steam existed. On top of that I noticed the (apparently long-running) NVIDIA and ATI campaigns on Steam, through which you get a couple of games for free if you have their graphics card, most interestingly for me Half-Life 2: Deathmatch. And all of this works flawlessly through Wine on Linux.

All in all, I must say I'm quite impressed with Steam, as long as you don't lose your account credentials.

Distribution of physical media is expensive and, given that nearly every PC worth speaking of will be on the 'net, why bother with shrinkwrap distribution at all? Online distribution channels such as Valve's Steam and Stardock's Impulse allow you to skip over the brick and mortar middleman completely. The systems handle purchasing, online distribution, updating, network game matchmaking & present a far lower barrier to entry for small software houses while providing a mechanism for purchasing games that's as convenient as downloading a pirated copy.

I've just copied & pasted this from a post I made in the previous discussion about whether physical distribution will survive.

I've never been able to actually find that quote [that they'll release a free activation tool], which is generally attributed to Gabe. I find it hard to believe that they would actually do that however as firms go bust when they become unable to meet their financial obligations. In just about every jurisdiction ever destroying your most valuable assets before defaulting on all your debts is considered criminal and I don't think the directors of Valve would be prepared to do jail time for us.

Having said that, Steam is making Valve huge sums of money so they're not likely to go bust. Even if they do, Steam is only worth so much because it's running as a going concern, shutting it down would destroy its value.

We don't own games on Steam, we purchase subscriptions. Read the subscriber agreement. A new owner might decide to charge a pound for downloading the games more than five times, for example. Under UK (and I think EU) law if you make unfavourable changes to a contract you have to let the other party opt out. I'd take that to mean a full refund for everything I've purchased but we all know if Steam ended up with a new owner with that mindset they'd make a refund process very difficult.

What happens if the old machine died? You have to download all of your games all over again. With physical media you can easily install at your leisure.

If you prefer physical media, you can burn it yourself: Using the Steam Backup Feature

None of the modern missile lock on frenzy games have anywhere near the depth of the old school sims, just can't get into them.

Go get yourself a copy of IL-2 Sturmovik and you will be in Nirvana. It's probably the best serious combat flight sim ever made, and you can set it for anything from moderate realism to full-out, hard-core "I want to adjust the engine mixture myself, thank you very much" realism. Based on your comments I predict you will love it - and as a bonus, you should be able to find it priced at about one-fifth the cost of HAWX.

IL-2 has been expanded and updated many times over the years, so to make sure you get the total package, look for the compilation titled IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946. It includes the core game, all its expansions, the sequel (Pacific Fighters), and a bunch of Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe-style late-war wonder jets. Earlier compilations will lack some of these and will require patching to bring up to date, so 1946 is the version to buy.

Ironically, Ubisoft is the North American distributor for the IL-2 series; if you live there, you can buy 1946 as a digital download from Ubi's Web store for USD$10. It's also available on Steam at the same price, and if you prefer physical media, Amazon has the DVD version for $15.

Because they consolidate the industry? You know, steam has been very friendly to indie developers.

Or maybe it's a simple issue with DRM. Oh well, the games are (mostly) cheap, and they can be installed on multiple computers. It's good enough for me.

Because they consolidate the industry? You know, steam has been very friendly to indie developers.

Or maybe it's a simple issue with DRM. Oh well, the games are (mostly) cheap, and they can be installed on multiple computers. It's good enough for me.

Because they consolidate the industry? You know, steam has been very friendly to indie developers.

Or maybe it's a simple issue with DRM. Oh well, the games are (mostly) cheap, and they can be installed on multiple computers. It's good enough for me.

Because they consolidate the industry? You know, steam has been very friendly to indie developers.

Or maybe it's a simple issue with DRM. Oh well, the games are (mostly) cheap, and they can be installed on multiple computers. It's good enough for me.

Because they consolidate the industry? You know, steam has been very friendly to indie developers.

Or maybe it's a simple issue with DRM. Oh well, the games are (mostly) cheap, and they can be installed on multiple computers. It's good enough for me.

"That'd be like wrapping up and presenting the toaster you've used every morning for the past year."
Does Steam really say that? Holy crap they do: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?p_faqid=549#gifts-whatare

<SteamFiction>
Yea... you can't give your old toaster to people or sell it. That's just nasty. It would be like selling the house you lived in every day for the past five years. Why would you want to sell your old house? Ewww... everyone knows you're supposed to burn it to the ground and have the next people on the land build a brand new house.

Same with cars, you can't sell your old used car once you drive it out of the dealer's lot, the title has your name on it and it is non transferable. Nobody else would possibly want that car you farted in while driving on muddy streets. Only the car dealer has the right to sell cars to people.

Same with clothing, you can't give/sell/donate your old clothing because once you wear it, it is yours forever. If you die, you have to bury your entire wardrobe with you.

Software is a whole lot more personal than a house, a car, and clothing. Ewww, why would you want to install software that's already been installed on someone else's computer? That's nasty! Ewww.... that's just plain nasty.
</SteamFiction>

Now back to the shocking reality. Steam is so out of touch with reality.
People can actually sell used houses and their used cars and even their old used clothing and if someone wants to give away or sell their old used toaster they very well can, and someone who is less fortunate who can't afford a brand new toaster can actually buy a used toaster and use it. A quick ebay search reveals dozens of used toasters for sale. Preventing people from selling their used software that they purchased is objectionable and unnatural at the least, possibly criminal.

You are sadly misinformed.

It's called gifting. I bought Half Life 2 when it came out, but later bought the Orange Box. It notified me that I had one extra copy of HL2 and I was able to give it as a gift to one of my buddies.

OrangeBox was a partial exception. A one time special deal for Orange Box buyers who already had other components of the game. It is not generally true. (And it only applied to duplicate components... you couldn't gift features you only had one of.)

You can gift any game that you've purchased. Just have someone send you paypal, then gift the game to their username.

Why don't you try just that? You are wrong. It **doesn't work**.

You can buy a game and gift it (but you have to buy it 'as a gift' and you absolutely can't play it yourself first), and who ever receives it can't gift it again.

Read all about it right from steam:

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?p_faqid=549

"A Steam gift purchase is a one-time transfer--after the recipient has activated and installed the game, it is a non-refundable game in his or her Steam games collection. Also note that you may only gift new purchases--you may not transfer games you already own. That'd be like wrapping up and presenting the toaster you've used every morning for the past year."

or further down:

"You can not gift games that were previously purchased on your Steam account to friends. Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One can be gifted when purchased as part of the Orange Box package. For more information about Orange Box gifting, please see..."

They couldn't be more clear that you can't transfer games you already own (OrangeBox duplicates being the ONLY exception.)

You can sell your Steam games. By saying otherwise you're just spreading FUD.

No you can't. Its you that is spreading misinformation. Sad thing is, I believe you genuinely believed you were right, which means their whole 'gifting' system marketing has completely deluded you into thinking it worked the way you thought it worked. But it doesn't, and you wouldn't have found out until you actually tried to gift one of you other used games and found you couldn't. At which point it is FAR to late to do anything about it.

I have spoken with support, argued with them live and via email over this on a number of occasions. I have actually TRIED to gift a in my account that isn't an orange box duplicate.

Don't trust me on this; do your own research. But unfortunately you WILL find that I am right.

We do have a promise from Valve (if you care to believe them) that they'd release an unlocker for Steam if they ever looked like going bust

I've never been able to actually find that quote, which is generally attributed to Gabe. I find it hard to believe that they would actually do that however as firms go bust when they become unable to meet their financial obligations. In just about every jurisdiction ever destroying your most valuable assets before defaulting on all your debts is considered criminal and I don't think the directors of Valve would be prepared to do jail time for us.

Having said that, Steam is making Valve huge sums of money so they're not likely to go bust. Even if they do, Steam is only worth so much because it's running as a going concern, shutting it down would destroy its value.

We don't own games on Steam, we purchase subscriptions. Read the subscriber agreement. A new owner might decide to charge a pound for downloading the games more than five times, for example. Under UK (and I think EU) law if you make unfavourable changes to a contract you have to let the other party opt out. I'd take that to mean a full refund for everything I've purchased but we all know if Steam ended up with a new owner with that mindset they'd make a refund process very difficult.

So yea, short of DRM free services like GOG, Steam is one of the best solutions out there. The phone-home DRM it uses isn't even much of a pain because you need an internet connection to get the most out of Steam anyway.

Steam is great. Or well, was great until I moved and the cable company decided to not fix my line for a month and a half. Online games? Nope. Offline games? Nope. Steam is a system that kicks you when you're down.

It's too bad you can't play your games without connecting to Steam or having an internet connection, that would be kinda cool....

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3160-AGCB-2555

oh wait...

I bought a physical copy of the first Half-Life back when it was released. When Steam entered the picture, I registered Half-Life to it, making the CD-Key useless since at least the online portion of the game was now completely tied to the Steam account. Then I forgot my Steam password and was unable to recover it - for five years. So I couldn't do much with the boxed copy of the game I had, nor could I access the digital distribution system.

However, a couple of days ago I suddenly remembered my Steam password, and installed Steam to see if my account was still alive. Not only did I find Half-Life associated with the account, but also several commercial mods and two expansion packs, that I had never bought. All of these easily installable with just a click of a mouse, and no requirement for the original Half-Life CD - which I don't have with me right now anyway. Turns out that the commercial mods/expansions were awarded at some point for free to those who bought Half-Life before Steam existed. On top of that I noticed the (apparently long-running) NVIDIA / ATI campaigns on Steam, through which you get a couple of games for free if you have their graphics card. Luckily for me I tend to be most interested in the deathmatch parts of first person shooters anyway :)

So all in all, I must say I'm quite impressed with digital distribution (at least when it comes to Steam), as long as you don't lose your account credentials. Makes me wonder what happens if Steam ever goes permanently down though. I think I'll continue buying physical copies of games as long as they are offered, so I have something to fall back to if the digital distribution part completely fails.

I bought a physical copy of the first Half-Life back when it was released. When Steam entered the picture, I registered Half-Life to it, making the CD-Key useless since at least the online portion of the game was now completely tied to the Steam account. Then I forgot my Steam password and was unable to recover it - for five years. So I couldn't do much with the boxed copy of the game I had, nor could I access the digital distribution system.

However, a couple of days ago I suddenly remembered my Steam password, and installed Steam to see if my account was still alive. Not only did I find Half-Life associated with the account, but also several commercial mods and two expansion packs, that I had never bought. All of these easily installable with just a click of a mouse, and no requirement for the original Half-Life CD - which I don't have with me right now anyway. Turns out that the commercial mods/expansions were awarded at some point for free to those who bought Half-Life before Steam existed. On top of that I noticed the (apparently long-running) NVIDIA / ATI campaigns on Steam, through which you get a couple of games for free if you have their graphics card. Luckily for me I tend to be most interested in the deathmatch parts of first person shooters anyway :)

So all in all, I must say I'm quite impressed with digital distribution (at least when it comes to Steam), as long as you don't lose your account credentials. Makes me wonder what happens if Steam ever goes permanently down though. I think I'll continue buying physical copies of games as long as they are offered, so I have something to fall back to if the digital distribution part completely fails.

Indeed. If it were possible to completely remove IE, including the rendering engine, it's incredible just how much it would break. Steam and IETab come to mind immediately.

Thanks for the clarification and expansion of your comments.

I think the key to keeping the money flowing to content creators is for them to increasingly cut out the middle man. With the advent of things like the Kindle, it is making more and more sense for an author to self-publish an ebook version only. As we move closer to that, we'll see some of the problems with the music industry. I'm sure there is lots of music out there that I would enjoy, but it is hard to find a content filter to narrow the choices down that creates a subset that I actually like. There have been some attempts but as it stands now I still have to go out there and manually filter through tons of detrius to get at the brine.

Things like Valve's Steam and Slashdot both provide models where content filtering lets me find a little better what I want.

Right now, the filters in place end up sending a lot of perfectly good content that at least someone out there would have bought to the rubbish heap, because it costs too much ink and paper (or whatever) to take a chance on it. I guess in a perfect world, everything put up for publshing would be available, and people would have the option to filter for themselves. A small filtering fee per transaction, with most of the money going to the creators, and you could sell a lot fewer units at a lower price than currently and still keep the same amount of artists in work.

If I had a million dollars I'd hire a couple of coders and start a company to provide the software backend to publishers to do for ebooks what steam does for games. I think that is probably a good step in the right direction.

Play the Empire: Total War demo instead.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/10620/

Can we stop this misinformation? Most gamers do not buy a new video card every 4 days.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Despite RAM prices, over 35% of Steam gamers have less than 2GB of RAM. About the same number are still running single-core CPUs. Just under half don't have a DX10-capable GPU, meaning their GPU is well over a year old. And that's with a generation of graphics hardware that gives extremely good value for money.

I can't think of something with significant market share, but there is now an indie game on Steam written in D: Mayhem Intergalactic

Additionally, D is link-compatible with C. Using C libraries from D is as easy as porting the header files to D. There are a couple of tools for (mostly) automating this process, and quite a lot of the major C libraries have D bindings available.

It only just came in a few weeks back, here's a link to the press release describing the deal Epic made with Valve

http://store.steampowered.com/news/2204/

Valve's store is too high anyway, particularly for new releases.

As an example, I opened up steam and checked out the first game that appeared: Dawn of War 2.

On steam, it costs £34.99, about the RRP of a retail PC game. http://store.steampowered.com/app/15620/

On play.com, it's only £22.99.

http://www.play.com/Games/PC/4-/5380006/Warhammer-40-000-Dawn-Of-War-II/Product.html

Do you honestly mean to tell me that the cost of manufacturing the box, pressing the disk(s), pressing the manuals and then sending them out to Jersey is actually more than £10 cheaper than throwing it on a server somewhere and having someone download it through the internet connection they pay for?

Boy isn't it just!

That's a peak of 1.6 million concurrent users in the last 48 hours alone. For comparison Microsoft were boasting about Xbox Live reaching 1.5 million concurrent users back in January, the highest peak they'd ever had.

Your argument about the 'next-gen' concept seems self-refuting. The consoles are already behind PCs a bit in terms of graphics, and in five years they won't be any better but the PC will have moved on considerably. They can't even move on in complexity because they're saddled with 512MB of RAM. By then 8 or 16GB will be standard on PCs and so will the 64-bit OSes to take advantage of it.

Also, I'd say it's a good thing that we don't have to upgrade so often. It's good that someone can go out and get a 100 dollar graphics card and play any PC game available without performance worries. That's how it is now, and I like it.

Take a look at the Steam statistics as well. 1.6 million people simultaneously logged in was the peak in the last 48 hours. In the January survey, 5% of people had Intel GPUs.

You can also dole out this figure when people whinge about "The death of PC gaming." For comparison Xbox Live reached 1.5 million concurrent users in January and it was a record for them overall, not a 48-hour peak.