Slashdot Mirror
Valve Announces "Steam" Content Delivery System
Greg Brown writes: "Valve just officially announced Steam, its new content delivery system that works automatically over the internet. While this has been in the works for a while, including a semi-public testing period, it has slowly been refined to the point that it is faster and more convenient than other methods. Valve is also planning on licensing it to other developers to use to distribute their games online. Looks like the game-publishing heavyweights (EA and Sierra) may be outdated. More info from Gamespy and ShackNews."
What does Sierra think of this, considering Sierra publishes Valve's stuff, last I checked? It seems like this is the kind of service that could be offered up easier by a larger company than a smaller one. Is Sierra going to be a part of Steam, or is Valve going to cut the middleman?
slashdot!=valid HTML
All this is cool, and I admit longing for a system that keeps proper track of patches, updates and serials. But isn't this pretty similar to passport ? The dreaded Microsoft thingie that every ./ter goes bananas about ?
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
This is how things are supposed to work. The RIAA and MPAA should take a lesson from these guys. Wow, pay for good content (program) get to use it as much/wherever you want and completely bypass the middleman = savings for the consumer.
Absolutely ridiculous that the music/video industry is refusing change or developing a new distrubution system like these guys are. I mean, consider what this will mean for small-time game developers. They get to keep a large share of the profits, reach a broader audience, and not have to deal with the bullsh*t that is typical of most game publishers. As for the consumer, you get cheaper games plain and simple.
Seriously, imagine this applied to the recording/music industry and I guess I realize why they are so afraid of the new digital medium.
During his presentation to GameSpy, Newell showed Half-Life running off a broadband connection. Mind you, no game files were installed on the client machine . After launching Half-Life from Steam, it downloaded the necessary files (which took hardly any time at all - actually it was faster than using a CD ), and before you knew it, the introductory cinematic for Half-Life was running.
;)
Wow! where can I get broadband that fast?
"There is 3% CPU utilization by Steam client," Newell said. "92% wire utilization, 4:1 compression and about 50% cache hits."
And 100% buzzword utilization.
From the article:
With it, we can market and have direct communication with customers, sales and distribution
This doesn't sound like directly downloading games. This sounds like the company taking over your computer and forcing you to watch an advertisement for their product, then "allowing" you to purchase it with a single click of the mouse.
At present, the amount of advertising on the web is becoming increasingly intrusive, but we still have one advantage- we can choose (for the most part) when we want to be abused. I have pity for people whose employment requires them to surf the web as they have no choice when they are forced to endure such pop-up banner misery. With "Stream", the Internet may very well turn into what the modern day telephone has become, a boon for telemarketers and con artists alike. They can choose when they wish to interrupt us, whether it be from a family meal or our favorite TV shows, to allow them the high likelyhood that we can be reached, as the demographics have clearly been researched on such common behavioral patterns.
I, for one, will take this new technology with a grain of salt. It may just step over the fine line between spyware and trojans, and while on paper it may look like a great idea, I would caution those who think being early adopters would be a rewarding experience.
It hasn't been received very well.
"In the latest survey by Speakeasy, over 75% of players use broadband..."
Aren't the majority of Speakeasy's business built primarily at targetting "power users", such as gamers who seek broadband? That makes their statistics not exactly a snapshot for who's actually the majority of their players.
One of the main reasons CounterStrike (and therefore Half Life) seem to be still selling well is the number of low end systems, such as those found in "internet cafes", that can comfortably run it, which doesn't point to the majority of the players being broadband enabled.
Regardless, isn't Valve pretty much only about CounterStrike and other Half Life (ie Half Life, but this time you play as one of the Black Mesa janitors) knockoffs these days? At least, Team Fortress II seems to have fallen off all our radars.
With Steam, all of your authentication information is stored server side.
Surely this is not a good thing? It is in reference to a re-install - initially I thought each copy of Steam would contain some form of authentication with the servers, but if you have just done a complete re-install, Steam will be gone as well as your half-life CD key.
It could be something as simple as a password, but game developers aren't noted for their skills in the security world - simply gaining access to someones "account" could gain you access to every game they own
Of course, that is what Kazaa et. al are for
Not to those of us who live in Kirkland, at least.
I thought they were dead or something?
sic transit gloria mundi
I get up to and past 500kb/sec on my broadband connection.. With 4:1 compression, a 650 mb cd becomes a 162mb download. That's about a 324 second download, or roughly 5 1/2 minutes. Faster than a lot of CD installs I've done.
That's not really empty buzzwords.. if they were saying stuff like "The new digital deployment paradigm", that would be different. All the things they mentioned are important. Low CPU usage is good, since most games expect to be given most of the CPU's power. 92% wire utilization means that the network code is written well enough so it can be using 92% of your network capacity.. granted that one is a little vague. 4:1 compression.. well, the more compression, the less downloading. 50% cache hits means that servers supplying this data don't have to undergo as much burden packaging together stuff to send out, because half the time there is already a cached copy to send out. Not as important for the user, but for those who serve the data it is.
slashdot!=valid HTML
Come to think of it, I guess I just did.
sic transit gloria mundi
Sega use to do this way back when. They used to have the Sega Channel, an adapter that hooked up to a Genesis and would let you play games. I wonder what's so revolutionary about this time around. Doesn't sound to different based on the info provided on the links, well except that it installs in less time than a cd.
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
Publishers (and the retailers) are the bane of the
games industry.
No one is willing to pick up innovative products.
I've hard too many horror stories of imbecilic external producers meddling with projects (I.e. I have random whim X and I want you to retarget your entire game to accommodate it. No wait I now want you to do Y instead etc...)
This is obviously a ploy aimed squarely at turning the online Half-life community into a pay-for-play revenue stream, at least over the long haul. The 'shack article alludes slightly to this, although Gabe Newell makes it sound a little more palatable, and wants to be our friend. He promises not to charge us twice for the same product. All who believe him, raise your hand.
While the features mentioned (automatic patches, etc.) are very cool, they're also merely the bullet points needed to sell the software to developers and clients.
Gamers are likely eager to jump on the technology if they can get the latest patches and maps without having to take an active role in the proces by going out and downloading them proactively.
Developers are likely to use it because then they don't have to worry about producing media, documentation, or those other annoying things that soften the pain of paying $50 a pop to most gamers.
Valve wins 2 ways: First, they can move all of the userbase over to a subscription model and start making little hats out of money. Second, they can get a piece of each sale from other developers' work that hits their content distribution system, and make little money shirts to match the hats.
Think about it. Half-Life came out 5 years ago. A lot of us have plunked down our $50 and have been playing away happily ever since at Counterstrike, DOD, Existence, and many other wonderful mods without giving Valve a penny.
Now, the case can easily be made that Valve DESERVES more cash. They've continued to pump money into the Half-life community, making Counterstrike into a commercial product, releasing the classic quake and team fortress classic mods, releasing patches and feature upgrades these many years, and constantly improving the product.
This works fine while your game is in the top seller lists through constant re-release. It breaks down when you hit market saturation. Who does Valve turn to when Half-Life isn't in the top 20 anymore, and Team Fortress II is no longer even a twinkle in Gabe Newell's eye?
It turns to you, the purchaser of the original product, who is brazenly continuing to enjoy the it long after anyone thought you would still pay attention to it. Your brazen audacity shown by not becoming a consistent revenue stream will be corrected once and for all!
In fact, if you buy a game over Steam, who's to say that the content provider can't just turn it off a few years down the road when the sequel's released? With constant enforcement of new patch downloads, what happens to purists who might enjoy the gameplay of an earlier revision? What if I want to install a custom hack such as a Tribes 2 HUD or build my own decal in Half-Life, only to have these changes constantly overwritten by the autoupdater?
Control over how I can execute my software should be left in my hands, not in the hands of a subscription service or remote authentication server. The current system isn't broken, and steam doesn't really address any significant problems except Valve's diminishing bottom line.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
... completely bypass the middleman = savings for the consumer ...
Doubtful. The consumer has demonstrated a willingness to pay $50 or so for a game. The business model used by the developers will probably be based on this fact and they will try to collect about the same amount of money in the end, it may not be all up front.
The good news may really be that the developers get most of the money and this will probably result in a greater percentage of your $50 being reinvested in the game via more content, expansions, new versions, etc.
Should I take it that TF2 is never going to happen?
:(
If it is still happening then what the bloody hell are you doing wasting your time on a CMS, we want TF2!
Let's hope people won't start to use phrases like "Steam me that content". "How do you want it delivered? I want it steamed". I don't know about you, but *I* don't want our rich computing/networking vocabulary to be polluted by marketing crap that was brainstormed in a self-masturbating committee of suit-wearing Joes.
Push Technology, 5 years too late? *grin*
Watch out! It's SYNAPSE !
I dunno. Blizzard has maintained the bnet servers for years (yes, complaints about slow service not withstanding) without charging existing users lame-ass subscription fees. I think Valve could get away with it if they could use the opportunity to cut out all the overhead expenses associated with feeding the deadwood between them and the consumer.
Now, if only we could get rid of those MPAA and RIAA middlemen and their hired guns using Steam as well...
What we may have is the virtual coin-operated game. Want to play a game, drop that virtual coin into the virtual slot.
Pay for play will be a necessity to some degree, those bits being sent to you cost the developer money. Not just the development of those bits but physically sending them to you, bandwidth costs. Those who choose to pay for the game up front are prepaying for their bits.
It uses broadband? Well so does Gamespy.
Besides, haven't they learned that it's the GAMES that drive the platform, not the other way around.
I wish to subscribe to myself.
downloading patches from servers full of banner ads and click me's and X-10 camera ads. It's annoying as hell these things, they make me want to reach through the computer screen and get very angry with someone. Lets hope they take an approach similiar to this article.
3 24 8&mode=thread
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/03/20/014
This is, of course, the Holy Grail of the "content" industries: Never even pretend to sell anything again, just rent access to it. Steam looks like it's the first cohesive attempt to do exactly this.
First, the scenario they describe to make Steam seem appealing ("You need to re-install Windows from scratch, but you can't find your Half-Life CD key! What will you do!?") fails on two major points:
- The need to re-install Windows at all. This is due to perennially shoddy Microsoft engineering, and it's a damn shame Valve is spending precious R&D dollars trying to compensate for it.
- The illusory need for a CD key.
Cut out either of those issues, and Steam's appeal to users is diminished.Second, I challenge the claim that, with nothing stored on the local disk, Half-Life starts up quickly. Half-Life is fscking enormous. Single maps are at least 1M in size, with 3M being entirely common. Do the math yourself. Even at 1.5Mb/sec saturated, that's still 20 seconds just to download the map. Then you get to download the player models, sound effects, music tracks, etc. etc. Unless they've done some massive engineering to achieve "just-in-time" downloading (this is still a major area of ongoing research), I don't see how they could have made this an acceptable alternative over storing the files locally.
Third, if they're saturating the link to download the content, what's left for actually playing the game over the network? Many people get broadband for the lower ping and higher rate, resulting in smoother, more responsive game play. What happens to that experience when some other process is consuming the lion's share of the link?
Fourth, not having a complete copy of all the bits needed to run the software makes me extremely queasy. What happens when the master index server craps out? What happens when my Steam client gets toasted by the latest Outlook virus?
Having all the bits stored locally is also what's helped bootstrap and maintain the Mod community. There, on your disk, are numerous examples of maps/models/art/music that can be taken apart by users, studied, and used by creative people to come up with new maps and Mods. But what happens to all that when Steam enters the picture? The bits aren't on your disk. Will Steam hand you a copy of the bits, or will it refuse, claiming you're not a, "trusted application?"
Fifth, I don't see the "daily update to thwart cheaters" as a feature at all, much less a realistic goal. The two primary things standing in the way of this are:
Finally, I'm concerned about all the stuff they're not telling you. There are obvious privacy/security concerns here:
Personally, I'm all for developing new facilities that help cut out the middleman and get more dollars directly to the creators of digital works. Perhaps it's my aging, cynical brain but, as a software consumer, I just don't see any advantage Steam provides for me.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Content delivery system? From Valve?
This is what has been staving off the release off Team Fortress 2 (and Half-Life 2, for that matter)?!?!?
Valve: I want TF2! Make with the gaming!
Perhaps by noting your ad viewing patterns the game content downloaded to you will be textures containing cusomized ads that will apear on wall in the game universe, posters, billboards, decals on players backs, etc. Player 1: Rally at the Toyota billboard. Player 2: What Toyota billboard? Player 1: Above the tunnel entrace we found a few minutes ago. Player 2: That was a Sony billboard. Player 3: Uh, I'm pretty sure it was "Girls Gone Wild". Yeah I'm pretty sure, I uh got distracted and got fragged.
Content distributor? Sounds like their whole game is to insert themselves in between a distributor and recipient, with them skimming a little off as middleman. What a joke.
Sounds familiar. Create a company with very fuzzy and ill defined purpose. Then insert that company in between as many deals as possible. Is Valve perchance based out of Texas?
... bpjs! The german Bundesprüfstelle für jungendgefährdende Schriften reviews games upon request if they endanger people younger than 18 years. They do (in their opinion) if they contain too much gore or glorify cruelty. They than are "indiziert". Which means you cant put up ads for it anymore, put it in your store shelfs or sell it to people younger than 18 (id required). But with steam there are no store shelfs, no german retails, whose store shelfes one could search or anything. What will they do against this? ;-)
IAAL
Which is savings.. =). Man, what I wouldn't give to pay for more linux ports on games - this way it might actually happen
This does nothing for Linux, the fundamental problem with Linux is unchanged. Linux gamers primarily dual boot or emulate, you only need a Win32 version to sell to them.
Its free but it asks for credit card details and there is no indication on the site or information about why they want it.
Plus they ask for special offer code which you dont have of course.
Why do they need my credit card? why wont they tell me why they need it ? I dont give my card number out to anyone for any verification process, its bullshit and a company the size of valve should not need it.
I wanted to try this out but i wont be doing so as i wont give them my credit card - this is a BETA test. At this point it reminds me of the famous Lindows pay $99 to beta test our software but you cant tell anyone about it or show it to anyone.
Something smells fishy here.
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
Apologies i missed the bit about key generator in the setup BUT i still want to know WHY the credit card
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
How?
No one forced Valve to make HL so mod-friendly. And if they didn't, developers would simply go to a different game. Indeed, Valve already is getting more money than they theoretically should, all because of third party mods.
What's more, third party mod developers (Well, the good ones) are often drafted into gaming houses because of the fact that they've displayed they know what they're doing, unlike most people being churned out of universities.
Oh, I agree with the rest, but there's no real case for Valve being owed more money for what they've done - they're reaping benefits already from being mod-friendly.
BEER from San Francisco - yummy - doh.. nope some new push client method. damn wrong list...
I Think Dave Perry wrote the Genesis version.
Steams sounds kind of cool, however there are already two OSS solutions that could be extended to provide the "rest" of Steam. Loki Installer and Red Carpet. Loki Installer only uses GTK+, which is fairly portable. Red Carpet, not sure on how much GNOME it requires, but I'd imagine that it could be slimed down some to make it portable.
Maybe someone should setup a Loki Installer or Red Carpet thing for OSS games. That'd be cool.
I just installed their beta; took less than 10 seconds of download to get the steam code. I installed Half-Life and it took 45 seconds to install, and I was in the game.
The process is beautifully seamless.
(Hm. I suppose since they made a public announcement NDAs don't apply...)
I thought the Steam delivery system was just for the beta testers. I hate the bloody thing. Runs in the background, downloads maps as you need them, requires you to log on to play, etc. I figured it was a necessary evil as a beta tester; I'm not going to put up with it as a gamer. Is there some way to boycott this? First PowerPlay and now this shit. Valve isn't a game company - game companies make games.
like a knight in shining armor/from a long time ago
I am not going to dwell on the fact that Gabe and the boys didn't actually make a game that was not HL in a new box for a long, long time (and NEVER so far produced a good online game) - yet are currently integrating the most annoying features of all online shenanigans into a client which we will have to use (transparently, mind you) once they DO publish a game. That would be low.
But the steam driven ploy is going to fail.
Even though the past is a long string of successes for schemes allowing users to communicate directly with people who use their brain as a symbolic battlefield in which corporations win cash and the people win the ticking pounding urge to get a shotgun and kill, kill, kill - the result is not to be generalized onto this case.
As the world's premiere gaming psychologist, I can tell that:
1. gamers LOVE colorful boxes
2. downloads are for free stuff
Now, if they would only throw one of those Comet-cursor thingies in their Steam engine, it would be so cool.
~zecg.
Most of the objections raised by Taco and others posting here can be applied equally to EverQuest and all of the other pay2play MMORPGs, or gaming in general.
-Mod support: This requires an active contribution from the developers in any case. Modifying a game that hasn't had mod support written in and documented by the developers would be ridiculously difficult. If developers don't want people to modify the game, they can QUITE easily make it prohibitively difficult to do so. If the developers don't want people modifying the game, it doesn't matter if it's on Steam or not.
-"They can choose when they wish to interrupt us, whether it be from a family meal or our favorite TV shows, to allow them the high likelyhood that we can be reached, as the demographics have clearly been researched on such common behavioral patterns": This is a problem with *any* application you run with priveliges to access the internet. If you don't like what an application does, don't run it. The distribution method is irrelevant.
To bounce around some other threads in this discussion:
-Account Security concerns: Once again, this is a problem with *anything* dealing with identity, authentication, and money on the internet.
-"i still want to know WHY the credit card information": Why does EQ want your credit card #? So they can charge you money to gain access to their servers, obviously.
As for concerns about advertising... *why*? This is obviously being modeled as a continuous revenue stream-- monthly fees. Ads that annoy and alienate players are a net LOSE for their bottom line.
Quite simply, Steam is a response to the realization that online multiplayer is *the* market segment to be in for gaming.
I also think that this is a great idea. I'd *love* to be able to download games for a nominal fee ($10) or so, and not renew the service after the first month if it wasn't worth it.
Bottom line: The scary parts of Steam aren't anything new, and the good stuff might mean a revolution in content distribution for gaming. From a distribution and support perspective, this is brilliant! Imagine clients being patched without user effort and bugs being reported with the system specs instantly available to the support systems. Imagine being able to get a refund for games that simply refuse to run on your system. Imagine raising the bar for the difficulty of cheating so high that it ceases to become an issue. Imagine the mod-distribution possibilities! It's *difficult* to pay attention to all of the half-life mods that are available, let alone download them and get them working.
All-around, this is hardcore win-win for gamers and developers.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
Although I am a little suspicious of Valves long term strategy for Steam, I am prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt for the moment.
The main concern of a pay-to-play model seems unfounded; Valve are doing very well at the moment as it is. Steam is going to give them even higher profit margins through the removal of the majority of the supply chain.
The argument that the current system isn't broken is completely flawed. The CS community is almost at breaking point with regard to cheating. IMHO this is the killer app of Steam. I dont mind waiting an hour to download the latest CS update, and I certainly wouldn't pay for the removal of this inconvenience, but I WOULD pay 5 pounds a month for a guaranteed cheat free counter strike. Most people I know who play CS would do the same. Cheating is endemic and hopefully this will be the silver bullet.
Valve seem to understand the gamer pretty well. They have heavily backed the modding community (a risky business decision as they net no revenue from existing HL customers) and have come out winners. Just because they are a capitalist business doesn't mean they are stupid. They know how fickle gamers can be and they know that their position could easily become tenuous if they start installing spyware all over the place.
Sometimes you need to have faith in a company and give them your support (read $$$ or £££ or whatever) for them to create a revolutionary product.
I'm going to support it. And I applaud Valve for setting this thing up. Sure, if they start spamming me to hell or intruding on my game I'll reconsider, but I think we have to give this sort of project a break and wait and see what happens...
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
Perhaps now they`ve finished tinkering with this little toy, they can do some proper work.
Like finishing Team Fortress 2.
At least with a web browser, I still have some control...
Yes STEAM is gonna be excellent for gamers to recive the updates. but really ive noticed it downloads in a pritty much uncompressed format, which makes life hell for us old 56kers. Imagine downloading a good 100-150mb of files to run the new version of counterstrike on a 2 hour limited dialup...nasty.
I just hope they still release Counterstrike in the old package versions, or i'll be quickly leaving...
"What do you mean you have no ice? Do you expect me to drink this coffee hot?" - Random Customer, Clerks
"Most game projects do not make any money."
This is true.
"That explains the record profits made by the game industry last year."
This is also true. Industry profit / amount of game projects = profit per project = ~0. The computer game industry is overflowing with supply and while demand can be said to be great too, paying customers are all the more rare. Especially if you take the VCs out of the loop. Most game companies work against the publishers as customers, not the gamers. Publishers have the experience and network/contacts to make a successful sale. Developers.. well, develop, and they are far too many to successfully make those big bucks you're talking about.
/ Per
Does anybody else remember valve's last effort called PowerPlay? It promised to make gaming over dialup as good as gaming over broadband... As far as I know, only one ISP ever came out with "support" for PowerPlay and it was generally a big flop (because it didn't DO anything?). Run a search at Bluesnews.com news for "PowerPlay" and you'll read about all the hype... but nothing ever came of it.
As for steam, I'm always wary of this server-side stuff, especially in gaming (where there's really no point). What does this do? Well, when your internet connection goes down (and it happens a lot around here), you don't get to play? What a sham.
I'm not sure how Valve hopes to turn in profit with their Steam engine. I was under the impression that the bandwidth was costly enough for a 'simple' game server. But they are proposing that you download the whole game (runtime file at least) every time you want to play? Or simply every time there is a new version available? Which would be the same as patching to me...
Where is the revenue coming from anyway? Monthly fee per game or pay once and play anytime?
I, for one, would not trust too much such a service if you don't get the game CD-ROM shipped at some point. It suspiciously looks like it could fold anytime and you'd be left without the games you used to play, definitly.
Also, if you think you are going to get 200kb/sec donwload time, I'd like to point you to the Anarchy Online release. You could dnload the CD from the net and then burn it. Even under those condition, it was quite tough to get the files under 5-6 hours. (By those conditions I mean the necessity of having a burner to do it).
I beta tested Steam for awhile. It's a great idea and all, but sometimes waiting for it to download isn't all that much fun. There were also some problems where the cache got corrupted (I'd assume that's fixed). I think the best part, thought, was that I got to play Counterstrike 1.4 before a lot of people. Oh, I didn't, on the flip side, mention how cool it is to be able to play without downloading patches. I guess storing the game in the cache is a small price to pay for that. For inventiveness and a great idea, I give Valve 4/5 stars. Give it a shot once you can.
If I wasn't so lazy, I'd have a sig.
I get up to and past 500kb/sec on my broadband connection.. With 4:1 compression, a 650 mb cd becomes a 162mb download. That's about a 324 second download, or roughly 5 1/2 minutes. Faster than a lot of CD installs I've done.
500Kb/sec = approximately 50 KB/second. Therefore 162MB = 162000 KB / 50 KB/s = 3240 seconds/60(m) = 54 minutes. If, on the other hand, you actually have a 500KB/second (or 5000Kb/second) cable modem, then you are a very lucky, and very rare, person : Most of us are capped at either 1.5Mbps or 2.0Mbps.
I truthfully didn't read the article, however my presumption from the Slashdot post was the CPU and network utilization was during transferring, so it's basically saying "We easily maxed out the pipe with our proprietary compression technology, and could run many multiples faster if the net connection allowed it, given the low CPU utilization. Regarding CD installs, it is interesting to consider that a 1x CD is about 176KB/second, or just a bit faster than a T1.
...I'm not sold on "Steam" yet.
I have a "broadband" internet connection by Valve's definition, which is to have at least 256KB/s.
I have 768KB/s DSL. Using Steam is not exactly fast.
Downloading the newest Counter-Strike Beta (1.4) via Steam took about 30 minutes, on a weekday, outside of any peak internet usage as far as I can tell.
This would be bearable, since you only have to do it once and occassionally upgrade to newer versions.
What really bugs me though is that it takes five times (I clocked it) longer to get into the game than connecting to a Counter-Strike 1.3 server. Now why the hell does that have to be?
On a tangent, I'd care less if it would take 10 times as long to connect if the touted anti-cheat features actually work.
People who use PC's are not quite as sheepish as game platform users. --That is, platform users are less likely to understand why something like Steam is invasive and ecconomically corrupt.
This is just another 'softener' for the eventual establishment of virtual money, bio-metrics and similar attempts at massive population control.
Has anybody else noticed that this so-called, 'Beta Testing' phase is in fact a mass distribution effort? "2000 more users a day???" This is not a beta test. The program is already in the bag. This is wide scale marketing, and people are falling for it.
-Fantastic Lad
While cheat prevention may be a nice benefit of Steam, it's simply part of selling their product, not a product in itself. Remember Punkbuster? From what I recall, Tony Ray stopped development of Punkbuster because Valve wouldn't give him the support he needed. While I've heard it's not omnipotent, it certainly did a lot for the TFC community with respect to cheating. If someone could do that as a part time job (though it was a lot of work), you'd think that Valve could pick up some of the slack and incorporate a similar system into HL. In retrospect, perhaps Steam is why Valve didn't support Tony and Punkbuster. There might be a lot more to the story then I remember though, since I was offline at the time it happened, but the point remains the same - anticheating is not sufficient justification for Steam.
Now I'm just wondering if anyone will read this. =)
slowdive
> I get up to and past 500kb/sec on my broadband connection.. With 4:1 compression, a 650 mb cd
> becomes a 162mb download. That's about a 324 second download, or roughly 5 1/2 minutes. Faster
> than a lot of CD installs I've done.
Audio CD speed (CD-1X) is 150KB per second. That's 1200 Kb per second, or more than twice your broadband rate. (A T1 is about 193 KB/sec.) If you meant you get 500KB per second (the capital B denotes bytes, lowercase b denotes bits), you're still slower than the CD-4x that came with my Pentium 120 6 years ago.
Uncompressed, a 16X CD beats your 4:1 compressed net connection, and most CD-ROMs are at least 32x and have been for years.
There's no reason you can't compress the CD data and store it in 1/4 the space on the disc (and get 4x the install speed) as well. In that case, a 32x CD (4800 KB/sec) would complete your 162 MB install in a little over 30 seconds. Note that high CD-ROM seek times can be mitigated by using one big compressed file.
Let's also look at the broadband situation for other users. Your 500K/sec is really unusual. Standard DSL download speeds are usually 384 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps (T1 speed). 384 Kbps is 48 KB/sec, less than 1/10th your speed. So a typical DSL user would need close to an hour for that same download.
With that kind of compression, it's even viable for a 56k dial-up user: 7-8 hours, just leave it overnight (although many ISPs have a max call length shorter than that and so it would need to be done in 2 parts). Patching would then be pretty quick. The real problem is making sure you have reliable, unclogged download sites. These days when a hot demo comes out you're lucky to get it at 2K/sec and in one shot.
> Low CPU usage is good, since most games expect to be given most of the CPU's power
On what? 3% of a 2 GHz chip is 15% of my 400MHz chip!
Besides, most games expect to be downloaded before you start playing them, so that's not usually an issue. More important is the auto-updating while you're in the middle of a firefight. On a slow link, you can play OR patch but don't have enough bandwidth for both simultaneously.
> 92% wire utilization means that the network code is written well enough so it can be using 92% of
> your network capacity.
Which isn't too hard when you have a fast CPU and slow net connection. On the other hand, it's fairly well-known that operating systems' networking stacks aren't that efficient, and in the old days you'd only get about 50% utilization of your 100 Mbps LAN link. Some people used to run FreeBSD instead of Linux in order to get 60-70 Mbps instead of 50 Mbps. I suppose 2 GHz CPUs let you saturate fast ethernet now (what about gigabit?).
> 50% cache hits means that servers supplying this data don't have to undergo as much burden
> packaging together stuff to send out
They shouldn't have to "package together" ANYTHING, since everyone gets the same 162 MB file! Later on, everyone gets the same 1.1 MB patch, etc.
The numbers that Valve was tossing about are not specific enough. Wire utilization on what link, and how does that compare to other programs' speed? I can get that percentage just downloading stuff online using a browser and my 56k modem.
50% Cache hits? Of what, and which cache? I assume they mean that half the time, they can serve a file from memory, and the other half, someone asks for the wrong file. Otherwise you'd serve that from memory too, and have 100% cache hits. Not to mention, how'd he get only 50% on his own demo as the only downloader? Did he ask for the wrong file the first time?
First up, this is not new at all, streaming of games (with patches, mods and extra maps) has been around for a while. A number of Application on Demand technologies already exist and have been widely deployed. http://www.exent.com http://www.intonetworks.com are two examples. I've played with the Exent tech, and while it amazes me, it is 100% dependant on broadband (unless of course you like the idea of downloading for a day or so before you play), and bandwidth costs of running this are potentially huge.
Add to this that while publishers are slowly getting used to this technology, they really don't like it, as it has the potential to remove their peice of the revenue pie. There is also the fact that so many of the games are funded by publishers money, so only the self funded devs are actually going to have a real chance at making use of this.
I had the good fortune to be allowed to be a beta tester of Steam. It works quite well. What happens is you download a small (Was ~1MB) installer program. This installed the Steam client software onto your computer. You then chose which games you were going to "subscribe" to (Yes, you have to pay timed fees by the game, but it was free during the beta). My largest complaints are probably space and time :p Each game gets a cache folder which is by default 500MB. So, your Half-Life folder is 500MB, your TFC folder is 500MB, your CS folder is 500MB... It adds up.
The other is time... There is no way that anything short of ethernet-based internet access would be able to rivel the speed of a CD. First of all, I really doubt they are getting 4:1 compression on that data. If they were, they'd make more money licensing THAT then they would selling the games! Anyhow, when you first play the game, it takes a while on my 1mbit DSL connection to download everything (Luckily they have good servers, so I get full speed). Maybe 3-5 minutes for the initial data. Then, the other annoying fact is that you have to download the maps before you play them if you've not before. So games usually have a bunch of people spectating in the beginning while everyone downloads and connects (It takes longer even when you do have the map, and it still says "Downloading and initializing" for some reason...)
Nevertheless, I was impressed. While the delays were annoying, it was nothing like having to download an entire 500MB game to play... I myself only had to worry about downloading 1MB.
I'd also like to comment on single-player; I was very impressed by the experience. Unlike multiplayer, single player loads ahead while you're playing. So once you download the initial footprint, and you're playing, you can just keep playing. The only way you'd know that you're not playing it off a CD is that your modem lights are blinking madly... The experience was completely seamless with no pauses for downloading, ever. Even the original CD music was included in MP3 format.
Regards, Adam.
The beta never asks for a credit card number. How do I know? I'm in the beta. I don't have a credit card number. End of story. Regards. Guspaz.
Now, the case can easily be made that Valve DESERVES more cash. They've continued to pump money into the Half-life community, making Counterstrike into a commercial product, releasing the classic quake and team fortress classic mods, releasing patches and feature upgrades these many years, and constantly improving the product.
Hell yeah. Over the years, I've probably gotten more gameplay from single-player Half-Life, deathmatch, Team Fortress Classic, and Counterstrike alone than any other recent game in memory. We're talking solid *months* of engrossing, well-produced, *fun* gameplay. Also, over the years, I've gladly bought two or three replacement Half-Life CDs for those that were lost or lent because, well, they damn well deserve it.
On the other hand, you have something like Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Bland single-player, unimaginative and buggy multiplayer, not really worth playing for more than a few hours, if that. (IMHO) Borrowed a friends copy for "evaluation purposes", and was immediately disappointed, and very glad that I didn't drop $65 at a local retailer for it. I will gladly spend that $65 on a game from someone like Valve.
'cuz I don't even have a credit card, and Steam runs just fine without me entering one.
At any rate, I'm guessing that the credit card number is there because they'll be offering "subscriptions" to other 'software content' at a price. Give away counterstrike to get people looking, and then make a half-assed attempt at selling people on other games.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
The article (on Gamespy) was overly optimistic. This type of technology works fairly well in fast a LAN environment (maybe an internet cafe that caters to gamers) but over home broadband, it's just not where it needs to be for content-heavy games. Loading faster than a CD? I'm seriously doubtful, since I've worked for companies delivering similar services.
Companies like Exent with their Games on Demand type solution and Softricity with their application on demand stuff have come a long way, by making local caches secure to thwart pirates, and by utilizing algorithms to anticipate what parts of the code you will need next, reducing the wait when a new code chunk needs to be downloaded. But the fact remains that at this point, if you have a dedicated line (DSL) your bandwidth probably isn't much higher than 640K, and if you're on cable, who knows what you're really getting when your neighbor is downloading bootleg porno for his collection.
Diablo-style games that generate dungeons on demand can suffer from serious lag because all of the code, at one point or another, has to get pulled across the wire. And when you're surrounded by 500 orcs trying to hack your way to freedom, do you really want the game to get choppy and unresponsive? Racing games that load everything and then just run from memory work much better, but you still wait. The idea is sound, but games are just too bloated for the average guy's broadband pipe. Maybe in a year or five, if access gets faster and cheaper.
-Jeff
A further Update.
I apologise - in a conversation with tech support on the forum i have discovered that their keygen had an issue and didnt work properly thats why it asked me for the CC number.
It does that without the secret code as its a full working version of the client they will be using.
I have now downloaded the software and played half life, i have a post in the same story about it an i can say that it appears to work as advertised.
I was wrong.
I apologise.
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
So that rules out me running a small CS server off ADSL then... Every time a new player connects, all the others suffer because I have to upload shitloads of data?
Its going to cost Games Service Providers loads of money in bandwidth too, because from what I can tell, the game data comes from the game server itself.
Also, for a GSP with 15 servers for example, when a new version comes out, all their regular players have to download new content. Players already on these servers might well suffer latency and packet loss while everyone else downloads the game.
Finally, if the beta is anything to go by, files ARE stored locally, in a cache. In CS 1.4 that I got, all these files are in the same directory structure as CS1.3 anyway.
We'll just have to see how it goes, I guess, but those are my concerns.
I'm a cable user, and trying to get updates are a joke. The updater software that ships with their products doesn't even work, out of the box even. Jesus, these guys can't even get patches out for their own games. I wouldn't trust them to do game distribution.
-Pat
The problem with RTCW is that it's not Half-Life. Sure, HL was great in its day, I played it for a few weeks and was quite fascinated by the smooth gameplay and bizarre plot. But it did eventually get old and now it's sitting in the closet. On the other hand, I still play Quake 2 and 3.. I actually bought my current Geforce2 GTS, two years ago, mainly to play Quake3. I still play it sometimes, because that's what I like. Others prefer Unreal Tournament, which is OK.
Every FPS'er has a preference, be it Quake, UT, HL, Tribes.. whatever. They each have a different 'feel', and that's why they're all so great. RTCW has its feel, and for people like me, I think it rocks. However it is radically different from the rest and thus, it cannot be everyone's favorite, no matter what anyone says.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
(Score:5, Funny)
Steam? Sounds like vaporware to me!
Ah, good thing they've been holding off on Team Fortress 2 for YEARS in order to create this masterpiece.
Back to work, Valve!
I don't know enough about this, but is it possible that Stream, being network-based, could open up Linux gaming in dramatic ways?
THIS, my friends, is one of my biggest complaints about the Internet. The uninformed can start bashing anything to their hearts content. Here is a case where someone started baching a product he hadn't yet used. Then he used it, and bashed various parts of it without fully reading the notes on what he was using. Then, he finally figures it all out, and posts a "retraction" ... that few people will ever read.
People are so quick to "have their say", they don't stop to think whether or not what they are saying is factually based or not.
In this particular case, Valve has done more for PC gaming (and Internet gaming) than most companies ever dream of. Half-Life is indeed an incredible value, as is just about everything of Valve's I've touched.
I have no reason to beleive that Steam doesn't work as they claim (people are using it and says that it does indeed work just as Gabe claims), or that there is some huge ulterior motive here. Just more Slashdot conspiracy theorists, needing something besides Microsoft to bitch about.
Hell, there's a post above where someone managed to take a shot at MS (something about needing to reinstall Windows and losing your cd-key for Half-Life) in addition to Valve. That takes talent of a sort.
The Internet has given everyone a voice. And everyone uses that voice to BITCH.
I've been a beta tester for Steam since mid-January, and I've been immensely pleased with the software and the gameplay. In order to play any game, you have to go through an initial download of compressed files, and it all takes up about half a gigabyte on your hard drive. This can take a while, but it's a one-shot deal, so I'd pick up a book or make myself dinner for twenty minutes. After this first delay, all updates are handled automatically at login, and they're transparent- unless you bother to check, you're never going to notice that some small patch has been installed to the software.
Login is a simple name(e-mail address, really) and password. This may certainly change, but that's how it stands now. There are no ads beyond a mention of Speakeasy.net, the company hosting the Steam servers, I gather.
The interface for game selection is excellent, as is the "Tracker" software, a combination IM/Gamespy Arcade applet that helps you find servers. The software does seem to improve on a near-daily basis, with fixes to minor bugs, improving ping times, etc. The staff has been great about communication on both the forums and through e-mail.
And one of the best things about Steam was watching all those people who have based their entire game of Counterstrike around bunny-hopping fall flat on their faces. CS 1.4 was first demoed over Steam, and it removed bunny hopping. Bloody crack rabbits getting capped left and right, swearing about how horrible the game is now. Brings tears of laughter to my eyes...
Namely, the push into subscription-based models for ALL games. If we could imagine a scenario where all game publishers are using Steam to deliver games, sooner or later (probably sooner), one of the suits is going to suggest that they could make a heck of a lot more revenue selling subscriptions to games rather than selling the actual game.
:-(
Yes, they are saving money by not selling shrink-wrapped CD's. But those savings are going to be short-lived as everyone starts competing in online distribution. And once they realize that they have cut game prices as low as they can to compete, the next logical step is subscriptions for everything (single-player games included).
You won't be able to "relive the good old days" without whipping out the credit card first.
well kudos to you for checking, verifying, and then having the balls to apologize. *clap clap*
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
So you play online games, right? You play Counter-Strike? Team Fortress Classic?
No, not really, just Starcraft.
You hate cheaters? How about downloading patches?
Starcraft downloads patches automatically.
It uses a high-performance distributed file system for fast, scalable content delivery.
I think the bottleneck is probably still the Internet.
This is only a small glimpse of what Steam will be able to do.
So, as usual, you haven't written any code yet.
Here is a familiar scenario: You reinstall Windows on your PC. You then start to reinstall your favorite games, only to discover you can't find your Half-Life CD-Key! Doh! What are you going to do?
I'll put my CD key in a textfile called cd-keys.txt (and maybe I'll even print it out!)
With Steam, all of your authentication information is stored server side.
"With Hitler's Third Reich, all your racial/ethnic information is stored in Berlin!"
After launching Half-Life from Steam, it downloaded the necessary files (which took hardly any time at all - actually it was faster than using a CD)
broadband = T5 in this scenario?
92% wire utilization
Wow, you saturated my connection. Doesn't *every* packet-switched application do this?
GameSpy will have more updates about Steam as it becomes available.
Go, code monkeys, go! Work that emacs buffer!!
Shouldn't they be spending more time on TF2? I preordered it from ebworld.com in September of 98, it was suppose to arrive on my doorstep in late November of 1998 and I have been waiting diligently on my doorstep every day since for my TF2 add-on pack.
I thought Sierra owned Valve? What is the whole "Looks like the giants are behind the times" reference about?
the player/consumer. what the consumer sees is yet another cookie cutter p.o.s. that really is only differentiated from all the other p.o.s.'s by a witty character trait here, or a city/dungeon/craft name there.... and MAYBE better graphics. Plus, the 'elements' that were obviously introduced ad hoc into the game merely to appeal to certain markets do not melt together good, are not done well and not really finished (half baked).
Perhaps this is one more step in allowing developers to make games that they want to make, and players being able to pick and play the games they want. The players could pick the styles they want and not be forced to put up with erradic mixtures of crap they don't care about resulting from the 'try to make everyone happy all the time' mentality often dictated by large production shops.
This could also be a great benefit for small startup development teams as well. I for one think this is a good thing
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
what about licensing? Most know about the complexity surounding the litigation and subsequent delay (and almost canceling it was whispered) of Neverwinter Nights by Bioware. I believe that the holders of the rights of these ideas, will need to be more open to individual development teams and not just license to large producers. So, is that likely? Will the licensing issue even be a big deal?
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
I was a beta tester for 2 months on the steam project and let me say one thing. Sucks to be 56k. I tried the system on my old modem and it just did not work. The initial connect to a steam server downloads all the data. Sometimes more than 5 megs of content. Thats a lot for a sad little modem user.
If people who want to manipulate their CD Keys would take a few seconds, they could find them via RegEdit at the following location...
HKEY_USERS\[installed user]\Software\Valve\Half-Life\Settings\Key
It is in plain text and can be changed at will without any negative repercussions.
Most of the objections raised by Taco and others posting here can be applied equally to EverQuest and all of the other pay2play MMORPGs
Which is exactly why I don't, haven't and won't play MMORPGs. The fact that everything is server-side makes the level of control the company has ridiculous and ridiculously easy to abuse. Even if they don't decide to ban me from the game (which is not a product but a service) a single mistake on their end can cost me untold hours of character building and I have no recourse but to leave. This is not acceptable and I won't pay for it one time -- let alone monthly.
The idea of more games going with this model of "everthing is controlled by the company" disturbs me. One reason is that it may mean more games going to monthly subscription models and implementing enforcable EULAs that cause me to not purchase them for the same reasons I currently don't purchase MMORPGs. Another reason is that I don't want to use my broadband for downloading games. I pay a significant amount of money for my cable modem service and I don't think it's unreasonable to demand complete control over what my own equipment is used for and when.
"They can choose when they wish to interrupt us [...]": This is a problem with *any* application you run with priveliges to access the internet. If you don't like what an application does, don't run it. The distribution method is irrelevant.
This is a theoretical problem with any application with internet privs. In practice very few actually implement anything like this -- and those that do can be easily detected, avoided and bypassed. A system which requires the internet to be present in order to work makes such abuses easier to perpetrate -- it encourages them and makes them difficult or impossible to bypass or avoid all at once. This is all very obvious and you seem to work pretty hard to ignore it. Who writes your paychecks anyway?
As for concerns about advertising... *why*? This is obviously being modeled as a continuous revenue stream-- monthly fees.
To that I say: "Not 'no' but 'HELL no!'". All the games I know of with monthly fees (MMORPGs) have highly restrictive and highly enforcable EULAs. Why should I pay what amounts to MORE money for what amounts to FEWER rights and what in most cases will amount to the SAME service? As it stands when an upgrade to a game comes out I have the freedom to read up on it, choose to upgrade (and take on the risks associated with any software upgrade) or ignore it.
Ads that annoy and alienate players are a net LOSE for their bottom line.
Then why are so many ads on the internet annoying as hell? Even ads that can be pretty well targeted just by the sites they're on! If you went to Penny Arcade last week you'd know exactly what I mean. I still have nightmares about the guy in that ad. It makes me want to seek out and destroy Sega products rather than purchasing them.
The scary parts of Steam aren't anything new
They are indeed new. I don't currently need permission from anyone or even an internet connection to play any of the games on my computer. I intend to use every method at my disposal to ensure this does not change, including abandoning games that go to this more restrictive model.
Imagine being able to get a refund for games that simply refuse to run on your system
Keep imagining it. Also keep imagining the "savings" you will be getting by not paying for games you don't want to play after a month. In reality you will be paying so much more for the games you DO want to play that it will entirely nullify any of these "savings". This entire system and those like it are designed for only one real purpose: To make customers even more dependant on and beholden to software companies than they already are.
I'm not sure why it wants credit card info from you but when I downloaded the Steam beta it was free, with no hassles. The code I gave it came from a key-gen program that takes your half-life cd key and spits out a code usable by Steam. This was a few weeks ago and it was all legal and sanctioned by Valve. Perhaps they've changed the process since then.
Half Life is five years old. That's an eternity in terms of software. Since that time they have developed a grand total of zero games. none. Since that time they have re-released half-life countless times, paid OTHER DEVELOPERS for add-on packs for half-life, and purchased the rights to half-life mods and commercially released them.
And don't get me started on Team Fortress 2 which has been in development hell for roughly four years.
I mean, good god... five years and no game? This makes John Romero look like a fucking workaholic.
It seems all they do now is figure out ways to pimp out the half-life engine. Personally, I've had it with the hero worship of Valve software. Half Life was great, but what have they done for us lately??
The MPAA and RIAA don't wan't to bypass the
middleman - they ARE the middleman.
While I don't doubt that Steam gives Valve a mechanism for eventually offering pay-per-play games, they've so far shown that they're far more interested in mining the obscenely huge video game market in a less insidious way. After all, they saw what a huge success Counter-Strike was and decided on their own to pour money and resources into making it a high-quality mod because they knew even if CS was free, it'd drive sales of Half-Life. Sure, they created a multiplayer-only version of HL based on CS and sold it separately, but everybody who'd bought HL when it first came out could get a commercial-quality multiplayer game based on HL for free.
It seems that Steam's development explains why Valve has been utterly silent on TF2 for the last year, though. They've clearly decided not to roll out TF2 until Steam is completed.
Into Networks has developed technology similar to what Valve is doing, and has been selling it for a while. A few sites offer software streaming using Into's technology; the offerings at EB1, Disney, and RealArcade are powered this way. In fact, when EB1 rolled out their site a year or so ago, it got a story on Slashdot (though I can't find the link to it at the moment)
Steam does sound a lot like it is a tool that could be turned to the side of evil (i.e. you don't own anything, you pay by the hour to play, la la la) but it is being released by Valve, who's shown that they do understand what the people who play their games want out of them, and what they won't stand for.
I am actually very happy that they've spent the last few years pimping the HL engine rather than making new games- the HL engine is actually still Pretty Damn Good. It's showing its age and has a few large, nagging problems (especially numerous audio bugs) but all in all it works for mod designers.
So, Valve has worked up the credibility to experiment a little. Let's see what comes out.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Who says you're paying for any of the bandwidth you're supposedly going to use to their servers to download the games.
Because if I was implementing Steam, I'd make it peer-to-peer. IE, break it up into 256kb blocks, which individual users can download from each other.. Then the central server just says 'hey, download blocks 1,2,3,4 from foo and 5,6,7,8 from bar', then it passes out signed MD5's of the blocks (to detect corruption) and away things go.
Then they merely seed a few dozen users with a game and/or updates, and then pay for no bandwidth after that. If they're not idiots, they'll do this.
Anyone want to take a bet as to whether they're idiots or not?
Anyways, I don't think that the bandwidth argument really flies. This is just pay-for-play...
"On the other hand, you have something like Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Bland single-player, unimaginative and buggy multiplayer, not really worth playing for more than a few hours, if that. (IMHO)"
Not meaning to be inflammatory, but is this a troll? RTCW had the least buggy multiplayer of any game I can think of at release.
Moving from fact to opinion, I won't dispute RTCW's bland single player, but Half-Life just doesn't cut it as a multiplayer engine for many of us who started gaming pre-HL - slow, jerky, and restrictive control. Not to mention the game's lag compensation was a joke for many months after release. Half-Life was a superb single-player game, but since its release Valve has done nothing besides fix bugs at a snail's pace, rehash multiplayer classics for their bastardized Quake engine, and milk third parties and mod developers for all the $$ they're worth. If it wasn't for the exceptional game design of Counter-Strike (which I personally don't enjoy, but to each his own), Valve might actually have finished TF2 by now instead of repackaging Half-Life a million times and cooking up hare-brained ideas like PowerPlay and Steam.
not 500mb in 3 minutes.
i used to work for the first company to develop such a technology (Into Networks - they power the Real Networks RealArcade). basically it works like a virtual CD, mounted over the internet. you don't need all the data at once, just whatever your system needs to process at one time. there was normally a pre-load for the times when you would need data faster than your connection could handle (mostly for movies or engines), like the 3 minutes you wait for Steam.
Let me repeat that: you download things as you need them! those resources, textures, sounds all come to you later. the maps come when thay are the one you are playing.
I tested this kind of software and even on first person shooters, so i think i can assure you that this technology works, and i've known for quite some time now that this IS the future of online gaming - think of how hard it is to cheat now!
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
MOST OF US STILL HAVE 56k
it's not our fault, it's the damn phone company that won't make broadband available everywhere
I think you're missing the point-- single-player gaming is being out-competed in the marketplace by multiplayer gaming... because in multiplayer gaming, a great deal of the "content" is generated by the interaction with other players.
Multiplayer games work better with an increasing level of developer support. Patches, servers, matchmaking, all of these are necessary for a smoothly-running multiplayer experience. Also expensive, probably a lot more than you would think. As an example, close to 40% of the gross subscription fees paid by EQ players go directly into paying for the bandwidth they use.
Thus, in order to get the support that multiplayer games need, the move to a subscription-based model is necessary, and good. Better servers, better service, more players. Subscription-based is the best model for supporting true quality in a multiplayer gaming experience.
The overall experience of multiplayer gaming *is* inherently a service, not a product. Look at a large multiplayer community, and you will see that *someone* is paying for the external costs-- either independent server operators, volunteers, and their ilk, or the game developer/publisher.
I'm quite happy to pay a reasonable price for a worthwhile service... and if you don't think that the service is worthwhile, you don't have to purchase it.
The switch to a subscription-based model will expand the possibilities for multiplayer gaming by extending the financial support available for providing an excellent service.
I want to play the kind of games that a cohesive revenue model will allow, and I want to see great game developers rewarded for when they raise the bar on quality, immersiveness, and fun.
Your objections are still FUD. If you don't want to use a service, don't-- make your own games.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
I am not sure it could be stated in fewer words. giving anyone the ability to update your system (or parts of it or software on it) *caugh* microsoft *caugh* makes me a little uneasy. Is this a change for the worse in the gaming industry? Are we going to start seeing "installation" software adding a "1.2.3.4 gameserver #pre" to our lmhosts file and then mapping some X: to \\gameserver\some-game-we-play so we always run off *their* version? Sure, the bandwidth on the internet isn't redily available, since not everyone runs on a DS3, but broadband is expanding quickly! As a side note, I would like to put in a plug for www.beerSpray.com -- They've got spray logo generation setup to the point of "upload image, download pldecal.wad" for the Half-Life community :)
--McG33k
There seem to be ups and downs in Steam. Sure, it takes a little longer to initially load, but that is only when you access stuff for the first time. You can also choose to "enable background caching", where it downloads everything while your computer is sitting idle, resulting in no waiting for downloads.
Ultimately, Valve's goal with Steam seems to use it as a strong measure to curb cheating. Throughout online communities today, cheating has been running rampant, and honest gamers are being turned away. You could use the traditional approach, and release regular patches every so often to address cheating exploits, but those take time, and still leave some areas vulnerable.
Steam can easily implement something that verifies the integrity of it's *.dll files (which are often hacked to exploit cheats), and if the checksum doesn't match, it could download the original on demand. Better yet, if the files aren't that big, it wouldn't be too hard to download the file every time the application is loaded.
Granted, Steam takes up some bandwidth, and could pave the way towards true "pay per play" services, but the bottom line is that many gamers are pissed off at the cheating, and would happily pay a small fee or put up with a little longer loading if it meant there were considerably less cheaters.
Cheating groups like Myg0t are already worried. They realize that Steam will be a real burden to exploit, and their days will soon come to an end.
I apologised for my error and i didnt bash the product - i have bought every one of valves releases and until i contacted them i had no idea what the issue was, the documentation on the site wasn' good enough.
If you do some investigating on this subject you will find another post by me in which i support and proclaim valve for the quality of the product.
I apologised and used my logged in name for it thus risking losing karma. I have never karma whored and worked damn hard to build it up BUT the right thing to do is apolgise if you make an error.
As for the conspiracy theory stuff, read some of my other posts - im not a linux zealot, i often post supporting MS.
But i love the last line about bitching
Pot meet kettle
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
Tried it with Day of Defeat...its ok but jesus it takes ages. Ok I'm in the UK and servers are probly in the US, but even with out that it took 5-10 mins to get to the menu, and then another 15-20 to get into the game proper.
I would think a hybrid system would work best, ie you download a 30-50Mb core and then the steam system is used for the non essential items.
----- I refuse to have an argument with an unarmed person