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 Looks like the game-publishing heavyweights (EA and Sierra) may be outdated.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."
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.
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
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.
I don't think that stereotype is real anymore, but I guess that doesn't matter. The site has bias, sure, but well reasoned arguments for Microsoft still get +5's.
At least, that's what I've been seeing.
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.
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.
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
Sorry, could you expand on this?
Did you have Half Life installed at all before starting Steam up? If not, what sort of connection are you on?
45 seconds of "normal" broadband (around 50 kbytes/sec) comes out to about 2.25 Mb of content - Doom was larger than that, so forgive me if I'm a little sceptical that Half Life can be retrieved that rapidly.
If not, what exactly was being retrieved here - the CS 1.4 upgrade? If so, did you have CS 1.3 installed already, or was this a full download? In either case, 45 seconds would be impressive - the CS 1.3 full installer was around 100 Mb, and the CS 1.1 to 1.3 updater was about 35 Mb.
Cheers.
Tim.
Consider the cost of bandwidth now. This makes some sense, in a theoretical way, for a new method of delivering content. How long does it take to go to the store, get a game, come back, and install it? I would estimate around an hour. Many people with broadband can fairly easily download about 280MB (averaging 80KB/sec) in an hour. Additional sections of the game could be downloaded while playing faster than the player is likely to achieve such advancement.
Of course, broadband isn't available for everyone, and Sierra would still have a role publishing games on CD for those of us who do not have fast connections or who choose to have physical media in hand. What this does, though, is put some power back in Valve's hands, allowing them a much faster method of distributing patches and anti-cheats and cutting distribution costs. The only remaining issue is how much Sierra loses from this.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
You forgot that this will bring them into power of cutting off not only cheaters, but crackers as well. With obligatory and unlimited room for upgrades, it becomes impossible to crack an online game. Having a "standard" platform like this will really simplify this process and make it all the more effective.
We can only dream of this making them games cheaper. *LAUGHS UNCONTROLLABLY ROLLING ON THE FLOOR*