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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 Looks like the game-publishing heavyweights (EA and Sierra) may be outdated.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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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....
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.
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
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.
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....
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...