Valve Games Still On Store Shelves

Valve has announced that despite its recent break with Vivendi Universal Games, games boxes will remain on store shelves after the August breakup. From the article: "The news will mollify retailers who feared that a recent legal settlement between Valve and VU Games, which will see VU Games withdrawing all of its Valve-created products from August 31st, could signal a move to online-only distribution for the firm's products."

Comments

I wonder...

[Nos.]

How much of their customer base Valve would lose by going to an online distribution method as their only source?

Now we all know that you require an internet connection for signup and to download the latest patches. Suppose however, that Valve allowed anyone to burn generic copies of HL2 (and previous/future releases) to their media of choice and distribute freely. None of these freely distributed versions would be playable until the user signed up with Valve and payed the "activation" fee. Valve gets to save bandwidth and publishing costs, yet the game is still available to those without high speed connections.

Hmmm, maybe I should run to the patent office

I for one..

[root-kun]

I know that personally (as a game collector) would not buy games online. Maybe if they were budget games, but anything serious I want a box and a disc that I can put on my shelf, and in 10 years replay! I cant forsee ganking a DVD-R with HalfLife3 out of the binder and having it work in 10 years, let alone finding it.
Ofcourse online distribution would (if done properly) allow a company like Valve to sell their games cheaper, and have more direct control on the content. If they did it right, it would be a mixed bag.