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Activision, Double Fine Join With Steam
Gamespot reports on the expected arrival of Double Fine's Psychonauts on Steam, and the unexpected announcement that Activision is now offering games on the service. Titles from the company include Call of Duty, Call of Duty 2, and Gun, which was developed by Neversoft. From that article: "Whenever Valve does open the digital spigot on the four Activision games, they will join an increasing number of third-party titles available on Steam. This week, Majesco's critical hit Psychonauts was made available on the service, and Ubisoft's Dark Messiah of Might & Magic will launch on the service later this month."
Having pissed off their previous publisher because they wanted to do things the publisher hated, and hating everything the publisher did anyway, and knowing that every other game developer hates the way the publisher treats them, being a Good Publisher should be very easy for Valve.
And at the end of the day, giving them a feature list:
* We are not assholes like Vivendi or suchlike.
* No box costs! No crappy CD copyprotection breaking the game for 25% of your users! Automatic patching so you can keep the games notbreaking for the paying public! You get more money!
I think that is a compelling set of two-ish arguments to put your game on Steam and rake in some well-earned cash.
If you right click a game in Steam and select properties you can uncheck the box that says "Keep this game up to date". Unchecking the box stops Steam from automatically patching the game.
The whole calling home thing is the copy protection to make sure that you are validated to play the game. At least this way you don't have to put up with CD checks like Starforce that can mess up your system. The only issue with this method of distribution is the whole selling of used games. With a CD check you can just sell the whole disk to someone and they can go play. With Steam you have to pay Valve a small fee to transfer the license to another account. With Half-Life 2 this was $10. With many games being sold on Steam for $20 this kills the resell because you'd only make $10 or the buy can give all of the $20 directly to Valve and not have to deal with you.
Maybe some DSL providers require a service contract, but not a single cable company I have used has required it. Besides requiring a phone line, contracts have what kept me away from DSL. That and cable tends to offer higher speeds. I can deal with a few blocked ports and a non-static IP.