Valve Has No Plans to Charge For Downloadables

In an interview with Eurogamer about the upcoming Team Fortress 2, Valve's Robin Walker discusses Valve's philosophy when it comes to downloadable content. In short, when you buy a game from them you buy 'all of it', even the downloadable maps that will be released after the game launches. "'[In multiplayer games] the content you're playing is being created by the players you're playing against, so the more people that get into the game, the more content you're going to have,' Valve's Charlie Brown concurred. Valve's strategy is roughly in line with the traditional PC model, but in recent years services like Xbox Live Marketplace have popularised microtransactions as a means of continuing to extract development capital from completed games." Relatedly, the company annouced last week that there will be no Black Box release for Half-Life 2, Episode 2. The original plan was to have a retail release of just the three new games (Episode 2, Portal, and TF2); now only the orange box with the complete HL2 experience will be available on store shelves. Gamers can still purchase the new content separately from the Steam service.

Comments

Pricing on new content?

[Canthros]

So, have they made any announcement with respect to Steam-only pricing of Episode 2, Portal, or Team Fortress 2?

Re:Pricing on new content?

[Ford Prefect]

I'm curious, what are your options for reinstalls? Can you burn this for the future? Do you have to redownload it if you are reinstalling?

You can download your games as many times as you like, on to as many machines as you like. Technically, you can only have a Steam account active on a single machine at a time, but you could probably fudge your way round it with use of the offline mode which is invoked if no network connection is present.

You can also manually copy game data files between machines - if you've forgotten anything, it'll get redownloaded when Steam reconnects and does a file check on game startup. There's also a function built-in for neatly archiving files into CD or DVD-sized chunks, and restoring them accordingly.

Yes, ideally you do have to connect to Valve's servers every time Steam starts up (where it'll download any game updates unless told otherwise) - so if Valve and/or Steam were to mysteriously disappear, then you'd be stuck either with offline mode or with none of your games working. Valve persons have indicated that in such an eventuality a final, check-disabling update would be a nice thing to do, barring any particularly severe catastrophes.

It's not brilliant, and the need-to-authenticate-online thing has drawn a lot of criticism, but it's pretty cool once you get the hang of it. Plus the catalogue of third-party games keeps on increasing - there's a nice little line in critically-acclaimed, market-ignored titles like Psychonauts available. I'd recommend it for that alone. ;-)

Re:Sarbanes-Oxley?

[beavis88]

You obviously don't live in the U.S., do you? "Patently ridiculous" is generally the first tipoff that a bill will make it through Congress with flying colors... :)

Re:No thanks, Valve.

[cliffski]

you won't be missed, because the gains they get from online registration in terms of reduction in casual piracy far outweighs the 0.01% of their audience who feel the way you do.

Re:No thanks, Valve.

[Hydryad]

You know what, steam is possibly one of the best systems I have used. I mean seriously, there is absolutely no problems with reinstalling games you own, using games you own.. there has yet to be a day where I was unable to play my games on steam. Saying steam should not be used for distribution is a lot like saying that CD drives are evil and should not be allowed. I presume that you think 'registering with the mothership' by making a steam account, which as far as I recall does not even require personal information, is a horrible thing. This is the best implementation of a next gen distribution system I can conceive. I simply do not get why so many people bring so much hate against it.

Re:No thanks, Valve.

[Nos.]

Anytime there is an article having anything to do with Valve, there's always a couple of you that feel the need to complain about Steam. Guess what... we all know there are a few of you who don't like it. Fine, we get it. Its not going anywhere. The number of people who like Steam far outweigh you.

Personally, an agent that keeps my games up to date, lets me purchase new hardware, and reduces the number of cheaters out there is something I like. I don't care if it authenticates my copy of HL2. Go ahead, I paid for it, it doesn't impact my experience negatively at all.

I can still play offline. I don't have to let it update games as soon as a patch is released. I don't have to run it all the time. I can play games offline.

Re:No thanks, Valve.

[fistfullast33l]

Plus, it allows Valve to sleep at night while I don't have to deal with a monstrosity like Starforce, which acts as a device driver and really screws up your CD and DVD ROM drives. I think Starforce is ten times worse than anything Sony did for anti-piracy, hands down.

Multiplayer expansions don't work well...

[RichPowers]

Not everyone buys "booster packs" and expansions for multiplayer games. This forces many servers to keep new maps out of rotation. Consequently, new maps are limited to a few dedicated "NEW MAP!!!" servers, some of which are located in different continents. I noticed this with Battlefield 1942 in particular. Its two expansions were solid, but, if I remember correctly, only a small handful of servers had the new maps. Because of this, I was never compelled to buy an expansion that few people actually played online, especially if I was dependent on just one server. Contrast this with the free maps DICE/EA gave us. Battlefield 42's Coral Sea map is still played today, oftentimes with a full 32 players. Everyone downloaded the map because it was freely included with a new patch. The great thing about free multiplayer content: everyone gets it, so it'll actually be played online.

Re:No thanks, Valve.

[Chabo]

Valve has announced that if they go out of business, they will release one final Steam update that disables the need to authenticate.

Re:No thanks, Valve.

[Broken scope]

Valve is working on a way to fix that by using guest passes.

Re:No thanks, Valve.

[Chabo]

Feel free to play in offline mode, so you don't have to authenticate. Personally, I'd rather give up a few of my rights in this particular area in order to play on nearly cheat-free servers. Remember how CS got its reputation for hackers? That was back in the days of WON and VAC1. Now with Steam and VAC2, I don't really see that, but I still do in other games, like Q3A, COD, etc.

Re:No thanks, Valve.

[randyest]

Interesting anecdote. This has never happned to me, even when steam is down, so I guess my anecdote cancels out yours.