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Valve Takes on Piracy With Free, Pre-Packaged Game Publishing Tools
Heartless Gamer writes "Valve is rocking the boat in a big way, especially for PC gaming piracy. They have just announced the release of a complete collection of publisher tools, called Steamworks. They're making it available to developers and publishers completely free. Valve notes that beyond simply making the product available to consumers some of the tools can integrate copy protection, social networking services, or even server browsing features into a developing game."
However, I'm okay with the idea of downloading the very same software (validation being one of the requirements for downloading).
I guess I feel that the "buy then validate" model is a cheat- If I bought it in a store, that should be proof enough. Whereas with downloading, they can do the validation/purchase at the same time.
No you are correct. Note that this whole kit is really a steam integration kit. So the primary purchase method will be online purchase. However, having a physical box sitting on the shelf at Walmart is still great for advertising, and even better for giving as a gift. What I find really weird, is that unlike with Valve's boxed games, the steamworks games will apparently not include the exe file on the CD. The CD will have all the resources, and everything, but the exe itself will need to be downloaded over Steam. The advantage (to the developer) is that the exe downloaded can be watermarked with the name and account information of the downloader, which makes distributing a no-steam crack for the game (which is necessary for widespread piracy) a risky proposition.
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Steam is great for first party Valve games and older games that have been out for awhile and had their issues sorted out.
It absolutely sucks for newer games which have their own copy protection schemes. See BioShock and Company Of Heroes: Opposing Fronts. I had trouble with Opposing Fronts and had to wait for a runaround before I got my money back, after which they said they would not do another. If you do a chargeback and they disable your account you will lose access to ALL your games.
I like Steam for Valve stuff... but just be careful with untested third party software. You can check there own forums on steampowered.com to see if people are having issues.
I'm actually pretty curious why they don't let you transfer rights to someone else - its not like you couldn't do it anyways. There's no limit on the number of accounts you could create, so you could:
a) Create a new account for each game
b) Buy the game with that account
c) Play game until you're bored
d) Sell account on ebay
I'm sure they have rules against this, but I'll bet it happens anyways. I know I did it when steam first launched to give a gift for christmas. I just created my brother an account, bought the game, and gave him the login. Now they have gift giving, and they let you transfer HL2 to someone else when you bought orange box, so I say "why not let me loan out the rights to one of my games to someone else?" I can't play it while they have the rights, and I can take the rights back when they're done. They could have a "transfer for good" or "let my friend borrow it" program. Its going to happen anyways, so why not enforce it and stop people complaining once and for all. They only hurt paying customers otherwise, because if your friend doesn't borrow it from you and doesn't want to pay for it, well, we know where they're going next.