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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."
They don't really have anything to worry about- their madly popular titles are all multiplayer so piracy is impossible and "cracked" servers are rarely of any quality..
social networking services
After all these years, my dreams of playing as a violent, gun-toting, car-stealing, cop-killing psycopath who uses MySpace to invite all his BFFs to his Sweet-16 party is coming true.
As a longtime XboxLive user, I'd prefer it if they were reducing the amount of social networking in games, rather than increasing it.
This is a real problem, though it should be noted that this doesn't happen after a game is signed to play offline.
also, the early implementations of the platform were quite buggy, in both client and network services. Most of these issues are sorted, but not all of them.
http://www.xkcd.com/354/
I've been using Steam for over two years now and have NEVER had a game fail to start. The only problem I had was with Trackmania, and that was entirely down to the games own servers, not Steam.
Steam's benefits far outweigh it's problems IMO. I can buy a game and be playing it within an hour. Within minutes if it's a small game. ("Gish" for example.) No disks to lose, no serial numbers to lose. If I have to reinstall I can just download all my games again rather than having to find disks, installers, license keys etc...
Curious to see how many developers take Valve up on this.
"After all these years, my dreams of playing as a violent, gun-toting, car-stealing, cop-killing psycopath who uses MySpace to invite all his BFFs to his Sweet-16 party is coming true."
Oh I don't know. That actually would rock with GTA. Me and my hommies could come over and trash your place, steal your car, and date your sister.
I own itburns.net. What should I put there?
Because copy protection has never been broken before, making it free will mean that game copying will stop forever. Just like how DRM ceased all music and video copyright infringement.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
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.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
You can buy games specifically for someone else, and with the Orange Box valve let you gift your HL2 and/or HL2E1 if you already owned it, but there's no way to transfer games. I think that's literally the only restriction you have on what you can do with the games... they even let you copy your games to discs if you really want a hard copy!
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 a luddite because I'd rather spend 20 minutes driving to the store, buying a cd, going home installing and playing it instead of waiting 20 hours for multiple GB of data to download because the only "high" speed connection I get is about 2 times faster than 56k or Valves servers get hammered and the connection gets disconnected, etc.
Distribution via CD has worked for years with very little problems. I realize it makes you feel like a unique snowflake to download games of the internet, I mean you'd never have to leave your mother basement except to run down to the unemployment office to get your check, or wait, they can mail those to you! You've got it made.
So your telling me that the developers of CoD4 didn't think to validate the client keys agianst a database of valid keys, and flagging accounts that have multiple logins from different IPs? I refuse to believe that.
I don't know what do suggest the mods rate you... hmm. Not troll, (There really should be a -1 wrong), maybe overrated...
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There are some issues I have with the service, namely if it ever goes under (doesn't seem likely in the near future, but technology can be picky), what happens to all my purchases? (I only have currently one registered game on there but plan on picking up the Orange Box some time soon.) I don't know that Valve can just unlock the (already) sold products once and for all if they go under or if they'd have to keep running the authentication servers, etc. Also, I don't have any problems with the whole needing to update before I play thing as I've always lived near major metropolitan centres in Canada, but for those people without broadband... Well, I remember 28.8 baud and 56k connections... That can't be much fun. Oh, and you need an internet connection before you can actually run the game. For some people, I can see how that'd be a show stopper. You can't really buy a Steam game used, either. At least the prices are decently fair, particularly when bundled. I almost wonder if they bundle since it increases sales figures / helps them squeeze a few bucks more out of people since the bundles are a far better deal than buying things in singles... That said, it's nice to not have to search for no-cd patches or duplicate my existing copies by working around really crappy copy protection schemes just so I can ensure my legitimately bought and paid for game is still playable five years from now, accidents notwithstanding. It's nice to not have to keep track of CDs and stuff when moving, and that I can wipe it off my hard drive and install it from the net with no consequences. In my mind, the benefits outweigh the disadvantages by a long shot. If you're worried about Valve taking the information they can collect re: your anonymous system statistics or just making a cash grab and running for it, well, they haven't done so thus far, but they could... As it stands, it's a pretty solid service, and they have to pay for the bandwidth / server costs / uptime somehow.
Sometimes I wonder if I think too much.
And I as an end-user get what the developer pays for. I've avoided Steam and any game that requires it so far; I just wish there were more like me.
How about the right to be locked out of ALL of your Steam games if you dare to buy a game outside of your country?
Steam and similar DRM schemes are killing computer gaming for me. I refuse to buy any games that can't be run with a disk image or a crack, so I can play the games I've paid good money for when and where I want to play them. Morrowind and my Collector's Edition of Oblivion run without any hassles. Screw Valve.
... have that right? Aside from, "Well, it used to be that I got my media on a physical artifact, and we have always been able to sell physical artifacts."
From an econ view, if you're buying your game on a physical artifact, you're buying both the utility of the product with an implied option to sell. The option to sell costs you money -- this is precisely why a game you can finish in 8 hours on the XBox360/PS3/whatever (provide your favorite example, I don't own either system) costs $70 and a Portal, which is similarly disposable entertainment, costs $20. The imputed value of the option is what allows the publishers/retailers to continue bumping up the prices while allowing the games to provide less and less entertainment value -- resale rights are sort of artificial permanence for good which is being created for quick consumption.
I realize that many games sell the online and physical version at the same price. This is a factor of both a bit of a market failure (retailers use their lock on the sales channel to demand that no game is sold anywhere for less price, on penalty of being excluded from the channel that moves the most sales, for this and all your other games) and that there are a few not-quite-apples comparisons going on in the package value of each. (For me, downloadable versions are clearly superior in every way -- no trip to store, no CD to mislay, no difficulty porting "collection" just to pass CD checks, and no box to have to throw out.)
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
The page you link to appears to say otherwise. The Adobe case listed shows that the EULA doesn't apply until you actually agree to it (presumably by installing it) but the next case after that seems to have the clear result that once you have entered in to the license agreement the publisher can limit your rights as outlined in the license.
Given that Steam (and pretty much every other online digital content store I've ever seen) requires you to agree to the EULA before you can even get an account, you can't claim any of the excuses you could against physical EULAs.
IANAL and such
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.