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What's the Best Video Game Download Service?
ThinSkin writes "Who needs a brick-and-mortar game shop when you have the world wide web of video game download services? Joel Durham Jr. over at ExtremeTech examines some game download services to decide once and for all which virtual storefront has the best deal for gamers. Among the services reviewed are: Steam, Impulse, Direct2Drive, Good Old Games, and WildTangent Orb. The most popular site in the roundup, Steam, was also the most favored because of its wide selection of popular titles, while Direct2Drive also scored top marks because it has 'just about every title in the universe.'"
Which service(s) do you like the most, and what have your experiences with them been?
TPB
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
BitTorrent.
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
I believe the correct answer is your favorite torrent tracker. Skip this article it is useless, forget this discussion and forget all the comments. No service will ever top the pirates. Ever. And you can write that in stone and quote me for eternity.
I'm terribly worried about account security. I think it's an issue they need to work on. They need to put in place some sane policies regarding account security.
If your account gets stolen, you may end up losing hundreds of dollars in games.
I've bought from D2D before, no complaints really, but steam has a convenient application to store your games in and downloads are always available.
I've bought from ubisoft direct download store. Sort of lacking in value though.
Never heard of any others.
They're using their grammar skills there.
http://www.playgreenhouse.com/
It is affiliated with (and I believe run by) the Penny Arcade guys. They sell games cheap, don't push DRM, and try to find games that offer Windows, Mac and Linux versions. They seem to offer trials for everything as well.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Is this limited to just PC? Because, yeah, I know it's popular to hate on the Xbox 360, but Xbox Live Arcade has some pretty nice stuff on it, especially lately. Castle Crashers, Geometry Wars 2, etc.
And then there's the Wii with WiiWare and I think the PS3 has some stuff too ;-)
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
For 99% of games available on Steam, if the game will work on your setup so will Steam.
Steam also doesn't limit your ability to have the game installed on any number of computers. It also provides a myriad of features that many people like.
The motivation behind it may be DRM, but it provides a better experience than any other platform, with essentially none of the negative effects of DRM.
I used Good Old Games today. I was pretty happy, because it worked instantly and no fuss. Even came with pdf manual and mp3s of the soundtrack. The game I got was descent 1 and 2, replaying those games reminds me that its not just nostalgia, the games were actually great. I've played similar games since, but even though they have better graphics, they've not been better games. The early descent games *nailed* it. Also, I was impressed at the way it came with a pre-prepared version of dosbox, so it ran right away, no hassel. Very worth the purchase price, and the lack of DRM sealed the deal for me. I'm planning to grab Freespace 1 and 2 shortly.
GamersGate is a good service. Has some exclusives and hard to find games. Just picked up King's Bounty. The Legend and will be picking up the 2nd Sword of the Stars expansion soon.
http://www.gamersgate.com/
DRM doesn't seems to be a big deal,
"How many times can I download and/or install my games?
Any game bought on GamersGate is yours to download and install as many times you like. Some games are protected with an activation limit but that limit is easily reset with an email to support@gamersgate.com"
It's important to explicitly call out the properties of DRM that make it bad. DRM is out there to prevent the player from willy-nilly installing on everyone's PC's, which can be bad as it prevents you from switching computers or backing up your own games. Steam actually facilitates transferrence, as you can download any purchased games on any computer you log into. You don't need a CD to play, you don't need a CD to install on another computer, you can play your games on all the computers you have available.
Steam only runs with your games, doesn't take up a lot of CPU time, and has been stable for several years now. The one outstanding question is "what happens if Valve shuts down," but they have promised to unlock everything in such a case.
If we shout that DRM in all forms is terrible, none of the companies will or can listen. If we work towards removing the problematic portions of the system, we might get a compromise setup that is better than we started with.
All consoles since the NES have had DRM. But because they were actually sane DRM, nobody but pirates and developers ever encountered it. Let's work towards that again.
The ______ Agenda
I guess you didn't notice many (most?) Impulse titles includes activation/hardware lock-in (as in you cannot move the files to a different computer unless you have Impulse there to log on and activate).
In other words, pretty much like Steam.
Oldschool games no DRM
http://www.gog.com/en/frontpage/
On the other hand, D2D's DRM does interfere with that -- at least, if you want to play any player-created content.
Pity the fools that bought Oblivion from D2D; they were unable to use any mods, which are half the point of the game.
Steam doesn't pull crap like that, thankfully.
In reference to number 3, a lot of games have been re-using DRM methods from other games. Once a game has been cracked once, cracking the same DRM in another game is trivial. Play time is what allows a mid-game break to slip through the cracks. What makes the mid-game break more effective is that it's often unique to the game and commingled with the game code, so it takes a lot more cracking work to break it. With Mass Effect, within hours the cracking groups knew there was a mid-game flaw, but it took them almost a week to actually crack it. Ironically enough, this still allowed to crack to get out before the European release of Mass Effect, rendering the DRM 100% ineffective for the EU market, but effective for the NA market, where it delayed a working cracked version for almost a week while the retail version was on the shelf.
The universe is held together with duct tape and karma. What goes around, comes around, and gets stuck to your forehead.
Gametap is a subscription service, yes, which means that if you stop subscribing your games stop working. However, they have tons of arcade games, classics, Sega console games, and even a startling amount of PC games for roughly the price of an Xbox live subscription. They try to sweeten the deal with tv shows and other extras, but you can take 'em or leave 'em. Some of the games you can buy to own.
Whether Gametap's the best or not is up to you, but it seems odd that they left it out but put Good Old Games in (nothing against GOG, but Gametap's been around a bit longer and offers more games)
I'm in the private access beta, and it is legitimate and every bit as awesome as it seems (and then some). I bought Fallout 2 and Shogo: Mobile Armor Division for $6 and both were packaged as completely self-contained, DRM-free executable installers and run flawlessly on XP x64. Not to mention the games come with lots of fun extras, including full PDF manuals, MP3 soundtracks, wallpapers, etc. And there's no program to install on your computer, just a sleek website and they store everything for download later on as many computers as you want.
Put simply, it's how business should be done.
You know, back in the old days, games were released without the ridiculous protections and they still sold... and some argue (I don't) that games back then were better quality anyway. And who said the only method of digital distribution was an honesty box? Apogee's method was brilliant - games were episodes and you could pick up the first episode for free, and buy the rest off them.
Umm... people were doing some ack-basswords crap with games even before Apogee was doing shareware. Companies would print the manuals in such a way that they couldn't easily be photocopied, and then require you to enter the 30th word on page 5 of the manual, and the 5th word on page 7, and the 12th word on page 29, every time you played the game (not just when you installed it; and of course the word and page numbers were different each time). Of course, it was much less likely that someone would be downloading a cracked version of your game back then, and they were doing it for the same reason they do now: to stop casual copies.
Then there were the beautiful code wheels and many other beautiful ideas of crap they could throw in the box that you would have to have to be able to play the game.
Shareware was as much a response to the analog version of DRM as anything else. It also was helped (and then almost killed off) by the explosion of the internet, since you could suddenly download the first episode and either get a key to unlock the rest or pay to download the other episodes.
Of course, when id released Quake with all of their previous games on the CD as shareware with a key system to unlock the full versions, it was only a matter of time (and it wasn't much time at that) before someone cracked the key system and everyone could easily gain access to every game id had made at that time by buying a $5-10 shareware CD.
In many ways I think DRM is less draconian than some of the old ways, but some of the DRM methods have been down-right hostile, and none of them have been easier to deal with than the game is when it's been cracked (including Steam, though multiplayer authorization is often a big advantage in keeping people from pirating your games).
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Actually, the quote is "Never ask two questions in a business letter. The reply will discuss the one in which you are least interested and say nothing about the other." and it's known as "Weed's Axiom".
I still don't know anything about who Weed is, or if it's actually the name of the original speaker or writer of that quote. I just found that attribution in some quote files.
Make sure to post your game requests to GOG's games wishlist on their forum.