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Game Distribution Platforms Becoming Annoyingly Common
The Escapist's Shamus Young recently posted an article complaining about the proliferation of distribution platforms and social networks for video games. None of the companies who make these are "quite sure how games will be sold and played ten years from now," he writes, "but they all know they want to be the ones running the community or selling the titles." Young continues,
"Remember how these systems usually work: The program sets itself up to run when Windows starts, and it must be running if you want to play the game. If you follow this scheme to its logical conclusion, you'll see that the system tray of every gaming PC would eventually end up clogged with loaders, patchers, helpers, and monitors. Every publisher would have a program for serving up content, connecting players, managing digital licenses, performing patches, and (most importantly) selling stuff. Some people don't mind having 'just one more' program running in the background. But what happens when you have programs from Valve, Stardock, Activision, 2k Games, Take-Two, Codemasters, Microsoft, Eidos, and Ubisoft? Sure, you could disable them. But then when you fire the thing up to play a game, it will want to spend fifteen minutes patching itself and the game before it will let you in. And imagine how fun it would be juggling accounts for all of them."
Another thing to worry about is that in 10+ years we will have a whole generation of games (not just MMOs) that will no longer be able to be played on emulators, etc. because the networks they connect with will be gone.
I think people will get fed up with it and the game publishers will have to change eventually, but not before a lot of damage will be done.
Game distribution
A tragic solution
The most horrid trick
Since the disposable Bic
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Just so we're clear: you're renting the ability to play. When, not if, they go belly up, you've just got a hard drive full of random bits.
Don't get me wrong, I use and love Steam (it even works well through Wine on Ubuntu) but I'm under no illusions about ownership.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Steam usually operates fine in off-line mode for single player games. And the trade-off of getting integral patch updates, being able to delete and restore a game at will, the low cost of downloadable games (especially ancient ones) and being able to transfer games to another client without media are all big advantages for most players. They seem well worth the risk of losing the Steam servers.
Steam isn't a problem, it's when you've got 12 Steam clones from different publishers all of which are required for you to be able to play different parts of your games library.
psychical media
Now that's a whole new distribution paradigm ;-)
I own a Nintendo, Super Nintendo and tons of games I loved when I was a kid. I still play with my Nintendo and Super Nintendo, which still work almost 25 years later. When the systems eventually don't work anymore, I have Emulators and ROMs for all my games that let me play the games on my laptop and PS3 (with Linux installed on it). Let me know in 20 years how all those Steam games are working and what you can play them on. Should be interesting.
Yes, because if they go belly up they'll definitely have the time and resources to come up with a patch to let you play their games. Plus I very much doubt the insolvency practitioner /debtor / purchaser will be willing to let them have funds.
The only way I'd believe that claim is if the patch had alread been written (and was kept updated with changes to the system) and in the hands of a third party to be released on a list of conditions - such as the servers going dark.
Well, I can't seem for the life of me to find the original article, but I recall clearly that Gabe Newell stated that Valve has a decryption key ready to go out, at the press of a button in case they go belly up.
It seems every little crappy program or tool these days wants to install their own "helper" thingy, either hidden or in the task bar. I wish all software companies would be a little more responsible about the cruft they load our computers down with.
5 Simple rules:
- only run stuff in the background if there's a good reason for the job to run continuously.
- for stuff that doesn't need to run all the time (and checking for updates most definitely belongs in this category), perform the task(s) when the associated program itself starts.
- if it runs in the background, it goes on the task bar (so we know it's there)
- if it runs at startup, there's a simple way (config setting) to disable it.
- if running at startup is disabled but the job is essential for the associated program, the job is started automatically when the program is launched.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
So now I work for Microsoft, Opera Software, Steam, Google, Infinity Ward, Logitech and (interestingly) Red Hat. That makes my work days 56 hours long, which leaves me -32 hours per day to dick around. Man.
I said the same thing when I bought my 2008 Pontiac Solstice.
I remember some years ago a friend bought a bunch of music from a music service from Microsoft. I've forgotten the name now (or maybe I've blocked it out). The friend told me it was easy to use and they had all sorts of labels and artists. The only catch was that Microsoft had to "refresh" your licenses to keep the music files playing. I remember telling him it didn't seem like a good idea, and he said "what are the chances that Microsoft would go away any time soon?"
Today, he's got an external hard drive full of bits that he can't listen to. I've seen this with my own eyes. When he tries to open them, some dialog box pops up telling him that he has to connect to some Microsoft service to refresh his licenses and then he tries and nothing happens.
That's why we'd like to be able to make copies of our game disks, including the ones for consoles.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The proliferation of game distribution platforms is very annoying. Which is why I am the CEO of a company that is introducing an innovative new product that distributes and manages game distribution platforms.
... and then they built the supercollider.
In legal circles, that's known as the "I promise not to cum" clause.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Two points.
1/ I fail to see the difference between crapware from the game company and crapware from the kiddies.
2/ Non sequitur, if I am tech savvy enough to not allow one, I am tech savvy enough to not allow either.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Gabe did not say that. There is no universal decryption key for the system they use. He said he expects he would make available a method to enable the games if the masters went offline. His wording was careful to avoid a legally binding statement. The reality is that it would not be in his control if they went belly up, as it would be a trustee's call with the creditors as the IP would be under their control. Something short of chapter 11 and it would be factors such as goodwill upon deciding there is no reason to continue the system for a given product. In other words there is no IP left that is profitable and as a gesture of goodwill and if within his control, it would likely happen. End of story.
I loved the original - I met a guy playing it in an apartment I rented in Amsterdam's red light district after Expedia failed to book my hotel - thought "wow, someone made an awesome looking 40k game!"
You were stranded in Amsterdam's red light district, and the best thing you could find to do was play video games?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Except that I'm not normally paying for a license to read the copyrighted text. I'm paying for a copy. If I were paying for a license, I would have the right to read the text even if my purchased copy were destroyed, and I don't. Moreover, if I were to find a book that somebody abandoned, I wouldn't have the right to read it, not having acquired a license. In fact, I can own a book, but there are limitations on what I can do with it. There's some limitations on what I can do with a lot of my property, so this is nothing unusual.
Now, some software is sold with a EULA, and the legal system has not completely rejected that idea as it should have, so in many cases when you use software you've agreed that you don't own it, only license it. That does not in general happen with books, which are sold outright, and come with no restrictions other than copyright.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
but I recall clearly that Gabe Newell stated...
Not in the Steam TOS he didn't. Nor anywhere else where it would be legally binding. But it's okay, Valve are the good guys, right?