Slashdot Mirror
UK Games Retailers Threaten Boycott of Steam Games
RogueyWon writes "Games industry trade site MCV is reporting that two major UK video games retailers are threatening to ban Steam-enabled PC games from their stores. The as-yet-unnamed retailers are apparently concerned that by selling Steam games, they are pointing their customers towards a competitor and will by trying to bring pressure upon publishers to strip Steam functionality from their games. This could prove an interesting test of where the real power lies at the retail end of PC gaming."
More sales for Steam then?
Publishers are creating a monster – we are telling suppliers to stop using Steam in their games.
No, publishers are finding new innovative revenue streams that cater to the customer. The only reason it's a 'monster' is because you perceive it to be a threat to your business model and, surprise surprise, you're not a part of that revenue stream so it's the devil. And you don't understand it, that is painfully evident by the 'stop using Steam in their games' part of your statement. They don't use Steam in their games anymore than they use Wal-Mart in their games.
... you aren't going to get very far in my book. I mean, Steam has DRM but it saves me gas and money and puts me a little closer to that little developer that spends countless nights slaving away over code. That's where I want the bulk of my money to go when I purchase a game -- to that guy.
If you understood that this is increasing revenue and profits to the publishers, you might also start to see that it increases the number of copies sold. Now, if more people are buying the game it is possible that Steam will expand this market and leave some of the sales to the brick and mortar stores. It is, however, a possibility that you are correct in that your model will become obsolete -- such is the nature of business. You can either respond by being a jerk about it (although you're holding aces backed with eights as a large middle man), you can attempt to become part of that distribution model (have you thought about selling steam gift cards?) or you can do nothing. If you lose your business, well that's just some good old structural unemployment where the hostile market of capitalism violently guides you to better serve the consumer in a new and -- here's the scary word -- innovative ways. Seriously though, when is the last time you did something new and interesting aside from unboxing the latest game and paying some high school student minimum wage to set up the Halo display and cardboard cutouts?
Hey man, if you want to make me pick between you, the distributor, and the publishers that actually make the games I cherish
My work here is dung.
More sales for Steam alright.
I'm pretty sure nobody walks into a retailer looking to buy a game, finds that it's not stocked then just completely gives up. No, you simply walk into a different retailer and look for it there. And if you can't find it anywhere, you think "well, that was a massive waste of time, I should have just bought it online". Like on Steam for example.
If a game is on steam, i wouldnt go to a store to buy it anyways.
So how much longer till we see the GameStop's of the world start trying to use litigation to defend their obsolete business model? I'm actually surprised game stores even carry PC games anymore, don't most of them make the vast majority of their money selling used copies of console games?
They won't be able to buy back used games for $5 and resell them for $40. Good riddance.
I haven't bought anything in a real store for ages, PC-games-wise. Why bother? All they stock is the expensive shit and anything older than 3 months is in the "Pre-owned", scratched-to-death pile and still costs 2/3rds of its original price. Plus a lot of PC gear can't be played second-hand anyway (and not because of Steam but because of other DRM) so there is no "cheap" game available in those shops.
I just order a retail box online (rare anyway) or I just buy from Steam or GOG. Stop charging me £60+ for a game that'll last a couple of hours and start stocking things that sell. Steam make a killing by selling things like PopCap games, World of Goo, Altitude, etc. - I never, ever see those in the shops and if I do, it's on a shelf in a big department store, not in the "games" store. You aren't complaining about XBox Live or PSN, so you can't really complain about Steam either. The fact is, though, that anything you do stock in my price range I'm more likely to be buying it online - quicker, cheaper, easier.
Give it up - either charge sensible prices, increase your stock range to appeal to customers or damn well concentrate on games console where you make an absolute FORTUNE.
I hate hunting down game updates.
Also, it seems like when I buy a game in the store, half the time the CD key has already been used.
The last PC game I bought in a store was Starcraft 2, because it wasn't available on Steam. Fortuntately, unlike the huge amount of Console Ported Garbage, Starcraft 2 was competently programmed and patches itself.
By the way, Call of Duty Black Ops sucks on the PC. all kinds of unnecessary performance problems . Probably sucks on the consoles too. I need to stop buying games the day they are released.
I love that game retailers are just now catching on to the fact that they have been essentially selling a market place with every steam game effectively circumventing the need to go to a retailer. It's obviously not in their best interest to do so. I wonder when this will catch on in the U.S.
You bet.
I don't like Steam, so I've never bought any Steam delivered games.
I rarely, if ever, buy products from companies I dislike.
The as-yet-unnamed retailers...
Given that there are really only two major retailers in the UK: GAME and GameStation, it's most likely them. Of course, it might be HMV, but they're not exactly specialist game retailers.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
I wonder if horse carriage makers were super pissed about automobiles. Maybe a half-assed attempt at competing with online distributors is due diligence for the stock holders of brick and morter game retail stores? I doubt there's even going to be plastic, physical media much longer, all the consoles already have built-in digital distribution mechanisms and internet just keeps getting faster. Any business that currently depends on selling plastic cds to be solvent should either be furiously brainstorming new business models or packing up their desks and putting down a deposit for uhaul trucks.
check out the Mp3 Garbler I built!
A couple months ago we heard how game stores were using used games to cut the publishers out of the revenue stream for a game. They were buying back games for $10 and reselling them for $45 and pocketing 100% of the $35.
There was a great brouhaha.
Now the return shot. Game publishers intent to cut game stores out of the first sale AND not publish any physical copies to resale.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
You dont see Walmart, Target, et al. Making this argument with the iPad and iPod products for media. Probably only a matter of time.
To be fair though, games sellers ONLY sell games. I think they have a point but I don't think that it's compelling enough to merit worth listening to. Steam is nice and all, but game shops still aren't obsolete yet. Never under estimate the bandwidth of a bag full of DVDs and a car versus any home Internet connection. Even if it is 100mbps. Plus are there any PC only shops?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Granted, its been a while since I've been in a Game or UK HMV, but my experience has been one small set of shelves given up to recent release titles, and the rest of the PC gaming section awash in 3 for £10 or 2 for £25 deals, and addons for simulators. My employer gave me a gift certificate to HMV last Christmas, and I went to about four locations on Regent St and Oxford St before I could find L4D2 and Fallout GOTY, both of which were recent releases at the time.
I wouldn't be too surprised by their boycott at some point, too - about curious exchange rates.
One that hath name thou can not otter
And yet another graduate of the Rupert Murdock (sp?) School of Business. "We don't understand what it is or how to adapt to it, but it's different than what we're doing therefore we must repeatedly try to crush it, regardless of how many times we smash our heads against the brick wall."
Portal 2 in February(?) is said to be coming to the ps3 with some form of steam, are they going to cockblock this aswell?
Not looking to start an argument, but why don't you like Steam? They're a bit Googlish in their ubiquity, which has the potential to be a problem if they start dicking around, but on a personal level I think it's great.
It saved me a lot of grief when my RAID array crapped-out (incautious youth) and I had to reinstall from scratch. I didn't have to hunt around for the individual media (half of which I'd lost) and then patch the old games up individually - just setup Steam and they were all there waiting for me. Absolute godsend.
Meta will eat itself
It seems to me that it's "Retailers demand exclusivity, threaten refusal to carry games"
Personally I think of boycott being something consumers do, not retailers. Walmart doesn't boycott products from 3rd world child labor, customers do.
Why do I get the feeling they'll still find a way to somehow blame this on piracy?
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?s=3584a3bb4ea90284f57d4e4dd4e4141d&ref=1456-EUDN-2493 It eludes me why we have to cope with custom ports & firewall rules just to login to a service and download software that could be delivered using HTTPS and web services. Note that I don't mean to play online but to merely log-in in the service, browsing the catalog, spend my money and download software. That's why other Digital Deliverers (mostly represented by Impulse) are gaining ground over Steam. I guess that iTunes will marginalize Steam on Mac as soon Apple will deply the new MacStore, since it is a lot easier to live with it on very strict network configurations.
Again what we've got here is an industry (or part of an industry at least) who have been slow to see that their business model is doomed by new technology and changes in customer behaviour. They're wedded to retail, which has got to be the most expensive way to distribute bits and bytes, compared to the other methods available now. They're pretty irrelevant. I do buy hard-copy sometimes (usually at xmas), as gifts. Otherwise I can't remember the last time I bought a hard-copy game for personal use.
Brick and mortar game retailers have been the architects of their own demise on this one. For years they have devoted the majority of their stores to the various different console platforms and their customers upped sticks and left. I've watched the PC section in my local Game store go from 8 panels back in the days of the XBox and Playstation to 2 panels today. Why would I want to buy a game from a store like this? The choice is more or less limited to the latest chart games and new releases. Steam lets me choose from a vast catalogue and find the games I want to play. The convenience of the games stores was their main driving force, if I wanted a game I had only to go into town and buy it. It was faster than Steam and you also got a nice box and manual, or at least you used to. These days if you want a boxed PC game you have to order it online as the local shop won't have it in stock. If you're going to have to order it online, you might as well use Steam, you'll get it faster.
Last time I went into a games store, the section dedicated to PC games was a tenth of that dedicated to Xbox 360. Maybe I'd buy more PC games in Game or Gamestation if they actually had a selection. They killed their own sales.
None of those things require DRM. So why is Stream with DRM so good because of these? Just have the company who sold the game and refuses to give anyone else the option of making a derivative (patched version) of "their" product will have to host the patches.
What hunting then needs to be done?
None.
So why is Steam DRM great because of this?
Don't lose the media. I've not lost any media, so how the hell have you managed to "lose" half of them? OR is it be "lose" you mean "sold on and kept a copy"? Well if you give your Steam game to someone else, you won't have anything to retrieve when your RAID dies again.
Not in the U.K., but if U.S. retailers decided to try this, I'd easily pick Steam instead. When Steam came out for the Mac, I got Portal for FREE, HL2 + episodes for $10, Torchlight for $10, Civ IV + expansions for $10, etc. As long as you don't need to absolutely get a game the minute it comes out, Steam will always have a good deal at some point in the near future. Sometimes games are so cheap I buy them even if I don't have any plans to play them more than a few times. I just got Day of Defeat for $2.49 yesterday.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Steam always has good discounts and sales going on and a couple FREE games...what retailer does that?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Although they are doing it for all the wrong reasons, I applaud any effort to stop this Steam juggernaut from becoming the de facto DRM monopoly and the single point-of-failure for entire game collections. It's just not healthy.
One day Steam will go dark, and then you won't be able to reinstall any of those games.
Footnote: "blah, blah, blah,...but they said they'd release a patch....blah, blah, blah". Please show me the legally binding clause in the Steam TOS that guarantees that.
Isn't it the same thing has having two different retail establishments selling a game? So GameStop and Best Buy both sell a game, will GameStop stop selling it because Activision is also selling it through Best Buy?
This is just behind the curve retailers lashing out at the fact they are behind the curve. I'm sure Blockbuster was mad as hell about Netflix before they broke down and tried to compete.
I have never seen a PC game (outside of Collector's / Special Editions) which costs anywhere near £60. £35 is the current top-end PC game price. You'll pay £45 for a AAA console title at launch, but even CoD:Black Ops is retailing at £34.99 in Game stores on the PC.
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The trend towards a game having to start and register with Steam for me to play it has got me doing the following: I purchase the game (from the store), then download a cracked version to actually install. Steam initially seemed like a great idea, but the more intrusive it gets, the more annoyed I get, and now I avoid it altogether. Retail stores for me, thanks.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
The Retail publishers are making the same mistake as the RIAA has thye need to evolve their buissness model
in other news, best buy, wal mart, target and fry's have stopped selling any PC with itunes, MSN, or Amazon pre-loaded.
This is entirely the wrong approach, and an act that demonstrates unwillingness to change, much like what we've seen in certain other parts of the entertainment industry. But seriously, if you owned and operated a shop selling music, would you be scared of iTunes and the likes, your only real choices would be to evolve and give better service than them, or just close up shop, the choice of abolishing internet music isnt really up there on the list of sane choices, atleast it didnt use to be. What if you sold horses when cars first became available, would you try to abolish cars altogether, or perhaps change your business into something that fits the market thats coming? Or what if you suddenly found that you'd been selling fax machines well beyond their obsoletion? Would you rage out and try to abolish the internet, or perhaps just realize that you should try to save the scraps, and turn your shop into selling something that people actually buy? Trying to force the market to do something can be tricky...
I've bought a few second hand games in my days, but rarely so cheaply as the games I've bought during Steam's many sales. Many of those sales have had ludicrously low prices, like just a few euros for Bioshock or Team Fortress 2.They usually knock off at least 50% of the price. Except for getting awesome deals, I also like that it's still the game maker's decision and they also get paid. With second hand games you're giving all your money to the reatiler, and they allegedly make an undeserved killing from it.
What they're talking about here is the use of Steam as a copy-protection system, which is completely integrated into a game, including the retail "disk" version.
Given a choice between an old-fangled, non-DRM'd disc from the high street or Steam DRM I'd go for the first - unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be what is on offer. We worry about what value our games will have if the DRM servers go down, but, last time I tried to revisit an old disc-based game, my modern computer wouldn't read the silly fsked-about with copy protected CD anyway, so forget that.
So, if DRM is unavoidable, I'd rather have a well-thought-out system like Steam (or iTunes App Store) with a big user-base and solid industry support than a mass of different half-baked product activation and online play systems. As well as being more likely to disappear overnight, the latter tend to be far more restrictive in terms of (e.g.) letting you install the software on all the computers you own. Not to mention the ones that install rootkits and spyware.
I can see the stores' frustration, but... high-street sales of digital media are going the way of the dodo, canals, blacksmiths and photo processors so they'd be better off diversifying or planning their exit strategies than whingeing.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
The retail shops are fighting a losing battle: they will all have disappeared in just a few years, along with non-specialist music stores (i.e. stores selling things like vinyl that customers generally want to look at first) and anything else that can easily be delivered over the internet. They can no longer stop the ultimate disappearance of the 'high street game store' market than King Canute could hold back the sea.
Boycotting Steam games will just hasten their disappearance, since customers won't be able to find the games they want in the stores, and will naturally go for downloads instead.
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Whether or not they include Steam functionality is moot, the stores are selling the games, and people still buy them from said stores. By stopping to sell these games in stores, the retailers are in fact pushing potential buyers to use Steam, accelerating their own irrelevance, and promoting their local competition as well as online retailers such as Amazon. Have they gone mad?
Twinstiq, game news
Ah, Steam. The one time you'll find Slashdot posters falling over themselves to support DRM...
An article about Steam. I should check to see what this weeks deal is. Now, what was this article about?
or tell stories with the horse and buggy makers. People like Steam. Do people give a crap about them and will people just skip these retailer stores instead? Yes.
I don't agree at all with the complaint, but a lot of people seem to be missing WHY the guy is complaining - it's not that people are using steam, but rather that some games force a steam install to be played, which is effectively installing a competitors digital distribution platform.
I love steam to death (I'll happily pay a bit more for the convenience of having something on steam), but I can see the argument too.
They won't be able to buy back used games for $5 and resell them for $40. Good riddance.
At least with the retail box, you have a used-game market.
That no longer true when back list titles go to Steam or Gog.com for sale at $5 to $15.
The sensible thing for the retailer may be to demand added value.
The boxed set on DVD or BLu-Ray that would be a ridiculously expensive and time consuming download.
The Fallout game packaged in an steel ammo box and sold as an Amazon branded limited edition collectible at $129.95.
steam is easier to find than any retailer. places like gamersgate com, steam, direct to drive will be gaining ground on and on, and boxed sales will be things of the past. they should start up their online service, if they want to stay in business.
Read radical news here
I live in Sunderland, UK and all of the game retailers here (with the only exception of PC World - if you can classify it as a game retailer) typically have less than 2% of their shelf space available for games. Generally just one shitty set of shelves tucked in the corner somewhere - my personal games collection commands about double the space. As a consequence you can't really get anything except the top 10 and the games/expansions which are perpetual sales machines (World of Warcraft, The Sims, etc).
To top it all off you're typically paying an extra £10 ($17ish at the current rate?) compared to what you'd pay online - and I don't mean Steam (tangental but Steam is not price competitive outside of their sales days. Never bought a full price game on there yet actually).
I mostly order from play.com, amazon, gameplay.co.uk and a few others - free and speedy delivery for all, much cheaper and generally less box tampering (retailers here usually have the empty boxes on the shelves, you take the empty box to the desk and they pop in the manual/disc from a storage drawer... sometimes along with some bullshit marketing crap. The box is always covered in some sort of overtly sticky label which you'll struggle to remove without damaging the damn thing).
It's just abysmal - they, along with practically everyone except Steam, have went out their way to make PC gamers feel like 2nd class citizens and now they're crying about it. I still wander in from time to time and browse but I haven't bought a 'new' game from one of these shops in a long, long time...
I always have problems with downloaded media; whether it be licensing that won't permit me to move to a new computer (I upgrade every few years) or "unsupported" apps that I can't get access to anymore. I want the disk in hand so I *know* I can reinstall if I have a problem or change to my environment.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Yeah I've become kind of a Steam Sniper recently. Games I've been wanting to play for ages show up for cheap, and I grab them. Like this. Can you believe that? Commander Keen? What is the chance that you can walk into a retail store, and find something like that? It would have to be somewhere in the range of -20%. No retail store can ever hope to match the selection of an online distributor. Bandwidth and storage are a lot cheaper than real-estate, and once you get the licensing worked out you are golden on inventory.
Funny the last several games that I bought which were on steam cost more than at retail stores. FO:NV being the most recent where steam has a price of $39.99, and B&M stores were $37.27-39.99. That's pretty much the norm around here, and until it changes I'll keep buying at retail.
Oh that's not forgetting that I live in a part of the world where my bandwidth is 'limited' to a piddly amount either. If I bought it through steam it would have cost me another ~$15 on top of the steam price.
Om, nomnomnom...
they dont force onto you a restricting client, you never have any issues with modding the games or patches, and most of the games are drm free even.
Read radical news here
Fuck Off !
It's my money and I'll spend it where it suits me.
For me the fun of going to video game store as a kid and finding a couple of bargain games to spend my hard-earned allowance on was the most fun part. I suppose times are a-changing and going to a physical location to buy something is so 20th century. This has a thin air of music corporations' temper tantrums that they can't sell CDs anymore. Blockbuster was also good while it lasted. I struggle to find sympathy for all of these though; if your business model sucks don't try to blame me or another company who's business model works. Society is changing so businesses must change with it, or cease to be, it's that simple.
However, I have to confess I don't know a lot about Steam, but I do know that I resent having things forced down my throat that I didn't ask for. People like choices, and I'm no different. Whether I buy my software from a physical store or download it online, I don't want BigBrotherResourceHog.exe attached to it. So I guess in conclusion, if there's some sort of privacy/anti-choice issue at stake here then I'm liable to side with the retail stores, but if they're just bitching because their business model is wrong... too bad!
Unless it's Amazon and Play then who cares?
Does anybody routinely buy PC games from places like Game any more anyway? They are rip-off merchants.
I like having a physical disc so still prefer to buy Steam games in a physical media but that would probably change if I had a faster broadband connection. Physical stores are becoming less of an issue in the PC market (largely due to the fact that for a long while they shunned PC gaming calling it a dying market).
IANAL, but such an agreement sounds dangerously close to constituting illegal Restraint of Trade both in the UK and the US, for precisely that reason, as it harms the market. There's a reasonableness test that applies to see whether the restraint would have a positive effect other than the loss of competition, but it seems like even as liberally as it's modernly applied, it would be a stretch to find any justification for this.
older games on steam are normally a fraction of the price of used games from a traditional retailer.... I see this weekend steam was having a day of defeat weekend for like $2.45 cents. I don't know how many games I have bought from steam simply because it was 1 am, I was drunk and wanted to shit stuff right then. well, have to stay awake for it to download and all but you see the point. no bullshit macrovision on my pc, no scratched disks, no having to use a disk, no idiot sales clerk who wants to tell me how to play civ! i'm too old and grumpy for that
Nearly all PC gamers I know, like steam for the convenience, portability and even manageable drm. The extras that steam offers through its community cannot be matched by a retail store. I guess retailers figure it is better to have no sales than to have a smaller piece as the rest of the world goes online? This is like a retailer refusing to carry music because iTunes might sell more. Sounds to me like its the retailers loss.
So as a user, Steam offers some value:
1) You don't have to worry about losing your DVD. Once registered with Steam, the game is on your account and can always be redownloaded. If you lose the DVD, no problem, just download it again (Steam will also allow you to create a new backup DVD, if you wish).
2) For games with an online component that make use of Steam's services properly, Steam can handle aspects of match making, such as allowing you to join a server your friends are playing on. The game has to be designed to use it, of course, but the service is provided. Also in all games it provides IM communication with your friends, that functions as an overlay that does not interfere with the game.
3) Likewise Steam allows for small amounts of data to be saved to the Steam Cloud. Things like save games, keyboard mapping, and so on can be saved meaning that when you go to another computer, that all follows you.
4) Steam provides globally viewable achievements. Maybe you think that is silly, but people love achievements. It provides and easy interface so games can grant them, and people can see and share them. Achievements are a massively popular part of XBL, and Steam is a way to get that on PCs.
Now from the publisher's perspective, Steam provides two benefits:
1) Steam stops used game sales. Once a game is activated with a Steam account it may never be sold or transferred. So buying a game on Steam is forever. Once you enter the code for install, that game is yours now and you cannot sell it. Publishers dislike the used market, of course.
2) Steam, or rather Steamworks, is a free, fairly effective, DRM. Steam allows you to use their DRM at no charge, only requirement being your game must be available through Steam. You can sell it other ways too, you just have to allow them to sell it on Steam. For that you get no cost DRM (most DRM solutions are rather expensive) that does a good job of stopping casual game sharing. A normal user can't just copy a game for a friend, it won't work. The warez groups still crack it, as with any DRM, but it stops the casual stuff just like other DRM and doesn't cost anything to do it. Also because Steamworks is a transparent part of Steam many users do not find it objectionable, since they like Steam.
So there you go. Now please, please don't get all bitchy and whiny and point out that the publisher's stuff isn't a value to you. I know that. Like I said, what the value is depends on who you are talking about. I am showing you why they want Steam, why you might want Steam, and so on. I am not advocating it, I am just showing you the reasons that some players like it, and the reasons some publishers like it.
ok shoot stuff, shit stuff same difference...
So, I imagine the conversation would go like this.
Customer: "Do you have "
Sales guy: Oh no, we stopped carrying those steam games.
Customer: Huh, ok, guess I'll go buy it through them instead.
Then that store has probably lost one of the few PC gamers that don't use steam to...steam.
They'll realize they can same time (trip to the store) and money(steam sales), and never go back to buying physical CD copies.
Good job on alienating what few customers you have left.
Don't believe the online polls that get tossed around, those suffer badly from selection bias, as well as other problems. Ask a publisher: Retail is still king. Stardock says they sell 4 copies retail for every 1 digital. That means you need to care about retail. People still want to go in to a store, buy somethign in a box, and have it. Logical? Maybe not but that's what they want. Heck it may just be for gifts. There is just something more special about a box wrapped in paper given to someone than there is about saying "Log in to your computer and check your Steam account." (you can gift through Steam).
So at this point, publishers do care about what retailers think. Now that will probably change and also just because a couple retailers are whining doesn't mean that'll be enough. Plus publishers will weigh making them happy against the "No used game sales," that Steam offers. However it might make a difference. If a publisher normally makes $50,000,000 on a game of type X and they do it Steam, and get boycotted, and only make $20,000,000, well they are going to very much care about that boycott and they are going to capitulate.
Ultimately I don't think the UK retailers have enough pull. They are just too small, the UK is equal to a US state. Now if Wal-mart and Best Buy threatened a Steam boycott, the publishers would listen.
Oh what a shame. Those shops with the poor selection of the PC games that I buy from steam are refusing to sell Steam games. That means I'll have to keep on not going to those shops and carry on buying games from Steam. What a pain in the arse.
Who exactly are they "threatening" by doing this?
Is it Steam? Considering Steam are already doing very well with out them, I don't think so.
Is it the customers? They buy their stuff from where they want. If a game they want is on Steam only, they'll get it from Steam (and the shop lose out). If the game isn't on steam then they would have to buy it from the shop either way, so no-one is affected.
Is it the publishers? It seems to me that the majority of publishers are going to go the way of the majority of users (that's where the money is), which seems to be Steam. At worst they'll have to produce two versions - one steam, one non-steam. Again, Steam wins.
Insiders say Steam, run by US studio Valve, serves a massive 80 per cent of the PC download sector. And retailers preparing their own rival platforms don’t want that share to grow any more.
Ah, so they're starting up a rival company. Well, that explains it. You know, Ford have quite a big market share, what with them inventing the automobile and everything. Now that I've seen how successful they are and, years later, have decided to start a rival company I consider it very important that this share doesn't grow and I think anybody who is considering buying a car should agree with me.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
It isn't the "needing to register with an online competitor" bit they don't like. People who are likely to buy online would do anyway and they'd not get a look-in. What they don't like is the fact that Steam stops them reselling games at massive markups, even games bought in physical boxes. This little boycott is intended to try make creators/publishers/distributors rethink going to far down that route as it harms the one good revenue stream they still have.
If you pay 30 bucks for a game on steam and play it for a year, that is like eight cents a day. Show me any other business that will rent you a game that cheap.
But who pays 30 bucks for a game on steam? Their christmas sales bring prices down to at or blow 5 bucks for last year's new releases.
Buying games from steam (if you are willing to wait for the sales) is about as cheap as it gets.
And are you sure gog.com doesn't include any DRM whatsoever? That shocks me.
That's the entire point of gog.
The idiocy in this statement is strong, for reasons that alot of non-UK gamers might not be aware of.
Backstory is that I bought the orange box in april this year (I'm not much of a gamer), so I could give portal a whirl as I'd heard nothing but good news about it, in full knowledge that I'd have to begrudgingly install steam. Ended up loving the whole bundle, and finding that steam was alot less painless than all my other CD/DVD-based games had ever been *.
Most stuff sold via steam in the UK however, is often cheaper at retail, thanks to exchange rates, VAT, and some other things that I don't really understand - so if I'm going to pick up a game that needs steam, I'll almost always check retail before I buy it, as buying the DVD will often save me a few quid and mean I don't have to use bandwidth pulling down the initial 5GB of textures. So don't get me wrong - potentially I'm a strong contender for buying games as retail. But, as other posters have pointed out, the retail sector for games (especially PC games) have been doing plenty to actively keep me away from them.
It's next to impossible for me to pick up PC games at your stores (thanks to being relegated to a couple of shelves, one of which is the PC top 10 and the other one being a bunch of "edutainment" games marketed to parents for kids, or "100 classic card games on one DVD!" bullshit compilations), and despite being an affluent professional in his 30's you seem to train all your staff to think that all their customers are priapic teenagers that are prepared to put up with your short-back-and-smarm "well why don't you pre-order it?!?!?!?!?!?!" fucknozzle attitude if for some inexplicable reason I'm not interested in a wide range of used console beat 'em ups and footie games at the low low price of £5 below what a brand new copy costs. And even if you did have more than three interesting games in the building, how in fucking tardwarks am I meant to browse when I have one of your "can I interest you in our store-encompassing selection of shitty s/h games" mantras engaging in a futile impression to charm me every five minutes? If anything is keeping me away from your stores, it's you. The only place I've ever gotten a halfway decent selection is in the larger outlets of HMV, which are big enough to not give a crap about s/h sales anyway. 99% of the time I just buy the game from amazon, and that's cheaper still than steam or the high street.
So in the immortal words of the heavy: cry some more, little babies! Boycott steam games and you'll just make yourself more irrelevant to people who already detest the way you do business.
On top of that, steam makes a big thing about promoting all kinds of little known/indie games, both by selling them in dirt cheap bundles or by letting people play them for free for a weekend; 95% of my steam purchases so far have been these cool little indie titles, often with quirkily brilliant game mechanics. Something the high street stores do absolutely nothing to promote, therefore helping perpetuate the sausage machine of identikit FPS games. Most of the fun I've had gaming over the last year that wasn't TF2 or portal has been darwinia, defcon, braid and defence grid, none of which I'd have heard about if not for steam promoting them (inoffensively, I might add).
* Yes, I'm aware that it's "for as long as steam keeps working!". I don't pick steam games because they're the best solution, they're just the least worst for those of us that don't like to pick up gloriously non-DRM'd games off P2P. Steam is a system made by a business for gamers, GFWL is made by a business that maybe drove past the iD offices once.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
Wasn't this the same complaint that record stores had when MP3's became prevalent? So STEAM would be akin to iTunes or eMusic etc. Reflective arguments? be interesting to watch
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
I don't think these retailers have really thought through just why people use steam. I don't use it because I can buy games through it, for me that's just one of the perks. I use it for everything else I can do with it.
- All of my games are in one place
- It keeps track of my stats
- In-game chat and voice that actually works and works well.
- Friends list, ability to see what friends are playing and join them, invite them, whatever.
- Keeps track of my stats and lets me look at others' stats.
- VAC. Anti cheat software that actually works.
All of these things seriously enhance the online play of any game, making it much more appealing to gamers. I think publishers recognize this and will also recognize that if players can't get it from a retail store, they'll just get it from steam. No skin off the publishers back. I prefer to have a hard copy of my games. I like having the case and the little booklet that comes with it and whatever else some like to include but if I walk into a store and they aren't selling steam games, I'll walk right back out and get it online. I think most other steam loving gamers will do the same.
Is it DRM? Sure it is but they aren't using it out of hand. The mod community is alive and well and valve software supports them. Until that stops, I'm not going to complain about their use of DRM. The games that don't allow modding are not actually published by valve and that has nothing to do with steam.
The only con that I can think of is what happens if valve goes belly up and takes steam with it? Suddenly I can't play any of my games that I paid for. I don't think it's likely to happen but it's a concern.
The only thing that might be considered a competitor to steam in these areas is xfire, but the simple fact that I can't click on a players name in the game and see that he's using xfire, add him, look at his stats etc. really hinders it's usability. I know very few people that actually use xfire.
Stay awake for the download? Bad Company 2 took under 30min for me to have up and running and I installed the instant it was released.
TF2 only took a few minutes to install. Man, I love Steam.
I really want the 60mb offered in my area, but I'm too poor for now.
I swear, Steam has special connection to my ISP. I have a 16mb package with power boost, which goes up to 38mb(max for single channel modem). But for some reason, when I download from steam, I get 38mb solid.
Run a story that doesn't even bother to name the two complainants...! Come on, do better than that !
They may indeed have a "special connection" to your ISP, in the form of a mirror within your ISP's (or their upstream provider in the case of smaller ones) own network.
Other distribution services do that too... akamai for example. (Steam may even contract such download services... I never checked who I have actually been downloading from.)
Let's just go ask Blockbuster... Oh yeah! That's right!
I thought that whole line of storefront retail was dead, along with video rental. Hollywood Video went bankrupt a few months ago, and liquidated; all stores closed. Blockbuster went into bankruptcy in September. They have enough interim financing to keep the retail stores open through the holiday season, but most stores will probably close next year. Almost all the little guys in video rental gave up years ago, of course.
What have the game guys got that the video guys don't have?
GameStop == Blockbuster
Steam == Netflix
The question is, why the hell didn't Blockbuster realize that they could deliver movies to customers in new ways, thus vastly increasing their market? Why didn't GameStop? If Blockbuster had started up their service which competes with Netflix the day after they first heard of Netflix, then today there would be no Netflix. If GameStop had started an online market the day after it first heard of the internet, then we'd all be complaining about GameStop DRM instead of Steam DRM.
Three years from now I'll be posting on Slashdot asking why Comcast Cable didn't offer an easy-to-use online archive of millions of TV shows, the way X company did. Well, actually maybe X company is also Netflix.
Location: Sweden
So at the end of this summer I bought the Orange Box in a local gamestore near my home where I stay during summer. I return back to my dorm room soon after (before having had time to install the game) and once I get back here I do... But... It does not work. No. The game box was definitely new and unbroken (also in plastic wrap) yet for some reason the installer tells me "This serial code is already in use". I could not return the game because the store was 3 hours away by car.
Shit.
I contact steam support and I'm told to take a picture of the note with the serial number on it and the receipt. I do.
Now they give me a unique code. I am to write that code on the same paper and take another picture and send them. I do.
Now they tell me they can't do anything, because the game was obviously bought used. The store in question actually does sell used games, which can be seen on the reciept too. Shit.
So what do I do?
I write something like this: "You have seen the receipt already so you know the game was bought at full retail price. If I knew the game was used I would not pay that much money for it. Certainly not for a game utilizing online serial code validation. Secondly, this game was purchased in Sweden. If the game was owned by someone else who sold it to that store it seems likely that whoever did that was also Swedish or had installed the game while in Sweden. You could perhaps take a quick look and see if the serial code is registered to a Swedish steam account."
A few hours later: "We've transferred the serial to your account. This is, however, not standard procedure."
Me: "Thanks!"
Steam is not without its faults. Thank god there are some sensible people working in their support.
I don't know too much about UK law, but in Australia a boycott could run very foul of competition/anti-trust laws.
It's straight forward anti-competitive to refuse to supply to a customer to punish them for selling another product.
How much of a "used game market" has there EVER really been?
If it was there, I managed to miss it completely for years .... On many occasions, I've tried to resell my used game software I no longer wanted, only to find I couldn't get more than a buck or two per title out of it. When you're only fetching that on a site like eBay, then you're usually better off just keeping the thing than spending the gas money to take the thing to the post office plus the cost of the packing tape and time/effort to box it all up!
I've even tried the strategy of "holding onto a few classics until they're old enough, they might have some special collector value". (I have a copy of Wing Commander III that's all like-new in the original box, to this day.) Nope.... still no takers.
Last winter I was trying to buy the Super Mario Wii game for my nieces, but after waiting in line for like 15 minutes I found out it was sold out even though they had like 50 boxes on the shelf.
Just as I was expressing my frustration at having waited in line expecting them to sell me a game for the box I was holding in my hand a woman came in trying to sell her disc. It didn't have a cover because the dog had eaten it. Not only did Gamestop allow us to do the sale inside their store instead of outside in the icy cold, they also gave me one of their empty boxes off the shelf since they were unable to sell me the game even though I'd waited in line.
It was surely not the kind of thing that corporate would recommend them to do, I'm sure, but it was a great gesture on their part and definitely placated all of my complaint that they would advertise the availability of a game on their shelf when they actually had no copies in stock.
Yeah... no argument that DRM Is inherently evil. But so were the practices of many software publishing houses taking such a large cut of sales, the original developers didn't get a fair piece of the profits. Steam got started from situations like that, as much as anything else.
I don't think I ever used Steam on my Windows PC except for when I bought Half Life 2.... but on my Macs, I've used it quite a bit and am happy they've made the commitment to supporting OS X.
The fact is "strangles LAN play" used to be a big negative for me, but as time goes on, I care less and less. I can't even get more than 2 lazy people to get off their butts and drag a gaming rig to another location to HAVE a LAN gaming session these days! And furthermore, the places that still DO pull off successful LAN parties are more likely to have a decent Internet connection now than in the past. (If you're still having them, you're probably well organized and using a nice facility for them -- or else people wouldn't bother with it.)
Valve has shown some generosity by way of letting Mac users download OS X versions of their games at no charge if they bought them in the past for Windows, too. Fat chance I'd get a retail store to give me a free Mac version of some game I bought a Windows-only edition of 2 years earlier - even if I brought in a receipt!
and that is take a risk and inovate they created this wonderfull distribution platform. It's DRM but very mild compared to the BS we have endured over the course of the last 10 years. Here are some facts. Other then the whole price argument which I tend to agree even though i'm not affected by it. One way to look at it is steam is providing a service of convenience so if it's the same price as retail I would say who gives a shit cause i'm a lazy ass and I dont want to drive to the store so what I would save in gas goes to the developer/publisher which I dont care. If the game isn't made by Valve and isn't locked down by the developer you can mod it. There is no way that steam stops you from using mods unless it's their own game which as far as I can recall has full mod support. All this don't support mod BS is from the developers who want to milk us via DLC releases. Why have the community create the mod when they can do it and charge. Steam works offline. You just need to ensure that you dont log out of steam when you exit so that when you log in the next time what happens is it times out and then prompts you to try again or go in offline mode which at that point you have full access to your library. Just need to ensure you have the game you want to play installed first. Re-sell. The fact is they no longer want games to be a product they want it to be a service and this is why it's harder and harder to sell off your copies as it's usualy attached to some account. If you blame steam for not owning your copy and not complaining about every other platform/developer/publisher then your nothign but a hypoctrit. Retail Copies of PC Games - We have all noticed the decline in availability of PC games in store way before steam or other distribution platforms have come out. The retailers are hypocrits. They are crying because all of a sudden there is a surge of quality games coming to the PC and they see $$$$ but they wont get shit cause they can't resell like they do for console but even with console you can see this is going away with consoles being connected to the internet and catching up to the PC in the distribution departed. The way I see it Consoles are 5 years behind in inovation at all times behind the PC. And for those complaining about the DRM and steam disapearing well good news on that front because like all DRM come and gone they have all been hacked/cracked and you can easly find those executables out in the wild. I mean if this is stopping you from accepting change then so be it but personaly no loss to me or the 20 million other steam users out there. Funny considering that blizzard is one of the bigges pc companies out there with steam and they dont complaing yet everyone else does.
With that in mind, it would be awesome if you could sign up for a monthly subscription to steam. After all, it's almost exactly like a hosted game, right? You have to auth with their servers, you download the content and its updates... now (FINALLY) it's even storing your save points on the server. It would make sense, then, that it was all just a rental service, like WoW, and you paid a lower price more frequently.
Honestly though, that sounds terrible to me... I think I'd get more value if I paid once and had the freedom to play the game again over the years as I saw fit, even if I couldn't resell the games that I didn't want anymore.
I guess it really boils down to transferability of the software license. Just like you can buy a laptop with an OEM version of Windows which is not legally transferrable to another computer, these licenses are not transferrable to other end users. It's just that there are technological hurdles instead of only legal hurdles.
This is bogus; Most stores don't even sell PC games any more!
PC World is the biggest PC games retailer near me now followed by CEX. GamesStation and Game both have a shelf a metre wide and 4 stacks high with things like StarCraft 2, but mostly Farm Simulator and Railway Simulator. HMV don't even have PC games!
Ironically, one of the guy in Games Station actually said that they'd basically stopped selling any PC games because of steam!
Steam is more than happy to let publishers charge grossly excessive prices to Australians and New Zealanders.
Some AAA titles are now more expensive than the physical product released in stores. Example:
Call of Duty Black Ops at NZ$98
This same game is US$89.99 on Steam. That's approximately NZ$115.
There must have been a glitch in the system because I was offered the US price on the Steam front page but when I clicked to buy the game its price turned out to be 50% higher. I don't like feeling like a chump. I no longer feel any obligation to be their bitch.
If you want to enable it, you need an internet connection...
That's why there is a giant section of light puzzle and Nancy Drew games.
Tell your friends with the $1500 gaming rigs to buy some games once in a while.
Who am I kidding, pc gaming is screwed.
I have a friend who used to work at Gamestop. Situations like this happened to him pretty often. He said corporate's policy for these situations is to be polite and let the customers carry out their transaction, but to inform them that for legal reasons they need to exchange money/goods outside of the store (otherwise the Gamestop needs to register as a market or something like that) Now if you were to set up a stall or something in front of a Gamestop I think they would have reasonable grounds to object. They're paying rent on the place, after all.
Basically Gamestop knows that no one is going to waste their time hanging out at Gamestop waiting to snatch up great deals on used games, so it's not worth it to them to antagonize their customer base just to prevent the occasional customer swap.
The pros and cons of Steam have been well explained already, and I think that the retailers know that it's inevitable that some business will be out of their reach because of Steam and similar outlets.
Telling retailers to adapt or die, as it is typical of quick and simple solutions, does not cover all reasonable angles of their problem. The fact is that the product sold is complicated enough to require post-sales support. If you are reading slashdot you're probably a tech-guru and won't need it, but the vast majority who buys something in the shop that is linked in with Steam might at some point have a problem or grievance and will not be happy to get a trouble ticket # from Steam as the response. What that buyer will do is rush to the shop and demand real life tech support from the retailer. If nothing changes, Steam gets the long term customer while the retailer gets the 8% (?) margin from the boxed game, the overhead from the shop itself and from customer care.
I don't know how far ahead the parties are in their negotiation if the retailers are threatening boycott, but it seems clear to me that if the subscription model is going to be forced upon the retailers, they should get a reasonable cut of recurring revenue, instead of getting all the hassle and none of the benefit.
ok 2 points.. stay awake. did you not note that I was drinking you insensitive clod! also, maybe I would stop drinking if I could find this high street you speak of..... on a more serious note. Since started randomly buying games on steam I have increased my pc games purchases. In addition, I have bought( licensed) some smaller independent games from steam that I would have never seen in a retail box store.
There's a setting in Steam about whether you'd like to be notified of new games on promos.
you are the new record store. Expect to be gone soon.
Signed,
Rest of the world.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
All they stock is the expensive shit and anything older than 3 months is in the "Pre-owned", scratched-to-death pile and still costs 2/3rds of its original price.
I bought Halo Reach at Gamestop, used. They charged $55 for it. I got it home, opened the case, and realized it REEKED of cigarette smoke. Returned it for a full refund, and went to Costco where I bought it new for $52.
For every older game I've looked for, the internet has become the only option at all. Games that are 3-year-old best-sellers have already been re-released in stores as $20 "platinum hits", sold out of stock, and been dropped from the stores altogether.
It's as if all brick and mortar stores have seen what happened to the video rental market and decided to follow suit by accelerating their own death.