Steam Now Offering Free-To-Play Games

donniebaseball23 writes "Valve's digital Steam service is going strong with 30 million active accounts, and now the developer has further boosted its offerings by adding free-to-play titles. Steam is kicking off its support of the free-to-play model with five titles (which will include in-game Steam exclusives): Spiral Knights, Forsaken Worlds, Champions Online: Free for All, Global Agenda: Free Agent, and Alliance of Valliant Arms. Valve's support of free-to-play shows just how widely accepted it's become."

Comments

Great catch!

[jhoegl]

Wow, if I hadnt played a steam game or looked at their main store page I wouldnt have known!

Thanks for the scoop Slashdot.

Re:Great catch!

[Anonymous Coward]

in fairness not everyone constantly visits steams website or plays games off of steam every day

Re:Great catch!

[hsjserver]

I'm sure that a significan portion of people who use Steam have their settings as such that they never see the store page or the "special deals" offered and not to mention the multitude of casual gamers who would probably be inclined to partake in such free to play offerings. Also, I hate free to play stuff :|

Re:Great catch!

[kvvbassboy]

This. I have never visited Steam website because I am not a big gamer since WC3, but I will probably download Steam now to check them out.

Re:Great catch!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow,

Nah, I don't think WoW falls in the free-to-play category.

Re:Great catch!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone plays games off of Steam at all for that matter. Polish it and put lipstick on it all you want, but Steam is invasive DRM that creates an artificial necessity to have a worthless resource using program running in the background and an internet connection even for single player games.

Re:Great catch!

[Amarantine]

an artificial necessity to have a worthless resource using program running in the background

Most people use Windows anyway.

and an internet connection even for single player games.

Steam features an offline mode. You only need to have been online once per game to be allowed to play it offline, i believe.

Re:Great catch!

[madmayr]

that may well be - but steam (in contrast to other drm copy protections for games) gives you something in return too - have your games available from everywhere where you have internet access (which is the main reason i started using it) - buy games comfortably from home - some really nice deals from time to time (especially on holidays) and with the option to go into offline mode, you can play without an internet connection (allthough it is needed at some point to enter offline mode)

Re:Great catch!

[damnbunni]

Steam's offline mode is far from perfect. I've lost count of the number of times I've had games cease working until I went online, even if they showed 'ready to play' in Offline Mode.

Yes, even single-player games with no internet functionality at all.

It's also really annoying that there's no way to throttle Steam's download speed, since it's capable of completely saturating my net connection so no one in the house can even check their email.

And it detects all the software bandwidth throttles I've tried to use and ceases downloading at all until I turn them off and let it have every byte it can slurp.

Then there's also that if Steam knows there's a patch, but it's not downloaded, you can't start the game even in offline mode until you download the patch.

Re:Great catch!

[X0563511]

Conversly, I've never had any such problems, and indeed have played multiplayer while in 'offline' mode. I should also mention I have almost 150 titles on it, having been with steam since it was just a half-baked WON replacement.

I'll agree that throttling needs to be added, but that's hardly an issue unique with Steam. It seems almost every software vendor assumes users have unlimited bandwidth...

Re:Great catch!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I know GOG doesn't offer the same selection as Steam does, but they do offer the ability to download any games you bought through them anywhere, as many times as you want with any web browser - all DRM free too. Too me this is a much, much better say to do digital game distribution.

Re:Great catch!

[Creepy]

I'm fairly certain the patch thing is because you have the game set to "Always keep this game up to date" instead of "Do not automatically update this game" - if you have the latter set, you have to manually update it.

The bandwidth thing is annoying - I'd like to be able to play Steam games while downloading, as well - a game like Empire: Total War in singleplayer mode should not stop downloads and it does. Just to clarify this, it only affects Steam associated games, not all bandwidth - I can launch other games that are not associated with Steam, including networked ones (I've run Battlefield 2, Guild Wars, and several other non-Steam associated games on my system) and downloads continue, so this is just a bad feature in Steam.

Another peeve for Steam is not allowing pre-downloading for some titles, even though they already have a process in place to lock the game until release - I bought the Witcher 2 retail because of this. The choice was wait 8 hours for Steam to download (at 7Mbps down, probably slower on average), or have it in the 20 minutes it takes to get to the store and back... hmm - I'll take store. Fallout 3: New Vegas took about 8 hours to download but was a pre-download, and I bought it through Steam (and I'm a sucker for Fallout games, even though they have always been buggy as hell - even the Black Isle ones had dozens of [mostly user made] patches... I have yet to finish any of the Bethesda ones, though - get too bored with the "MOTS" play and cardboard characters about 3/4 through to finish - if I don't care about anyone in the game, which is usually the case, that is bad storytelling).

As for Offline mode, I've never had a problem - I played Empire: Total War for a week while staying at a house in bumf*ck nowhere with no internet access. I also like that I can have a copy of multiple games on my desktop and laptop and switch between the machines (just can't be logged in as the same Steam user twice, but that is fine IMO), and also that by just logging in with a different Steam user that also owned a game (Borderlands to be specific) a friend of mine and I could play multiplayer with my copies of the game (I think we started a new game, so not sure about character access - it would probably be my laptop and desktop characters).

Re:Great catch!

[Journe]

Wow,

Nah, I don't think WoW falls in the free-to-play category.

Have you seen the wealth of private servers? They're falling a bit behind on expansions, but in general... It's possible to have the WoW experience without paying a dime.

Need to layoff RedBull

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS IS MADNESS !

Re:Need to layoff RedBull

[Anonymous Coward]

This.... Is.... SLASHDOT!!!!

Re:Need to layoff RedBull

[Anonymous Coward]

Tonight.... We dine in your MOM'S BASEMENT!!!

Steam already had free games...

[gomiam]

...they just didn't have an official list. On the other hand, IvanDoomer has unofficially taken care of that for a while.

It also seems that some of these free to play games aren't available everywhere (a couple of users have written at the thread about it).

Perhaps Valve should just make IvanDoomer's list official or something :)

Re:Steam already had free games...

[Anonymous Coward]

are these free to play fully or do these include micropayment fleecing for better equipment?

Re:Steam already had free games...

[gomiam]

Define "fully free to play". But you'd be better off going there and reading. Some games like Global Agenda: Free Agent allow you to pay a one-time fee to get better access (more experience per action, auction house access...), but you won't usually need to worry about micropayments or free player limitations as the games on that list don't really block you from doing everything (at most you can't do it just as quick).

Steam's list, though, has some games that limit your maximum level so they are probably not "fully free to play".

Re:Steam already had free games...

[rwa2]

Doh! And I had just paid money for some (on sale) version of Trackmania. Thanks for the link! Especially since all these new games sound like boring "fantasy" MMO grindfests.

Had a lot of fun with Alien Swarm back in the day... hoping they start exchanging features with Tremulous!

Re:Steam already had free games...

[Creepy]

Yeah, but what you're missing is that Steam is a commercial product, so to add "free to play" games they likely are taking a cut of micropayments or charging yearly fees in exchange for broader visibility of these games (via Steam). Someone is paying for the bandwidth to download, and I guarantee it isn't Valve.

I see max level limits as OK - it is kind of like shareware - if you like the game after you get to a certain point, buy the rest of it and get more content. It is a good way to avoid games you really dislike. For instance, I considered buying Dungeon Runners before it went FTP, and after trying it, I found I really didn't care for it. I gave D&D Online two shots - once with a free trial and once after it went FTP - neither time impressed me enough in the first 20 hours to keep playing beyond that. Never managed to get past the free trial for WoW, either (which I did 3 times under different names/emails, none of which was faked - just variants - for instance, not my real name, but Charles can be Chuck or Charlie).

Re:Steam already had free games...

[Anonymous Coward]

Steam already had free games...

"Free-to-Play" doesn't mean free to play...

I prefer the word (neologism?) "freemium" to avoid this very ambiguity.

Re:Steam already had free games...

[gomiam]

I don't set the criteria on the free games on Steam list. And the manager of that thread considers level limits don't cut it. I'm not too worried about those limits actually: if I find them a nuisance I can always stop playing the game. But not having to worry about them is a good thing IMO.

doing this for years

[Anonymous Coward]

They've been doing this for years, do i need to mention trackmania?

Re:doing this for years

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. I was wondering what was so special about these "Free to Play" games in comparison to all the free games that have been on Steam for a while. Reading the article it looks like these "Free to Play" games are using Steam's micro-payment system to try and fleece you by allowing you to buy in-game items to "improve your playing experience" of these free games.

I dont think free means free here

[collect0r]

I honestly think everybody should steer clear of all the free to play games on offer the one i downloaded is using item mall and after playing atlantica online for the past 2 yrs it has cost me a lot more than say paying for a wow subscription. each month for warrior pack and blessing licence it costs me £30.00 which is a lot more than a flat rate subscription to WOW for £9,99 a month. in the longrun i would stick to Guild wars 2 its a one off cost at £29.99 with cheap expansions planned. please try your best not to make these types of game the norm as very soon you will be paying £1.00 to open media player or notepad on windows.

Re:I dont think free means free here

[hardtofindanick]

Do you have a key for "£" on your keyboard?

Re:I dont think free means free here

[DrXym]

It's probably casuals who benefit most from Free To Play games. I play Lord of the Rings Online in fits and starts, maybe a couple of hours a week. I bought the game when it first came out but couldn't justify a monthly sub for such low intensity gameplay so I cancelled. Now it's FTP I've gone back and the new model suits me a lot better. I go weeks without buying something and when I do need something that requires points it tends to cost less far less than paying on a sub. I expect if you were really hardcore that it might go the other way (though there is a premium service which is sub based), but on balance I think more people benefit than lose out. It also means the game becomes more popular which benefits Turbine because even if they're earning less $$$ per player they're still gaining more players to make up for it.

I think the subscription model is going to decline severely the more games that exist which are FTP. I would not be surprised if even Blizzard is starting to see their subscriber numbers dip and are beginning to wonder what to do about it. Maybe it means WOW will eventually go FTP, or a successor title will.

Re:I dont think free means free here

[Bert64]

The problem with these one off purchase games with online play, is that most of them don't release the server code and force you to play on their servers... And if they are not making any ongoing revenue, they have very little incentive to keep the servers running - and the online play mode of the game becomes useless once the servers are shut down.

Warcraft is a bit better since your paying for a service so they have an incentive to keep it running, but i do resent being expected to purchase the game *and* pay for service.

Re:I dont think free means free here

[collect0r]

yes uk keyboards usually have the proper keys needed to ride a computer :)

Re:I dont think free means free here

[Defenestrar]

You can also directly enter the ASCII code on most keyboards (in Windows at least) by holding alt while punching in the base 10 number. For example [alt]156[/alt] yields: "£."

I don't do a lot of currencies much, so I'm not using £, ¥, etc... often, but I do use some of the Greek letters on a daily basis - particularly mu (who wants to use the letter "u" when you can use "" (230))*. "" and "ß" (224, and 225 respectively) are of occasional use. The fractions for "½", and "¼" (171, 172) sometimes come in handy too. (And back in junior high I programed the Apple || e in the library to wait about five minutes and then start printing ASCII 7 (audible beep))

So just because the key is not on the keyboard doesn't mean you can't type it without navigating the insert function in a word processor and then pasting to whatever internet forum you're posting on. I've always thought throwing in an extended ASCII into a password is also a good way around the method most brute force attacks would attempt (at least until exhausting "regular" ASCII combinations first). It'll get you into trouble if you wind up with a non-standard keyboard (some laptops are cheap that way) or one of the "virtual" keyboards some remote authentication web based servers use to attempt to get around key-logger vulnerabilities.

*Strange - in the preview mu doesn't show up as it's own character and neither does alpha, but everything else does (they all display properly in the FF text entry window). Anyone have an idea why? Is this some sort of error of the Slashdot ASCII to html unicode converter? Or is FF or Windows inputting in a "symbol" rather than the true ASCII 230? Curious and curiouser.

Re:I dont think free means free here

[jank1887]

not sure what'll get through, but we'll try -

alt-0230: æ &#230 (that 'ae' character)

alt-0181: &#181 (mu)

alt-0176: &#176 (degrees)

Re:I dont think free means free here

[Machtyn]

Maybe it means WOW will eventually go FTP, or a successor title will.

Not while they're under Activision. Even if they weren't tied to Activision, I doubt Blizzard would make such a move. They've got plenty of users and the number of attrition doesn't quite alarm them, yet I'm sure. (There are still millions of players worldwide.) I imagine if they had to start reducing the number of servers down to about the 10+/- range, then they'd start to worry.

Having said that, I've let my subscription to WoW lapse recently and indefinitely. It was a fun game, but if I'm paying a monthly sub, I feel I need to get my money's worth - and that meant 2-3 hours a night nearly every day. Some would call that an addiction, except I have no urges or desires to jump back into the game, heh.

Re:I dont think free means free here

[DrXym]

Their hand is going to be forced on the matter whether they like it or not. WOW apparently lost 600,000 subscribers since last year which is a drop of 5.5% or ~ $108 million in revenue. I don't think they can sustain their current model if subscribers continue to drop like that.

Re:I dont think free means free here

[Riceballsan]

Varies on the game as far as if they are worth the money, or more economical to play in a F2P or monthly subscription model. D&D online I have to give props to it for it's options in the payment system, the game itself varies on what your taste in a game is, but the payment options I think are a good way to reach both sides. You can either pay like $4-$5 to gain access to new areas that give more to do, more instances to run etc..., grind out the same ones over and over again to earn cash shop money in game without paying cash (annoying, tedious, but possible), or pay a set 15 a month and have access to everything. Myself my schedule etc... varies like crazy, so for me it's worthwhile just to pay to access the areas I want as I reach them, play for a week compulsively, take a month off, no worries for me, I generally pay about $10 for every months worth of time I'm playing, but don't feel my money goes to waste when I buy something then get really busy.

the absolute worse payment system in a free to play game I've played, would be perfect world. Where it would be virtually imposible to do anything without buying cash shop mana and HP charms. (in game potions were prohibitively expensive, and mana regens so slow that without the charms, you would have to sit and regen 10 minutes for every 45 seconds you used skills/spells), and those charms added up so fast it was rediculous, I'm talking a $3.50 item that was more or less necessary, and burns out in under 2 hours, and that was assuming you didn't use the best skills, in which case you could blow through them in less then an hour.

Re:I dont think free means free here

[Machtyn]

Interesting. I did not know that. It is significant. They are making money like crazy. I don't see why a subscription has to be $15/mo, or even over $12/mo.

Re:I dont think free means free here

[insertwackynamehere]

On a Mac (US Keyboard) you can just press option-3 :P You can do a lot of other things using option- or shift-option- including some cool stuff like umlauts (option-u) where when you do an umlaut, it highlights a freefloating umlaut yellow indicating you can type the following character you expect to display under it so typing option-u and then a gives ä which I don't even think appears in a language (if slashdot chokes, the character it gives is literraly a lowercase a with an umlaut).

Also I'm not sure why the things weren't showing up but I know slashdot chokes on half of the "nonstandard" characters its fed so it's probably just slashdot.

Re:I dont think free means free here

[insertwackynamehere]

It does exist im dumb Wikipedia has an article on it but Slashdot can't handle "Ä" in a url so yeah.

Re:I dont think free means free here

[MagusSlurpy]

Their hand is going to be forced on the matter whether they like it or not. WOW apparently lost 600,000 subscribers since last year which is a drop of 5.5% or ~ $108 million in revenue. I don't think they can sustain their current model if subscribers continue to drop like that.

Well, 5 percent in six months is certainly something to be concerned about, but the overhead drops almost as quickly as the income, so in eight or nine years, their $2,000,000,000/year cash cow will be breaking even. I don't think they need to worry quite yet.

Not a fan of the F2P business model

[Flipao]

This Penny Arcade strip pretty much sums it up for me.

Mainly because it's simply not free, yes you can enjoy the games to a certain extent without paying a penny, but they are designed to squeeze as much money out of you as possible and in the long term are far more expensive than purchasing a retail product upfront.

Re:Not a fan of the F2P business model

[Anonymous Coward]

This Penny Arcade strip pretty much sums it up for me.

Mainly because it's simply not free, yes you can enjoy the games to a certain extent without paying a penny, but they are designed to squeeze as much money out of you as possible and in the long term are far more expensive than purchasing a retail product upfront.

Some F2P games like LOTR I completely agree with you. The -only- thing that you can buy with real money in League of Legends that you can't buy with points earned from playing is: new skins. So paying customers and non-paying customers are on the exact same level in terms of what they can accomplish.

Re:Not a fan of the F2P business model

[aiht]

This Penny Arcade strip pretty much sums it up for me. Mainly because it's simply not free, yes you can enjoy the games to a certain extent without paying a penny, but they are designed to squeeze as much money out of you as possible and in the long term are far more expensive than purchasing a retail product upfront.

My strategy to work around this problem is simple and (I think) effective:
Don't buy the extra stuff that costs money.

They're only more expensive than an upfront retail product if you actually spend that much money on them - the choice is yours.

Re:Not a fan of the F2P business model

[mustPushCart]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/5/11/

just read this last night and fished it out of history.

Re:Not a fan of the F2P business model

[Anonymous Coward]

Being something of a League of Legends fan, and since you are presenting the PA comic without the contrast of Tycho's post I feel that I must offer some insight to the comic which you've missed.

LoL is a really great F2P model. I don't want to get too bogged down in the mechanics of LoL but it's the only F2P game I've spent actual money on because (as best as I can explain this) I didn't feel I *had* to spend money with it in order to get somewhere with the game.

There are two currencies, one which you earn purely in game through playing it and one which corresponds to actual money. So far so normal as these things go. The interesting thing about the LoL structure however is that the items which actually boost your abilities (runes) are ONLY purchaseable with the latter - people simply can't throw money at the game to get the edge in that way, everyone's gotta earn it the same.

Champions (ie who you play as in the game - you control one character at a time only) are unlocked with either currency and this is how they generally hook you in to spending money. There is a roster of champions for any given week which are free to use for that period but if you want to use one outside of that you have to buy them. However it's worth pointing out that the cheapest champions (in terms of the free currency) are amongst the best (or at least, easiest to be effective with). It doesn't take long to have a good roster going even if you don't spend a penny - two matches is usually enough to net you enough IP to buy a cheap champion.

Of course people flush with cash can buy a truckload of champions but there isn't a lot of point to this - it's better to gradually grow your roster because you can only afford to itemise your runes towards one or two champions anyway. Besides, part of the fun is getting a champ that really clicks with you and focussing on that.

Re:Not a fan of the F2P business model

[itsdapead]

Don't buy the extra stuff that costs money... [snip] the choice is yours.

True, but a "well" designed free-to-play game will quickly lose its playability if you don't regularly open your wallet - either because you can't progress or because the endless pressure to buy stuff spoils the game.

So, yeah, don't whine if you're stupid enough to pay out a fortune, but also don't confuse "free-to-pay" with properly free or just plain good value.

Plus, just because some people are stupid enough to fall for the sort of pressure these games exert, doesn't necessarily make it a nice thing to do.

Re:Not a fan of the F2P business model

[Anonymous Coward]

This Penny Arcade strip pretty much sums it up for me.

Mainly because it's simply not free, yes you can enjoy the games to a certain extent without paying a penny, but they are designed to squeeze as much money out of you as possible and in the long term are far more expensive than purchasing a retail product upfront.

League of Legends is one of the worst examples out there. I have played the shit out of this game without paying a single penny. The benefits of paying for the game and at the store are almost exclusively aesthetic and provide no advantage whatsoever when fighting against a skilled player. Practically all of the game content (apart from champion skins) can be unlocked by playing the game normally.

Gotta give Riot Games some credit for giving the F2P users an equal experience. And if you really love the game, you'll end up spending money on it anyway.

Re:Not a fan of the F2P business model

[Terrasque]

And another PA one

Re:Not a fan of the F2P business model

[Anonymous Coward]

Before making the claims that a F2P business model is "designed to squeeze as much money out of you as possible" perhaps you should look into the game that's referenced in the comic strip you linked. In League of Legends spending money doesn't give you any advantage over any other player, the only thing spending money does in that game is allows you to buy skins. Skins only change the aesthetics of the game.

Re:Not a fan of the F2P business model

[Ephemeriis]

This Penny Arcade strip pretty much sums it up for me.

Mainly because it's simply not free, yes you can enjoy the games to a certain extent without paying a penny, but they are designed to squeeze as much money out of you as possible and in the long term are far more expensive than purchasing a retail product upfront.

Well, that's why it's called "free to play".

Nobody forces you to pay for it. Unlike WoW or EVE, I can create a LotR:O account for free. And play all I want, day after day after day. Nobody is going to force me to pay for anything.

But there are some nice things you get if you pay money. And, of course, the things are nice enough to make you want to pay for them. That's the whole idea.

Re:Not a fan of the F2P business model

[drinkypoo]

I'm trying out a couple of F2P web games now, Grepolis and Lacuna Expanse. (Out of a dozen and a half games I tried, these were the only ones that felt like they were actually worth playing, or indeed, ready for release.) So far it seems like practically nobody gives either one money, I don't know how they stay afloat. Presumably mostly by having low overhead...

Re:Not a fan of the F2P business model

[arth1]

LoL is a really great F2P model. I don't want to get too bogged down in the mechanics of LoL but it's the only F2P game I've spent actual money on because (as best as I can explain this) I didn't feel I *had* to spend money with it in order to get somewhere with the game.

It's rather obvious that you somehow felt you had to spend money, because you did spend it.

Re:Not a fan of the F2P business model

[xouumalperxe]

The -only- thing that you can buy with real money in League of Legends that you can't buy with points earned from playing is: new skins. So paying customers and non-paying customers are on the exact same level in terms of what they can accomplish.

League of Legends is a curious example. You do have XP/IP boosts that give you "more bang for your buck" sort of bonuses, and those mean that two players that start at the same time and only play together will see the paying player be a fair bit more powerful than the non-paying player after a while. But then that difference melts away once you reach level 30 (cap) and, once you have the champions and runes you want, you'll find yourself with enough excess IP that you can just collect stuff because you feel like it.

As a paying player, you can buy champions and rune pages, paying your way into more flexibility earlier than a non-paying player would have it. But then, neither of those things really gives you any in-game edge, and the one single thing that could provide a palpable in-game advantage can't be purchased with RP: runes. In the typical F2P model, they'd charge some cash for better-than-normal runes. Instead, you can't even buy them at all with cash! So cash is only a way to scratch the itches of impatience and vanity.

Re:Not a fan of the F2P business model

[Anonymous Coward]

But, and this is a BIG plus for me, I know if I like the game before I spend more than a couple of dollars on it. I don't have to gamble $50 or more....

Re:Not a fan of the F2P business model

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's rather obvious that he somehow felt that he *wanted* to spend the money. There is nothing about his statement that makes it 'obvious' that the felt he *had* to spend the money.

Re:Not a fan of the F2P business model

[Anonymous Coward]

However, it does depend on the actual game.

In some games like League of Legends, you can obtain all the things that matter (heroes, runes) through normal playing and very little farming (well you won't end up getting all of them, but a good portion you'd usually play with anyway). The only things that you "have" to pay for are skins (which just alter appearances), and it also happens that you can easily get free custom skins (made by players, although only visible to you) from here: http://leaguecraft.com/skins.

And then, there are games like Runes of Magic which pretty much force you to farm like a monkey (or pay), otherwise you'll end up being 3-4x weaker in comparison to other players, which completely ruins the game.

Re:Not a fan of the F2P business model

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't play Turbine's LotRO that much (was boring to me), but their F2P with DDO is definitely unlike what you describe. Certainly what you describe is the norm, but it's not universal. You can level to 10 without ever wishing you had a pay to play adventure pack (you'll earn enough points by then to purchase 1 or 2 pay to play ones with no cash out of your wallet). The only thing you miss out on really is things like a shared bank between characters and some other niceties (something you would expect for free if you'd actually paid for the game, but when you've paid nothing is completely accepatble to have to use the in game mail for it).

Re:Not a fan of the F2P business model

[TriezGamer]

As an avid player of F2P games, I see a lot of people who seem to be completely in the dark regarding what F2P really does. The majority of F2P games give you no actual competitive advantage for spending money. Those that do USUALLY have a way to attain the same things through trade in-game. Games where a definitive advantage is given to the paying players and are 100% unavailable to free subscribers are remarkably few. Does paying make life easier in many games? Yes. But free players are nearly always capable of keeping up competitively.

Re:Not a fan of the F2P business model

[Darinbob]

Depends on how you play. For instance in Lord of the Rings Online you can get to max level and do end game purely for free, it just needs quite a lot of grinding to earn the points. So it's more of a balance between time spent earning points versus time spent having fun. Some have even calculated that for them and their purposes they can get more bang for the buck by buying all the quest packs and buying off limitations than by subscribing to the game.

Of course, no game is going to be a charity free-to-play game. They all want to make money. What matters is how they go about it. No one should expect pure free to play with the same convenience as paying customers.

It is also true that quite a lot of players are just very very bad at money management. It's hard for them to avoid the micro transactions or set a budget. So do you blame the naive player or do you blame the game?

Re:Not a fan of the F2P business model

[FreekyGeek]

It's a pretty simple equation: if the cost of the stuff you buy is less than what you'd pay for an average subscription (say, $15/month) then you're probably getting a pretty good deal.

My strategy is to buy very little extra content, but I will once in a while if it's something I really want, like an unlockable class I want to play, an item that makes my life easier, or a new region to play in. I definitely NEVER pay for purely cosmetic shit like fancy clothing, or min/maxing like a weapon that does 1 or 2 more damage than the best one I can get playing free.

Treat the game like you (hopefully) treat real life - don't buy stupid shit, don't spend too much, think about your purchases carefully, etc. For me there are lots of games that I would never pay $15/month to maintain, but might keep around on my hard drive to jump into for a couple hours here and there and maybe spend a couple bucks a month.

It's a good model. I always though the perfect MMO pricing model would be "by-the-hour with a maximum". I won't pay $15/month every month to keep a WoW subscription. But if they had a scheme where I paid $1/hour, UP TO A MAX OF $15 (after with subsequent hours are free) it would be awesome. People like me who just want to jump in for 3-4 hours one Friday night a month could do that, pay $3-$4, and on months we didn't play, we'd pay nothing. If I happened to get really into it one month and play 30 hours, then I don't pay more than I would have with a normal subscription. And people who play heavily every month would not notice any difference, they'd just hit the $15 max every month. And Blizzard gets a few extra bucks from me that the don't now get because I just stay unsubscribed. Win/win for everyone. I get to enjoy playing once in a while but not pay for a full subscription every month, Blizzard gets money from me they would not otherwise have gotten.

What are these games?

[gmhowell]

So what kind of games are these? Never heard of any of those titles.

Re:What are these games?

[Dails]

Lucky for you, they're free to try:

http://store.steampowered.com/

Re:What are these games?

[Hadlock]

Spiral Knights is one of the titles. It's been in beta for something like two years now. The art style is somewhere between Crystal Chronicles, FF9 and World of Warcraft, plays sort of like Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past. The first hour or so is quite a bit of fun, but I haven't played past that. It plays sort of like how I would imagine a MMO of Diablo or Torchlight would play out.

Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[Pepebuho]

This offer of Free games sounds just like Turkish Delights in Narnia. Steam does not care about the games, it is all about extending the DRM'd platform. The more people use Steam (and Steam's DRM) the more Steam can tell developers that to reach a sizeable market they have to be part of Steam and use Steam's DRM.

It's all about the platform and its network effects. The larger the platform, the more relevant it becomes, the worse off we will be (as someone who decided NOT to purchase Civ V just because it uses Steam's DRM.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, those games weren't released specifically for Steam, I've been playing Forsaken World since way before it came to steam. I doubt the games now use the "DRM" of steam just because they are available on it. It seems to me more like a way to make those game known by a larger population.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[twocows]

As someone who uses Steam and loves it (among the many who do), I would recommend you try the current version before you bash it. I don't care if it's DRM if it's DRM that makes it easy for me to play my games anywhere.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting sick of hearing this sort of winging. Allow me to correct you.

"Steam does not care about the games, it is all about extending the platform. The more people use Steam, the more Steam can tell developers that to reach a sizeable market they have to be part of Steam."

Notice how the mention of DRM has been removed? That's because its not actually their goal to have their DRM everywhere. Why would they care who's DRM is used, as long as it keeps their customers buying games? Its actually in their interest to lower the amount of DRM so that gamers want to get their games from steam, instead of being butt-fucked by the DRM employed by most big-game publishers these days. The bigger Steam gets, the more power it'll have to block bad DRM schemes from its store. This is a good thing from the gamers point of view.

However, I will grant you one thing: Its a horrible conspiracy-type situation for the more paranoid among us.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[syousef]

My kingdom for some points to mod you up, sir!

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you understand how (modern) Steam works. I'm guessing you haven't played it since the original Half-Life came out. "DRM"? Maybe, if by DRM you mean "a system that lets me install a game as many times as I want on as many systems as I want, syncs my save data and achievements, and allows me to play offline and forego the authentication process if I'm not connected". Yeah, really terrible DRM there, buddy.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who uses Lysergamides and loves it (among the many who do), I would recommend you try the current version before you bash it. I don't care if it's drugs if it's drugs that makes it easy for me to hallucinate anywhere.

I'm sorry that I couldn't find a car analogy...

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Turkish Delights

You think "OMG EVIL DRM DIE DIE DIE"

I think "Yum, candy!"

Seriously, some of us just play games, don't have any problems with the "DRM", and enjoy the convenience - case in point...i'm moving next month, and I don't need to bother backing up hundreds of gigs worth of Steam games along with the rest of my data, since I can just redownload them at will at any time.

I'm curious as to what the supposed awful DRM is actually stopping you from doing, and (as was mentioned by others) whether you've actually used Steam in a long time - as best I can tell, the only reason you would really have to complain about (besides not being able to pirate the games, and even then you can find torrents) is having problems playing while offline. And even then it's far more likely to just be a glitch on your end or a temporary problem than some evil plot to steal your freedoms.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[Anonymous Coward]

If there is a right way to do internet-enabled DRM, then Steam does it. If that's something you just can't accept, then I guess you can sit on the sideline and watch as far worse implementations creep into every non-Steam title. Just look at what Ubisoft tried a while ago.

And if you actually paid attention to games, you'd realize the "Free" games mentioned in this article are always-internet-enabled MMORPG "freemium" games. They already require you to be connected to the internet just to be able to play at all, and the insidiously try to nickel and dime you into paying more than you would in the traditional monthly MMO model just to "compete", or sometimes even "play the game" beyond the most basic level.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, please.

Steam's DRM has been just enough to allow them to effectively sell the games, and they've turned the money right around and plowed it into upgraqdes, patches, and developlemnt. It doesn't interfere with other products, it supports detached play, it provides access to move your games to different systems or re-install them when desired without having to retain a stack of CD's or DVD's, they're constantly bringing in old games that I lost my media for years ago and have wanted to play again (such as X-Com).

They don't use rootkits, they don't interfere with other software by manipulating CD access, and the intrusion of hacks against multiplayer games has been very slight, and overall their minimal DRM has helped restrrain the script kiddies and "griefers" who often make multi-player games useless. They're also handling player accounts and player's credit card information to purchase services, so they do need ot apply some caution to prevent theft.

Steam is the poster child for how to do DRM correctly and safely.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[gman003]

Plus, they've made a promise to make a DRM removal patch if they ever go out of business. It isn't a legally-binding promise, AFAIK, but it still shows that they mean well.

And pirates have already made their own DRM removal patch, so even if Valve goes out without that last patch, you won't be totally locked out.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[arth1]

I don't care if it's DRM if it's DRM that makes it easy for me to play my games anywhere.

How about everywhen?
Like letting your son play one game, while you play another?
Or what when a lightning strike has knocked out your internet connection? "Offline play" requires that you go online first to enable offline play.
Or what when you have so many games that they can't fit on a single disk partition?
Or what when you need newer content/patches to play online than what Steam yet offers, and you have to update the game through Steam?
And what about Steam games that add additional DRM, often conflicting, and often without even mentioning it at purchase time?
Or what when Steam one day goes titty up, as all companies do one day?

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[parens]

Just addressing one of your points, not the list, but ... it hasn't been my experience that I need to go online to enable offline. For most games, you must launch it once while online, but after that, it'll detect the lack of an internet connection and prompt you to restart in offline mode.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm okay with this.jpg

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[Kingrames]

I'm not seeing it.
Having Steam for these games (which are freely available elsewhere) is like putting all your tools in one toolbox.
But what if someone steals your toolbox?!?
Then you kill them and get your toolbox back.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[RobertLTux]

Like letting your son play one game, while you play another?

im not sure how that is addressed maybe check the steam FAQs

Or what when a lightning strike has knocked out your internet connection? "Offline play" requires that you go online first to enable offline play.

as somebody else has stated a given game needs to be "unlocked" by going online at least once and then will fallback to offline if the network is down

Or what when you have so many games that they can't fit on a single disk partition?
so you can spend several hundred dollars on games but not US$150 on a 2 TERABYTE hard drive??

Or what when you need newer content/patches to play online than what Steam yet offers, and you have to update the game through Steam?

that may be an issue i would ask about that in the steam forums

And what about Steam games that add additional DRM, often conflicting, and often without even mentioning it at purchase time?

That is a problem with the Publisher not a problem with Steam

Or what when Steam one day goes titty up, as all companies do one day?

plan is the guy that turns out the lights will also post a "Master Unlock" for the games you have and anyway i would see some company buying out Steam first.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[arth1]

This is only true if there are no updates for the game. I tried playing The Witcher 2 in offline mode yesterday, but couldn't, because there's a 5 GB(!) update for it. You have to download and install all updates to all games, and then start them at least once in online mode before offline mode works for that game. Until online mode detects another update, that is.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[parens]

Perhaps I've altered settings and don't remember, but all of the games in my Steam library auto-update whenever they detect an update. Since it auto-updates, it's always been ready to go for me. I've grabbed a laptop in a hurry out the door, and still played my games while offline for a week.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[drinkypoo]

Some of us don't permit Steam to run automagically because it is a pig and it spies on your usage patterns. I want to be able to use my limited bandwidth and transfer allotment for other stuff, like Netflix streaming. I bought Half-Life 2 and since I can't sell it I occasionally play it. Bought Garry's Mod too, that has been disappointing because of the awful, awful UI. I don't know if that's Source's fault or what, but it just gives me a headache. Good thing it was cheap.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[parens]

In the case of a capped or limited internet connection, that certainly seems like a good policy for you to follow. as such, i can see the limitations of Steam having some impact on you. I'm lucky enough to have an unthrottled connection, so it hasn't affected me.

I'm not sure blaming Steam because your ISP wants to limit your connection is completely accurate, however.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[arth1]

Perhaps I've altered settings and don't remember, but all of the games in my Steam library auto-update whenever they detect an update. Since it auto-updates, it's always been ready to go for me.

With games like The Witcher 2, where a single update is 5 GB, you have no such reassurance. Once the new update is detected, the game becomes unavailable for offline play (and offline play only) until it has finished downloading and installing.
I.e. with auto-update, if your internet connection goes south before an update has fully downloaded, you can't play that game in offline mode, even if you can play it in online mode.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[drinkypoo]

The problem is that Steam doesn't care if you are limited in any way. It's abusive. Windows BITS at least tries not to use your whole connection. Okay, so it usually screws that up, but WTF Steam.

Also, Steam insists on showing me ads. That pisses me off. However trivial a waste of my time and bandwidth it is... it is. Further, when you look at an ad, it affects your brain whether you like it or not. I skip previews, I crumple up ad cards and throw them away, and I think Steam is rude for showing me updates on games I will never give one tenth of one shit about. Further, even if they would only show me stuff about games I do care about, I don't want to see that either.

All in all, I am quite the curmudgeon. But this isn't even the stuff that I dislike most about Steam. I don't like my games being held hostage (if you think that Valve is going to free any games if they are taken over you are a sucker) and I don't like being spied on. I also don't like the massive hit my system takes when Steam starts; I still have an old-timey 7200 rpm 2.5" disk with like 8MB of cache that I use for Windows. I don't trust it to touch the disk my Linux desktop is on.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[arth1]

so you can spend several hundred dollars on games but not US$150 on a 2 TERABYTE hard drive??

2 TB isn't enough to hold all Steam games. You need a GPT partitioned RAID.

And what about notebook users? I have two 150 GB partitions on my notebook. Even if I have 100 GB free on one partition, that doesn't help if the one Steam games on is full.
I'd even be willing to install my games on different USB keys, but Steam requires you to keep all games in a single folder.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[geekoid]

How about everywhen?

what about it? You can use it everywhen now. It's not like other DRM where you computer upgrade breaks the DRM.

"Like letting your son play one game, while you play another?"
agreed. They really need a home server method

"Or what when a lightning strike has knocked out your internet connection? "Offline play" requires that you go online first to enable offline play."

My test (unplug the net, boot computer play offline) did not need me to go online. I have never actually seen anyone have this problem. It is always brought out by people who don't use it.

"Or what when you have so many games that they can't fit on a single disk partition?"
interesting. I would think you would just maps the different directories to one 'virtual directory, and use that. At least in win 7. However I haven't tried, and with a 2 TB hard, it' will be a while before I need to. But I am intrigues.
AS a cluge you could probably install different steam package on different partitions. Each with there own set of games. But you could only use one at a time. so blech.

"Or what when you need newer content/patches to play online than what Steam yet offers, and you have to update the game through Steam?"
I'm not sure what you are asking here. Up can easily apple patches and update through steam. Its trivial.

"And what about Steam games that add additional DRM, often conflicting, and often without even mentioning it at purchase time?
I have seen games with a separate set of DRM, but never a conflict. That said, if the publisher adds another DRM* package to it, that's not really on steam.

"Or what when Steam one day goes titty up, as all companies do one day?"

Well then it will just be offline play.
The software titles you buy are far more likely to go tits up then steam is, and Gabe has said they will remove DRM at that time.
However, my concern about this is offset by three factors:
1) Very, very few game are re-playable to me.
2) I get games at a steep discount.
3) I would have no compunction about going to an alternative site and downloading a game I already paid for.

Non steam games are worse with their DRM, and future proofing.

If you point is you won't play any games with any DRM, then fine but this conversation isn't really for you.. Good luck with that. That would seem odd since you would need to be using DRM in order to have an OS that plays them, but hey.

*Steam DRM is very light.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[geekoid]

How does it know it has updates when it isn't connected to the internet?

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[geekoid]

No they do NOT require that, they even tall you how to put games in different places.

Moron.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[RobertLTux]

you do know that the drive im talking about is a USB PORTABLE drive so it would be well within the price range of somebody that is willing to spend a few hundred dollars on games.

point is if you are willing to spend X on games you should be willing to spend X/10 on a drive to hold the games.

(and btw if you map the network drive to a letter steam will work from a network drive)

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Like letting your son play one game, while you play another?

That's the whole point of DRM/the software business model as a whole; you shouldn't be able to use the same copy twice at the same time. Come on, I don't think there is any type of non-free software that allows this.

Or what when a lightning strike has knocked out your internet connection? "Offline play" requires that you go online first to enable offline play.

It tries to keep connected at all times and although this could be a privacy problem, this will stop this from happening. Most people only use one or at most two computers to play on, so having one permanently logged into steam is pretty likely.

Or what when you have so many games that they can't fit on a single disk partition?

Just use symlinks ("junctions" in NTFS speak). A bit of a workaround, I agree, but with the current cheapness of HD space, would you really run out of space on a 500 GB disk with just games?

Or what when you need newer content/patches to play online than what Steam yet offers, and you have to update the game through Steam?

Bad developers, but when they are this bad, their patches will also work on the steam version, so in nearly all cases this wouldn't be a problem. (Does it even happen though? I have never heard of a game like this).

And what about Steam games that add additional DRM, often conflicting, and often without even mentioning it at purchase time?

Again, bad developers, what the heck can Steam do about this? I'd rather have a semi free platform that allows the developers to fail than Apple store rigidity.

Or what when Steam one day goes titty up, as all companies do one day?

Valve has promised to release a patch if necessary. And if they don't: there are tons of Steam hacks, so that won't be a problem.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[tecnico.hitos]

Plus, they've made a promise to make a DRM removal patch if they ever go out of business. It isn't a legally-binding promise, AFAIK, but it still shows that they mean well.

I find that very hard to believe. Even if they wanted to do that, how can they be sure they will have the opportunity to do that. If they are bought before going out of business, the new management probably won't keep this promise. Unless they have this patch ready right now, it is not certain whether they will be able to develop it when they are going out of business.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[GrumpySteen]

None of the game clients include Steam's DRM and all of the games can be downloaded and accessed from their respective websites without having Steam installed. Steam is just offering up what's freely available elsewhere in a format that makes it easy for Steam users to find.

But hey, why let little details like that stop you from ranting about Steam's DRM and how it's ruining gaming for you.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[Anonymous Coward]

sing it on. I have not played, or purchased even ONE of steaming nugget of game from them. they can stick their DRM in their ass. after reading all the nightmares about accounts not working etc, it was fuck them. bet there were NO bugs on the payment servers, and the advertising, oh ya, the ADS always get through.

A message needs to be sent to developers, that these games wont be worth pirating if they go with steam on principle

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Could it be called DRM if it didn't break all of that?

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Steam->Setting->Interface->Uncheck "Notify me about additions or changes to my games, new releases, and upcoming releases." No more Steam message ads! Furthermore, you can set your favorites window to "Library", which makes it so the store page is not the default page. Finally, you can right click games in the library, select properties, go to the updates tab, and disable automatic games updating. That should alleviate some of your concerns.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[drinkypoo]

Steam->Setting->Interface->Uncheck "Notify me about additions or changes to my games, new releases, and upcoming releases." No more Steam message ads!

Until I launch Steam one or two more times, and it re-checks the box "for" me, apparently. I cannot get that box to stay unchecked.

Finally, you can right click games in the library, select properties, go to the updates tab, and disable automatic games updating. That should alleviate some of your concerns.

I'll give that a shot, I haven't tried that yet.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[Darinbob]

But Steam DRM seems pointless for online games, since online games have the DRM built-in. Ie, you can't play Champions Online without an account, there's no worries about illegally copying to game to other computers, etc. You can also get Champions Online directly from the publisher so there's no need for an extra download mechanism; in fact alternate downloads make no sense since you get all your patches directly from the publisher anyway. So it seems that Steam serves no practical value here. There is clearly not going to be a Steam-DRM version of Champions Online that is different from the regular version. So what's the point? There is no added value to customer at all and I don't see any value to the publishers except for some trivial marketing to Steam fanatics.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[Darinbob]

You should care. That's like saying you don't care about living in a dictatorship as long as it's a benevolent dictatorship.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[Darinbob]

This is infeasible. They can promise this but it won't happen. It's just one of those things that people want to believe in order to justify their love of Steam.

If they truly wanted to do this they'd have the DRM-removal tool already in a third party escrow with a legal contract that allows them to release it even if Valve later changes its mind (ie, under new management, or if they go bankrupt and someone buys them). Which they haven't done. Plus they aren't legally allowed to do this for anything but their own games, not someone else's game that's using Steam DRM.

There is just no way this will work, it's just a Jedi mind trick to get you to ignore the DRM.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[Anonymous Coward]

You can make one account per game if you wish to play them simultaneously. Accounts don't cost anything.
Offline play only requires to have launched the game online at some point in the past. You can start Steam and launch almost any game without an internet connection.
I'm pretty sure Steam follows hardlinks, though I haven't checked as I never had problems with disk space yet.
In what game did it happen to you, that a necessary patch wasn't supplied on time? Never heard of that issue before.
It is always mentioned on the store page AFAIK. Just scroll down the bottom, some notice on third party DRM should be mentioned there, if it is included.
Valve promised a DRM-removal tool if they ever go bankrupt.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[arth1]

No they do NOT require that, they even tall you how to put games in different places.

Reference?
They only tell you hove to move your Steam folder including all games to a different place.

Users (but not "they" as in Steam) has come up with a workaround using junctions for individual games. This, of course, depends on (a) using a file system that supports junctions, and (b) still having enough free space that the game could have been installed there, so the pre-install disk space check won't fail.

Moron.

Well, at least you're polite enough to sign your posts.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[arth1]

How does it know it has updates when it isn't connected to the internet?

Whenever you are online, and Steam detects that a game you have installed isn't up to date, it gets marked as "not up to date". If you restart in offline mode, the game is still marked as "not up to date".

This prevents offline mode from working for games until they have been fully updated. In the case of 5 GB updates like for TW2, or hundreds of games installed, that can be quite a while. It certainly prevented me from playing The Witcher 2 in offline mode, even though I had it installed.

So, simply put, you can't trust offline mode to work. If Steam goes belly up, games will become unplayable for everyone who logged off Steam while updates were pending; they won't be able to use offline mode for those games.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[arth1]

Like letting your son play one game, while you play another?

That's the whole point of DRM/the software business model as a whole; you shouldn't be able to use the same copy twice at the same time.

What part of "your son play one game while you play another" was it you didn't understand?

You can only be logged in to a Steam account from a single computer at a time. If junior is playing Smack My Bitch 3 with his girlfriend, you can't log in for a quick game of Puppy Petting IV with yours.

Re:Turkish Delight (Remember Narnia!)

[Anonymous Coward]

So wait, you are refusing to buy a game you want because it has the industry's least invasive DRM to date? I can understand holding back because of Star Force or something, but Steam? What is your complaint? That you require an internet connection? Because you don't. Or is because it auto updates all your games? Or is it because you can access any game you own, on any computer at any time no matter how many times you've rebuilt? Seriously, I am bitchy about DRM in general, and I won't touch DRM'd media files at all. But Steam, while including DRM is a service that is more than worth the trade.

Further, do you imagine a world in which there is a DRM free distribution channel being used by major publishers? Because that's fantastically optimistic. There are 3 or so other big online distribution systems. Impulse, D2D and whatever else (I'm sure I'm missing a few). Do you find any of them to be better than steam? Seriously. Because my experience with impulse was horrible.

It's funny too, because I used to hate on steam non-stop. You see, I played CS. A lot, like highly ranked in CPL, a lot. This was back before steam, mind you. Valve used their wildly successful game, Half life, and it's wildly successful mod CS as a leverage tool. They started steam, which originally didn't do anything useful. Eventually steam grew up into a top notch distribution platform with unobtrusive DRM (and obnoxious background habits). I realize no one asked for that, and no one really wanted it, and certainly moving to steam is what put the final nail in CS1.5. But you have to realize that if Valve doesn't do it, someone else will, and they will do it with Ubisoft style DRM. Believe me, steam is by far the preferred solution. It makes users reasonably happy, and it makes companies reasonably happy, meaning that we all get to win for once.

Free to play doesnt mean free.

[Cyno01]

I really dont care for this business model, i dont like someone having an advantage over me in a game because they spent more money than me. Its one of the things i like about WoW, that everyone on pretty equal footing, they do have some microtransaction items, but theyre strictly vanity items and have no impact on game play. I also really like what valve has done with TF2, i think it strikes a good balance. Every item is balanced, so one is not necessarily advantageous over another in every situation, so if someone chooses to spend money on those items they dont have an unfair advantage, BUT, every item is also available for free via random drops or a crafting system if you invest enough time. Unfortunately most companies arent rich enough to not be greedy when it comes to this sort of thing...

Re:Free to play doesnt mean free.

[hitmark]

Huh? So far the only real "advantage" i have seen in f2p mmo's are that you can pay to have your character get a percentage more xp for a while. Hell, ever so often they give those away for free. Basically you are balancing time vs money. If you have the time to grind your way to the top, you can do that. If not, then you can pull out your credit card and pick up the slack that way. At the end all characters have access to the same powers and items.

Re:Free to play doesnt mean free.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its one of the things i like about WoW, that everyone on pretty equal footing

Yeah, they are all retards.

Re:Free to play doesnt mean free.

[DrXym]

I can only speak of LOTRO but the difference between not paying anything and paying is grind and extra constraints that require you be a really good manager of inventory / character slots. You could probably work through to the upper levels by shunning some zones, killing everything that walks in front of you, completing all the achievements (for points), not spending points on frivolous things, and continuing in this fashion all the way through. You wouldn't be disadvantaged vs someone of the same level. You'll just take longer to reach the top.

Re:Free to play doesnt mean free.

[Shrike82]

You haven't seen very many MMOs then. Have a look at RuneScape as one of many MMOs where paying users are offered absolutely massively more than free players, in terms of map areas (F2P get about 20% or less), items (similar proportion), skills etc. Not that there's anythign wrong with that, it's just not accurate to state that free players don't get a lot less than subscribers.

Re:Free to play doesnt mean free.

[Darinbob]

LotRO is also a hybrid. It's not pure free-to-play, it's a mixture of free-to-play and micro-transaction and subscription. The same with Dungeon and Dragons Online.

Of course paying gives you some advantage. What's amusing is when people who subscribe for $10/month complain about this because their subscription already gives them a massive advantage. "Pay to win" is irrelevant in a game that doesn't have winners and losers and where PvP is a tiny side game. But even in a cooperative game quite a lot of players seem to think it's a competition.

F2P MMO's

[mustPushCart]

Please note, these are not what GamersGate is doing which is an F2P for single player games that are ad supported:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/14/gamesgate-explain-freegames/

This is regular F2P mmo's where the payoff for having people play for free is the community is bigger (small community and empty worlds can kill an mmo in a heartbeat). The games just seem to be promoted on steam now, not that much of a story to be honest.

Uhm, wrong about LOTRO

[CountBrass]

In LOTRO you can buy everything -including the expansions and quest packs- using turbine points you can earn in game.

A member of my kinship (guild) in LOTRO has played from 1-65 (the current level cap) without spending a penny of real money. And she has every expansion and quest pack.

Me? I'm much weaker and richer ;)

Re:Uhm, wrong about LOTRO

[julesh]

In LOTRO you can buy everything -including the expansions and quest packs- using turbine points you can earn in game.

This also applies to DDO, FYI.

Re:Uhm, wrong about LOTRO

[Anonymous Coward]

Second that about LOTRO. Everything that can be bought, can be bought for points earned in game. Including the expansions! (And there is very little that really *needs* to be bought to play the game. Sure, stuff you'll want to buy. But until you hit like L50+ and want the expansions...)

Plus you can always just start another character, possibly on another server, and earn LOTRO points in the three newbie zones (Bree,Shire,EL), delete it, rinse, repeat... A little tedious perhaps, if you were going for an expansion. But certainly perfectly doable for shared inventory slots or wardrobe space. And a good way to try out new classes.

Re:Uhm, wrong about LOTRO

[drb226]

Or if you have a job, you could work like 1hr overtime, as opposed to "working" 20 hours in game, to earn about the same amount. Unless you enjoy your in-game work and hate your irl work.

But does it run on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it doesn't. :(

do not see the point...

[hitmark]

all of the mentioned games can be installed and played without touching steam. And being mmo's they are updated as needed anyways. What do Steam bring to this?

Re:do not see the point...

[Hadlock]

30 million active users who are already comfortable buying virtual goods on the internet on a regular basis?

Would you prefer they try to market their game with in-game purchases to grandmothers who are struggling to learn how to use email, and always pay in cash or check at Walmart?

Re:do not see the point...

[closetpsycho]

all of the mentioned games can be installed and played without touching steam. And being mmo's they are updated as needed anyways. What do Steam bring to this?

Steam brings additional awareness to these games. The biggest problem these games have is a limited player base due to fewer people being aware of them. Also, Steam brings the Steam Wallet. This allows for you to have microtransactions handled by a single, relatively well trusted company, rather than having to trust your credit card info to multiple smaller ones.

Re:do not see the point...

[DisKurzion]

This allows for you to have microtransactions handled by a single, relatively well trusted company, rather than having to trust your credit card info to multiple smaller ones.

This x 1000. While there are risks in having your transactions handled by a central company (hello Sony!), they are mitigated by a few factors:

If you only have CC Info with 1 company instead of 10, you only have to worry about 1 company being hacked.
On average, 1 larger company will generally have better security auditing than 10 smaller ones...especially a company like Valve.
Steam allows you to purchase, but not save CC info to the account (providing a similar level of security as prepaid points cards on consoles).

Re:do not see the point...

[VGPowerlord]

Steam brings the ability that, on the off chance you do decide to buy something in the game, you pay someone you (theoretically) already trust rather than a whole bunch of other entities.

The fact that you no longer have separate logins for these games is a plus, too... or at least you don't for Spiral Knights, the only one I've tried.

Least Disrupting DRM

[Dudibob]

I don't understand some of the hate here for Steam, sure I use it and may be a little bias but it is the least most disruptive DRM, you can take your games to a different PC if you want (all you need is a login) and is so easy to join in games with friends if they are already in a game.

Re:Least Disrupting DRM

[DrXym]

The hate for steam most likely comes from the fact that Steam the service is tied to Steam the store. It's rapidly becoming a monopoly on the PC and that reflects in the stupid prices it commands for titles. If the two were split apart (e.g. you could buy & download Steam powered games through Amazon, Play, etc. etc.) I doubt anyone would care so much if it allowed proper competition.

Re:Least Disrupting DRM

[Gaygirlie]

If the two were split apart (e.g. you could buy & download Steam powered games through Amazon, Play, etc. etc.) I doubt anyone would care so much if it allowed proper competition.

Actually, you can often buy games from elsewhere and just supply the CD-key to Steam and from there on it'll work as if you had bought it from there. It seems to work mostly for the bigger games that are also available on Steam Store, the games that aren't available there obviously won't work, and I ran into one re-print of Mass Effect 1 that didn't work that way.

Re:Least Disrupting DRM

[Gaygirlie]

I personally really love Steam. It works great, and unlike other DRM schemes it actually gives advantages to you in return for not allowing you to sell your games. All other DRM schemes just restrict you without giving anything back. Tbh, the one single feature that I love the most is the fact that I never ever have to worry about losing my CDs or CD-keys or patch my games up or backups: they're always up-to-date and can be installed anywhere where there's Internet connection.

Re:Least Disrupting DRM

[Shrike82]

You can buy games that use Steam in brick and mortar stores. You can purchase physical copies of games that use Steam through Amazon and Play etc. The only thing you can't do is buy digital copies of games from other stores, and that's simply a business decision made by Valve. The crux of it is this: if you think Valve are charging too much for games through their store then don't buy them, and drop them an e-mail to let them know.

Re:Least Disrupting DRM

[DrXym]

That's physical games. I'm talking about download games. Amazon et al could sell Steam games from their own store paying Valve $2 to sign and package a game. User benefits from competition, vendors benefit from sales and Steam benefits from a steady revenue stream and defacto dominance of the platform.

But concerning physical, the very fact that you can purchase a physical title for 30% less than it is on steam including middleman's cut and P&P more or less highlights the point what a scam the store is. Even Portal 2 was cheaper by 30% than it was online.

This of course assumes electronic downloads were governed by the same rules of retail as physical products. Sadly they're not and I wish the EU would do something about it. In physical land the RRP / MSRP is advice, whereas the price sold electronically appears to be contractual with every major vendor more or less engaged in a price cartel through mutually assured destruction style clauses which means the publisher dictates the price and there is very little room for competition.

Re:Least Disrupting DRM

[Glothar]

The hate for steam most likely comes from the fact that Steam the service is tied to Steam the store. It's rapidly becoming a monopoly on the PC and that reflects in the stupid prices it commands for titles.

Right. Why let knowledge and research ruin a good argument.

You do know that prices on Steam are set by the publisher not Valve, right? At best, Valve picks times for sales. They don't set prices. Want to complain about high prices? Throw those complaints at the publishers.

Re:Least Disrupting DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought Civ V from a non-steam store (for $10 less than steam was offering it). Given the result of that purchase was a license key and instructions to enter into steam that would seem to be a digital copy.

Re:Least Disrupting DRM

[DrXym]

You do know that prices on Steam are set by the publisher not Valve, right? At best, Valve picks times for sales. They don't set prices. Want to complain about high prices? Throw those complaints at the publishers.

Oh stop with this bullshit please. Valve's own games sell for 30% less in retail even when they must manufacture a box & DVD, ship it to a retailer, the retailer takes their cut, and things like returns / unsold stock must be taken into account. 30% cheaper and the bloody games ending up using Steam anyway.

The price of games on Steam is pure greed and Valve is as guilty as every other publisher. Why aren't they setting an example? Valve is in strong a position to change the landscape but they choose not to. Therefore they deserve as much blame as the publishers if not more.

Furthermore, why should publishers be in such a strong position to dictate prices anyway? In physical retail they can recommend an RRP / MSRP but they cannot enforce it and merchants will sell somewhere between the MSRP and their wholesale prices. A publisher should be entitled to set a wholesale price and an MSRP but they should have no right to choose the price a merchant sells their product for. Because when they do competition ceases to matter, it's the same damned price everywhere.

Re:Least Disrupting DRM

[0123456]

It's rapidly becoming a monopoly on the PC

I can think of about half a dozen other digital download services for PCs and I spend more money on one of those than I do with Steam. So I can't see where there 'monopoly' comes from.

and that reflects in the stupid prices it commands for titles.

That's true. Thanks to Steam sales I rarely pay more than $5 for a game these days; and because Steam is so popular, other sites have to compete with similar sales.

Re:Least Disrupting DRM

[geekoid]

"But concerning physical, the very fact that you can purchase a physical title for 30% less than it is on steam including middleman's cut and P&P more or less highlights the point what a scam the store is. Even Portal 2 was cheaper by 30% than it was online."
what the hell are you smoking?
I paid 10 bucks for the Orange box on steam.

Postal 2 was 5 bucks cheaper then nay B&M

I have about 100 games, and 3 of them did I pay more then 10 bucks for. I regularly get gamers cheaper. Steam is always having a sale.

Re:Least Disrupting DRM

[geekoid]

"Furthermore, why should publishers be in such a strong position to dictate prices anyway? In physical retail they can recommend an RRP / MSRP but they cannot enforce it and merchants will sell somewhere between the MSRP and their wholesale prices"
true,. They also have the right to not let someone sell the game. SO if you don't play ball, you loose out next time.

And in most cases, it's fixed for a period of time.
That said, competition still occurs, it's just on the value add side. i.e. free crap.

Re:Least Disrupting DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

They can take away your games, they can prevent you from playing your games, the list goes on. You may not have had personally any issues with it, and that's fine, mechanically it's actually one of the most invasive forms of DRM. And I can't just boycott Steam by not buying from them, a Steam enabled title from the store is not optional (at least GfWL used to be avoidable if you didn't want it, don't know if they still are).

So they take over the PC industry with extremely onerous DRM and one has a hard time avoiding them and still playing new PC games.

Re:Least Disrupting DRM

[DrXym]

When real stores have sales and they can be compared to Steam sales the price is cheaper there too. It may be that Steam (being digital) can reach back in time to sell stuff which is out of print in physical formats but that is no what I'm talking about here. I am talking about new games, games where the price on Steam can be compared to the exact same product in a physical format.

For example Duke Nukem Forever is €49.99 on Steam and €33.99 on Play.com, 32% cheaper. Dungeon Siege is €49.99 on Steam and €37.49 on Play.com (for limited edition with 4 bits of DLC), 25% cheaper. Portal 2 on Steam is €49.99 and €16.49 on Play.com, 67% cheaper.

Valve's own game which has only been out a month or so is 1/3 the price in a physical format. That's even with an middleman, postage, returns, production costs included Even if it Portal 2 goes on sale tomorrow I expect they'll flog it at ~€35. It'll only be after it's shelf life has expired (literally) that Steam starts to offer good value on titles.

little love for Mac users?

[CongealedSalad]

Out of the 5 only 1 (spiral knights) is available for Mac.

Re:little love for Mac users?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a mac user and mac gaming sucks, even on my spankin' new quad core imac. I boot to windows just because of the huge performance boost I get using the same hardware. Until apple actually focuses on supporting gaming it's going to stay crappy. Microsoft, for all its faults, recognized this eons ago with directx.

Re:little love for Mac users?

[VGPowerlord]

Microsoft, for all its faults, recognized this eons ago with directx.

There's a certain irony here, as from what I remember, DirectX was introduced to make it so you could run the same programs on Windows 95 and Windows NT4 without running into compatibility issues.

Then apparently Microsoft realized they weren't limited to just application stuff, and thus Direct3D was added in DirectX 2.0. Unfortunately, it was inferior to OpenGL until at least DirectX 6, which is likely why most games you run into don't support DirectX less than 7.

Re:little love for Mac users?

[drinkypoo]

It was more about driver abstraction than cross-platform, although DirectX on NT was a necessary step to abandoning Win9x. It wasn't really reliable until Windows 2000, which also became the basis of the Xbox OS (pretty much just the kernel and some key libraries.) The few graphics programmers I know personally said Direct3D was fairly offensive to use until 9; in my personal experience it became tolerable from the user's POV about 7 as you say. Most games you run into don't support DirectX less than 7 because that's about the time every game had to be 3D. The Xbox provides DirectX 8.1; I've seen plenty of DX8+ games for Windows.

I'll pay!

[Anonymous Coward]

If I could get hold of a service which helps me keep Left 4 dead 2 running on Ubuntu between updates so I don't have to turn the world up side down in order to make it run again. Give me a price!

For what its worth...

[RanceJustice]

Here's a quick overview of the Steam announced titles.

Global Agenda: Free Agent - I've been playing this for quite some time, back since it was "boxed product" that was going to be a MMO. The devs then actually had the integrity to say "You know what, monthly subscriptions aren't right for this...so we're just not going to do them." That evolved into its current state where it is actually completely free, and you can pay a $20 ONE TIME fee to be upgraded to Elite Agent status on your account (anyone with a boxed copy of the game on their account is automatically Elite) which unlocks a number of things, including speedier XP and more loot. You can also pay for name changes or buy a "booster" which further gives you 2x XP and Loot, plus so many "free" tokens every day. Amazingly for a free game, to get the best in game gear you don't have to buy or pay for anything if you don't want to. Global Agenda plays well on Linux through the use of WINE, at least in my experience. Onto the gameplay itself, mix "Planetside" with "Guild Wars" and you get a MMOTPS/FPS that is actually really, really fun. There's a lot of content available, open world "questing" areas like any other MMO...but you have to use your FPS/TPS skills to take down that enemy you need for the quest. PvE content, PVP content, and Agency vs Agency combat in a meta-game for map control of various "Hexes" on a grid. If your agency (guild) say, owns a hex and have built a special building on it that provides resources, it can be attacked by another enemy agency - 15+ members of your team teleport to an in-game instance of that hex (with special building) and you fight against 15 of the attacking enemy etc... Crafting is more accessible than ever and there's a nice amount of customization. Out of all the "shooter MMOs", I think Global Agenda is one of the best. It may not have the scale of Planetside, but it has a nice "Guild Wars + Tribes" mix that's really unlike most of what's out there, polished to a nice shine. I buy boosters just to keep this business plan viable.

Champions Online: Free For All - Cryptic, the developers from the City of Heroes team, made this "sequel" if you will, to practice for their better known MMO, Star Trek Online. One thing Cryptic does better than most other MMO developers is to make you "feel" powerful. Blasting someone with a ice beam has a real "weight to it" and you feel "super" when you deploy your batman-style grappler to swing around the map. In Champions, Free "Silver" players have a wide variety of prefab archetypes that basically include a balanced set of powers along a fixed progression. If you want to mix and match core skills, you'll need the "Gold" subscription, which is like LOTRO/DDO in that it costs the standard MMO fee monthly. Gold also allows you free access to many of the "travel powers", which silver players can purchase individually if they wish. After selecting your character's powers, you can design a costume from what is likely THE most comprehensive costuming system in a MMO to date. If you want to be a hero with a tiny green head with pointy ears, a barrel chest, red hulk hands attached to robot arms, you can do that. Silver players have a lot of the content unlocked, but there will be some that need to be unlocked with a Cryptic Points (a RMT token). Those that don't want to spend anything can have a great experience and not "fall behind", provided they don't mind losing some access to certain costumes, travel powers and a couple of the Adventure Pack zones of the game. Unlike many, you can level to the cap easily in the zones available and without buying any XP-boosters. Its a good value for Silver players and has what you'd expect from a Super Hero MMO and many of the things you may not. Works in WINE on Linux, in my experience.

Spiral Knights - Anyone play "The Legend of Zelda: The Four Swords Adventure"? Spiral Knights, made by the Puzzle Pirates developer three rings (Amazingly, one of the only devs with the balls to create guild owned pirate ships that p

Re:For what its worth...

[DisKurzion]

I give you all of my imaginary mod points.

Re:For what its worth...

[Remus Shepherd]

Thank you, that list of quick reviews is *very* useful.

I tried Champions last night. I've been wary of the title because of the bad blood between it and my beloved City of Heroes, but I thought that if I didn't need to give Cryptic any money it couldn't hurt to get a taste of the game. My first impression is that it's not bad but it breaks immersion in all the wrong ways. There's too much complication in game mechanics that should be simple (the dizzying variety of equipment that doesn't seem to have any real effect, for example), and too much simplification where there should be depth (such as in combat, which is more button-mashing than strategy, at least so far in the low level game).

As far as it being free to play, they give you a lot of stuff for free. You get maybe half of the costume options available, and with a character creator as rich as theirs that's a lot. The big drawback is that you only get two character slots, and only one costume slot on each of them. In a game that encourages alt characters that's something you'd want to pay to improve.

Thanks to your review I think I'll try Global Agenda tonight.

Steam timed this rollout of free games just right. I was expecting to play Duke Nukem for most of the summer...but yeah, that's not gonna happen. Glad to have other options.

Re:For what its worth...

[RanceJustice]

Hey, if you (or anyone else that likes Global Agenda) use one of the coupon codes below on the Global Agenda Store: http://www.globalagendagame.com/thegame_shop.html

They will give you 30% off Elite status, a booster, or anything else you buy! I don't make any profit from you using these, save for if enough people do I get an in-game pet or something. Enjoy!

GACOU214858315530
GACOU214858332330
GACOU214858352900

They can each be used once and I hope you enjoy the game!

There's also alien swarm ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... which is a free to play aliens vs marines coop playing game. The sdk is also freely available and there's been a community released map pack with over 40 community-made maps ( called the spring 2011 mappack). I highly recommend to check it out.

Found the partition answer, and I was right

[geekoid]

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=664376

No they do not

[geekoid]

" Its one of the things i like about WoW, that everyone on pretty equal footing, "

False.
In some FTP games it's money v money

In other FTP games there is very little advantage. In DDO, you can buy some thing, but the power advantage is minimal. It's real power is in selling some special and interesting dungeons.

In WOW it's time v time. If you don't have the inclining to spend 4-12 hours a day playing, you will never be able to compete. By the time you just about get to the power level, there is an update and all the people who don't mind spending 60hours a week playing get more powerful in a day.

I'd prefer a disk check

[doug141]

Steam becomes extremely disruptive the moment you finish a game and want to sell it used. You can't.

Would that be George M. Howell?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a jerk in real life also. I know him. He's another dime a dozen web page flunkie http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=George+M.+Howell&btnG=Google+Search and that's about it who thinks he knows about computers. He's a joke.