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Valve Will Let Gamers Pick Games To Appear On Steam
Valve has announced a new system called Greenlight, which will allow the gaming community to select which games get chosen for distribution via Steam. Developers will post information about their games — this can be screenshots and videos, or even concepts and potential game mechanics for titles still in development. Once posted, the Steam community will be able to vote on which ones are the best. This will prioritize which games become available on Steam first. Greenlight is Valve's attempt to solve what they call an "intractable problem" — figuring out ahead of time what games players will like. They also hope to facilitate the development of interesting games. "We think it's going to encourage this virtuous development cycle. The problem we had of, how do we encourage somebody when they're not done developing yet? This we think will work. We think a bunch of people will be looking at it going, 'oh my gosh, I want that.'"
I pick Episode 3.
Seems like this is just advertising. Go watch ads and tell us which ones are good. It's not as if there is a limit to what can be released or when.
I'm old and jaded though. I stick to free roguelikes and muds.
Of course there is a limit. It takes resources to convert a game to play on the steam platform and show up in thier store. Since these resources are limited, the number of games released is limited.
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
if its on steam, chances are its better than the alternatives (origins, blizzard's always online thing, etc).
Bioware had "leave the dvd in" if you played Dragon Age, but now that a lot of people are using laptops and dvd drives may be disappearing in the forseeable future (see: retina mbp, mb air), an online option is desirable. (they even were relatively reasonable on selling used copies - just that you wouldn't get some DLC which was desirable)
Good luck with your not buying into DRM - its not going to wither away and die, because frankly, not enough people care. I'll still buy a good game so long as it works and isn't overly intrusive.
If they're doing that by helping to promote games people want... what's the problem?
Check out my world simulator thingy.
Can we vote to prioritize Linux versions? I'm sure the Apple guys would like a button to prioritize games (that already exist on steam) to get OSX versions as well.
it continues to amaze me that they become such sheep when Steam is mentioned.
I'm not sure sheep is really the right word here. Fairly certain most, if not everyone, on /. who uses Steam (myself included) are well aware that it is DRM. Hypocrite would seem to be a better word, though even then I would have to disagree. Finding some instances of DRM to be deplorable but other forms to be acceptable does not a hypocrite make.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
They already have that genre, it's called JRPG/MMO.
Because Steam DRM is "consumer-friendly".
It doesn't encrypt anything except unreleased, pre-loaded content (which is decrypted when the game is actually released). .exe - I copied the DLC files from my Steam install of Oblivion to my retail install of Oblivion with no problems (it was cheaper to buy the "Deluxe" all-DLC-included version on Steam than to buy all the DRM alone).
It allows you to go into offline mode, and to back up your games to DVD.
It doesn't itself restrict anything except the
It includes a notice on any game that includes additional DRM
It doesn't do any spying other than the opt-in Steam Hardware Survey
It tries to be a beneficial service, including chat and modding features
It hosts, for free and without DRM, user-created mods for several games
It supports OS X, and is expected to shortly support Linux
It does not in practice restrict what you can do with your data (the ban on sharing, trading or selling accounts is not strictly enforced)
Valve has pledged to, should they go out of business, release a DRM-remover for any games they legally can. (and Steam is easily broken, if you wish to)
So given a choice between "not getting the game at all", "pirating the game", "buying it on Steam" or "buying it on some far more DRM-encumbered platform", is it really a wonder that people choose "buy on Steam"?
Yes, in theory, everyone should boycott DRM. But this is the Real World, and out here, you have to make compromises. Steam is the best compromise solution - it eliminates or ameliorates the problems with DRM, but still placates the corporations' concerns about digital distribution and "piracy".
The thing about Steams DRM/Platform is its not all that bad
1 they are semi cool about redownloading games
2 they include a patching service
3 it works well and does not trash most systems in the process
4 you buy in some cases multiplatform versions (i think some games if you buy the windows version but log into a Mac system it will download the Mac Version)
in cases where a publisher does not ADD DRM on top (or otherwise futz with things) it looks to be the best setup around for DRM Platforms.
So Steam is like a True Professional doing a hit on you Yah you end up dead but at least you are DEAD AND GONE not jammed into some hospital bed wondering why the pain meds don't work or crippled or...
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You might be surprised. Not so much here, but on a few game forums I frequent, it's head-deskingly painful how often someone will decry Steam's DRM and get a slew of "it's not REALLY DRM" excuses, plus the new Diablo III favorite "Get a real internet connection, looser[sic]!"
I look forward to seeing the first games featuring Pedobear and/or Goatse.
the new Diablo III favorite "Get a real internet connection, looser[sic]!"
This is my favorite, because it is very suburban/urban centered, and is easily argued against by pointing out that not everyone lives in urban areas. It is my favorite, because that line of conversation invariably leads to my second favorite pearl of wisdom, "WELL, if you don't like crappy internet, move out of the country."
It's as if people don't understand where food comes from, that the people who make that food also enjoy/have a use for technology, and that the countryside isn't actually full of castles, serfs and fucking mud farms.
Publishing angry birds onto the Apple store is easy because apple has a dedicated team to sift through the crap from the cream. This also leads to Apple favouritism in apps and makes publishing very luck of the draw. Valve wants the neat, tidy, clean environment Apple products have, but without all the politics and costs. Even the Google play store has a minimal approval process. Valve does not want to hire a team, lest that be another expense and essentially hold them liable for review and what makes it.
So they developed an intelligent solution: they don't have to hire a team that sifts through and decide what looks good, the users do. They aren't liable for what makes it on their, its up to the developer. They aren't directing games, they aren't influencing game production, its straight on just being a conduit between gamers and developers, for a smaller cost than hiring people to manage that connection.
Valve does have a team for this, and they still will (since the community is most certainly not 100% reliable). I'm still slightly uncertain what the point of Greenlight is, but I imagine Valve probably got contacted by angry developers/fans screaming "why is x game not on Steam?!?!?" This helps to solve that issue. Now they can point to Greenlight and say "well, it either isn't on there or doesn't have enough people who want it on Steam. You want it on Steam? Fix those problems." Boom, problem solved for Valve.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
My only real complain with steam is that all games are locked to a single account on a single PC (e.g. I can't have two games across one account active on two different systems).
Offline mode. I use it regularly for LAN gaming.
Start Steam on one computer, go into offline mode. Repeat for all (n - 1) remaining computers. Last one can stay in online mode. Start up a local server on any of them, have the rest join. Bam. LAN party on (n) computers with 1 copy of the game.
The only thing offline mode really stops you from doing is updating, chatting or using the server browser (IIRC, you can still directly connect to internet servers). So for single-player games or for LAN, it works perfectly (at least until one of them updates and gets out of synch).
I'd rather have it the other way around; how do I vote to get a game OFF Steam? I bought a game on retail DVD and missed the fine print on the spine that said Steam was required. The miserable thing had to go through a huge download despite the DVD and it always wants to be connected to log in to the Steam account to play in single player mode. Highly irritating!
It would probably have more to do with the legal issues and that a game developer must allow Steam to have digital distribution rights and quite an incredibly powerful license to the software. You see, Valve doesn't sell games on Steam. They sell subscriptions to a license to a game. Valve owns the licenses, you own a very limited subscription to that license, and it affords you no rights under law, and it can be terminated at Valve's discretion for any reason or no reason. To distribute a game under that framework, I presume there's legal footwork to be done, and to do that for EVERY SINGLE GAME ANYONE EVER MADE, EVER would be an intractable problem indeed. If you go into it with a publisher saying "our customers want this game" and they deal with the legal issues up front, customers get games they want and Valve has less legal work to do.
I still say nobody should ever buy a game from Steam again. The reason they can sell games at 80% off is because you never actually own a copy of any game purchased through Steam, so you're literally paying Valve to let you play in their sandbox; at the end of the day, you have to go home, and all the toys stay with Valve. This is the most anti-consumer system I could imagine; complete and total dismissal of all consumer rights.
Steam's subscription model is anti-consumer; that itself is sufficient to warrant dismissal of Steam as a valid outlet for purchasing games, regardless of any DRM they impose, be it permissive or not. You don't have any rights to that content outside of what Valve says you can do with it (sure, you can run it offline and you can make backups to save us money on bandwidth, but nope, you can never resell it, or run it without steam, because you don't own the copy!). Nope. Buy games THEN put them on Steam. Never the other way around.
I've owned many Steam games for years. I have never had any problem at all with them. While what you say is technically true, experience has shown me that it's more of a conspiracy theory than anything substantial to worry about.
Valve is no EA, they're no Ubisoft, they're no Activision/Blizzard. I trust Valve. And I think Valve knows that a lot of their company is built on goodwill and trust from gamers.
Until I see Valve treat their customers like shit, I'm going to keep buying games on Steam in preference to every single other form of distribution. Why? Because I can have access to AAA titles for $5 on sale when that same title costs $20 in the store.
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