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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.
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)-
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".
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.