So all the evidence to the contrary (in the example of Steam) is just ok to ignore?
Despite your views on DRM (it is bad, there isn't really any way around that), to completely ignore all the good that comes from Steam, just because you cannot play the same game 5 times at once on 5 different machines (or whatever legitimate Steam-fear you have in 2013) is selectively picking your arguments.
DRM is bad. DRM is usually nothing but a headache for the honest buyer. Steam is DRM. Therefore all humans are cats, right?
- Friends lists (no more chasing people down over mumble/IRC/AIM/ICQ/TS) - Groups (easier to deal with chunks of people at once, great for organizing events) - Workshop (One click modding) - Marketplace (Lets me be an awful person and buy things from other people, no weird 3rd party sites) - Automatic patching (to be fair this should be done by most games) - Ability to get those same games with one login, on any machine I use it on - Big Picture/console mode
And those are just the features that I use, not even all the features of Steam. A stand-alone game (other than automatic patching perhaps) brings NONE of this. Please learn how to spell and look into why people enjoy DRM. You're getting mad at the DMV requiring you ALWAYS HAVE A LICENSE AT ALL TIMES if you want to drive the car that you own.
Your Steam account here is like your Xbox, you cannot both be playing different games on the same Xbox.
While the technical ability to play two different games on one Steam account exists, this feature is not intended to be used in the way you describe. Steam is not making it any more of "a pain" to make purchases for the household than Microsoft is by charging me $300 for two xboxes to play two different games at once.
Stop conflating what you want with what this feature is offering.
You're alright about having to spend another $300 for the luxury of playing games at the same time, but if you have to spend another $60 for the game that is RIGHT OUT?
Got it, you don't understand what this feature is.
That's because this is how the PC ecosystem has been running for years. This isn't Steam's problem to fix. Steam is a storefront slash game management software, it's not the collective will of every PC game developer.
Despite being correct, your point has no real bearing in this conversation.
Steam must be for hard-core gamers only, and just because they may not use this feature, it's now "barely added functionality"?
I'm glad I can let my brother play my games without having to worry about him mucking up my profile, market, inventory, friends, CC# info, etc. I guess I'm sad that I cannot let 10 of my friends play free games off my account at the same time while I'm also using my games and account?
It's really grasping for straws to shake angrily at Valve here.
Yes and if everyone you're sharing your steam account with lived under the same roof as you, then this would be pretty bad. All the negative reaction people are having boils down to: "I cannot give my friends free copies of games, bullshit."
This is sharing a Steam account like you'd share your physical Xbox. This isn't sharing per-game. This makes people angry for some reason, getting "shafted" on something they didn't know existed 30 seconds ago.
If I'm playing Left4Dead2, why should that lock my daughter out of Peggle?
Because this is allowing you to share your Steam account, this isn't letting you get 10 times as much use out of your Steam account at once. You're misunderstanding the basic feature here because you want something else.*
*so do I, but that's being mad at vanilla for not having enough chocolate in it.
You don't even need to go that far, just share your/steamapps/common folder and let them grab what folders they need. Steam is a big-boy, it will figure out what missing content you need.
What if you have one shared computer and you want to let your little sister play some of your games without also giving her full access to your account, friends, profile, and CC information?
"I want to give 10 of my friends free copies of the games I'm not playing this very second."
While this would be nice (and 100% possible in the physical world), the trade off here comes with the fact that ANYONE IN THE WORLD can play your games at any time you're not playing them.
That's a bit different than say, giving your brother a copy of quake 3 to go play in the next room.
This is the biggest thing. I know that we all have 40 computers per household now, but this is trying to treat Steam as a console. If you have one console (one Steam account) with games on it, how the hell are you and your brother going to play two different games on the same machine at the same time?
People are getting angry that they aren't understanding the feature.
This is 100% the case for digitally sourced games.
I do not see a way for Valve to implement per-game sharing until they also implement some kind of first-sale doctrine rights. If you can just lend out X games to X people where X is the amount of games in your inventory - entire groups would just go in on one huge "group library". Even for Valve that's kind of hard to justify from a business perspective.
True, but how many concessions must Steam make for this? If that was the case then entire communities could just "go in" and buy one of nearly every game they enjoy, and as long as they all just play one game at a time, you could have hundreds of people sharing these games.
While this/can/ happen in real life, the chances that these kind of uses actually going on (outside of netcafes) is so slim it would be a big presumptuous to assume it should work like this online. This really isn't that big of a restriction.
I have Street Fighter I want to play with a friend. We both show up and play on the same screen. If they want to play while we are at different houses, they will need their own copy, so we can play online.
The scenario I've described is exactly the same for Steam as it is for consoles here.
Slashdot Mirror
It only hurts honest buyers.
So all the evidence to the contrary (in the example of Steam) is just ok to ignore?
Despite your views on DRM (it is bad, there isn't really any way around that), to completely ignore all the good that comes from Steam, just because you cannot play the same game 5 times at once on 5 different machines (or whatever legitimate Steam-fear you have in 2013) is selectively picking your arguments.
DRM is bad. DRM is usually nothing but a headache for the honest buyer.
Steam is DRM.
Therefore all humans are cats, right?
But aren't you ever tired of being a coward?
I for one have welcomed:
- Friends lists (no more chasing people down over mumble/IRC/AIM/ICQ/TS)
- Groups (easier to deal with chunks of people at once, great for organizing events)
- Workshop (One click modding)
- Marketplace (Lets me be an awful person and buy things from other people, no weird 3rd party sites)
- Automatic patching (to be fair this should be done by most games)
- Ability to get those same games with one login, on any machine I use it on
- Big Picture/console mode
And those are just the features that I use, not even all the features of Steam. A stand-alone game (other than automatic patching perhaps) brings NONE of this. Please learn how to spell and look into why people enjoy DRM. You're getting mad at the DMV requiring you ALWAYS HAVE A LICENSE AT ALL TIMES if you want to drive the car that you own.
I hope I missed something here!
Except, you know, literally all the improvements that have hit Steam and have raised the bar of PC gaming many-fold.
But yeah, video games and stuff, forget about infrastructure.
Your Steam account here is like your Xbox, you cannot both be playing different games on the same Xbox.
While the technical ability to play two different games on one Steam account exists, this feature is not intended to be used in the way you describe. Steam is not making it any more of "a pain" to make purchases for the household than Microsoft is by charging me $300 for two xboxes to play two different games at once.
Stop conflating what you want with what this feature is offering.
So you have two consoles?
You're alright about having to spend another $300 for the luxury of playing games at the same time, but if you have to spend another $60 for the game that is RIGHT OUT?
Got it, you don't understand what this feature is.
Yes, nothing unexpected ever happens to anyone, ever.
That's because this is how the PC ecosystem has been running for years. This isn't Steam's problem to fix. Steam is a storefront slash game management software, it's not the collective will of every PC game developer.
Despite being correct, your point has no real bearing in this conversation.
Think of Steam as sharing your Xbox, not as sharing each individual game on your Xbox.
This is just a case of not reading (or willfully misunderstanding) the feature.
Steam must be for hard-core gamers only, and just because they may not use this feature, it's now "barely added functionality"?
I'm glad I can let my brother play my games without having to worry about him mucking up my profile, market, inventory, friends, CC# info, etc. I guess I'm sad that I cannot let 10 of my friends play free games off my account at the same time while I'm also using my games and account?
It's really grasping for straws to shake angrily at Valve here.
Yes and if everyone you're sharing your steam account with lived under the same roof as you, then this would be pretty bad. All the negative reaction people are having boils down to: "I cannot give my friends free copies of games, bullshit."
This is sharing a Steam account like you'd share your physical Xbox. This isn't sharing per-game. This makes people angry for some reason, getting "shafted" on something they didn't know existed 30 seconds ago.
Microsoft: Dial home every hour or the game is nixed within 24.
Valve: Dial home when you want to share the game.
If I'm playing Left4Dead2, why should that lock my daughter out of Peggle?
Because this is allowing you to share your Steam account, this isn't letting you get 10 times as much use out of your Steam account at once. You're misunderstanding the basic feature here because you want something else.*
*so do I, but that's being mad at vanilla for not having enough chocolate in it.
You don't even need to go that far, just share your /steamapps/common folder and let them grab what folders they need. Steam is a big-boy, it will figure out what missing content you need.
What if you have one shared computer and you want to let your little sister play some of your games without also giving her full access to your account, friends, profile, and CC information?
Oh wait I mean YEAH FUCK VALVE.
So they added functionality, but it's not the functionality you wanted, so the entire feature is worthless?
Christ.
"I want to give 10 of my friends free copies of the games I'm not playing this very second."
While this would be nice (and 100% possible in the physical world), the trade off here comes with the fact that ANYONE IN THE WORLD can play your games at any time you're not playing them.
That's a bit different than say, giving your brother a copy of quake 3 to go play in the next room.
The switchoff would be the XBone calls home every hour, the Steam client may not (we don't know how often it will phone home during this).
Someone give you some points, this message is being missed a lot.
This isn't the holy grail of DRM freedoms, but this is a pretty HUGE step forward.
This is the biggest thing. I know that we all have 40 computers per household now, but this is trying to treat Steam as a console. If you have one console (one Steam account) with games on it, how the hell are you and your brother going to play two different games on the same machine at the same time?
People are getting angry that they aren't understanding the feature.
De-authorize her account?
This is 100% the case for digitally sourced games.
I do not see a way for Valve to implement per-game sharing until they also implement some kind of first-sale doctrine rights. If you can just lend out X games to X people where X is the amount of games in your inventory - entire groups would just go in on one huge "group library". Even for Valve that's kind of hard to justify from a business perspective.
True, but how many concessions must Steam make for this? If that was the case then entire communities could just "go in" and buy one of nearly every game they enjoy, and as long as they all just play one game at a time, you could have hundreds of people sharing these games.
While this /can/ happen in real life, the chances that these kind of uses actually going on (outside of netcafes) is so slim it would be a big presumptuous to assume it should work like this online. This really isn't that big of a restriction.
How is this different?
I have Street Fighter I want to play with a friend. We both show up and play on the same screen. If they want to play while we are at different houses, they will need their own copy, so we can play online.
The scenario I've described is exactly the same for Steam as it is for consoles here.