Steam is the best balance between convenience and protecting the game developers profits IMO. I mean as much as a lot of the Slashdot crowd seem to hate companies that are out to make money, without money, there are no more decent games. I love that I don't have to think "Right, if I uninstall this, I have to make sure I don't lose the disks. And I have to burn these patches to disks as well." I just "remove local content" knowing that if I want it, I can just download it again and it'll be up to date and ready to play. I need to download Steam to install all my usual games, that's it, rather than hunt down multiple disks, find manuals with bloody serial numbers etc... Given I've had to do three clean installs this year on different machines Steam has made my life SO much easier.
Now see, I am the complete opposite. I enjoyed Crysis, but feel Bioshock is probably the most overrated FPS in the history of the genre! I just don't get why it's so popular. Didn't enjoy it at all. But different strokes I guess.
Don't forget you don't HAVE too let iTunes manage your files though. You can have it just browse your usual directories.
I used to be all about the hierarchy stuff. But with over 8000 songs, a lot of which are just individual songs rather than a whole album, that became unwieldy so when I got my iPod Touch I figured since I had to use iTunes anyway, I'd try it.
For the most part I like it. I still have Foobar as my default music file player though when double clicking.
Wish Rockbox supported the Touch, because if I recall Rockbox plays back SID files (C64 music), something I really want on my iPod. (There is a SID player supposedly being developed but I'm starting to think it's vaporware.)
MOST games can be. I believe the developer makes a choice of whether to allow it. I've got several that won't work in offline mode for no apparent reason.
I've never had cause to deal with Steam's support. I did deal with Direct2Drive's recently. I don't have anything through them, but was curious how the Spore DRM would work and had a few other questions, so I sent an email asking about four questions. I received a response which answer one of them. So I figured I'd escalate to one of their managers. It tells you how in their information, so I did everything it said.
And that was a month ago and I've heard nothing.
Only issue I've had with Steam was with GTR-Evolution recently. According to friends it works just fine in offline mode. My internet has been crappy lately so I've been unable to use Steam online, and GTR-Evo flat out refused to start without the internet. Ironically this has forced me to download the cracked version so I can actually play if my crappy internet goes out.
I love Steam. It's actually easier than piracy. (FINALLY!) Find a game, purchase, download, done. Never have to worry about disks. Can install on multiple machines. Honestly, with the system issues I've had the last year with reinstalling the OS on several machines, Steam made life SO much easier with just setting it downloading and leaving it. No finding disks. No disk swapping. No trying to find the misplaced manual with the serial number on it. Nada.
Stardock's Impulse service may prove in the end to be better than Steam due to lack of DRM, but the fact is Impulse is a diabolical piece of software currently.
You remind me of this girl named Rachel. She worked with me in 1996. When she started where I worked I warned her that the customers were mostly idiots, and told her lots of stories of said morons. She didn't believe me, thought I was making it up etc...
Two weeks later I invited her over to my place to watch a movie. (Nothing sordid, so get your mind out of the gutter.) We got to talking and after a mere two weeks she said to me "You know, you were absolutely right."
The majority of consumers are, by definition, the lowest common denominator. The reason people like Rob Schneider have a career, that garbage like "Epic Movie" gets made, and that pan'n'scan DVD's still sell.
See, my wording was right. I am vindicated. *cough*
Goddamit, I hate it when I make that Affect/Effect mistake. ARGHHH! I'm usually just as picky but occasionally under the influence of prescription painkillers, sleep deprivation etc... One slips through. (As the actress said to the bishop.)
Yes, but they don't do they. You're seriously overestimating the average consumer. "Disk go in here? Disk play." That's the mentality. I hang out on a lot of forums that deal with Blu-Ray and I've not seen a single complaint about DRM, because the disks just play, just like DVD (ARCOS protected titles not withstanding.) DRM is irrelevant to 99.999% of Blu-Ray owners because it doesn't effect them.
I think it's more a case of lack of reason to upgrade. When DVD came out I was really excited as it was a huge quality leap, plus you got documentaries, commentary etc... It was a MASSIVE leap, especially if you're a movie geek. DVD to Blu-Ray is a picture and audio upgrade which you can't really notice without a 40"+ TV and a 5.1 surround system. The regular consumer, the idiot who buys "Fullscreen" over widescreen gets very little benefit from Blu-Ray over DVD. All the consumer sees is the movies are more expensive and in pretty blue boxes. I see DVD's flying off the shelves in stores, but I don't think I've yet seen anyone buying a Blu-Ray release. (PS3 titles not withstanding.) This is just from the many hours I spend feeding my DVD habit and browsing.
Blu-Ray will most likely be these decades Laserdisc. A niche market for home theatre geeks.
Well Sony are the makers of Securom, and also made a DRM for DVD's (ARCOS) that rendered the disks unplayable on their own devices. I bought a movie with ARCOS for my nephews and it wouldn't play. I had to take said DVD and make a rip of it purely so they could watch the movie I bought for them on their Sony DVD player.
So crap like this no longer surprises me and is why, despite being a huge Metal Gear and Gran Turismo fan, I will not be buying a PS3.
I didn't say I didn't GET Seinfeld. I said I didn't get why it was such a big deal.
And I think the reason I much preferred Larry was the sundry characters were better (Paula in particular), and the show, due to where it aired, was more adult and realistic.
Scrubs doesn't have one either. Though it's supposedly moving to ABC, and given what those asshats foisted on Sports Night (a laugh track which STILL lives on on the DVD) I'm sure they'll add one.
Why would anyone WANT to run Aero though? I mean yeah, it looks nice, but it adds absolutely zero functionality. I'm sticking with XP until the very end, just like I did with Win 95. (Though that was more laziness than a conscious decision.) I have no interest heading into Vista's DRM infested nightmare. Fuck it. I figure XP probably has a good 2-3 years left. Game companies in the majority of cases aren't going to be dumb enough to go DX10 only, meaning gaming won't be an issue. And I figure by the time XP is killed off, Vista's replacement will have been rushed to market and hopefully won't be such a pile of shite.
Glad the ads are dead. There's "cool" surreal. (See: Rutger Hauer Guinness commercials in the late 80's and early 90's) Then there is utterly retarded. That was these.
I never got "Seinfeld" either. I saw a few episodes and it was okay I guess, but I never understood why it became so huge as it wasn't that funny. "No soup for you." Indeed.
So you could care less? How much less could you care? Since clearly you care more than the minimum you could care, because you've clearly said you COULD care less. Please enlighten us as to how much less you could care.
And this is a fucking awful idea. Without spoiling the last book, doesn't it have a fairly conclusive and rather final ending?
I loathe that damn word, "monetize". The software industry is without a doubt the greediest industry in the world. I mean the movie industry have tried, with DIVX, to make you pay every time you watch a movie, but that failed miserably.
The software industry, though, has a customer base largely filled with suckers who pay for an account on an online service, and who then pay for content that should have been in the game in the first place in many cases. Almost the entire industry is fueled by greed, treats their customers like thieves with increasingly intrusive and restrictive DRM, and comes up with more and more ways to fleece the consumer.
Valve have the right idea. Treat the customers decently. The content updates for TF2, they've already said they're being forced to charge for them on the Xbox even though they don't want too. The PC versions will remain free, as Valve believe in not fleecing their customers. Same goes for Stardock. Galactic Civilizations 2 has received two expansions, but they've added SO much stuff for free. The upcoming 2.0 patch includes some fairly major additions. Far beyond what you could ever expect for free from the likes of Activision.
It's nice to know there are a few holdouts who seem to believe in putting the experience and the games above the financial avarice of the likes of Activision and EA.
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Dude, I feel your pain. My wife hates MTG as well. Waiting for my kids to get old enough so I can teach them.:)
Kudos to you, sir. Well put.
Steam is the best balance between convenience and protecting the game developers profits IMO. I mean as much as a lot of the Slashdot crowd seem to hate companies that are out to make money, without money, there are no more decent games. I love that I don't have to think "Right, if I uninstall this, I have to make sure I don't lose the disks. And I have to burn these patches to disks as well." I just "remove local content" knowing that if I want it, I can just download it again and it'll be up to date and ready to play. I need to download Steam to install all my usual games, that's it, rather than hunt down multiple disks, find manuals with bloody serial numbers etc... Given I've had to do three clean installs this year on different machines Steam has made my life SO much easier.
Now see, I am the complete opposite. I enjoyed Crysis, but feel Bioshock is probably the most overrated FPS in the history of the genre! I just don't get why it's so popular. Didn't enjoy it at all. But different strokes I guess.
And it's fellatio.
I would SO pay to see that! Vader pop up in Mel Jewhaters movie? AWESOME!
Don't forget you don't HAVE too let iTunes manage your files though. You can have it just browse your usual directories.
I used to be all about the hierarchy stuff. But with over 8000 songs, a lot of which are just individual songs rather than a whole album, that became unwieldy so when I got my iPod Touch I figured since I had to use iTunes anyway, I'd try it.
For the most part I like it. I still have Foobar as my default music file player though when double clicking.
Wish Rockbox supported the Touch, because if I recall Rockbox plays back SID files (C64 music), something I really want on my iPod. (There is a SID player supposedly being developed but I'm starting to think it's vaporware.)
MOST games can be. I believe the developer makes a choice of whether to allow it. I've got several that won't work in offline mode for no apparent reason.
I've never had cause to deal with Steam's support. I did deal with Direct2Drive's recently. I don't have anything through them, but was curious how the Spore DRM would work and had a few other questions, so I sent an email asking about four questions. I received a response which answer one of them. So I figured I'd escalate to one of their managers. It tells you how in their information, so I did everything it said.
And that was a month ago and I've heard nothing.
Only issue I've had with Steam was with GTR-Evolution recently. According to friends it works just fine in offline mode. My internet has been crappy lately so I've been unable to use Steam online, and GTR-Evo flat out refused to start without the internet. Ironically this has forced me to download the cracked version so I can actually play if my crappy internet goes out.
I love Steam. It's actually easier than piracy. (FINALLY!) Find a game, purchase, download, done. Never have to worry about disks. Can install on multiple machines. Honestly, with the system issues I've had the last year with reinstalling the OS on several machines, Steam made life SO much easier with just setting it downloading and leaving it. No finding disks. No disk swapping. No trying to find the misplaced manual with the serial number on it. Nada.
Stardock's Impulse service may prove in the end to be better than Steam due to lack of DRM, but the fact is Impulse is a diabolical piece of software currently.
You remind me of this girl named Rachel. She worked with me in 1996. When she started where I worked I warned her that the customers were mostly idiots, and told her lots of stories of said morons. She didn't believe me, thought I was making it up etc...
Two weeks later I invited her over to my place to watch a movie. (Nothing sordid, so get your mind out of the gutter.) We got to talking and after a mere two weeks she said to me "You know, you were absolutely right."
The majority of consumers are, by definition, the lowest common denominator. The reason people like Rob Schneider have a career, that garbage like "Epic Movie" gets made, and that pan'n'scan DVD's still sell.
See, my wording was right. I am vindicated. *cough*
Goddamit, I hate it when I make that Affect/Effect mistake. ARGHHH! I'm usually just as picky but occasionally under the influence of prescription painkillers, sleep deprivation etc... One slips through. (As the actress said to the bishop.)
Clearly you have never worked retail and dealt with these people.
I'd rather be a pretentious twat than one of... THEM.
I said All the consumer sees is the movies are more expensive and in pretty blue boxes.
So that's what I just said. Now can you say "Polly want a cracker"?
Yes, but they don't do they. You're seriously overestimating the average consumer. "Disk go in here? Disk play." That's the mentality. I hang out on a lot of forums that deal with Blu-Ray and I've not seen a single complaint about DRM, because the disks just play, just like DVD (ARCOS protected titles not withstanding.) DRM is irrelevant to 99.999% of Blu-Ray owners because it doesn't effect them.
I think it's more a case of lack of reason to upgrade. When DVD came out I was really excited as it was a huge quality leap, plus you got documentaries, commentary etc... It was a MASSIVE leap, especially if you're a movie geek. DVD to Blu-Ray is a picture and audio upgrade which you can't really notice without a 40"+ TV and a 5.1 surround system. The regular consumer, the idiot who buys "Fullscreen" over widescreen gets very little benefit from Blu-Ray over DVD. All the consumer sees is the movies are more expensive and in pretty blue boxes. I see DVD's flying off the shelves in stores, but I don't think I've yet seen anyone buying a Blu-Ray release. (PS3 titles not withstanding.) This is just from the many hours I spend feeding my DVD habit and browsing.
Blu-Ray will most likely be these decades Laserdisc. A niche market for home theatre geeks.
Well Sony are the makers of Securom, and also made a DRM for DVD's (ARCOS) that rendered the disks unplayable on their own devices. I bought a movie with ARCOS for my nephews and it wouldn't play. I had to take said DVD and make a rip of it purely so they could watch the movie I bought for them on their Sony DVD player.
So crap like this no longer surprises me and is why, despite being a huge Metal Gear and Gran Turismo fan, I will not be buying a PS3.
So what you're saying is your company is full of wankers then.
I didn't say I didn't GET Seinfeld. I said I didn't get why it was such a big deal.
And I think the reason I much preferred Larry was the sundry characters were better (Paula in particular), and the show, due to where it aired, was more adult and realistic.
Scrubs doesn't have one either. Though it's supposedly moving to ABC, and given what those asshats foisted on Sports Night (a laugh track which STILL lives on on the DVD) I'm sure they'll add one.
Why would anyone WANT to run Aero though? I mean yeah, it looks nice, but it adds absolutely zero functionality. I'm sticking with XP until the very end, just like I did with Win 95. (Though that was more laziness than a conscious decision.) I have no interest heading into Vista's DRM infested nightmare. Fuck it. I figure XP probably has a good 2-3 years left. Game companies in the majority of cases aren't going to be dumb enough to go DX10 only, meaning gaming won't be an issue. And I figure by the time XP is killed off, Vista's replacement will have been rushed to market and hopefully won't be such a pile of shite.
Oh well played, sir. Well played.
Glad the ads are dead. There's "cool" surreal. (See: Rutger Hauer Guinness commercials in the late 80's and early 90's) Then there is utterly retarded. That was these.
I never got "Seinfeld" either. I saw a few episodes and it was okay I guess, but I never understood why it became so huge as it wasn't that funny. "No soup for you." Indeed.
Give me "Larry Sanders" any day over that.
So you could care less? How much less could you care? Since clearly you care more than the minimum you could care, because you've clearly said you COULD care less. Please enlighten us as to how much less you could care.
And this is a fucking awful idea. Without spoiling the last book, doesn't it have a fairly conclusive and rather final ending?
A few years ago? You still get that now. *cough*Stalker:ClearSkies*cough*
I loathe that damn word, "monetize". The software industry is without a doubt the greediest industry in the world. I mean the movie industry have tried, with DIVX, to make you pay every time you watch a movie, but that failed miserably.
The software industry, though, has a customer base largely filled with suckers who pay for an account on an online service, and who then pay for content that should have been in the game in the first place in many cases. Almost the entire industry is fueled by greed, treats their customers like thieves with increasingly intrusive and restrictive DRM, and comes up with more and more ways to fleece the consumer.
Valve have the right idea. Treat the customers decently. The content updates for TF2, they've already said they're being forced to charge for them on the Xbox even though they don't want too. The PC versions will remain free, as Valve believe in not fleecing their customers. Same goes for Stardock. Galactic Civilizations 2 has received two expansions, but they've added SO much stuff for free. The upcoming 2.0 patch includes some fairly major additions. Far beyond what you could ever expect for free from the likes of Activision.
It's nice to know there are a few holdouts who seem to believe in putting the experience and the games above the financial avarice of the likes of Activision and EA.
what's a few more inches?
The difference between "Is it in yet?" and "Dear god you're ripping me in two!"
As Windows annoyances go, EULA's are fairly low down on the list for most people.