Max Payne made a profit ten years ago. Any sale now above the cost of hosting the download and adding a store entry/discount ad is pure profit. Even without that it helps the network effect - i log into steam to play max payne, it increases the chance of further future sales.
I suspect there's some serious data mining and analysis happening server-side to understand steam customer behaviours and maximise revenue. Often the impressively cheap game offer is the max revenue opportunity, and that's likely to continue
I don't know what kind of equipment you're watching on, but the picture quality is MUCH better, as is audio quality with a Dolby TrueHD or DTS MA.
I'm watching on a 5 speaker CRT. Oh, and I can't turn the sound up because the neighbours complain. And I'm deaf.
So picture quality is no different, audio quality is not discernably better.
Once you get used to Blu-Rays on a decent quality TV, there is no going back to DVD. It feels like going back to VHS.
I still own/watch VHS. It's perfectly fine. Shit, half the TV I watch is re-transmitted within my house through an analogue transmitter. The other half is watched on a 20" widescreen LCD from 12 feet away. You tell me how Blu-Ray's going to be magically superior on that.
Trust me, if I want near theatre quality, I'll buy a fucking projector.
hmm. People were selling HDTVs 10 years ago? LCD/Plasma screens were only just starting to drop down to sensible prices, HDTV wasn't being marketed at all.
If you wait though, Steam will drop the price on a game for a weekend, a week, or sometimes just a day. It takes patience and being logged on, but you can pick up enough bargains to keep you going.
E.g. Bioshock 2 is currently £14 - but it's been available at 50% in the past month, which brings it close to your $9 mark.
Last week I bought Max Payne and Max Payne 2 for a combined £2.50. Second hand on Amazon would've cost me £1.23... + £4.06 in delivery fees. Less convenient, higher price.
I would rather have a thriving second-hand market available too, but given the choice I'm finding Steam extremely convenient and (if you're patient) extremely good value for money.
And new PC games cost far less than new console games. And many PC gamers wait for the 75% off bargains on Steam (or equivalent reductions in first-sale prices).
PC gaming is actually pretty cheap these days, even if you're buying new release games.
IT department is a _SERVICE_ to others. Like cleaning ladies. So I appologize if it hurts your feelings, but IT guys should do everything possible to make their work INVISIBLE and non-DISRUPTIVE to others.
Almost. You forgot 'enable', 'optimise' and 'provide capabilities that nobody else can'.
If it means allowing somebody configuring their servers -- so be it.
Sorry, you're just incredibly naive. Just read the other posts here: What's running on that server. Who supports it. Is it correctly licenced. How is it kept maintained/patched. Has it been tested? Is it compliant with various network standards? How is it backed up? Does it need/have DR? Is it sufficiently secure? Will it scale to meet anticipated loads? Will it cause undue load on the network? Who are the users, and how do they access it? How are they configured on it? Who supports them?
They're pretty fucking basic questions, and answering them costs money in any organisation.
it should not cost him a single second of his time (including answering emails or taking it up the chain).
Sorry, he's going to answer all of those questions in less than a second? Naive..
How the fuck does outsourcing IT deal with the issue that some muppet has breached legal requirements and sidestepped IT controls that exist for good reason?
How does IT doing the minimum possible amount of checking constitute a failure in service provision, and why the fuck should we listen to a department head that's stupid enough to plug an unauthorised server into someone else's network?
Do you want your hospital IT network to be stable, all the time? Maybe testing stuff before plugging it in would make sense. Yes, testing costs money. Yes, it adds delays. Yes, it's fucking expensive when you just want iCal.
So buy a fucking blackberry, it's cheaper than subverting the IT networks just to support your gadget du jour.
This fire-the-bastard attitude is exactly what this fuckwit department head is likely to exhibit if his precious IT services fail because of rogue servers on the network.
Software development can be cheaper but often isn't. Sewing cheap clothes is clearly significantly cheaper. Many manufacturing activities are a lot cheaper.
Is it unfair? Yes, I get to buy a t-shirt for around ten minutes wages, and the shop I bought it from gets a 40% markup on it too. Meanwhile the person making it can't afford a computer..
Random girl in office: Anybody got an iPhone charger Me: here, try my Nokia one. Oh. Friend: here, try my HTC one. Oh. Friend2: here, try my Blackberry one. Oh. Friend3: how about my Sennheiser headset one. Oh.
All four of us can (and do) interchange chargers at will. They all use the same connector, they all operate within sufficiently close power input range, they all run happily from mains or a USB port..
4. They put DRM in there that stops me playing the game I paid good money for, and refuse to give me a refund.
And yes, I have been trying unsuccessfully to play Dragon Age: Origins since Saturday. Unsuccessful because EA and Bioware are collectively fraudulent cunts that will take your money and not provide the content you paid for.
If I hit Google to find out if game A is any good and find lots of reviews stating that it's a bugged shitless unplayable mess, or that its publisher has never successfully delivered a working game, I'm not going to buy game A.
At no point in the above paragraph did I pirate anything, yet the distributor's lost a sale anyway. Ho hum.
You got lucky, if you'd bought it on Saturday you'd have spent four days going "Why the fuck did I just waste $39 on this piece of shit?"
Heck, while I was there, I bought KOTOR1 for $10, a game that I had pirated years ago to see if I liked it, and I was 'eh', so I decided not to buy it.
Hang on? You bought a game you don't like because it was only $10? Hmm. Give me a minute, I need to go write some really bad $10 games...
I regularly take a snapshot of my Steam library contents. If Valve ever disable my Steam account I immediately bill them for the replacement cost of all of those games.
If they refuse, it goes to court.
Steam's store has a button marked "Purchase", not "Rent"..
DRM doesn't drive anyone to piracy, people use it as an excuse to steal.
I've bought 200 games in the last decade. Over 100 on Steam, dozens on CD/DVD. I mention this only to establish my general willingness to spend cash on gaming.
Recently I've been playing Dragon Age: Origins. Bought the Ultimate edition on Steam. What I didn't realise is that it checks EA servers to see whether the DLC is valid or not. Obviously it is valid, I bought the Ultimate edition..
The EA servers died on Saturday. Without those servers, I can't access that game content. The servers were dead Sunday. The servers were dead Monday.
In other words, someone's sold me a game, which the publisher has unilaterally taken from me, without provocation, without justification, without reason. Whether it's through incompetence or malice, I am unable to enjoy the game that I bought.
EA refuse to refund me, as I didn't buy directly from them. I'm waiting for Steam's response to my refund request.
I fully expect Steam to decline to refund me. When they do, I will be hunting down a pirated version of the game. It's the only choice I have to play the game that I bought.
THE ONLY CHOICE.
Tell me again, how DRM doesn't drive people to piracy.
You say that.. I only know who Adele is because she's apparently had a number one album for a record length of time. Until she broke the record she'd had a number one album for weeks without me hearing of her.
It's not that I don't listen to new music, it's just that my new music gets filtered. So I do hear people like Lady Gaga (who is frankly fantastic to dance to) but not Adele or Justin Bieber. Who I have heard of, but only through commentary on his marketing rather than because of his music.
Then again, I made it through my teens hating most of the music hitting the charts. It's the other stuff that's good.
What if the weapon is, I don't know, a radar guided one.
Ooh, look! Your pretty laser just cooked a small school of herring. Meanwhile my small boat is either completing its attack run or getting the hell out of there. Either way I've lived a fuck of a lot longer than if I'd had no chaff.
What, you're going to aim the laser manually? Sure.
As someone diagnosed with ADHD long before it became trendy (i.e. mid 70s) please let me assure you that the text version is preferable.
I can and did skim-read the text version in seconds, giving me the information I wanted without slowing me down or distracting me from the other four things I'm doing.
Watching a video would've required my full attention.
people mocking french, were you americans. not rest of the world.
Actually we've been mocking the cheese-eating surrender monkeys since before I was born here. In Europe.
Frog taunting is a national pastime here.
Yes, it's potentially racist, and definitely xenophobic. No, it's not always justified. Yes, it's fun. No, I don't give a shit whether you like it or not.
Adding a user to a system so that they can log on and gain restricted access to it.
Before you tell me how easy that is from a command line, bear in mind your CLI using admin is now up against a minimum wage call centre employee.
Efficiency includes making shit easy for idiots.
Disclaimers: Most call centre employees I work with have a degree, and I have Cygwin installed on every Windows PC I use. I don't install it on my Linux boxen.
Slashdot Mirror
Max Payne made a profit ten years ago. Any sale now above the cost of hosting the download and adding a store entry/discount ad is pure profit. Even without that it helps the network effect - i log into steam to play max payne, it increases the chance of further future sales.
I suspect there's some serious data mining and analysis happening server-side to understand steam customer behaviours and maximise revenue. Often the impressively cheap game offer is the max revenue opportunity, and that's likely to continue
I don't know what kind of equipment you're watching on, but the picture quality is MUCH better, as is audio quality with a Dolby TrueHD or DTS MA.
I'm watching on a 5 speaker CRT. Oh, and I can't turn the sound up because the neighbours complain. And I'm deaf.
So picture quality is no different, audio quality is not discernably better.
Once you get used to Blu-Rays on a decent quality TV, there is no going back to DVD. It feels like going back to VHS.
I still own/watch VHS. It's perfectly fine. Shit, half the TV I watch is re-transmitted within my house through an analogue transmitter. The other half is watched on a 20" widescreen LCD from 12 feet away. You tell me how Blu-Ray's going to be magically superior on that.
Trust me, if I want near theatre quality, I'll buy a fucking projector.
You're in for a surprise if you try to play a DVD in the wrong region
People still buy single-region DVD players?
The £12 players available in the supermarket here support multiple regions.
hmm. People were selling HDTVs 10 years ago? LCD/Plasma screens were only just starting to drop down to sensible prices, HDTV wasn't being marketed at all.
General price, no, not that low.
If you wait though, Steam will drop the price on a game for a weekend, a week, or sometimes just a day. It takes patience and being logged on, but you can pick up enough bargains to keep you going.
E.g. Bioshock 2 is currently £14 - but it's been available at 50% in the past month, which brings it close to your $9 mark.
Last week I bought Max Payne and Max Payne 2 for a combined £2.50. Second hand on Amazon would've cost me £1.23... + £4.06 in delivery fees. Less convenient, higher price.
I would rather have a thriving second-hand market available too, but given the choice I'm finding Steam extremely convenient and (if you're patient) extremely good value for money.
sometimes you just need to read the damn license and use common sense.
Indeed. Please do.
But now the used PC game market is dead
And new PC games cost far less than new console games. And many PC gamers wait for the 75% off bargains on Steam (or equivalent reductions in first-sale prices).
PC gaming is actually pretty cheap these days, even if you're buying new release games.
IT department is a _SERVICE_ to others. Like cleaning ladies. So I appologize if it hurts your feelings, but IT guys should do everything possible to make their work INVISIBLE and non-DISRUPTIVE to others.
Almost. You forgot 'enable', 'optimise' and 'provide capabilities that nobody else can'.
If it means allowing somebody configuring their servers -- so be it.
Sorry, you're just incredibly naive. Just read the other posts here: What's running on that server. Who supports it. Is it correctly licenced. How is it kept maintained/patched. Has it been tested? Is it compliant with various network standards? How is it backed up? Does it need/have DR? Is it sufficiently secure? Will it scale to meet anticipated loads? Will it cause undue load on the network? Who are the users, and how do they access it? How are they configured on it? Who supports them?
They're pretty fucking basic questions, and answering them costs money in any organisation.
it should not cost him a single second of his time (including answering emails or taking it up the chain).
Sorry, he's going to answer all of those questions in less than a second? Naive..
Dude! Lighten up! He asked the IT for access rather than bull-headedly blazing ahead.
The only reason he asked IT for access was because they'd done their job properly and locked down that port on the firewall.
If they had a leaking network he'd have merrily exploited it and gone happily on his way without involving them.
All by itself, the very fucking answer why he should have gone to them in the first place.
How the fuck does outsourcing IT deal with the issue that some muppet has breached legal requirements and sidestepped IT controls that exist for good reason?
How does IT doing the minimum possible amount of checking constitute a failure in service provision, and why the fuck should we listen to a department head that's stupid enough to plug an unauthorised server into someone else's network?
Do you want your hospital IT network to be stable, all the time? Maybe testing stuff before plugging it in would make sense. Yes, testing costs money. Yes, it adds delays. Yes, it's fucking expensive when you just want iCal.
So buy a fucking blackberry, it's cheaper than subverting the IT networks just to support your gadget du jour.
This fire-the-bastard attitude is exactly what this fuckwit department head is likely to exhibit if his precious IT services fail because of rogue servers on the network.
Depends what you're outsourcing.
Software development can be cheaper but often isn't.
Sewing cheap clothes is clearly significantly cheaper.
Many manufacturing activities are a lot cheaper.
Is it unfair? Yes, I get to buy a t-shirt for around ten minutes wages, and the shop I bought it from gets a 40% markup on it too. Meanwhile the person making it can't afford a computer..
So far, by pissing off their customers.
Random girl in office: Anybody got an iPhone charger
Me: here, try my Nokia one. Oh.
Friend: here, try my HTC one. Oh.
Friend2: here, try my Blackberry one. Oh.
Friend3: how about my Sennheiser headset one. Oh.
All four of us can (and do) interchange chargers at will. They all use the same connector, they all operate within sufficiently close power input range, they all run happily from mains or a USB port..
But hey, Apple.
4. They put DRM in there that stops me playing the game I paid good money for, and refuse to give me a refund.
And yes, I have been trying unsuccessfully to play Dragon Age: Origins since Saturday. Unsuccessful because EA and Bioware are collectively fraudulent cunts that will take your money and not provide the content you paid for.
If I hit Google to find out if game A is any good and find lots of reviews stating that it's a bugged shitless unplayable mess, or that its publisher has never successfully delivered a working game, I'm not going to buy game A.
At no point in the above paragraph did I pirate anything, yet the distributor's lost a sale anyway. Ho hum.
I just bought Dragon Age 1, and, guess what? It still plays fine, and it came with the expansion and all the DLCs for $39.
Sure.. unless for some reason EA/Bioware fuck up the validation server:
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/58/index/7036701/1
You got lucky, if you'd bought it on Saturday you'd have spent four days going "Why the fuck did I just waste $39 on this piece of shit?"
Heck, while I was there, I bought KOTOR1 for $10, a game that I had pirated years ago to see if I liked it, and I was 'eh', so I decided not to buy it.
Hang on? You bought a game you don't like because it was only $10? Hmm. Give me a minute, I need to go write some really bad $10 games...
I regularly take a snapshot of my Steam library contents. If Valve ever disable my Steam account I immediately bill them for the replacement cost of all of those games.
If they refuse, it goes to court.
Steam's store has a button marked "Purchase", not "Rent"..
DRM doesn't drive anyone to piracy, people use it as an excuse to steal.
I've bought 200 games in the last decade. Over 100 on Steam, dozens on CD/DVD. I mention this only to establish my general willingness to spend cash on gaming.
Recently I've been playing Dragon Age: Origins. Bought the Ultimate edition on Steam. What I didn't realise is that it checks EA servers to see whether the DLC is valid or not. Obviously it is valid, I bought the Ultimate edition..
The EA servers died on Saturday. Without those servers, I can't access that game content.
The servers were dead Sunday.
The servers were dead Monday.
In other words, someone's sold me a game, which the publisher has unilaterally taken from me, without provocation, without justification, without reason. Whether it's through incompetence or malice, I am unable to enjoy the game that I bought.
EA refuse to refund me, as I didn't buy directly from them. I'm waiting for Steam's response to my refund request.
I fully expect Steam to decline to refund me. When they do, I will be hunting down a pirated version of the game. It's the only choice I have to play the game that I bought.
THE ONLY CHOICE.
Tell me again, how DRM doesn't drive people to piracy.
Actually yeah, there are many forms of financial exchange that don't include cold hard cash.
Let me guess, you hate that phrase too?
You say that.. I only know who Adele is because she's apparently had a number one album for a record length of time. Until she broke the record she'd had a number one album for weeks without me hearing of her.
It's not that I don't listen to new music, it's just that my new music gets filtered. So I do hear people like Lady Gaga (who is frankly fantastic to dance to) but not Adele or Justin Bieber. Who I have heard of, but only through commentary on his marketing rather than because of his music.
Then again, I made it through my teens hating most of the music hitting the charts. It's the other stuff that's good.
The defense being "It's not an alcohol container, it's a tea container."
What if the weapon is, I don't know, a radar guided one.
Ooh, look! Your pretty laser just cooked a small school of herring. Meanwhile my small boat is either completing its attack run or getting the hell out of there. Either way I've lived a fuck of a lot longer than if I'd had no chaff.
What, you're going to aim the laser manually? Sure.
As someone diagnosed with ADHD long before it became trendy (i.e. mid 70s) please let me assure you that the text version is preferable.
I can and did skim-read the text version in seconds, giving me the information I wanted without slowing me down or distracting me from the other four things I'm doing.
Watching a video would've required my full attention.
people mocking french, were you americans. not rest of the world.
Actually we've been mocking the cheese-eating surrender monkeys since before I was born here. In Europe.
Frog taunting is a national pastime here.
Yes, it's potentially racist, and definitely xenophobic. No, it's not always justified. Yes, it's fun. No, I don't give a shit whether you like it or not.
Android phones aren't inherently closed. My android phone lets me install whatever the hell I want on it.
You could argue that I didn't have root on it, but I don't have root on my steam iron either.
I'd prefer root, and there are Android distributions which give you root, so the issue is the specific device/carrier combination, not the OS.
Adding a user to a system so that they can log on and gain restricted access to it.
Before you tell me how easy that is from a command line, bear in mind your CLI using admin is now up against a minimum wage call centre employee.
Efficiency includes making shit easy for idiots.
Disclaimers: Most call centre employees I work with have a degree, and I have Cygwin installed on every Windows PC I use. I don't install it on my Linux boxen.