Valve Is Killing The PC Market Apparently....

[OmegaFenix]

According to a report on trade site MCV, two "big-name digital retailers" for the PC market are staring down the barrel of financial ruin, while two major British retailers are reportedly considering a ban on games that include Steam integration.

"Publishers don't give a shit, they don't care what happens to the customer. Which is the crucial point, because Steam do," the director of "a fledgling Steam rival" told the site. A fledgling rival, eh? Direct2Drive, perhaps? GamersGate? Impulse, maybe?

The criticism of Steam - an online multiplayer platform and digital shopfront run by Half-Life developers Valve - doesn't stop there.

"I've fought hard for my customer, and never before have I had to give my customers away. Steam is killing the PC market and it is no wonder digital retailers are failing", the unnamed director continues.

"Steam is locking down the market."

See, here's where these digital competitors have it wrong. Yes, it's hardly an ideal set of circumstances that a single company is effectively taking over the mainstream PC downloadable market. More competition would be good for everyone. But there's a reason Steam is so dominant: it's the only service that's doing things right.

The sooner competing services quit bitching and start putting together comparable platforms where you can shop, play and communicate as easily as you can on Steam, the sooner we'll take their criticisms as something more than just sour grapes.

As for the bricks-and-mortar retailers, there are reportedly fears that selling boxed copies of games that include mandatory Steam integration is only going to encourage customers to not only shop online in the future, but shop with Steam, which is a competitor to these own retailer's digital shopfront ambitions.

As a result of this, "two major retailers" in the UK are threatening publishers that they will cease stocking games that include such a requirement in any form.

Source

Agree with Kotaku here, Steam is the only one doing it right, MS screwed their chance with the shamble that was Gamers for Windows Live and there is no other real competition for it.

 

[Crzwaco]

Games for windows live really suck its like they tried the xbox thing on pc.But then again its pretty new and we all agree that steam was shit in the beginning day's but these day's its top notch still need a lot of improvement but its stable.

 

[Necuno]

Games for windows live really suck its like they tried the xbox thing on pc.But then again its pretty new and we all agree that steam was shit in the beginning day's but these day's its top notch still need a lot of improvement but its stable.

exactly, and thank your fellow pc pirate for steam.

 

[Stefan9]

Right the platform that grew 178% last year and has grown for 6 years straight is the death of pc gaming...Personally I prefer steam as platform because of its integration, gfwli is just trash I try to avoid games that use it.

Have used gamersgate and gog as well and never had any issues. Don't like impulse and d2d because most of their games is restricted to only US users. If you want to keep in the digital world you need to insure that as many titles as possible is available for all of the regions. Steam and gamersgate are much better with this.

 

[czc]

Ever since I got steam I have not pirated a single game, true story. And then I only pirated age of kings until I could buy a copy in the shop.


Its not dead, just creating a monster.

 

[smokey]

Sour grapes, plain and simple. I never wanted to install Steam on my PC because it constantly crashed when I used it before... but since I was enticed by Alien Swarm I have gotten my sister and brother to make an account and we've bought quite a few games. I mean how can you say no to KOTOR for R35? I really hope major retailers in the UK and US ditch Steam titles. It will just force a showdown that will end badly for them. The Steam machine just keeps rolling on...

 

[James]

Haha, retail stores don't get it. They won't carry Steam games because they are afraid that people will rather buy the game on Steam. What do they think will happen if they don't carry the game at all?

@ Pr⊕phet: It's not like piracy was the reason that Steam was developed. You can still easily get pirated Steam games anyway.

 

[Raven Gold]

My biggest issue with steam is that it's horribly unreliable with offline functionality, one tiny little glitch and it's useless.

 

[Crzwaco]

My biggest issue with steam is that it's horribly unreliable with offline functionality, one tiny little glitch and it's useless.

As long as you save your details there won't be a problem its when you don't save your details that you can't do nothing.

 

[Necuno]

@ Pr⊕phet: It's not like piracy was the reason that Steam was developed. You can still easily get pirated Steam games anyway.

haaai nooit wie sou dit nou kon raai .

steam is partly a piracy deterrent, it's one of the reason and i've never said it's the only reason. why do you think so many games use steam works these days ?, but um thanks... i lol'ed when i read your reply.

Right the platform that grew 178% last year and has grown for 6 years straight is the death of pc gaming...Personally I prefer steam as platform because of its integration, gfwli is just trash I try to avoid games that use it.

Have used gamersgate and gog as well and never had any issues. Don't like impulse and d2d because most of their games is restricted to only US users. If you want to keep in the digital world you need to insure that as many titles as possible is available for all of the regions. Steam and gamersgate are much better with this.

i've bought 4 or 5 games on physical media this whole year so far as to rest is just digital distro because of the ease of it.

Ever since I got steam I have not pirated a single game, true story. And then I only pirated age of kings until I could buy a copy in the shop.

that and, it becomes less when you actually have pay to afford it.

My biggest issue with steam is that it's horribly unreliable with offline functionality, one tiny little glitch and it's useless.

As long as you save your details there won't be a problem its when you don't save your details that you can't do nothing.

i've gotten the one instance where i had no internet for about 2 months and somewhere along the line steam decided it won't launch any more in offline mode and must update now. needless to say, i just couldn't play my steam games and went over to my console till i got access again.

 

[James]

I also hate how Steam decides that Friday is the best day to roll out gigantic game updates. Countless times my weekend gaming plans have been thwarted because of this ;_;

 

[James]

haaai nooit wie sou dit nou kon raai .

steam is partly a piracy deterrent, it's one of the reason and i've never said it's the only reason. why do you think so many games use steam works these days ?, but um thanks... i lol'ed when i read your reply.

Of course it's a piracy deterrent, much like a solid moral compass and strong ethics are also a piracy deterrent. I'm just saying that I reckon Steamworks DRM is just a natural element to the digital distribution platform (much like meat-sweats and regret are a natural element to eating an entire family bucket of KFC by yourself) and not the reason it was developed in the first place.

Looking at other implementations of DRM (Ubisoft's online verification fiasco, Starforce, etc), Steam is probably one of the most user friendly systems (random crashes and giant patch Friday's aside). Plus it lets you collect all your games into one accessible digital distribution platform where you can always retrieve them. Props to Valve for this one

 

[Crzwaco]

I also hate how Steam decides that Friday is the best day to roll out gigantic game updates. Countless times my weekend gaming plans have been thwarted because of this ;_;

Yeah wtf is up with 2 gig updates for left for dead each friday now!!!

 

[Necuno]

/informs james of tag fail and that the internet might implode

 

[Necuno]

Yeah wtf is up with 2 gig updates for left for dead each friday now!!!

2 gig for the world (usa) speed is like nothing. *shrugs* i suppose we would be seeing more and more of large (and larger) updates while we are still at dark ages line speeds.

haven't got any feed notices for l4d2 updates. lets hope there is none tonight

 

[sycogrim]

I think steam is the best thing that has happened to PC Gamers, because think about it NO ONE likes DRM it's a bunch of bullsh!t and secondly you can store your games on there for as long as you want.

PC games will never die and I reckon a partial cause of that is thanks to steam!! I think without them the PC game industry would be chaos on it's own, worse than it actually is now.

 

[DenSweeP]

Steam is good and well when it works. And yes, the specials are cool. And now you never need to worry about scratched/lost or stolen discs. But I still prefer to go and buy the box with the disc when I can. Just feels more natural.

What I do wish they would drop is this reliance of having to connect to steam before you can play COD or similar. Because when you lose connection to Steam, games kaks also. Or my favourite is when you wanna play SP game and it says game is currently unavailable, try again later. FUCK OFF AND DIE STEAM!!! And don't tell me I must do this or that and all will be cool. Bullshit. I bought it, installed it and it's on my PC. Why must I do anything more than double click on the icon?

Another thing, it is xtremely annoying to get home and there are 17 234 invites to play COD:MW2. Fuck sakes, if I haven't joined you or played the game in over 6 months, take a hint? Can steam not disable that somehow? It gets extremely annoying. Not everyone is still in school or sitting at home everyday.

Yeah, I'm ranting a bit, but it's friday morning and I want to vent before weekend starts! AND, can all the people who have these fucked up Steam names ^3D^2e etc please just be normal and change it! FFS. The whole colour name thing in MW2 was over like 5 years ago! How old are you? Really? If you don't change it, I gonna delete the shit, cause I really couldn't be bothered to try and decipher kak like ^3I^8'^1m^6a^1I^9d^1i^4o^0t

Ahh, feel a bit better.

 

[James]

What I do wish they would drop is this reliance of having to connect to steam before you can play COD or similar. Because when you lose connection to Steam, games kaks also. Or my favourite is when you wanna play SP game and it says game is currently unavailable, try again later. FUCK OFF AND DIE STEAM!!! And don't tell me I must do this or that and all will be cool. Bullshit. I bought it, installed it and it's on my PC. Why must I do anything more than double click on the icon?

This also drives me insane. Having to micromanage your games and be paranoid about automatic updates is a huge annoyance. Sometimes you just want to dive in to your SP game and not have to worry about 1 gig update that rectifies a small insignificant bug

 

[Terak]

Another thing, it is xtremely annoying to get home and there are 17 234 invites to play COD:MW2. Fuck sakes, if I haven't joined you or played the game in over 6 months, take a hint? Can steam not disable that somehow? It gets extremely annoying. Not everyone is still in school or sitting at home everyday.

It's called deleting friends .

I agree though, Steam is the best thing that has happened to PC gaming. In the beginning I hated it because I had no stable internet (500MB 3G). But now I love it. The only thing that makes me sad is the decreasing ability to play games via LAN. Every person has to have their own account and what now. Quite annoying.

 

[sycogrim]

Yeah, I'm ranting a bit, but it's friday morning and I want to vent before weekend starts! AND, can all the people who have these fucked up Steam names ^3D^2e etc please just be normal and change it! FFS. The whole colour name thing in MW2 was over like 5 years ago! How old are you? Really? If you don't change it, I gonna delete the shit, cause I really couldn't be bothered to try and decipher kak like ^3I^8'^1m^6a^1I^9d^1i^4o^0t

Ahh, feel a bit better.

Ok there I know ur pointing fingers at me lmao I am one of them culprits and I know its annoying I was just doing it for MW2