Steam cashes in on better gaming experience

prices not being the same for everyone. A game that's 20 dollars in the US is 20 euros over here in Europe, which is not really the same.

Steam is DRM, it limits your access more then other DRM scheme's.
(It's not as bad as securom)

Biggest problem i have with steam is, it limits access to your games, having every game tied to one account that only one person can be logged into is a bad idea.

I don't like it. More greed from Steam to the 360 and so on. They sell you an incomplete game then afterwards try to sell you all these add ons. I don't buy into it and won't. I would rather wait and pick a game up down the road completed. Game of the editions come to mind and so on.
I mean come on, pay $1.99 extra here and there for new armor and so on. It's like buyiung a car then afterwards they sell you the rear view mirror.

So..whatever happened to that "Google buying valve any second now" which Charlie reported on back in 2008.. still hasn't happened, has it? Tsk tsk

I have not once had to pay for an update or add-on to a steam game. I own close to 20 games on steam and every one of them has had free updates at one point.

Only allowing each account to log in and play at a time is the same way the Xbox 360, and PS3 work. This is DRM done right.

Did steam write this article? or are you a pr bunnie? Come on, when you put your game on steam its not as efficient they make it out to be. I will say it again, i had a 16/2 meg connection and i was downloading at 200k from them, and multiple downloads get queued. Also the biggest problem to them is pac steam. Once steam gets cracked, then all the pirates have access to the game they wanted and games they would have not even tried. But since steam is already cracked, you can go ahead and try all the games you want. I swear the inq is loosing it, you guys could do some real journalism. Kinda like the nvidia thing, o wait no thats not real either.

I've been using steam since 2003 when it first came out. I love the fact that its a great system, stores all your games your purchased on steam so you can always download them repeatedly for free, the downloads are very fast, and I always get automatic updates. The people who really hate steam are the pirates, IMHO.

I too own quite a few games on steam (about 15 or so) but I refuse to use them now they have changed the pricing to Euros, as all they did was change the dollar sign for a Euro one. This meant a large price increase for customers in the Eurozone.

The upshot of this is they are doing exactly what Gabe Newell is talking about here: charging too much...

I still like the idea of Steam, but this is an obvious rip off, and won't help to stop the pirating of software.

I think there is a major point a few people are missing here.

Steam does work to stop piracy. ALL of the Steam games are multiplayer. Have you tried playing a HACK with your buddy at a LAN or online, you can't. Thats the point. You can play it by yourself, want to play it with your buddies, buy the copy. Thats the point.

I stand behind the try before I buy, if you enjoy the product, buy it.

I don't consider steam DRM. And since I'm very much against any form of restriction/rights "management" I think this is a prime example of why Steam is so popular with others who think the same way.

Thanks to steam I can quickly reinstall my games after a clean install of Windows, or if I'm using a different PC and want access to my games.

I can't play on more than one machine at a time, so the issue of having all the games linked to one account is not a problem for me. I can only imagine that would be an issue if you wanted to contravene the license agreement.

The prices aren't prohibitive, I don't have a disc I can lose, and I'm never without an internet connection. So all the common steam "problems" just don't apply to me.

And if I decide I want a new game, I can have a fully licensed legal copy in a few minutes without having to twitch a buttcheek.

It's just total convenience.

European Union E-commerce Directive 2002/38/EC, Regulation 792/2002 stipulates that all EU residents must pay a Value Added Tax (VAT) on electronically supplied services including online games. Steam is thus obligated to add a VAT on all payment transactions for customers living within the EU.

I love Steam, hardly ever buy games that I can't get through it these days.

I can get to games on any of my PC's by just signing into it (or even working in offline mode for some), and then if you ever need to reformat you can back up your steam files and don't have to worry about reinstalling every bloody game, just install Steam and you are done.

Don't understand how anyone can knock it. Unless you are pro-piracy of course.

Steam strikes a fair balance between publishers and gamers IMO, which is why it is so successful.

Now games grow and evolve with added content, new levels, new weapons, new characters and new features.

I've been playing community (free) content since Doom 1. Is the Inq really that out of touch? Fire your fact checker.

I purchased Daw of War 2, 2 days ago, because Valve said it was playable at that point, i purchased but had to wait 36 hours before i could play. To me that is dishonest Bullshit.

I fucking hate steam for doing shit like that, and then not offering a refund.

NO FUCKING REFUND even when they don't deliver the fucking game.

Bunch of fucking crooks.

I bought boxed Dawn of War 2 yesterday and Steam didn't let me play it because it was not yet "released". After that i had to wait few hours for client to actually download the game from Steam servers. Guess what, whole DVD from the boxed version game contains scripted install of Steam client, no game files whatsoever.

Luckily i have a flat ADSL subscription plan so i won't have to pay for downloading 4GB+ of game files (little less than 4 hr on 200kB/s download speed).

Of course, there is also that bullshit about price in euros being numerically same as price in USD. You can't justify that by EU VAT. Even if you count in pretty generous VAT increase from my country (22%), 50USD game doesn't turn into 50€ game.

Steam is DRM. Whenever I want to play a game I have to be connected to the net? No way! I am not going to buy Empire: Total War because the game has to be activated on Steam! I bought a single game on Steam, big mistake.
If you want fair rights, buy the games from GamersGate.com. Now I only buy from them, Matrix Games or brick and mortar.

I really do have to laugh at the muppets that reckon if you don't like Steam, you're pro-piracy. Dear oh dear.

I don't like piracy, nor do I use pirate software. I will always pay for the software I want but I simply will not buy a game that has SecuROM or other such abominable DRM implementations - I'll just do without.

Steam is the best DRM implementation so far - but it is still DRM. I've purchased a few games that I really love on it like Half Life 2 and the episode expansions.

I have two main gripes with Steam however: 1) Inability to play the single player games without an internet connection as and when I want (e.g. Half Life 2). 1) The dollar / euro price is absolute cockrot. If the VAT excuse is even remotely true, then their implementation is absolutely horrendous and does nothing but screw Euro customers.

If Steam ever manages to sort out the requirement for an internet connection on their single player games, it'll be a genuinely great fair-for-all system.

Regulary I get the "password incorrect" when trying to log on to BF2 mutliplayer. This isn't Steam, it's EA. And the password never ever changes, it's just lame EA server.

That's the risk when you rely on someone else's machine and internet connection. Steam appear to be better than EA.

I bought 1 game on Steam, Counter Strike. I found Steam ok, but all those slow speed download suppliers need to up their download rate to at least 10x what it is right now. Otherwise I can see plenty of people going for torrents.

Why pay out your hard earned money when you can get it faster and for free off a p2p?

Games are regularly over 5GB, and at 200KB/s that's just too much time doing nothing.

I tried WoW demo and that took something like 9GB total download over several days, a total f##king pain. And the people who make WoW, Blizzard, were making customers share out their uploads so that Blizzard didn't have to supply much of the download!

EA need to get their act together, BF2 can be unplayable for hours due to that "incorrect password" fake error. There are some right old fools in charge of customer satisfaction.

Summary - Greater bandwidth from these people taking our money, come on suppliers, get supplying! ;-)

'nuff said

I guess you're from Cro also ;) But man, boxed game that downloads?!?! Someone is going to get a spanking over the net...

Did you try to return the game?

After your currency experienced a major reality check, the actual difference between US and EU Steam prices is about 5 to 6%. Considering it's quite a bit more expensive to do business over there, be happy that you're not stuck paying 50 - 100% more, like you do with electronics.

Why is this such a big deal.
Frankly I don't like "Steam". The whole point of Steam is to piss off pirates which I get...but the consumer still gets ripped off due to the "DRM".
Unless "Steam" makes all it's games DRM free it will still be a failure in my book. I don't care if half the planet uses it or what not.

A similar service like Steam but without any DRM is "Impulse". "www.impulsedriven.com". Too bad half off the greedy developers don't put their games on there without DRM.

One more reason why pirates wont die.

Hello,

A couple of posters said that they have to be online to play single player games via Steam. That has not been the case for me; I very rarely connect to the Internet when playing a game on Steam. So far, I have not played a game that absolutely required it. Make sure Steam is not running and you’re not connected to the Internet, launch Steam and it tells you it cannot connect, click offline mode and off you go.

Also, Matt stated: “Biggest problem I have with steam is, it limits access to your games, having every game tied to one account that only one person can be logged into is a bad idea.”

Well, I’m not so sure. I can’t see a problem single player games run in offline mode. How would one copy of Steam know that another copy is installed on another PC using the same account? If you played in offline mode, then surely more than one person could play a single player game at the same time? I have not tried this myself, but I think it could work. If your talking about online games like Team Fortress, then I think that buying more than one copy is your only option. Personally, I think it’s a fair one too.

Things that could be improved?

Valve selling third party software that has additional DRM on the Steam install. I know Valve can’t do much about it and they do at least state when a game uses additional DRM. Publishers should piss off with additional crap that gets shoved onto my PC without my permission. Steam is all the DRM I want, you would sell more if you removed DRM from Steam versions of your software. I understand that software companies want to protect their product, but at least Steam is a way of doing it without silently installing a bunch of driver and windows services on my computer without my permission. They are not even removed when I uninstall the game. I purchased Galactic Civilisations II + Dark Avatar from Stardock mainly because of the fact they did not protect it. I’ve played it about five times but I don’t begrudge them a single penny because they had the balls to do something the major software houses would never do, treat me like a responsible adult.

Next, Steam is starting to get a bit bloated. Sure, social networking is a great thing for clans and such. Having the marketplace embedded in app is nice. A more modular design would be better though. I don’t need community functionality, so why can’t I disable or unload it? Sometimes I want to look at the store, other times I don’t. Why not load it on demand? I have Steam loaded at the moment, looking at the Store tab for X2: The Threat. Why should Steam need 110 threads to do that?

Pricing is a bit off kilter as well, Dawn of War II is currently 34.99 GBP, I’m pretty sure I can get it from PC World for the same price and not endure the download time.
I thought that Steam should be cheaper because there are no printing and boxing fees. The reality is that Valve offer a special price from time to time and demand goes up to the extent that you can’t download it. Games on demand as long as the demand is not too high. With the exception of the Half Life episodes, I now never pre-purchase either.

Pre-purchasing a game requires a gamble on the part of the purchaser that the software house will provide a bug free game that lives up to all the hype. For the consumer, I think that a pre-download with the price set at download time, followed by a purchase of an unlock would be farer. For example, you download a game, only to discover that the game is a bunch of pap that does not live up to the hype or that it does not work with your make of graphics card or something. You delete the content, no harm done. People rave about it, you purchase the product, you’re rewarded for downloading it before release because Valve’s servers are not as crippled by everyone downloading at once.

I just disconnected my connection, I open Steam and... I got the following message

Could not connect to the Steam Network

It appears that you are not curently connected to the Internet, or that your Internet connection is not configured correctly for Steam.

Either check your connection and click 'Retry', or start Steam in 'Offline Mode'.

There are those buttons.

After going offline mode I could open Half Life which is Single player game. I don't see what you're talking about.

If Steam where not to have any DRM then anyone could just buy a game, download it and spread it around which is not cool. They do this because you do what you're not supposed to be doing. You have your account, you can download and use it in your computer as many times you want, delete it and reinstall anytimes you want. erase and blow up your computer as many times you want. Move to the artic circle, buy a PC, log to your steam account and you have all the games you bought there to download again without the worrying of lost or damage disc. To me is perfect balance. And about the VAT thing, not only steam brand their prices 20 USD 20 Euro. Look at the price of the PS3, and a bunch of companies on the internet that do the same thing, Steam is just one of every company out there, blame your goverments, not a single company.

@Josh

http://finance.yahoo.com/currency-converter?amt=1&from=EUR&to=USD&submit=Convert#from=EUR;to=USD;amt=1

Check link for up-to-date currency exchange rate between EUR and the dollar.

Looks like it's back to school for someone.

We in the US don't pay tax on digitally distributed media. I'm assuming you already knew that.

Most people learn simple arithmetic by the age of 8 to 10. I see you haven't.

Current exchange rate 1 Euro : 1.28 USD

1 x 1.22 (VAT in the country mentioned in a previous post) = 1.22

1.28 - 1.22 = .06

.06/1.22 = 4.9%

(and I apologize, the absolute range would be about 4 to 10%, with the majority of Europe falling between 5 and 7%)

4 to 10% should read 2.4 to 10%

Piracy is real but not a real threat to any company. It comes with the property, if i drive a car so does the expense of keeping it on the road. Ive only heard of one company going out of business as a result of piracy, but that was before torrents. If a game is good, then even pirates will buy it. If they don have the money to buy it, then they wont. Piracy does not equal lost revenue. RIA has been making that case more and more true. If someone wants to pirate half life 2 on steam, they also get access to avant rising and at the same time the ship and a shit load of games. with out having to re crack every single game. You can see how that can become a real problem. All you punks that say "if i loose my cd", well guess what. Ive lost a lot of cd's before. And guess what, thanks to piracy i was able to re download a copy with a crack for my cd key that i keep at a safe place. Guess what i do now when i buy software? I don't use the cd!! I use a copy. Steam is just a vampire that places itself in between the consumer. Also you still have to activate the product at least once, even after you get it out of the box. And if you want to trade your cousin for a game you haven't played, then you're screwed. If you want to let someone borrow a game, then guess what youre screwed. And if you don't want to move a butt cheek then that's fine don't worry. They will do all the raping, you just have to sit there and take it..
in the...
butt...
cheek.

Steam sucks. End game.

The second time steam forcefully 'updated' a game to force ingame ads in it I knew enough: steam is bad news.
Not to mention other updates that mess up games but which you then can't uninstall.

Steam is called DRM because it takes control away from you the buyer.

I think this story is a lot less about Steam's functionality and more about how they have proven that "media" which is priced reasonably has a greater rate of acceptance and lower rate of pirating.

The idea is that if you make something valuable enough to steal then people will and if you price it as a commodity, people will purchase it like one.

Steam isn't perfect but they have me checking their home page all the time now to see what might be on sale. You can't beat the lure of a "bargain".

My major qualm is that their piracy check doesn't override the check of games they list for sale. For example, the idea of having to install 3 different services to play GTAIV from Steam is ridiculous. In fact, two is too much and while I purchased every version of GTA from the beginning, this abusive consumer tactic will likely force me to angrily pirate a copy until this is no longer a requirement. As far as I'm concerned, "Windows Live" has paid them for my copy.

As someone who has used steam since it first came out, i must say that steam rocks! I currently own 37 games on steam, and have spent close to $1,000 in steam alone. Valve has really hit the mark here. Fast downloads, the ability to access your account from anywhere, etc. PS to all of you flamers bangin' on steam. I'm not getting paid to write this. Steam deserves all of the praise and more. It's totally transforming the PC gaming landscape.

As someone who has used steam since it first came out, i must say that steam sucks! I currently own 0 games on steam, and have spent close to $0.00 in steam alone.Steam deserves all of the praise and more ... NOT!. It's totally transforming the PC gaming landscape ... FOR SOME RETARDS

1) Inability to transfer games between accounts. This is intended to kill the second hand games market, and I'm strongly against it for this reason.

2) Constant phone-homes required. Steam will refuse to launch games if you haven't allowed it to connect recently (~1 month, though it varies). This problem frequently hits my laptop.

3) Forced updating, and the inability to revert an update. This is especially a problem with Valve game updates, as they often break things. I was unable to play CS:S for about 3 months because of a bug, and had no way to undo the update.

And I'm ignoring the whole thing about the bugginess of the steam client, and the problems with authentication servers, and ...

I have also been using Steam since beta and I will never look back. The only problems I see are users! Nubs all your game's belong to us!
Yank!!

GBP

Steam - £34.99
Game.co.uk - £24.99 + code for some free in game content (and it was £2 or £3 cheaper from play.com)

gee, can you guess where i bought my copy?

change the prices and I'll change my supplier.

Why don't people realise that it is the publishers that sets the pricing of their games on Steam not Valve. It is also the publishers who control what regions they will release their games in via Steam.

You do know that when you play a game from Steam for the first time, it is playable on offline mode.

You just have to be connected to the internet for the first run.

How many other people out there have had their steam account hacked? Even though I dont even have it installed at the moment and a full scan has found no malware, i received 2 emails in quick succession stating my password and then my email address had been changed. The password I use is not what I would consider guessable (meaningless and Alpha-numeric) and I have certainly not given it to anyone.
Any system which allows the password and the email address to be changed so quickly without raising alarms is concerning, but the fact that it seems to take 4-5 days to get your account disabled is far more worrying. Look at the steam forums, there are lots of people in the same boat.

The worst part is i just bought dawn of war 2 the same day before getting the emails so cant even play it.