Risen 2 - Using Steamworks

[Eisberg]

Your source?

Seriously? They are not some independent developer who doesn't have the money to distribute in all forms. This is Deepsilver, have any of their new AAA games ever been digital distribution only, and only sold at one DD? It would make no business sense to to not distribute to the other 60-70% of the physical/DD customer base preference.

 

[Eisberg]

We're not calling it a monopoly. That would be stupid, because it isn't one.

It's BECOMING a monopoly, as far as I can see.

They don't have better overall value than other DD. That would be an objective statement, which would - at least - require everyone to agree.

I think GOG, Gamersgate, D2D ALL offer better value - because they're not intrusive pieces of shit - and they offer much better EU prices.



There IS no value unless you see and feel the value. I don't. I don't CARE about those services - and I'd rather be using free versions downloaded off the net that suit me. Just like I always did.

If YOU see the value that makes it all worthwhile - then great, but don't assume we all do.



I'd rather have pretty much anything but Steam. Also, it's not a reality unless we accept it as a reality.

Some people do that without putting up a fight, and that's on them.

Yes it was stated on this very thread that it was a Monopoly. And no, not everyone has to agree that is has the better over all value, to have the better overall value. And by your own submission, you said that Steam is becoming a monopoly, and considering they are not doing anything that is anti competitive, logic would dictate that Steam must have the better overall value if most customers prefer Steam over Direct2drive, Gamersgate, Amazon, ect. But yes you are right, value is subjective, but apparently the vast majority of Digital Distribution customers agree that Steam has the better over all value over the other DD.

 

[Eisberg]

I don't think it's paranoid.

It's not at all unprecedented that people have been banned for one reason or another, and whether or not the reasons were good - it's something to consider. It's one thing to ban people from having access to a service, it's quite another to ban them from playing games they've paid for.

I don't think it's fair to have all access to all games removed for, say, using a pirated version of Steam. Some people do that to get rid of the hassle of going "offline" and "online" and just avoiding the crappy client. I could see myself doing that, easy.

Wasn't it just recently someone got banned from a forum and all access to games was taken away? Not Valve-related - but it's relevant.

These things might not be particularly plausible TODAY - but things change, as people adapt to the new way of doing things.

I think people shrugging things like that off are being naive.

You also have a far greater chance of getting into a car accident, then to get your account banned. Going to work and back, I hear at the very least about 6 accidents a day on the traffic report on the radio, and there is about 800,000 in the metro area that I live, now compare that to what the 1 or 2 we hear about a year about someone of the 30,000,000 Steam subscribers. Yeah, there is a huge difference in chances of being in a car accident over getting the account banned. It is so rare that it is negligible, practically non existent chance of it happening. I have a higher chance of winning the State Lottery of $18,000,000 then to have my account banned. So shrugging things like this are not naive, it is not being paranoid of something that is practically non existent. I still drive my car, despite knowing there is a chance that I could get into an accident.

It was Bioware where a guy got banned from the forums, and it was a mistake that he lost his game access at the same time. He got his game access back. But that was 1 guy out of how many Bioware game owners?

 

[Eisberg]

Read your agreement then because they have the right to take away your games at any moment for any small rule break. Its not paranoia its fact. I had a friend gift a game overseas and according to them violated a rule and he lost access to his games.
Also have fun dealing with valve's customer service.

Be my guess and rent your games if you want since publishers love that idea.


As for windows 8 Microsoft already announced you will be able to play xbox games on it with a new service for the pc. Something like xbox live on the consoles. Of course you will have to pay for the service and games.

It is not against the rules to gift a game overseas. Over at Rage3d, we have people constantly gifting games overseas, and have been doing it for years now, and not one of them have been banned. I believe there are a few where most of their games were gifted from someone overseas. What ever reason your friend got banned, that was not the reason.

It is paranoia, despite there is a clause for it. Look at one of my responses above about the chances of it happening is practically non existent. Do you drive car? There are people who put more then $250,000 into a bank account, despite the fact that banks are only insured up to $250,000 if something goes wrong. People put money into stocks despite there is no guarantee they will not lose money. We take chances every day. So if you think that the chances of having your account banned is to high, then I hope you don't drive, or do anything else that has an even greater chance of something going wrong.

 

[holeraw]

Eisberg all you are saying is that it could be worse which noone denies and isn't a favorable argument anyway. Example:

You also have a far greater chance of getting into a car accident, then to get your account banned.

And you have a greater chance of getting into a car accident than dieing on a plane crash - therefore plane crashes are good and we all should be supporting and happy with them.

 

[Motoki]

I know this is not a popular opinion here but I like Steam. To the point where I prefer it now and in most cases only want to buy the Steam version of a game. I wasn't always that way though. It snuck up on my recently and I realized how many good aspects Steam has.

I used to dislike Steam not really because of experience with it but because I didn't like the idea of it. I bought New Vegas a while back from another retailer (Direct2Drive I think?) on sale and didn't read the fine print that it required Steam. I was annoyed but I went with it and played the game anyway. To my surprise, I found mods still worked and I modded the hell out of the game and it looks and plays much better. Steam never stopped this. I also noticed it grabbing patches. This was awesome for me. I didn't even have to hunt it down.

Then the Summer Sale came along. I got caught up in it and got some great deals. I grabbed the entire portfolio of Paradox Interactive and Square/Eidos plus a ton of indie games. I now have well over 100 games on Steam. I haven't played them all yet but I've at least tried out a fair bit. I can honestly say I have not had problems on any of them.

It's nice for me to have one portal of most of my games in one place. It's also a huge relief to not have to worry about patches and always know that I will have the latest version no matter what. There are still a few games I got elsewhere that I follow patches for, Witcher 2 for example, but there's just no way I could keep track of patches for 100+ games so I am glad I don't have to.

Cloud save in games that have it is a nice feature too. I have in the past lost a hard drive and lost saves with it. Yes it's my own dumb fault for not backing it up but it's nice not to have to worry about that.

Steam does a lot to promote indie games and I like this. I've found out about and bought a number of indie games that I'd otherwise probably never heard of.

Lastly, I actually like the games that require Steam because it means they will always have Steamworks no matter what retail outlet I buy them from. I now pretty much exclusively want my games in one place on Steam (with some exceptions like GOG for classics) but the games like New Vegas that have Steamworks built in can be purchased elsewhere and still work with Steam. This means more outlets to buy them from and compare prices to get the best deals. With other games I find I'll either pay a little more for the Steam version or just wait and hope for a Steam sale.

So yes, I'm a recent convert. I like Steam. That said, if you don't just get a crack. It's no different really than getting a crack for any other DRM. I always cracked my DRM in the past. There's nothing wrong with it if you own a game already to crack it.

 

[Eisberg]

Eisberg all you are saying is that it could be worse which noone denies and isn't a favorable argument anyway. Example:

And you have a greater chance of getting into a car accident than dieing on a plane crash - therefore plane crashes are good and we all should be supporting and happy with them.

/rolleyes We should be supportive and happy with Airplanes, but happy with crashes, seriously? That was a stupid argument and a far stretch of what I was saying.

The point is, people talk about "renting game, getting account banned, blah blah" like it is so common. That is a joke. Put some perspective on it, and realize that the chances of something happening is pretty close to non existent. We do things everyday that have a higher chance of bodily harm or damage to property, using Steam is no different. I am not going to treat gaming any different then anything else in my life, which is what people like the ones I have been responding to seem to be doing, treating gaming different then everything else in their life, otherwise they would quit driving and myriad of other things that have an even greater chance of something going wrong.

Really, people to stop using "renting game" as an argument against Steam or other forms of DRM, they need to come up with something with more substance then that, unless their live their life in the same way and being paranoid and not doing anything that has a greater chance of something going wrong, otherwise it makes them a hypocrite.

 

[DArtagnan]

I have several PC games that I now have to make a phone call to activate the game because I ran out of activations and no way to revoke activations. Yes, that is far more intrusive then Steamworks where there is no activation limit. It has also been proven that Securom causes performance issues, which as far as I can tell is the most used form of DRM. Tages has been proven to slowdown loading of a save game, which is another common DRM.

I'm talking about my own experiences. I've never used the phone to activate anything in my life.

Oh, and I've never had a performance issue due to any copy protection. Generally, I just crack the game if there's the potential for such an issue. Cracking Steam will mean I risk getting banned. Not for me.

As for your issues you had. You can get rid of that popup, it is optional. Steam takes a few seconds to log on for online mode. You are doing something wrong with the offline mode. I have a laptop that maybe gets on the internet 1 time every 3 or 4 months, so I play all my Steam games in offline mode. Plus there are many games that don't even need Steam to be running to play them, even though they were bought from Steam.

Great, but I don't have a laptop that I can play those games on. I'm not doing anything wrong with "go offline".

I don't care about games that don't need Steam in this case, as we're referring to those that use Steam as copy protection.

 

[DArtagnan]

You also have a far greater chance of getting into a car accident, then to get your account banned. Going to work and back, I hear at the very least about 6 accidents a day on the traffic report on the radio, and there is about 800,000 in the metro area that I live, now compare that to what the 1 or 2 we hear about a year about someone of the 30,000,000 Steam subscribers. Yeah, there is a huge difference in chances of being in a car accident over getting the account banned. It is so rare that it is negligible, practically non existent chance of it happening. I have a higher chance of winning the State Lottery of $18,000,000 then to have my account banned. So shrugging things like this are not naive, it is not being paranoid of something that is practically non existent. I still drive my car, despite knowing there is a chance that I could get into an accident.

I don't believe in chance. Things happen for a reason, and I've been in two car accidents already.

Your bullshit calculation of what's likely to happen is useless to me. If I happen to do something Valve doesn't approve of - they're entitled to ban me. That's not something that sits well with me, and it makes me very cautious when considering how many games I'll buy using Steamworks.

It was Bioware where a guy got banned from the forums, and it was a mistake that he lost his game access at the same time. He got his game access back. But that was 1 guy out of how many Bioware game owners?

That was something that got the public's attention, which simply proves the point that it can happen. If it happens just once - it's relevant because it's not a factor when you don't use Steam or similar "services".

If you think you're safe - then that's a "chance" YOU take.

 

[DArtagnan]

Yes it was stated on this very thread that it was a Monopoly. And no, not everyone has to agree that is has the better over all value, to have the better overall value. And by your own submission, you said that Steam is becoming a monopoly, and considering they are not doing anything that is anti competitive, logic would dictate that Steam must have the better overall value if most customers prefer Steam over Direct2drive, Gamersgate, Amazon, ect. But yes you are right, value is subjective, but apparently the vast majority of Digital Distribution customers agree that Steam has the better over all value over the other DD.

Yeah, and Avatar is a better movie than Godfather according to millions of people. Great.

I have zero interest in what customers agree to. I'm explaining why it's not attractive to me and so many others.

You need to study logic if you think that something is overall better because the majority think so. That means it's logical that the Earth is flat if you go back a few hundred years.

Let's just say I've learned what the value of the majority opinion generally is to me.

 

[DArtagnan]

Seriously? They are not some independent developer who doesn't have the money to distribute in all forms. This is Deepsilver, have any of their new AAA games ever been digital distribution only, and only sold at one DD? It would make no business sense to to not distribute to the other 60-70% of the physical/DD customer base preference.

Ah, so you don't actually know.

That means I can now expect you to take educated "guesses" and present them as certainties. Essentially, it means you're not trustworthy.

I don't expect them to use Steam exclusively - but since I can't be certain, I'm not going to say yes to Steam for Risen 2 until that time.

 

[holeraw]

Eisberg it seems to me that you are missing the point.
(You also misunderstood my post but never mind)

I don't like steam because I don't find it convenient for whatever reason.
Let's say, for the sake of the argument, one of my reasons is that I'm afraid that I might get banned by accident and lose access to my games.
I realize that that is highly unlikely, I realize that most don't care about that and some might even like it but I would like to have a right as a consumer to choose not to use that service.

Like choosing not to travel by plane because I'm afraid of a plane crash - I realize that my fear is irrational but I still reserve my right to choose to travel by train instead. (I'm lying - I like flying )

My problem here is that I'm not given the option to not use that service.


Yes, I could have stuck with a worse service than steam.
- I could be stuck with a worse airline or an incompetent pilot, or maybe we can say that a train is slower than a plane, therefore in that aspect worse, I can still choose it.

Yes, real problems in steam are rare.
- Plane crashes are also extremely rare, I can still choose not to fly.

etc.

It becomes more frustrating when I am given all these reasons that I might not care about.
Maybe I don't care for the comparability, comfort or whatever else steam offers, I just want to play the game.
- As I might not care for in-flight entertainment and meals, I just want to reach my destination.

 

[DArtagnan]

http://www.ghacks.net/2010/09/03/steam-mover-automated-tool-to-move-games-and-apps-to-other-drives/

That doesn't seem to be what I'm looking for.

Also, it's a complete joke that I have to look at third-party utilities when you're advertising the flexibility of Steam. Don't you see the irony and weakness of your position here?

 

[Kefka]

Dunno why so many developers keep spending so much money on attempts at blocking their game from being pirated. There has never been any DRM that has stopped a game from being pirated, slowed down by a few weeks yes, but its eventually cracked and distributed shortly there after.

More or less DRM just makes it more difficult and annoying for the legit consumer to enjoy their new game than not.

Eisberg: Maybe your 8 friends do that with DRM free games but I know many people who won't buy games with DRM or limit what they buy because of DRM. Which is a bigger loss in sales 8 people sharing one game or 20 people not buying the game at all. Anyone can come up with these statements so this is fundamentally useless as any kind of evidence either way.

I'm wondering how companies come up with the information you talk about. It obviously can't be from a study since there have been none from the gaming industry. The only other ways (since there isn't any real evidence) is that they used different forms of analysis to determine the financial gain for using DRM. There are many companies that rely on statistical analysis and trend analysis to make company decisions. The problem with this is that many companies are too reliant upon these but they are essentially fictional, and are the equivalent of ancient Greek people going to see an Oracle to tell their future. Besides that what other information could they have. They have information on sales for all DRMed games which some are successful and some are not and information on the hand full of non-DRMed games which some are successful and some are not. I don't see anything a developer or publisher could have that would withstand the burden of proof on whether DRM is useful for sales but maybe if they had a time machine that they could use to see what the sales are both ways they could.

PS. The sales for The Witcher 2 were 400,000 in the first week so I guess not everyone did what your friends did.

PPS. I was a little wrong about that article and it was actually about movie piracy and not general piracy like I thought it was. If you want to check out the article anyways it is here http://torrentfreak.com/suppressed-report-found-busted-pirate-site-users-were-good-consumers-110719/

PPPS. There was also a report that had similar results to the above made by the U.S. government.

Read the piracy article on tweakguides.com for a ton of sources showing the harm piracy causes and how DRM can help sales. The article is very indepth.

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

Let it be, Eisberg. They don't want to use steam and thats that. It has no effect on you or me or anything but their own shopping habits.

 

[DArtagnan]

Heavens be praised, GBG got it

 

[Eisberg]

That doesn't seem to be what I'm looking for.

Also, it's a complete joke that I have to look at third-party utilities when you're advertising the flexibility of Steam. Don't you see the irony and weakness of your position here?

That just makes it easier for all games. Most games you can simply move the games folder where ever you want without using a 3rd party tool. I have Oblivion GOTY edition which needs Steam to be running, I copy/pasted that folder from Steam to my other drive, and it works perfectly. Also, everything that tool does, you can do yourself just using features that Windows already has, it just makes it easier.

 

[DArtagnan]

That just makes it easier for all games. Most games you can simply move the games folder where ever you want without using a 3rd party tool. I have Oblivion GOTY edition which needs Steam to be running, I copy/pasted that folder from Steam to my other drive, and it works perfectly. Also, everything that tool does, you can do yourself just using features that Windows already has, it just makes it easier.

You don't seem to understand. If I don't use Steam, I can install games to any folder I please and I won't ever get into trouble. I haven't found a way to accomplish that within Steam - and that's a disadvantage to me that's quite significant. That's because I have several drives for games.

It's also a problem if you use SSD drives - because they tend to be small, and you can't be selective with Steam.

Now, if there's some third-party tool that will let Steam recognise multiple drives or install partitions for the game directory that's something - but it's still a major oversight for the service supposed to be friendly and flexible.

It's a collection of things that bother me, and not just one.

I know people don't seem to care about all the annoyances and bugs - but I do.

 

[Eisberg]

Read the piracy article on tweakguides.com for a ton of sources showing the harm piracy causes and how DRM can help sales. The article is very indepth.

Direct link to the article. http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html

It is a very good article, and yeah in depth.

 

[bemushroomed]

DRM definetely helps, i see it all the time on the "scene" forums i frequently vist, if a game isn't cracked for the first day or first few days, there's a lot of people there buying it instead. If it's not cracked for a whole week or sometimes more, then a lot more buys it.. For many it's very important to be able to play the game the minute it's out, it's also one of the reasons people even play cracked games, to be able to get it and finish it as fast as possible.