Pricewatch!

You have to go where the potential user base is. If this means leaving the most conservative customers behind,

But this is already happening in the RPG genre as well right now ! It's everywhere !

What I see is that more conservative players are left behing by "the industry", which sets sail and moves off into an unknown future/sea ... There is a reason why people were so much looking forward to King's Bounty, for example ! Or to the last HOMM game ! Because no-one does these kinds of games anymore !

In my opinion there should be balance - and games for everyone.

What I see instead is that games are made so that the only ones who are going to like it are the ... "non-conservative" (as the opposite to the proposed "conservative) players.

It's like ... It is SOOO uncool to havbe offline games nowadays ! You are a Gruftie if you don't play online games ! And Steam as such is SOOO über-cool !

Yes, I read these comments. In the commentary functions of both PC Games and Gamestar there are people begging for games to be released on Steam ! They are begging for DLCs !

And yes, I feel like ... being locked out. The restaurant or cub I used to go into and which I had been loving for almost 20 years now closes its doors behind me. They had been throwing me out - in a figurative sense (I mean the gaming business, of course), because I'm "too old for rock & roll, too young to die" ! They pushed me out, let me stand in the cold and locked the door behind me. Time to get home.

Okay, if they don't want me as a customer - that's fine ! I have enough other hobbies I can go into !

But I really don't like to be treated like a ... "non-customer". Or, as someone from "PC Gamer" put it, "But PC gamers work hard for their money, too, and they deserve full-featured games that let them have the best experiences possible on their chosen platform. They deserve a publisher that cares more about its customers than its resentments."

Getting ... "alienated" like that just is like saying to me : "Droids. We don't serve their kinds here."
 
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But who would buy an adventure game with German voices and EFIGS subtitles?

Actually, in the official Drakensang there were in fact a few people who wanted that. Because they thought that the English voices sounded ... not optimal.
 
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... And the biggest question still is not solved : Why must a retail game require Steam ?
 
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In order to kill the second hand market, is probably the correct answer. Everyone knows that it won't kill piracy, but you can't sell a game that requires a steam key.
 
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In order to kill the second hand market, is probably the correct answer. Everyone knows that it won't kill piracy, but you can't sell a game that requires a steam key.

That isnt true ... Steam HAS had a huge impact on oiracy, has allowed massive user communities, made things more convenient for users, and much more. The price is the loss of trade/sale. This is different than folks like EA and UBI and Epic who basically equate used ga,e sales and piracy.
 
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so… does anybody have the 411 on some good deals? ='.'=

Slow week. ;)

Gamersgate is having a sale on sci-fi/space games. Sword of the Stars 1&2, all Evochron titles, Space Rangers 1&2, Darkstar One, Master of Orion titles, Genesis Rising, Dark Horizon, etc., are all 30-70% off their regular prices.
 
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Well Space Rangers 2 Reboot is only $3.38 on Gamer's Gate. That's practically free and I've heard great things about it. I bought it. Not sure if it needs the non-reboot, but I have it. :)

Also lots of Painkiller packages are on sale there as well.

EDIT: JDR beat me to it. :p
 
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That isnt true … Steam HAS had a huge impact on oiracy, has allowed massive user communities, made things more convenient for users, and much more. The price is the loss of trade/sale. This is different than folks like EA and UBI and Epic who basically equate used ga,e sales and piracy.
But why can't they offer both a non-steam and a steam version then? I can understand why Valve wants all their games on steam, they do after all want people to get steam, but for other companies it should not really matter if Steam, Gamer's Gate, Greenman Gaming, Origin or retail is the dominant force, or if you have to lock your game to a certain service or not. They get their games sold, and the gaming market is a finite market. For a smaller company, getting added to steam can be a huge help, as they get some extra promotion, but for a company that is able to market its own games properly, that should not be a huge deal. And how is steam affecting piracy? From what I've heard steam-only games are still getting pirated to the same extent as non-steam games.
I still believe that one of the main reasons why companies are linking their retail copies to steam is because it prevents re-sale of that game (with digital distribution that is not a problem, you can sell your entire account, but not individual games)
 
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I still believe that one of the main reasons why companies are linking their retail copies to steam is because it prevents re-sale of that game

That is absolutely one of the main reasons. Anyone who believes otherwise is being naive.

Steam only delays a game from getting cracked and pirated by a few days at the most.
 
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(with digital distribution that is not a problem, you can sell your entire account, but not individual games)

If you are caught selling your account you lose *everything*. It is policy for every DD vendor ... they search AND enforce it.
 
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That is absolutely one of the main reasons. Anyone who believes otherwise is being naive.

Steam only delays a game from getting cracked and pirated by a few days at the most.

Sure - EVERY DRM gets cracked, but in terms of impact it has a huge impact compared to a game like Crysis.

Also, not denying that the publishers want to kill 2nd hand sales - what I am saying is that for Valve that wasn't originally the primary goal ... but it sure helps being others into the fold.
 
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Gamersgate is having a sale on sci-fi/space games. Sword of the Stars 1&2, all Evochron titles, Space Rangers 1&2, Darkstar One, Master of Orion titles, Genesis Rising, Dark Horizon, etc., are all 30-70% off their regular prices.

Also Deus Ex: Human Revolution for $7.49! That's the best price I've seen.
 
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That is absolutely one of the main reasons. Anyone who believes otherwise is being naive.

Steam only delays a game from getting cracked and pirated by a few days at the most.

Stopping the large-scale, organized sale of used games (known collectively as "GameStop", lest we kid ourselves) seems on balance to be a very good thing indeed, but it's also worth mentioning that delaying a game from getting cracked a few days is much more important than seems to be implied by the quote above. The desire to get a game as early as possible is one of the driving forces behind the whole piracy industry, and effectively making the pirated releases day-and-date with the legal copies has been a significant recent development which would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
 
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What I don't quite get is that companies are trying to stop Gamestop - a company which has (at least here) NEVER sold used PC games within the last years !

They aren't selling used PC games anymore. They have taken them out, I was told, several years ago.

So, why are they going to hinder a company from selling used games that isn't selling used games ?
 
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Because Gamestop's whole business is based on selling used console games. The UK and NA are console territories. Gamestop is selling a new game for, say, 50$ and the same game used for 45$. They charge the publishers for shelf space, as every chain does, and then use every opportunity to push used games over new.
 
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I don't know how it is in the rest of the world, but if it is anything like here, then I don't understand why people even buy their (used) games at GameStop. Not when I can buy the same games new somewhere else, for less.

And in regards to steam & piracy, I thought whatever system steam uses had been beaten a long time ago. Heck, Skyrim was on torrent sites BEFORE it had been officially released.
 
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