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Game Dev/Pubs - taking the piss


Bikerdude

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Masseffect 3 & Origin spyware

Dont know if you guys are aware of this -

http://youtu.be/Ri0vrJ-y2zM

Like others I have absolutely no intention of using origin due to its spyware-like scanning practices of your personal computer. Cutting storyline required content from the main game so the total price ends up being £54 (UK) or $80 (US) or $100 (AUS) - EA/Bioware can f**k right off! Yet again we have a perfect example of situation that harms the legitimate paying player forcing them to torrent a copy of either the missing DLC of the whole game.

 

I have absolutely no intention of using origin due to its spyware-like scanning practices of your personal computer

And here is another example of this activity - techspot article Edited by Bikerdude
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Dont know if you guys are aware of this -

 

Like others I have absolutely no intention of using origin due to its spyware-like scanning practices of your personal computer. Cutting storyline required content from the main game so the total price ends up being £54 (UK) or $80 (US) or $100 (AUS) - EA/Bioware can FUCK RIGHT OFF! Yet again we have a perfect example of situation that harms the legitimate paying player forcing them to torrent a copy of either the missing dlc of the whole game.

 

Too bad. People will have to wait for the game of the year edition, where they'll hopefully put in all or some of the DLC.

 

I just recently bought ME1 & ME2 from steam for less than twenty euros. Excellent games, and thus I got ME3 on my radar. Too bad they don't sell it on steam. That means I'll have to live without ME3, I suppose.

 

I've no intention of installing yet-another game delivery platform on my computer. Steam will have to suffice and if EA & Bioshock want to shoot themselves in the leg by limiting the game to their platform, then by all means. Their loss. It really is that simple. =)

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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I was really surprised when he mentioned the hour of entertainment in the demo + multiplayer. It is almost like they've caught up with the mid 1990s gaming scene. Looks like another publisher/developer I will stay away from.

 

My advice to you is to wait a few months until that particular game is no longer the flavor of the month, at which point you can get it for real cheap. It isn't like there are no other games to play in the meantime. I would also consider sending the developer a letter telling them why you didn't buy on release. Also, if the game turns out to be GOTY/exceptional quality, you may see a version that includes the bonus material.

 

"Yet again we have a perfect example of situation that harms the legitimate paying player...." That's what all these forced-online systems are about.

A. finding more ways to extract more nector from the honest person

B. take full control over how and when the paying victim (I mean customer) is allowed to use what they bought

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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And Valve's strategy is now leaning towards giving you most of the game for free, then charging you for extra useless content if you have to have it. And they're doing better than ever.

 

Interviews with Gabe Newell are pretty interesting. Steam tries to disuade studios from adding DLC but they won't argue to hard. They just point out what their studies show. DLC = more pirating plain and simple.

 

Now if our (US) govt. could figure this out. The drug war is just causing more of a problem than it solves by keeping harmless drugs like MaryJane illegal. It also makes people wnt to rebel and do it more just because they are told they can't.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Here's a legitimate question. It is obvious that these studios are trying so hard to crack down on used sales to pressure more people to get games on release... but the lifespan of a game is so short in the public eyes. Unless you're a hardcore fan, you're probably not going to be playing that game in a few years anymore. Sales will have tanked. So, if they get everyone to stop buying used and we all just wait until the game is old and bargain material, how have they won? What can they possibly do to stop this, other than removing a game from the market after a few months? "Either you buy my game for full price, or you don't ever get to play it". I personally don't think they're above doing this, it just hasn't gotten to that point yet.

 

Also, the video author sympothizes with the publishers who put him in this situation to begin with. When I'm out for a product like a video card, I don't care if I "ripped off" Nvidia by buying a used card from Jack down the street. As a consumer, my only goal is to get the product that suits my needs as cheaply as possible.

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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rentiers... scum

 

 

Also:

Heard several places that the DLC is supposed to only be ~140kB download to activate and is on disc, if that's true it would certainly generate some more love but I don't have a source or way to verify xD

 

Couldn't care less about bioware though, haven't bought (or played jokers) one of their romance simulators since Neverwinter nights (worst campaign ever).

Black listed forever.

 

Have you heard about the Syndicate defilement?

Edited by i30817
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In another interview I read with Gabe he stated that they actually make more money by selling the games cheap than they do full price. Sure they do their games full price/pre-order at first. But they always have sales and sell them cheap too. I highly doubt steam would ever go full price only.

 

They are constantly 'experimenting' with different ways to make money.

 

And Steam really is great for the consumer. You can't resell games (unless you buy on new account and sell/give the account to someone), but you can get them really cheap if you wait, you can trade them, gift them... With the new in game trading I won a $40 game during their x-mas sales just for doing a few achievements in steam games. I can play it, or trade it to someone for a game I want more, or in game content for another game...

You can have on as many comps as you want. (So you can share games, you just have to coordinate so only one person is logged in at a time per account).

You have to run steam to play them, but you can run single player games in offline mode.

 

I even have a ton of game content from TF2 that I could trade right now for probably $150-$200 in games.

And I craft auction stuff in Spiral Knights that I constantly trade for steam stuff (it takes a few minutes a day across a couple accounts), and I don't even play that game anymore. It's free to get it, craft stuff, auction and trade for games, lol.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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You guys have touched on another related topics I forgot to mention -

1. Who the f**k do the devs/pubs think they are trying to dictate to the end user regarding s/h sales, the guy in the video has got it completely wrong. The Devs/Pubs are here to serve us not the over way around! Two games I have recently bought but never opened Arkam City/Skyrim have stayed sealed because of the invasive ways (online activation) I am being prevented from selling the game on once I finished playing it. And because of this I found other ways of obtaining said games, but this alternative method wont be around in the next year or so because of acta/sopa etc.

2. Digital distribution such as steam/origin/others are a crock of shit, the greedy pubs have the cheek to charge full retail when digi version's cost far less to produce & distribute than the retail counterparts. This is because there is no media to produce, no case/box to design and make and no middleman and or retails store. The £30+ should be more like £10, if that were the case I would less retaliatory about the likes of steam (I was about to include Origin, but then we have the spyware issue with them which is another kettle of fish)

3. Then we have issue with online activation and being able to play are games even a year or two after the initial purchase. We have already seen issue with the like of ubisoft (who I will never buy anything from as long as there is a hole in my arse) with thier always-active-via-the-net-activation lunacy. You loose the connection to the net you can't play your game, or where your game cant be activated any more because the cnuts turned the activation server off - forcing the user to get a crack or some other means of activating the game.

At this rate things are going to hit critical mass as the customer base will be significantly reduced. Piracy as far as I can see only came about due to the overly expensive prices of some of the games, even that fat twat Newell has had to admit that games sell more when they reasonably priced. I used to buy games on release day (if it was good enough) when I knew I could punt them on after for 2/3rds to a half of the initial purchase price. Now if the devs/pubs got their fingers out of their collective arse's/ears and realised this simple economic and started selling digi version at around this price (£10-20) with a non-expiring activation method or no activation at all. Things would be better for everyone - player, developer and publisher alike.

Edited by Bikerdude
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Dont know if you guys are aware of this -

 

http://youtu.be/Ri0vrJ-y2zM

 

Uh, is this the new internet-generation, uploading a 24 minute video instead of a 2-sentence text? Ugh. I couldn't stant to watched more than 30 seconds of that rambling...

 

TL;DNV

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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And Steam really is great for the consumer. You can't resell games (unless you buy on new account and sell/give the account to someone), but you can get them really cheap if you wait, you can trade them, gift them...

 

It is funny how people see things they could do (sell bought goods, being it games, or books, or toasters) removed, and yet still proclaim that this is "good for them".

 

Right now I can do all of the above, INCLUDING selling my used games, as well as getting a refund (in case I bought a defective game/book whatever). With Steam, I cannot sell my used games, nor can I get a refund (if you try to get a refund from your CC company, they remove your entire account). And in addition to that, you games only live as long as Steam lives (if you are lucky, this is long enough for you, if you are unlucky, they either yank your account, or they need money etc)

 

The upshot is, as a consumer, you only have added risk (losing your bought goods), and restrictions (not selling used stuff), but you still paint this in a positive light. I'd refer to this as the Stockholm syndrome...

 

(Granted, Steam does give you some convience that boxed games do not give you. But only mentioning the restrictions and proclaiming in the same sentence that these restrictions are good for the consumer is bizarre)

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Uh, is this the new internet-generation, uploading a 24 minute video instead of a 2-sentence text? Ugh.

Yeah he did repeat the same crap in different ways over and over again.

 

Right now I can do all of the above, INCLUDING selling my used games, as well as getting a refund (in case I bought a defective game/book whatever). With Steam, I cannot sell my used games, nor can I get a refund (if you try to get a refund from your CC company, they remove your entire account). And in addition to that, you games only live as long as Steam lives (if you are lucky, this is long enough for you, if you are unlucky, they either yank your account, or they need money etc)

This should have been point 4. in my rant above but I sorta refered to it when I mentioned about activations server going offline and the like.

 

@BC, how does the game trading work on steam, for example how easy would it have been for me to get a used copy of Skyrim/Arkamcity from another user..?

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This should have been point 4. in my rant above but I sorta refered to it when I mentioned about activations server going offline and the like.

 

Yeah, people often say that this won't happen with "X" (esp. not with Steam), but you just have to look at the already occuring examples on why this is a big risk:

 

* MS did disable their "Play's For Sure" (was that the name?) music licensing servers, so Zune buyers are out of luck playing their bought music (ok, Zune buyers deserved this, but heh :D

* EA regulary disables "old" games - they have somewhere a page which goes one for pages with the list of games you can no longer play. Usually any sport game that is older than 2 years and has a newer version (so you have to buy the 2012 er baseball simulation, and can no longer play anything from 2010 or before).

* Sony does this, too, "disabling" support for some Playstation titles (or the support for Linux on Playstation)

* Blizzard even sued people who build their own battle.net (was that the name) server - so you can't even play the game on a private network

* there are more examples, but I am too lazy to dig them out all at this moment.

 

Anyway, companies like id, that actually leave their authentication server running for some years are becoming the exception. And even here they might just have folded and shut it down

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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No Stockholm Syndrom here I garanteee. Sure they are greedy, that's corporations for you. They control even the US Supreme Court now.

 

Personally more worried about that than a stupid game service.

 

 

 

Funny, 5 years ago I didn't want to buy any thing from steam but once I got orange box retail, and had to use Steam to play TF2 multiplayer (online anyway) and never had any issues with it I got over it.

 

You can't trade used games, but people buy games on sale/whatever to trade for other stuff. Silly sure but it's free to me.

You just have to add them as a friend, right click their name>invite to trade.

 

Steam forums has trading areas, etc... where you can post what you want to trade/receive.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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@Tels: Don't forget that they can decide to move the goal posts at any time. By that, I mean Steam can retro-actively change the system requirements to play a game by dropping support for your OS at a later date. What happens when they drop support for XP? You would say no one should be using such outdated crap, but I just upgraded a Dentist's P4 to 2 GB of memory a few weeks ago. He asked how long I thought it would last, and I told him to get a new machine in 2014.

 

My point is that many people don't upgrade just for the hell of it, and now with these services, we must upgrade when the publishers say, or we potentially lose access to our games. Only reason I upgraded was to play TDM! :)

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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Funny, 5 years ago I didn't want to buy any thing from steam but once I got orange box retail, and had to use Steam to play TF2 multiplayer (online anyway) and never had any issues with it I got over it.

 

You can't trade used games, but people buy games on sale/whatever to trade for other stuff. Silly sure but it's free to me.

You just have to add them as a friend, right click their name>invite to trade.

 

Steam forums has trading areas, etc... where you can post what you want to trade/receive.

 

Funny how I got exactly the same background. At first I was a against steam online activations etc, but nowadays all the games I've bought came from steam. It is fast, easy and convenient. Since they have the occasional discounts you can have even new games for really low prices. And all the games are conveniently kept updated. And no CD hassles (or no-CD fix hassles.) I see it only sane that if someone bought a game and did not pay it, of course they should receive some shit upon themselves. The lack of ability to sell or trade games does not bother me. The only time I sold games was because the big game boxes were consuming too much shelf space. With digital distribution and huge HDs that is not an issue.

 

I can, of course, worry that what if steam just disappears some day and I lose my games. That is theoretically possible. It would also be theoretically possible that enraged steam users would warez all the games they had plus more. I think such a betrayal from valves part would not go unpunished. If we have noCD cracks, why wouldn't there be noSTEAM cracks which to apply on the games that suddenly wouldn't work due to mystical disappearance of steam. If sufficient amount of people are simultaneously affected, things have the habit of sorting themselves out. While waiting that scenario, I still consider steam a good service and would not go worry about it too much.

 

Edit: totally agree with tels about the video: can't people read and write anymore? Will the ability to post a video soon be the basic unit of 'literacy.'

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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@Tels: Don't forget that they can decide to move the goal posts at any time. By that, I mean Steam can retro-actively change the system requirements to play a game by dropping support for your OS at a later date. What happens when they drop support for XP? You would say no one should be using such outdated crap, but I just upgraded a Dentist's P4 to 2 GB of memory a few weeks ago. He asked how long I thought it would last, and I told him to get a new machine in 2014.

 

My point is that many people don't upgrade just for the hell of it, and now with these services, we must upgrade when the publishers say, or we potentially lose access to our games. Only reason I upgraded was to play TDM! :)

 

Yes, but upgrading to use a new game with higher graphic requirements is one thing.

 

Why would Valve purposefully make Steam NOT work with XP? It makes no sense. It works fine with XP, they make a lot of money and are good at making money because they DON'T screw the customer.

They have TONS of indie games, and low spec games for sale. They know people use these games on lower end hardware. Shooting themselves in the foot is stupid, and while they may be greedy, they aren't stupid.

Steam is basically a web browser, I can see them not wanting to support older OS'es like 98, what would be the point? To pick up one sale? But to just do away with XP?

What would they have to do to Steam to make it hard to keep compatible with XP? It's not a graphics hog, all they have to do is maintain that current code. If a new system comes along they just add code. Should they add Linux, yes. Will they? Not until Linux because more 'stable' like Windows - ie: one release not 10+.

 

 

Steam has become the number one online distribution system with millions of subscribers. They are making a ton of cash because most people like it if they try it. They constantly try to improve. This is not likely to change anytime soon. Steam is hear to stay. I have no fear of losing my games anytime soon.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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It was crazy. Games were coming on CD up until some time in the later 2000's. Take Dreamfall for instance. Nobody is going to have the hardware capable of playing a game like that and not have a DVD drive. I got a DVD drive in 2001 for $50 and my mom's Vaio desktop with its craptastic TNT2 even came with one in early 2002. Likewise for this (USB 1.1!) P4 laptop from 2002 that sits here.

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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I've no intention of installing yet-another game delivery platform on my computer. Steam will have to suffice and if EA & Bioshock want to shoot themselves in the leg by limiting the game to their platform, then by all means. Their loss. It really is that simple. =)

 

The next bioshock game will be on steam (check the coming soon tab)

 

I'd not be surprised to see ME3 coming on there too since there will be uproar if they have to change platforms for the final installment. Sadly, it also means that EA will only be releasing games on Origin in future. It'll mean either longevity or death to them

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yeah it does that, got deadspace 2 from steam, and origin has it listed as installed.

 

Although I've got mass effect 2 installed and it cant see that.

 

I've got other EA games installed and it cant see any of them either.

 

the platform says Origin Beta so its still in the test stage.

 

Once its shutdown its no longer in memory, unlike windows live which hangs around for ages after you think you've turned it off.

Edited by stumpy
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