Like Steam? Support Steam? Rejoice!

[SneaksieDave]

Saw this over on Blue's News. EA's answer to steam?

 

As predicted by many, here they come (you'd really have to be asleep not to have seen this coming). I have no plans to buy anything from EA anyway, but I'm sure it won't stop with them. This is just the second of many to come, as long as so many keep supporting voluntary loss of consumer interests. If you're an opponent, you know what to do.

 

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?...&threadid=61922

[OrbWeaver]

As a technology and a distribution medium I do think Steam is a good idea. It is just the compulsory use of it to authenticate during single-player gaming that I have a problem with.

 

Make it available, make it voluntary, make it required for online play - but don't make me ask permission to play a game on my own computer.

[Forsaken]

Same with me.

[sparhawk]

You seem to forget that Steam takes away the right to sell your games second-hand. Yeah, I know you are gratitiously "allowed" by Valve to sell them after paying a fee.

[OrbWeaver]

You seem to forget that Steam takes away the right to sell your games second-hand. Yeah, I know you are gratitiously "allowed" by Valve to sell them after paying a fee.

 

Again, that is a problem with the forced single-player authentication. If Steam was only required for online play, you could still sell the game for personal use, or you could give away your userid/password along with the game for online use (as long as you don't use the same userid for multiple games).

[sparhawk]

If you buy multiple games this way and just want to sell one, how exactly do you sell it, without giving you userid away? Of course, since Valve gratitiously 'allows' us to do this (naturally with a fee, but nothing is free these days) it's no big deal. Thank you Valve for granting us this right for a minor fee, while the law granted us it all along for free.

[Dram]

in one word, these systems can be described as "fucked"