delay = loyality?

[Tlaloc]

How do you know? Do you have special info? Our (admitted) speculations on Steam are based on experience with Steam thus far and their own admissions that the release didn't go well and that they had "catastrophically underestimated" community demand

well let's see... we go to school for something:

average kb/s "required" per user for HL2 release let's say 100kb/s

100mbit is about 12,500kb/s max capacity (theoretically speaking)
they have about 28 of those if most of them are up (some of them are not 100mbit, in reality there are 31 servers when i write this.)

12,500kb/s * 28 = 350,000kb/s

number of ppl that will buy HL2 over steam... well i have no idea so i'm just gonna use a round figure to make it easy to estimate: 50,000ppl

50,000ppl * 100kb/s

5,000,000 kb/s

the game, assuming it's 2 cd's worth, is 1,200,000kb, would take about 3-4 hours to download

total steam bandwidth 350,000kb/s compared to:
50,000ppl -> 5,000,000kb/s
100,000ppl -> 10,000,000kb/s
200,000ppl -> 20,000,000kb/s
500,000ppl -> 50,000,000kb/s
1,000,000ppl -> 100,000,000kb/s

course a million people won't download the game at the same time (or will they? heh heh)

valve thought it could handle THIS community

 

[BlackMesaDude]

loyalty ? id say ignorance to us gamers.

 

[GLMinorThreat]

Originally posted by SirMcNugget
I think developers should just stick to general release dates like Quarter 4 2003 or the like as release dates are always nothing more than general goals anyways.

True, but after I read that I also thought of Nintendo... They give out quarter release dates and hardly ever make those the first time. Haha.

 

[droper]

*I cried out


Why?????


*the man said nothing and his silence consumed me. *

 

[hunter-killer25]

Originally posted by Tlaloc
I'm not saying this is true or not. Although it does sound reasonable, why would they want to release a game that wont play nice on a huge part of the gamers' systems?

Also, this could be an explanation as to why they are not giving us any reasons for the delay.

Essentially, Valve just hit nVidia where it hurts, real bad. HL2 and Source put nVidia in a very difficult position, more so than ever before. What I mean is this: nVidia must be putting a lot of pressure (ie: money) on Valve to wait until the next set of drivers.

Hopefully, if my theory is correct (cuz that's all it is,) if the next set of drivers show no improvement Valve will release Source/HL2 and nVidia will be on its own.

Tlaloc
^^^^^ llueve

good thoughts there

 

[mbrithoms]

Originally posted by Ahnteis
The word is loyalty.

No one here KNOWS the REASON for delay so saying that they are were HIDING it from us is PREMATURE and possibly ERRONEOUS.

on the contrary, the reason for the delay is more than obvious, money. Im not anti valve or anything so keep your hair on but they dont care about you nor does any other game company (and trust me i have worked with two of the biggest) they simply want to make more money and money is always what it boils down to

the 'holiday' release statement made me giggle, not only are they not giving a date but there rubbing it in our faces 'holiday'=very obvious term for wait till christmas season so we can make more bagfulls of cash. its fairly obvious and its called marketing and the delay a week before release is ridiculous but its award winning advertising and superb marketing, so everyone get over it, valve(or any company for that matter) will do exactly the same.

holiday release, hehee

 

[hunter-killer25]

heh, i wonder if they'll be able to occupy themselves for that many months.

 

[ilove64]

"see the thing with me is, and lots of the other people, we upgraded, and in my case, got a completely new computer for sept 30th, because was was always coming out on the 30th, now its delayed, that just pisses me off."

Why are you pissed off? You'll still be able to enoy the latest games and HL2 eventually.

 

[Plopfish]

I disagree with much said.

First, that they delayed for the holidays to make more $. Wouldnt that be obvious to them way back in July when they annoucned such a set in stone date of 9/30/03. And it doesnt gurantee more money anyway, it would have more time on the shelf before competitors as Doom3 and ut2k4 come out....and word of mouth needs to build in the PC market since they barely advertise.

I also disagree with the fact people shouldnt be pissed of they upgraded and what not. If it comes out 2 months later, thats a good (at least) $50 per component (cpu,gfx,hd,etc) that you upgraded. If you bought a new comp for it, you def got screwed. Whyd they wait so long to tell us.....oh well

Edit: More clearly I meant that price drops very fast for top of the line components we gamers buy. Could be $50 for a gfx card in less than 2 months easily.

 

[poseyjmac]

Originally posted by ilove64
"see the thing with me is, and lots of the other people, we upgraded, and in my case, got a completely new computer for sept 30th, because was was always coming out on the 30th, now its delayed, that just pisses me off."

Why are you pissed off? You'll still be able to enoy the latest games and HL2 eventually.

hes pissed because he and others could have waited and got better prices if they would have announced the delay earlier. yes they can take back their stuff, but thats still piss-off worthy.

 

[hunter-killer25]

hey i'll probably be able to grab the radeon 9800XT for the current R9800 pro price in a few months

 

[SuperflyCol]

Originally posted by Tek
see the thing with me is, and lots of the other people, we upgraded, and in my case, got a completely new computer for sept 30th, because was was always coming out on the 30th, now its delayed, that just pisses me off.

See, that's so mind-numbingly pathetic, well it's just sad.

Valve didn't tell you to buy a new system, and now you have a kick arse(presumeably) new machine, so stop whining like a little bitch. God, I'm so ****in tired of you 12 year old mother****ers with more money than sense, whining and thinking valve is personally out to get you. GET A ****IN LIFE!!

Valve has given you a shitload of quality products half of them FOR FREE and you have done what?? Go and discover girls, drugs, alcohol and all the other myriad fantastic things life has to offer.

 

[Owskie]

Originally posted by hunter-killer25
loyality.. hmm is that a word? whatever

if you truly think about it doesn't this make sense more

valve delays because they want to release a GOOD game and please the fans. Therefore by delaying the game would better than just releasing it because if it's not released, obviously they're gonna work much longer on fixes then if they released it. therefore, how about we thank valve for delaying.... it.... ? (god how screwed up does that sound?)

i dunno about all of you, but i'm using this extra time to upgrade my computer. because when hl2 is released.. heh nothings getting me away from this screen.

(feel free to delete this thread if you feel it's "spam" or some crap)

Ill die b4 i believe its delayed....3 days left

 

[hunter-killer25]

hahahaha

denial

 

[Stiler]

From: "Gabe Newell" <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: Netcode
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 12:42:23 -0700

Not true.

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2003 12:22 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Netcode


Is it true the game was delayed because you were not done with the netcode, or there were still many bugs with it? I've heard this through the grapevine and was curious if it was true or not, thanks for your time.

- Ben

Seems like marketing BS to me.

 

[Mr Neutron]

I don't buy the nvidia argument. Vavle implied on "Shader Day" that 'this is as good as we can get it'. There's no point in delaying for Nvidia because it ain't getting significantly better (just look at the Det 50 numbers), especially at Valve's end.

My money's on game content: the SP game was deemed unsatisfactory, in depth, length, or polish, and incomplete things formerly put on the cutting block are being resurected. This would make some sense as it would be difficult for Valve to really judge this until quite late when it all came together (maybe not as late as it took them to tell us, but not much sooner).

This is a forgiveable excuss for a delay, but they still should have told us at least a few weeks earlier about the possibility.

Oh, and another possiblity is that Vivendi has pressured them to bring the rating down from M to sell more units. They could just release an expigated version down the road, though the usual solution is to include parental controls.

 

[ferd]

Originally posted by DimitriPopov
The lack of official press releases is the BS.

true, nothing is ever confirmed, and although Gabe replys to 30 email every day, they cant same to email every newssite, thats kinda...hmm weird

 

[Owskie]

what are you talking about....
the game isnt delayed...
i live in denial
but im happy there

 

[Stiler]

Originally posted by SuperflyCol
See, that's so mind-numbingly pathetic, well it's just sad.

Valve didn't tell you to buy a new system, and now you have a kick arse(presumeably) new machine, so stop whining like a little bitch. God, I'm so ****in tired of you 12 year old mother****ers with more money than sense, whining and thinking valve is personally out to get you. GET A ****IN LIFE!!

Valve has given you a shitload of quality products half of them FOR FREE and you have done what?? Go and discover girls, drugs, alcohol and all the other myriad fantastic things life has to offer.

Because oh....say they bought a raedon 9800pro for HL2, then after a bit (still before hl2 is out) ATI lowers the price say to 250.

They could have got hl2 free witht he money they saved.

That's why.

Valve hasn't gave much to us for "free".
they didn't make CS, they didn't make DoD.

 

[hunter-killer25]

that is so true, after the XT comes out sept 30th the R 9800 prices are gonna drop along with the 9600's and the 9700's

 

[StickFigs]

Originally posted by dbsynergy
I blame 3drealms. Because of them, developers like Valve think it's okay to break release dates.

(please don't take me seriously)

3DRealms is my FPS childhood! BACKOFF! :flame:

 

[hunter-killer25]

uhhh? you had a childhood?

 

[eQUIV]

Actually, all these theories are good.. so overall it is basically a combination of all of them.

1.) They'd make more money on a holiday release.
2.) Steam issues and upgrades
3.) Nvidia drivers
4.) Pleasing the publisher
5.) HL2 needs more time for tweaking and multiple language versions.

 

[alco]

Originally posted by eQUIV
Actually, all these theories are good.. so overall it is basically a combination of all of them.

1.) They'd make more money on a holiday release.
2.) Steam issues and upgrades
3.) Nvidia drivers
4.) Pleasing the publisher
5.) HL2 needs more time for tweaking and multiple language versions.

or just #5, for those of us who aren't paranoid and think there's an ulterior motive for everything.

 

[eQUIV]

Originally posted by alco
or just #5, for those of us who aren't paranoid and think there's an ulterior motive for everything.

True.. I'm actually pretty sure Steam will be able to handle it. When the first official version was released it was probably simply a test to see how many servers they need and how it will handle. Plus those servers are simply for HL1. I'm sure they have a whole set of fast servers lined-up specifically for HL2 and delivering it... but of course we will not see them until around the HL2 is officially released.

 

[Plopfish]

*note the huge difference (8 fold) of bit to byte conversions

Current Steam bandwith available (rounded up) is 1500mbps
1500/8 = 187.5 MBs
avg acceptable DL speed is 100KBs (or 0.1 MBs , 10 sec per MB)

Thus, 187.5MBs / 0.1 MBs = 1875

1875 is the amount of users the bandwith can handle if they are all downloading at 100KBs (rather slow... for a 600+mb DL) wich is an extremely small amount. I think the demand on a Sept 30th release would be at least 8-16 thousand users.

Correct my math, I am thinking I messed uo and it is really 18,750 people they are able to host, but im not sure.

 

[Owskie]

could be, i expect a good product

 

[PainLord]

Originally posted by Plopfish
*note the huge difference (8 fold) of bit to byte conversions

Current Steam bandwith available (rounded up) is 1500mbps
1500/8 = 187.5 MBs
avg acceptable DL speed is 100KBs (or 0.1 MBs , 10 sec per MB)

Thus, 187.5MBs / 0.1 MBs = 1875

1875 is the amount of users the bandwith can handle if they are all downloading at 100KBs (rather slow... for a 600+mb DL) wich is an extremely small amount. I think the demand on a Sept 30th release would be at least 8-16 thousand users.

Correct my math, I am thinking I messed uo and it is really 18,750 people they are able to host, but im not sure.

They might rent out a bigass connection for a while such as OC-48. As those things cost a large fortune, they would set it up until a few days before. Or they may just add more bandwith. Actually im suprised ATI havnt offered some bandwith. Nvidia has 200mb of it.

 

[SuperflyCol]

Originally posted by Stiler
Because oh....say they bought a raedon 9800pro for HL2, then after a bit (still before hl2 is out) ATI lowers the price say to 250.

They could have got hl2 free witht he money they saved.

That's why.

Valve hasn't gave much to us for "free".
they didn't make CS, they didn't make DoD.

So what? They now have a new video card, and you may not know this, but it can be used for other games too!! Buying new hardware is ALWAYS a losing game. If Valve had released HL2 3 months ago, he would've paid an extra $100 on top of that. To say that valve is responsible for you wasting money is idiotic.

And as for free stuff, well, maybe they didn't make CS, but they damn sure helped them out.
That's not to mention the immeasurably superior TFC, which they DID make and give away for FREE, plus netcode upgrades, new editing tools and deathmatch classic. Stop whining.

 

[Fuzzy]

"The VALVe works in mysterious ways." The delay is merely testing our faith.

 

[spitcodfry]

Originally posted by Fuzzy
"The VALVe works in mysterious ways." The delay is merely testing our faith.

Yeah I'm sure Valve delayed a game they want to get to the fans in order to test their faith. When I was at Valve Gabe told me the one thing he was most concerned about was getting the game to the fans and hearing their response on how it is. Testing our faith is the last thing Valve wishes to do. My 2 cents: Vivendi is an evil conglomerate bent on world domination and will stop at nothing to get Valve to be their slaves!

 

[3rd Impact]

Originally posted by Tek
the game is done, BLAME STEAM.

BLAME VIVENDI!

 

[genocide604]

Im just miffed at the fact.. they hide it for 4 years.. show it at e3, pump everyone up, state sept30th as the date to be, then 6 days before announce a delay.. that was just a kick in the face.. simple as that.