Long Live Steam!

[TheWall421]

At first I thought the whole $9.95 subscription to steam was the most retarded idea ever. But then I got to thinking....$9.95 to rent any valve game for an entire month. Now that isn't a big deal since valve only has a few games under their belt, and they are all games you want to keep for more than a month...But what if the steam concept expanded to other developers?

PC gamers have never been able to goto the local video store and rent a game for short period of time. We've always been stuck shelling out $40+ for the whole game. If steam were to incorporate a large protion of game developers, PC gamers would finally have a means to get a game without having to invest a great deal of money into it.

This is probably why piracy has grown to such enormous proportions. I mean, who would want to spend $50 on something like Hitman 2, when they will probably only play it for a few weeks. With something like steam around, people would be more than willing to "rent" the game for a month for a much lower fee. All right thats the extent of my intellectual stimulation for the day. Any thoughts?

 

[Koldfire]

Yeah, but this is Half-life 2. nobody wants to rent the game for a few weeks. People will be playing and modding this for years to come.






Steam is intrusive MALWARE that slows down load times, spies on you, and has memory leaks.

 

[Epsi]

Steam loads are pretty snappy as long as you're not downloading anything. Spyware it is not, that is baseless paranoia that does not stand up to the most basic of logical thought. Memory leaks are a problem in any C++ program, but it seems Valve have eliminated that problem, it is always hovering around the 28-30mb mark on my computer. And in comparison, 1 IE window is using 18mb.

 

[TheWall421]

Yeah, but this is Half-life 2. nobody wants to rent the game for a few weeks.

My thought exactly, but I'm thinking Half-life 2 is being released on Steam more as a proof of concept. Valve doesn't expect to make any sort of profit off of steam with the release of Half-life 2, it is just another means for people to get the game who were going to buy it anyway. But its just being used as a way to show the world that consumers are willing to purchase games over services like steam.

I think in the coming months Valve will be coaxing other developers into embracing the Steam initiative and trying to get publishers to release their games over steam. On valve's job openings listing, valve has listed:

Game Development SDK Developer......Responsibilities include working directly with game developers to design, port and enhance their games for Valve’s broadband delivery system and develop the SDK used by game developers. This position may require some travel....

It appears they are hiring people to go work with other game developers and make their games deliverable over steam. They are using a similar tactic to what graphics card companies use, they are shipping out programmers for free to developers in hopes that this will be enough to get developers on board. Then once a large portion of games are available over steam, consumers will embrace it. Of course, this is all speculation on my part.

 

[Kuros]

Well, in a few years when Valve has a few titles on Steam, it would be worth it to pay $10 and then being able to play CS2, TF2, HL2 and everything. If you are just a casual gamer who wants to try the games out, it would be a pretty good deal.

 

[Parasite]

Look at it this way...$10 a month is the value of buying 3 games a year, 1 game every 4 months. Also, it is a "Valve subscription" meaning you'll get all Valves games as Kuros says. But I dont doubt that TF2, CS:CZ and good amount of exclusive bonus content will be available thru the subscription service, along with any Valve adopted mods probably within the first year or so of the service.

As far as "spying", I run NTFS so I wont be affected.

 

[demonslayer]

Um.. What $10 a month fee.

 

[GonzoBabbleshit]

You might have noticed the last time someone posted in this thread is was 2003

 

[^Ben]

lololololololololol.

MEGA THREAD MINE!

 

[2Fast4U]

Hey it's not so old, only 2 f'ing years! And it's his first post so everything is forgiven.

 

[bliink]

Um.. What $10 a month fee.

Learn to use a forum before you make a complete fool out of yourself.


Closed.