Valve Cybercafe Program

[Chris D]

Yesterday Valve announced new information about their Cybercafe program which seems as though it will be welcomed news to the proprietors of Cybecafes. The press release is as follows:

Counter-Strike: Source, Half-Life 2, and More Coming Soon

Valve Corporation today revealed a series of new games and features being added to the Valve Cybercafé Program over the coming months.

Effective immediately, subscribers of the Valve Cybercafe Program will receive a free license to use Xbox versions of Valve's games in their cafés, up to the number of active cybercafe subscriptions held in the Valve Cybercafe Program.

In similar fashion, Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2 will be added to the program for active subscribers in the Valve Cybercafe Program. These new games will be included as part of the regular monthly fee as soon as they are released.

"Valve has a long tradition of developing award-winning action games, online technologies and services for our individual customers," said Gabe Newell, Valve president and founder. "As we prepare for the launch of our next generation content and services, we are eager to extend that tradition to our Cybercafe partners by developing features and content that will make it easier to administer Valve games in a Cybercafe setting and provide compelling games for their customers. We are hoping to hear feedback from the Cybercafes so we can continue to improve the program and better understand how we can best support our subscribers."

In addition to the new games, Valve is also readying a Cybercafe License Server. Among other features, the Cybercafe License Server will allow café's to manage their licenses on a concurrent user basis, locally update individual computers on a café's local area network (reducing bandwidth needs for updates), and allow individual users with personal Steam accounts to access their account on any computer station located at a cybercafé site.

Active Valve Cybercafe Program subscribers receive access and a commercial license to use Valve games in their café (including Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, Day of Defeat and Half-Life), access to upcoming new releases in the program such as Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike: Source, free tournament licenses, promotional materials and priority customer service and support. To find out more information and subscribe today, please visit http://steampowered.com/index.php?area=cybercafes.

 

[Crushenator 500]

w00t ???

guess its a good thing for cybercafes.



build me up buttercup - the temptations

 

[Kangy]

Haha.

I guess they're trying to make up for their previously crap track record for lancafes.

 

[Varsity]

Where's the source? I don't see it on the site.

 

[Maxi]

Wow, that's pretty cool.

To bad that there aren't any cybercafes in my area that I know of.

 

[Chris D]

Where's the source? I don't see it on the site.

It's a press release so it's sent out to websites in an e-mail.

 

[crimity]

You would think this would be a good deal for lan centers, but it isn't. I am an operator of a lan center store and we are installing new games. Unfortunately we don't have plans to install Valve's cyber cafe software. Not because we don't want to, but because it is far too expensive.

From what I've gathered Valve charges 10 dollars per month per computer that the cyber cafe software is installed on. This is extremely expensive, unless your lan center is full almost all day. It might work if there were a lower price for only certain games that we could install that bring in customers the most. But I have yet to here of such a thing so it seems as though (if you are a lan center) in order to use any of Valves games at all you must install their cyber cafe software.

Not speaking for the company I work for, but as an observer of this problem to me it seems as if Valve is taking advantage of their position of being a popular game developer and milking as much money as they can from it. I like Valves games and I like how much they've done for the community and everything, I just hope they don't become another microsoft.

This may not be a problem for other lan centers. But it is a pretty serious one for us. Many lan centers have become dependent on Valves good games and Valve knows it. If the competition that makes enough money to install the cyber cafe software and we stop receiving traffic, we might be put out of business. It's unfortunate, but true. Right now we can only hope to recieve players through games by other developers.

 

[The Mullinator]

You would think this would be a good deal for lan centers, but it isn't. I am an operator of a lan center store and we are installing new games. Unfortunately we don't have plans to install Valve's cyber cafe software. Not because we don't want to, but because it is far too expensive.

From what I've gathered Valve charges 10 dollars per month per computer that the cyber cafe software is installed on. This is extremely expensive, unless your lan center is full almost all day. It might work if there were a lower price for only certain games that we could install that bring in customers the most. But I have yet to here of such a thing so it seems as though (if you are a lan center) in order to use any of Valves games at all you must install their cyber cafe software.

Not speaking for the company I work for, but as an observer of this problem to me it seems as if Valve is taking advantage of their position of being a popular game developer and milking as much money as they can from it. I like Valves games and I like how much they've done for the community and everything, I just hope they don't become another microsoft.

This may not be a problem for other lan centers. But it is a pretty serious one for us. Many lan centers have become dependent on Valves good games and Valve knows it. If the competition that makes enough money to install the cyber cafe software and we stop receiving traffic, we might be put out of business. It's unfortunate, but true. Right now we can only hope to recieve players through games by other developers.

I know that the pricing system is done on a per machine basis, but where is this $10 price comming from? As far as I can tell from here http://www.steampowered.com/?area=cafe_pricing Valve hasn't given any standard price yet. They seem to desire alot of information on the specific Cafe so maybe the pricing is variable and based on an average number of customers perhaps?

 

[JohnnyBeverage]

Hopefully i dont get chewed up too much but what exactly is a cyber cafe?

 

[crimity]

I know that the pricing system is done on a per machine basis, but where is this $10 price comming from? As far as I can tell from here http://www.steampowered.com/?area=cafe_pricing Valve hasn't given any standard price yet. They seem to desire alot of information on the specific Cafe so maybe the pricing is variable and based on an average number of customers perhaps?

That's the price they gave one of my supervisors awhile ago and he didnt mention Valve asking about our customer traffic. But maybe they have changed things since then. But if it is going to be 10 bucks per computer per month then we probably won't have enough cash to cover it. Hopefully I'm wrong.

 

[Javert]

Hopefully i dont get chewed up too much but what exactly is a cyber cafe?

It's like a cafe with many computers. You can pay by the hour to log on and surf the web, do word processing, or (in my case) play computer games with your friends. ^_^
They usually also serve foods and drinks.

 

[azz0r]

Another great reason to buy Condition zero

Cant wait until I get it

 

[nickanderson]

great so late summer we'll just start beta testing.. Looks like a later fall release for Half life 2 is a reality.

 

[[RDH]MastahFrag]

yeah, i kinda think that valve is serious on this right now. something tells me he actually is.