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First Person Shooters (Games) PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Half-Life 2's Multitude Of Purchase Options 99

Posted by simoniker from the do-you-want-fries-with-that? dept.
Thanks to ShackNews for their post explaining the multiple ways consumers can buy Half-Life 2, summing up a confirmed email/forum post by Valve's Gabe Newell following much false information. The options are summed up as: "...a single-player only mass market version ('sold mainly at the Costcos and Walmarts of the world'), a traditional single/multiplayer version for places like EB Games, and a collector edition's version ('with lots of cool bonus stuff for people who like cool bonus stuff')... [and] Steam pricing plans", which will include one-time download fees, or "...pay a monthly fee and have access to all Valve titles", including Half-Life 2.
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Half-Life 2's Multitude Of Purchase Options More

Half-Life 2's Multitude Of Purchase Options

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  • Or, for the budget-minded users... (Score:5, Funny)

    by seinman ( 463076 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2003 @01:51PM (#6860752) Homepage Journal
    I'm going to use the P2P "purchase" option.
    • And how do you play to thrwart the license key system that Half Life/Counter Strike used?
      • I'm assuming you meant "plan" instead of "play." And when I downloaded HalfLife and Counterstrike via P2P, it came with a crack that worked just fine. I've been playing CS with a downlaoded copy for about two years now.
      • Oh come on, key's are a joke.
        Go on emule and search for half life serial.

        Still I think the parent should be raped by Bubba for the retarded desire to pirate a game in a case where the publisher is FOR A CHANGE TRYING TO BE FUCKING REASONABLE.
        • Serial crack works fine for single player but it wont work on Mutiplayer.
        • Keygens won't work for multiplayer and two people can't use the same key at the same time in multiplayer over internet (there is a limit of 3 ppl with the same key on LAN I think). There was a time you could use the 1234-56790-1234 key. But I don't think it still work (even without internet connection). A trick I heard about to allow people without key to play Q3 over the internet is to set up your own game server and set your DNS so it can't resolve the master server so it can't check the keys. I suppose

    • Re:Or, for the budget-minded users... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by image ( 13487 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2003 @02:18PM (#6861055) Homepage
      You probably didn't mean that. Or maybe you did. No matter.

      Thing is, unlike the RIAA, which is fighting to maintain an artificially high pricing structure for music in the digital era, the game publishers and developers are really operating in a pretty fair and free marketplace. I.e., games are retailing for $50+ dollars because they are actually worth it. Not all games, of course, but a game like HalfLife 2, which could potentially provide hundreds of hours of entertainment, and incurring development costs in the tens of millions of dollars, certainly seem to justify a large retail price tag.

      A very good strategy for buying games is to wait a few weeks -- not necessarily for the price to drop -- but rather for the unbiased, unsponsored (i.e., not payola) reviews, and to download the demo if it exists. That way you can be pretty sure you are going to get a return on your $50. If it is a console game, read the reviews and rent it first.

      But definitely don't steal it via P2P. Remember, most of us probably _want_ gaming to continue to get better -- more games of the caliber of HL2 are a great thing. And as earlier Slashdot articles have pointed out, there is a low-end gaming market as well for those of whom who have neither the money nor the time to spend on a $50 game.

      That said, someday there will likely be a body as stubbornly obstinate as the RIAA for games. But until then, don't hurt the industry via piracy. Ethicality aside, it is just defeating of your own self interest.

    • Re:Or, for the budget-minded users... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Be advised I sent an email to valve, Sierra and the SPA regarding your idiotic brag. Be sure to keep your cool when the FBI knocks on your door, fucko. Let's see then if you think $15 were "worth your time".

      Some people are complete idiots...

  • Xbox Live? And other things... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jvmatthe ( 116058 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2003 @02:00PM (#6860827) Homepage
    Will HL2 for Xbox have an extra fee on top of Xbox Live subscription fees? Seems possible, but I would not be surprised if Microsoft saw having HL2 on Xbox as important enough to give Valve a good deal on XBL revenue sharing, thus avoiding the extra cost.

    Frankly, I'm not that keen on the new system. We don't know what the one-time cost is going to be for the game without the subscription. It could be $60. Also, what happens if/when the service shuts down in four years or so? How do you play on a laptop on the road?

    Combine consumer confusion over the various products with subscription fees and requiring an online connection to play the single player game and requiring that LAN parties provide internet access to check in with STEAM and it just sounds like a huge tangle that won't set the world on fire.

    While I don't have the quote handy, the old Valve approach was that you could share the HL CD with up to four other people at a LAN without problems. As I recall, it wasn't discouraged and was almost encouraged. As a result, everyone loved the game and bought it by the truckload. The new system sounds onerous enough that some enthusiasm will no doubt be dampened.
    • Regarding HL2 for XBox having fees on top of the XBox Live fee -- very unlikely.

      Regarding the one time cost -- the game's retail price is $50, just like numerous other new games out there.

      Regarding the Steam network questions -- I'd imagine Valve will come up with some sort of "grace period", where you will be allowed to play for 24 hours or whatever without a network connection (as long as you already have the game fully cached or whatever.) This would make a lot of sense.
      • Regarding price -- is there a source for this? I mean, sure, folks are preselling it, but that doesn't mean the final price has been officially set. I'd like confirmation on price points for all the different versions.

        As for Steam, it was my impression that the whole game is never fully cached. At least that's what I had read about the downloadble version of HL1. It may be cached enough that it won't matter, but we have no idea how well that will work yet. Perhaps the downloadable HL1 was a test for the sc
        • In Steam, you can right click on a game and choose properties. There's an option to "always keep the game up to date", and this will pretty much cache the entire game, as far as I know. It maxed out my bandwidth for a few minutes downloading around 500 megabytes to it's folder for Half-Life. In previous versions of Steam, you could actually specify a percentage of the cache to use. So if you only wanted 200 megs on your hard drive at one time, Steam could be configured to do that. I don't know what they've
    • Will HL2 for Xbox

      Last I heard there were no plans for HL2 on any other platform, Xbox included.

      We don't know what the one-time cost is going to be for the game without the subscription. It could be $60.

      The question isn't how much HL2 itself is, but how much HL2 + all other Valve content over a certain period of time is. Honestly, however, at $120/year, that's going to have to be a TON of additional paid-for content. I'll be buying the one time cost version, thank you very much.

      requiring an online co
        • Ouch. That is silly, particularly the single player bit (yeah, you can play w/o a net connection until you do something that requires Steam... to assume that you will forever thereafter have a net connection is inane).

          My apologies.
      • Last I heard there were no plans for HL2 on any other platform, Xbox included.

        Then you're behind the times. Here's one story [gameshark.com], here's another [gamespot.com], and, what the heck, one more [gamer.tv].

        The timeline goes something like this: Valve said before E3 that an Xbox version of Half-Life 2 was in the works. Not long after E3, a guy at Microsoft (David Hufford, a product manager in the Xbox group) was quoted in the Puget Sound Business Journal as saying that the Xbox version of Half-Life 2 wasn't coming. About 24 hours later

      • "Checking in with Steam will certainly have advantages -- like being able to access your keyboard/mouse config from any PC "

        Nope. Config isn't saved remotely (though thats a great idea). Currently you still have to reconfig by hand, but then again if you have console access(steam forces it on) you can pretty easily reconf most hl mods. off the top of my head:
        bind w +forward
        bind s +back
        bind a +moveleft
        bind d +moveright
        bind q lastinv

        other than that, defaults are fine.
        • I usually keep my cfg files zipped up on my ISP-provided website so I can get them whenever I need to (also because people occasionally ask for them). In theory if I needed to play on someone else's computer I could just download them, but considering the fact that I can't use a mouse to save my life (well, maybe if I swung it around and hit someone with it), I probably wouldn't bother.
        • Config isn't saved remotely (though thats a great idea).

          Ok, of all of the things I said, this one I knew I'd read.

          From the HL2 Valve Info thread (page 13 on default settings, 3rd message from bottom):

          hLABS]tryptefan: when i go to a friends house and play halflife i usually end up wasting around 10 minutes trying to get my config right.

          it seems like such a logical step to store configs with steam login info and thus serve up my config anywhere i go.
          has this been thought of and if so any chance of seeing

  • Subscription to Valve's future releases... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Violet Null ( 452694 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2003 @02:10PM (#6860940)
    So, let's see. I can pay a monthly subscription fee, and get all the stuff that Valve releases in the future for free.

    And it only took them...what, six years to go from Half-Life to Half-Life 2?

    Sounds like a deal to me!
    • What if they throw in all future 3DRealms releases?
    • Why is this "Insightful" ?

      It's already been stated that the subscription gives you access to all Valve games & mods (HL1/OpFor/BlueShift/TFC/CS) as well as future games and mods (TF2/CS2/HL3?)

      Whether or not it's worth $9.95 a month or whatever is up to you.
      • I think you missed the point. He's essentially saying that if you had bought this service in order to get the first Half-Life and its sequels, you would pay up to $720 ($120 a year for six years) in order to get two full games with expansion packs. It's both insightful AND funny.
        • No, it still doesn't make much sense. Steam is being developed/planned now, along with the content therein. I imagine it wasn't even a thought in an engineer's head around the time of Half-Life, so speculating that Valve wouldn't have released anything between HL1 and HL2 is just that; speculation.

          I don't know what content or mods they're going to be adding after HL2 comes out, but I'm sure they're going to lay out some general roadmap so people have an idea what to expect; otherwise I'd say the subscripti

          • Re:Subscription to Valve's future releases... (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Babbster ( 107076 ) <aaronbabb&gmail,com> on Wednesday September 03, 2003 @08:36PM (#6864747) Homepage
            It might not make sense in terms of "projecting Steam back in time" but the reality is that Valve promised us Team Fortress 2 a long, LONG time ago - even before Half-Life 2 was in development - and still hasn't delivered, instead opting to release multiple expansion packs, some of which were freely available on the Internet. Whatever "general roadmap" Valve provides should be taken with a huge grain of salt by fans given Valve's history so far. That's not to say that Valve is evil or plans to take the subscription fees and give nothing in return, but the idea that they could have significant delays on products isn't at all far-fetched.

            Imagine if they told you that "X" Half-Life 2 expansion was coming out within six months and that it would be $30 on its own but would come automatically with a Steam subscription. So, you decide to go with the Steam subscription figuring that you would pay $60 over six months and get both HL2 and this expansion pack instead of paying $50 now (meaning when it comes out) for HL2 and $30 later. Fast-forward six months and you find out that they are having QA problems with the new release so it's still in testing. They're going to release it as soon as they can. Every month of delay is another $10 you would be paying for product(s) that you can't even play. Again, I'm not saying that Valve would plan to do this but sometimes $@#! happens.

            I'm not against subscription fees on their face. I've paid $10/month in the past for one game in fact (EQ). But in the case of Half-Life 2, unless they're going to cripple the online experience somehow without the subscription, I'd need to see at least a year of consistently on-time, solid releases from Valve before I'd even consider paying them $10 a month in lieu of $50 up front.

      • It's already been stated that the subscription gives you access to all Valve games & mods (HL1/OpFor/BlueShift/TFC/CS) as well as future games and mods (TF2/CS2/HL3?)

        Most of us already have HL1 uncrippled by Steam. After all, it sold quite well, I believe I have 3 copies somewhere. I also bought OpFor, and TFC and CS are free. I could probably buy another copy of HL w/ another copy of Op4, and a copy of Blue Shift for $15.

        I bought my first copy of HL because TF2 was going to be a free mod for it, and
    • Keep in mind that while you acquired TFC and Counterstrike for free with HL1, TF2 and CS2 are both going to be seperate retail boxes.

      Also, mod authors are going to be able to sell their mods using Steam - it doesn't say how subscription will affect this, but likely you won't get access to the non-Valve mods.
      • TF2 was supposed to come out 4 years ago, I don't see why anyone would pay a subscription hoping for it's release now.

        I won't buy CS2, so it doesn't even figure into my equation for the cost of subscription vs. retail box.

        So, HL2 (I might buy it) + TF2 = $100 or
        subscribe, and keep paying as long as I play TF2 =
        $120/year.

        Given that I've waited since 1998 for TF2, I think I'll wait a bit longer, and maybe even wait for reviews on it, too, given that they could make quite a mess of things.
    • See! Microsoft really does innovate!

  • Demo? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Schnapple ( 262314 ) <tomkiddNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday September 03, 2003 @02:32PM (#6861204) Homepage
    Wrong place for this I know.

    Right, so if this game is out at the end of this month, is there any way to get a demo of it?

    Probably not, if they have 26 more days to get it to market and they're still playtesting and pondering issues like this.

    But how about a one level test? By this I mean - not a demo to get people to buy the game, but rather something running on the Source engine to see whether or not this stupid thing will even run on your system. Make it one of the scientist guys taking you through a tour of some of the things the engine will do, and maybe he could even reccomend ways to uprade your system for better performance. Hell, ATI or whoever could sponsor it.

    I just don't want to buy it and then discover I have to upgrade to run worth a damn.

    • If I recall correctly, the demo for the first Half-Life came out a bit after the final game was out, but it was also a seperate mission that didn't appear in the game.

      A pretty good trade off, if you ask me.

    • Re:Demo? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Zathrus ( 232140 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2003 @03:54PM (#6862026) Homepage
      Right, so if this game is out at the end of this month, is there any way to get a demo of it?

      No. Valve has previously stated there would be no demo for HL2 prior to release.

      something running on the Source engine to see whether or not this stupid thing will even run on your system

      Valve has also stated that they will be releasing a benchmark program for people to use and see how their system will fare with the Source engine, as well as to see what upgrades they may want to make. I'd guess that it'll be a tech demo with no interaction that'll measure frame rate and such, but that's just a guess. It should be out RSN -- Valve has said "September" several times and stated that it would be available before the game was.

      I don't recall if it was to be generally available or not -- they may only release it to benchmarking sites, but that'd seem odd to me.

      I have an Athlon 2100 w/ 512M and a GeForce4 Ti4200. I plan to replace the GF4 w/ a ATI Radeon 9800 (non-pro). I think the rest will be fine. I haven't bought the card yet though because I'm waiting on the benchmarking to see what the whole story is.
    • If you remember a demo of the original Half-Life took a few month to be released even after the game was on store shelves...
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • hmm it didn't ship with my Voodoo 2. It shipped with something else I bought, either a sound card or possibly a TNT card, which I bought after I already had Half-Life. I ran HL on the Voodoo 2 cards until I got a TNT2Ultra, though, because the TNT wasn't quite good enough to replace them at 1024x768.

  • What a load!!!! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Allison Geode ( 598914 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2003 @02:37PM (#6861239)
    what ever happened to putting it on a dsc, putting the disc in the box, and giving the customers a simple package with a working, non-crippled product in it? this is utterly rediculous, in my opinion.

    this is going to confuse the hell out of parents and grandparents buying the game for the upcoming holiday season.

    also: is anyone else utterly sick of collectors editions of movies and games? at least they're putting this out at the same time, but still, I don't want to have to choose between a crappy bare bones version and a fancy version with hordes of extras and such.. if anything, make the game you get in all the boxes the same, and put a soundtrack cd, a t-shirt, a map, a pewter ordinator figurine, whatever in the collectors version.. not extra game content.

    as for the mod community: I seriously think that with the various rediculous distribution methods, this will kill the mod community for HL2 before it even has a chance of being born.

    • You are completely wrong. Why do people insist on making stuff up and then getting mad about it?

      what ever happened to putting it on a dsc, putting the disc in the box, and giving the customers a simple package with a working, non-crippled product in it?

      Half-life 2 will be on a disc, in a box. You will also have the option of purchasing it online. If your store is out of stock, or you live in Latvia, or you just don't like going to the store, this will probably be a good option for you. Options are

    • Re:What a load!!!! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by delus10n0 ( 524126 )
      I guess you didn't read the thread/forums/article, because you can do just that (buy the retail game in a box with a manual/disc)

      You know, you don't have to buy the collector's/special editions of games/movies/whatever. No one's forcing you. The whole point of a special edition/limited edition is offering things the standard version doesn't have! That is why you're paying more.
      • ...you don't have to buy the collector's/special editions of games/movies/whatever.

        But if the actions of the product distributor are hurting the market as a whole (or even, decreasing the potential for growth), then you have to take issue with that- because if it's less profitable than it could be you'll be less likely to see things like it in the future.

        Geniune options are good, but not artificial ones that create resentment, confusion, or waste. If you have to take the game back to the store, that the
      • "You know, you don't have to buy the collector's/special editions of games/movies/whatever. No one's forcing you. The whole point of a special edition/limited edition is offering things the standard version doesn't have!"

        And what about when the standard version has things the special version doesn't have? There's been a trend lately *cough*LOTR*cough* where there are certain deleted scenes on the standard one, and different ones on the special edition. The push then is that if you are a TRUE collector...

      • I remember the days when the special edition *was* the regular edition. You could pick up an Infocom or Origin Online box and it would be filled with trinkets, cloth maps, extra manuals, newspapers. Game packaging is a lost art that now costs money. It's gone the way of finding cool toys in your cereal box.
    • I seriously think that with the various rediculous distribution methods, this will kill the mod community for HL2 before it even has a chance of being born.

      Yeah. I mean, come on... you give the mod community that degree of customization, along with a very high level of support, and then actually let them choose to release their product for free OR make money off it?

      How rediculous [sic]! That'll fail in a heartbeat. Stupid Valve.
    • Yeah, what a load! Giving the consumers a choice, what were they thinking! Don't they know we're all at the 1st grade level of education and can't even read the box, let alone decide which one we want?!

  • Rampant speculation (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dscowboy ( 224532 ) <drugstore.cowboy@gte.net> on Wednesday September 03, 2003 @02:52PM (#6861397)
    Ok, I'll try answering the questions. No, there will not be an 'additional monthly fee' for xbox half-life 2. The monthly subscription thing is NOT for halflife 2. It is for forthcoming games using the half-life 2 engine that Valve will develop/publish. This will include expansion packs like Opposing Force, Blue Shift, and things like Team Fortress 2. The subscription fee is just A WAY TO RENT these games, instead of paying for each one at the store.

    Valve has said there will be a HL2 benchmark released before the game, so you can test your hardware against it. But there will not be a demo before release.

    The new pricing model is actually pretty cool. The moms and dads who shop at wal-mart for christmas games for their kids will be able to buy the single-player version for a discount price. Game enthusiasts will be able to buy singleplayer + multiplayer for normal price. And in the future, people who want to try out expansion packs or new multiplayer games for a month or two without having to buy each of them at the store will be able to pay 10 bucks to play all of them for a month.

    For some reason people have been getting pretty confused about how this works, and the inevitable "Valve is trying to screw us!" keeps popping up. If anything, the new pricing model gives people more value for their money, not less. Some people don't LIKE multiplayer, they should have an option to pay less and only purchase single player. Some people will want to try out expansion packs and TF2 without having to pay full price for each of them, they should have the option to do so. It's all about more options.
    • If I was a kid, I'd be pissed to see that I couldn't play online.

      Is there any real demand for such a product?

      Then again, I can see how it would be good, as some parents might not want their kids paying online/might be cheap bastards.
    • "...some people don't LIKE multiplayer, they should have an option to pay less and only purchase single player..."

      I completely agree with this statement. A few minutes ago, I wouldn't have given HL2 a second glance (never got into the first game), but now, because of the incentive to buy just the single player package, I think I'm going to have to check it out.

      Imagine games like Neverwinter Nights -- how much would just the SP campaign have cost? A *LOT* less than the $75 CAD (plus tax) that I paid fo

      • I agree with you on everything except NWN. I don't like multiplayer games because it is still possible that one guy acting like an idiot can ruin it for everyone else. And there is always an idiot. But regarding NWN, considering the amount of mods available, some of them very VERY high quality, as well as the different experience you have of the game if you roleplay (fighter requires different playing skills than sorcerer, e.g.) make it one of my best purchases ever. It is one of two games (the other being

  • what? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Suppafly ( 179830 ) <slashdot@s[ ]afly.net ['upp' in gap]> on Wednesday September 03, 2003 @02:53PM (#6861407)
    I don't really understand why they would sell a single player only version at walmart and then sell a regular single/multiplayer version at "gaming" stores. Just sell the regular version everywhere..
    • Agreed.
      I think they'll just drive piracy up. When Jo Schmo gets home and finds that he can't play against his friends because he picked up his copy at Wal-Mart rather than at EB or the like I doubt he'll be willing to go out and spend money on another copy of the game just to be able to get multiplayer.

      I noticed there's no listing of price (obviously, since it's at the discretion of the retailer), but I'm just wondering how much of a difference in price we'll see between the two.
    • They will sell the regular version everywhere. The different SKUs are not retailer specific. Retailers will buy whatever they think will sell. Valve referred to the SP-only version as the 'wal-mart' version because stores like wal-mart will carry more copies of SP-only than game stores, just because the kind of people who go to game stores probably won't want SP-only.

    • Re:what? (Score:2)

      by eht ( 8912 )
      It's for the 80% of people who buy a game that has both SP and MP, and then only play SP, Blizzard has released statistics in the past to back up such claims since they own the MP gaming network and can tell when each and every one of their keys doesn't call home.

      This is to provide a discount to the majority of users who have absolutely no intention of ever playing the MP aspect of the game.

      Though I'm sure it will cause confusion when little johnny opens his x-mas present and finds the SP only version and
      • A less useful statistic is the simple numbers:
        Half-Life sold how many million copies?
        Number of people that play Half-Life online: ~60,000

        Although the 60,000 are different people at any given time, and new people start every once in a while and old people stop every once in a while, it still can't add up to the number of people that bought the game. In fact, it'd be amazing if half the people that own a copy of Half-Life have played online.
    • No shit, it's not like pressing a disc with "Everything" on it would be any more expensive or les desirable to a Wal-Mart version/customer

  • Crippling their online player base. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03, 2003 @03:13PM (#6861618)
    The majority of the copies are going to be sold through places like Walmart. What does this do to the online community? Screws 'em.

    Even Microsoft learned that it was a bad idea to make multiple versions of their flight simulator games (eg: FS 2002 and FS 2002 Pro) because it was damn irritating and confusing to the more casual simmer. So they stopped this practice with FS 2004.

    If Valve (sorry, "VALVe") follows suit, by releasing a version without multiplayer - they've just killed their multiplayer community for HalfLife. Many people will just buy whatever version they get their hands on first, only to find out later there's no multiplayer. In the meantime, there will be a far lower server population and less servers.

    HalfLife's success came from the free mods - Counterstrike in particular. To start trying to charge for the basic ability to play an online mod for a game isn't going to be productive, less so when they actually want to charge for something like Team Fortress 2 when the prequel was available for free.
    • The solution, obviously, is to allow players to 'upgrade' to multiplayer if they want. Since Steam will be the HL2 launcher, all the SP-only owners will always have the option to upgrade to SP + MP with a credit card over Steam.

    • Many people will just buy whatever version they get their hands on first, only to find out later there's no multiplayer.

      So they'll have to go and buy ANOTHER box with multiplayer included -- doesn't that look nice from Valve's point of view?

  • First, the date everyone keeps mentioning in the thread (and here) as being the end of September for the release? According to ebworld.com, the currently listed release date for hl2 is 11/18/03. Which, needless to say, isn't this month. Second, nobody has available anywhere on their preorder pages (at least that I can find) any information about collector's edition vs. standard vs. 'lite' versions of Half-Life 2. I do wish that the information about the 'extras' was a little more clear. If the extras a
    • The game hasn't even gone gold yet so there is NO date. No matter what the stores say. Wait till the gold announcement then add probably 2-3 weeks. So each week that goes by just keep sliding that window.
    • I am so sick of people who think that the stores know what they're talking about.

      Valve is still saying September 30th. EB thinks November, Gamestop says February, but are either of them making the game? No, I didn't think so.

      Now that we're actually IN September, I don't think they'd be saying the 30th if it wasn't going to happen. The backlash now would be incredible.
  • This is news. This is kind of a big deal.

    This is Sierra using the MMRPG model for a type of game that has traditionally been supported for free. Sure patches and whatnot will still be free, but other things that were free aren't gonna be anymore (Counterstrike). I dunno, I think this is weird. Maybe I'm just not grasping the whole thing, but I don't see a ton of people subscribing to Half-Life (steam, whatever).

    If this was MS changing Office to subscription based sales (or even offering that option fo
    • You are wrong. The subscription service you're referring to is for renting games that Valve makes with the HL2 engine. If you go to the store and buy HL2, you have no obligation to pay a subscription. You have the game already. Subscription is an option for people who would not be inclined to pay $40x2 for expansion packs, but WOULD consider paying 10 bucks for a month or two to play them. It makes a lot of sense, and it has nothing to do with MMOGs or their pricing scheme.

      People, try to understand th
      • So what you're saying is that if I just want to play through the single player game once and then have nothing more to do with HL2 (or counterstrike or expansion packs or whatever) then I can pay $10 to rent the game for a month instead of dropping $50?

        That doesn't sound right. Is it?

    • CS2, since CS is now an official product, is going to be a boxed retail product.

      Same with whatever the DOD team decides to do.

      Everyone else is pretty much free to do what they want. Hell, Valve could make Ricochet2 and release it for free.

      You can take the plastic sheeting and duct tape off your house now.
    • This is Sierra using the MMRPG model for a type of game that has traditionally been supported for free.

      Actually, not quite. you've got to click on the original post in the halflife2.net forums [homelan.com] to realize that it's not MMORPG style. As Gabe's email (apparently) states: "But nowhere has there been a suggestion that people pay in the store and then pay a monthly fee on top of that a la the MMORPG." (unless there's another message from Gabe past page 1 of the forum)

      It sounds to me that it's psuedo subscr
      • Well, more to the point, assuming that Valve releases somftware that you want to buy every six months, it's a deal. That's a funny kind of gamble that I'm not yet willing to take.

        Mind you it doesn't matter whether or not I take that gamble. Tech advances and changes in distribution structure require a bunch of early adopters to test things out and so on. Then if it works well enough and seems stable, the mass market well jump on the bandwagon.

        So I won' be signing up for Steam right away, but I'll be watch
        • I think the only way it's really a deal for anyone is if you're the type of person that plays a game maybe once or twice for a couple weeks, and then puts it down. If you only do this about 5 times and don't let the monthly fee recur on you, then it's probably worthwhile (though if you can't keep your saved game info, then it might not, depending on the kind of person you are).

          Alternatively, if Valve can manage to ship 3 full games a year that are actually worth full price ($150), then you're getting a goo

  • ... if they price it the way I hope they will.

    A new game on average costs 50 euros where I live. If the SP-only game costs 40 euros or below, and the MP-enabled one costs 50 euros, all is good and well. Also, I'd like the ability to upgrade my SP version to MP and mod-enabled version for 10 - 15 euros; I'd rather not pay the price of an entirely new MP version just to play multiplayer.

    The forty euro option would be excellent for gamers who don't really bother with multiplayer and usually don't have time

  • My prediction (Score:4, Funny)

    by Torgo's Pizza ( 547926 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2003 @05:57PM (#6863411) Homepage Journal
    I have a feeling that all Steam is going to be is a bunch of hot air. Gimme the box and the CD.
  • I think I'd like to know exactly what they would be releasing for the $10/month subscription fee. For $120 dollars a year, I could buy 3 other games at full price (give or take), so if Valve releases 4 new games that year, it would be worth it (I already own Half-Life and some of the expansions).

    However, if Valve doesn't release anything beyond the game and a couple of expansions, then it doesn't make any sense to go the subscription route.

    Am I missing something fundamental here? Unless Valve increases th
    • This may be true, but steam is also a way of being able to rent games using your $10 subscription, then stop playing it when you're done playing. I personally rarely play any one game for more than a month or two nowadays, so I could get a 2 month subscription and save more than half the retail price. Sure, I don't have anything to show for it after that, but I've got a cupboard full of old games rotting away.
  • Let's say we weren't talking merely about Valve's relatively small product line here, but a large publisher, like all of Sierra. Buying a subscription for a month or two would allow you to play through and enjoy EVERY game in the collection at least once, like a rental without the middleman. When you finish, you let the subscription expire, and then if you want to go back to one of the games you can buy the boxed version and keep it forever.

    I think it's a wonderful idea, personally, though Valve is taking
  • I, for one, am fed up with pompous game companies that turn up their noses at game demos. I don't want your namby-pamby fake benchmark program to tell me numbers. I want to run around in one of your sample levels and test the 'feel' of the engine myself. Yes, it may say that it will do 60fps on my system, but if I buy the game only to find out that it can drop to 15 fps during many scenes (or it plain out sucks), I have no recourse! Once the software is opened, very few companies will simply take it bac

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