Metal Gear Solid V PC Disc Contains Steam Installer, Nothing Else 217
dotarray writes: The boxed copy of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain reportedly contains nothing but a Steam installer. That's right, even if you fork out real-world money for a physical copy of the game, you'll still have to download the whole thing from the internet.
The game officially launches tomorrow. Early critical reviews are quite positive, though you should take that with a grain of salt until the game is more widely distributed. Game Informer says, "Unlike the linear design of previous entries, The Phantom Pain rarely assumes you have particular weapons and equipment, so the missions are brilliantly designed with multiple paths to success." The Washington Post notes, "The Phantom Pain’s openness feels like Kojima finally found a technical platform broad enough to make use of all of those tools and trusts players to build their own narrative drama from the way they choose to put these tools together for each mission." IGN has this criticism: "... where Phantom Pain’s gameplay systems are far richer and meatier than any the series has ever seen, its story feels insubstantial and woefully underdeveloped by comparison." Metal Gear Solid 5 is launching for PCs, current consoles, and previous-gen consoles; Digital Foundry thinks is likely to be the last true cross-generation AAA title.
Who names this shit (Score:2, Funny)
The Phantom Pain? Like the pain that amputees feel in the location of their removed limbs? That is truly an awful name for a game.
Re:Who names this shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who names this shit (Score:4, Funny)
"Knowing Kojima's body of work, the title is deliberate and thematic."
Actually I don't think they have a leg to stand on.
Re:Who names this shit (Score:5, Funny)
It's what happens when you watch Star Wars Episode I
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The Phantom Pain? Like the pain that amputees feel in the location of their removed limbs? That is truly an awful name for a game.
The game is painfully slow to install, because it's not even there. Makes perfect sense.
Re:Who names this shit (Score:5, Funny)
You pay for the game, you expect the game to be in the box, but it's not there: Phantom Pain.
Not all that uncommon in reality (Score:2)
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Updates is one thing; you could install it on a machine never connected to the internet and play it straight out of the box, bugs be damned.
This is different. Your time is 100% wasted going to a brick and mortar store to buy an online installer.
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This is different. Your time is 100% wasted going to a brick and mortar store to buy an online installer.
Unless you have a POTS modem, your time is already wasted when you go to buy a Steam-"powered" game. Since you don't own it and are just licensing it for reals in the case of a game which must be blessed by an online server before it can be played, you really are just wasting everything when you buy it on a physical disc. The disc itself is meaningless as it alone cannot be used to install the game. Even a Steam "backup" is not a backup of a game, but of the game's resources. It's not really a game until yo
People limited to 10 GB/mo (Score:2)
Unless you have a POTS modem, your time is already wasted when you go to buy a Steam-"powered" game.
In some parts of the United States without access to cable, Internet access costs $5 per GB. People with a 10 GB/mo plan on cellular, satellite, or Iowa DSL [slashdot.org] could start a download now and not finish the 50 GB of a full 2-layer BD-ROM before the end of the year.
Re:People limited to 10 GB/mo (Score:4, Insightful)
People with a 10 GB/mo plan on cellular, satellite, or Iowa DSL could start a download now and not finish the 50 GB of a full 2-layer BD-ROM before the end of the year.
Well, there are plans which would provide more bandwidth. The reality though is that more and more games have not just massive installs but also massive patchsets, so if you don't have high-speed internet with reasonable caps then modern gaming is not for you. That sucks, it sucks a lot, but it's how it is, and the person without decent internet access should take up retrogaming yesterday. I only have 6 Mbps myself, though with no cap, and that puts a serious crimp in my gaming activities. I cannot download a game and game online at the same time, for example. I can only game while my lady watches Netflix in the mornings; in the evenings, my ratty-ass WISP goes all to hell due to oversubscription and/or crap hardware they claimed they were going to replace a long time ago, shock amazement.
TL;DR: AAA games are not for people with crap internet
$250 to download one game (Score:2)
Well, there are plans which would provide more bandwidth.
Such plans are cost prohibitive: after already having paid $60 to buy a license for a game, one further needs to spend $250 at $5 per GB to download it.
I only have 6 Mbps myself, though with no cap, and [...] cannot download a game and game online at the same time
This is an instantaneous throughput limit, which you can work around by downloading a game overnight. Caps, on the other hand, tend to be applied around the clock, except for a few satellite providers that offer a "happy hour" type plan with a separate larger quota of data that can be used only between 12 and 5 AM local time when the bird is a little less ov
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Either that or this is another advantage of consoles over PCs.
Well, the last console I used was an Xbox 360, and I haven't turned it on in quite some time after getting turned off by titanfall (in fact I packed it into a crate and forgot about it, the whole system I mean, I guess I should sell it while it's still worth something since I don't want to cart it around until it becomes an antique) but even on that platform I had multiple-hundred-megabyte patches to deal with.
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Did single-player or shared-screen games for Xbox 360 bug you to create an Xbox LIVE Silver account, connect to the Internet, and install multiple-hundred-megabyte patches before they would start playing in the first place?
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Did single-player or shared-screen games for Xbox 360 bug you to create an Xbox LIVE Silver account, connect to the Internet, and install multiple-hundred-megabyte patches before they would start playing in the first place?
Literally no, effectively yes. If you want them to work right.
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6 mbps? Try 448/96 kbps because of living too far from the DSLAM and the ISP not caring. Refreshing a Slashdot page is not done without asking the rest of the household if they're doing anything latency-sensitive.
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With respect... if you surf Slashdot, how can you live somewhere that has such poor Internet? That would drive me insane.
When I look for a new house, what type of Internet it gets is high on my list of requirements. My wife wants to move further into the countryside, and I'm ok with this, so long as we can still get some type of reliable high speed Internet (50+ megabit would be the bare min)
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Because when I bought the house I was promised there would be fiber in the ground by the end of 2012. Yeah, that didn't happen. :-/
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Because when I bought the house I was promised there would be fiber in the ground by the end of 2012. Yeah, that didn't happen. :-/
That sucks... but their "promise" worked, you bought the house, they have their money, and your lack of fiber is not their problem...
I would only move somewhere that had high speed today, right now, that I can hook up before I even move in. I don't believe the "promises" by anyone, too many plans change.
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Same here. Problem is that selling a house with this kind of pre-2000 net connection is not going to be easy.
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Same here. Problem is that selling a house with this kind of pre-2000 net connection is not going to be easy.
I never really understood such comments, but perhaps there are situations I don't know about.
I have friends who have had trouble selling their houses in the past, comments like, "ugg, we've been on the market for 5 months, no serious offers..."
Nonsense, what has REALLY happened is, "you've been on the market 5 months OVERPRICED and no one is even asking you to dance, much less make a deal."
If a house is listed for sale for 30 days and it hasn't sold, then generally the price is too high for the existing con
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if you surf Slashdot, how can you live somewhere that has such poor Internet?
Probably because it is even more cost-prohibitive to move somewhere with a higher cost of living.
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Probably because it is even more cost-prohibitive to move somewhere with a higher cost of living.
I live in the DFW Metroplex, the cost of living here is quite low, compared to many other places, and we have gigabit to the home for $105 a month, or 300 meg for $85 a month.
What more do you want?
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You realize that not everyone can be so picky about their location, right? Maybe they bought their house back in the olden times like 1993 when there was no such thing as broadband. You can hardly expect people to anticipate technological changes 10-20 years down the road.
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You can hardly expect people to anticipate technological changes 10-20 years down the road.
Which is why you can choose to rent instead of buying, so that you can react instead of anticipating.
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I you buy, your house is a pile of money that you can get back when you move. If you rent, the money is gone.
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If I bought a house in 1993 and in 2015 could not get decent high speed Internet, then it would be far past time to move.
IMHO...
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People who rent software can pay to download it.
Not when the cost of the download payable to the user's home ISP substantially exceeds the rest of the cost of the rental payable to the publisher.
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These people are willing to rent software. [...] No sympathy at fucking all.
How are high-production-value computer games available other than through rental? Or do you likewise have "No sympathy at fucking all" for people who desire high-production-value computer games in the first place?
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Someday Steam will go away, and then all those discs which are now coasters which install Steam and maybe some game resources will just be coasters.
Yes, and someday the universe will end in heat death and everything that ever existed will be useless. That doesn't mean we shouldn't enjoy it up until that point.
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Someday Steam will go away, and then all those discs which are now coasters which install Steam and maybe some game resources will just be coasters.
Yes, and someday the universe will end in heat death and everything that ever existed will be useless. That doesn't mean we shouldn't enjoy it up until that point.
The point wasn't "don't use Steam", the point was "if you have decent internet access, the disc is a complete waste of time." It's worth noting however that if you don't have a halfway decent connection, it may still be a complete waste of time.
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I was on a 19.2 dialup connection when Half-Life 2 was released. The "special edition DVD" version of Half-Life 2 that I paid $70 for also didn't have anything on it but a Steam installer and a bunch of artwork. As I recall the total install size was five or six GB, but that would have required weeks of connections and reconnections to obtain on the link I had available.
I've still never played Half-Life 2.
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I've still never played Half-Life 2.
I was on a ~26.4 dialup connection that was flaky. My disc actually did contain game content, so once I was able to get Steam installed, I could play the game. I actually highly recommend it, especially if you've already paid for it. It is a gem among single-player FPSes. But my problem was that the initial Steam install required (or requires?) a Steam update as part of the installation process, and the download for this update did (does?) not resume when it fails. This was enough to keep me from being able
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I don't think you missed much. I was a big fan of Half-Life 1 and it's addons. The only FPS I played. Half-Life 2 though was a disappointment. Only half a game, the whole thing ends abruptly requring you to get chapter two or some oddly named thing to see what happens. At which point I didn't care what happened. I had also forgotten how totally linear the half life series was. Luckily I wanted give years for the price to drop to $10.
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The DVD is a faster install if all you have is DSL internet speeds. A full day download for some games.
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Updates is one thing; you could install it on a machine never connected to the internet and play it straight out of the box, bugs be damned.
Depends on the game. When was the last time EA released a game that worked at all straight out of the box?
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Half Life 2 - wasn't that the first proper use of the Steam platform, and basically the same as this?
I think it had some cached gcf's but the fact was by release day, you had to download the whole thing anyway because it had all changed.
Quite what's different between then and now? Now, I can't even REMEMBER the last time I bought a physical copy of a game. Honestly. I have a shelf of old-favourites and I have them all either on Steam, GOG.com or similar services or - at least - an ISO of their disk.
Who t
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I don't mind if the download process is gated to user authentication, but I'm troubled at using online authentication for rights management for single player, offline games. GoG.com will let me redownload my media over if I ever lose the file and doesn't force me to use some weirdo client wrapper/launcher/DRM thing just to make games go, but IMO the over-reliance PC gaming has placed on Steam is a serious miscalculation on the part of gamers and developers everywhere.
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It's nice living where there's proper broadband available, isn't it?
Anyone buy Microsoft Office lately? (Score:3)
This isn't a new thing in any software genre. "Physical goods" now means a scratch-off key you can use online to activate something you download.
(As a security guy, I think this is generally a good thing: no more insecure-out-of-the-box-and-never-updated software packages hitting end users' computers.)
Re:Anyone buy Microsoft Office lately? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, usually when you buy a physical game using Steam, there's a Steam installer as well, but you get a lot of the basic assets and such so you don't have download 12-15GB of data over your internet connection.
Given most of the fixes usually affect code, and maybe maps, not having to download that stuff certainly helps.
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Not for people who have capped (and worse slow) Internet connections. :(
Plenty since Phantasy Star Online (Score:3)
tell us when the last time was that you can recall security risks arising from a video game
Both the Sega Dreamcast and the Nintendo GameCube were compromised through a security oversight in the video game Phantasy Star Online. This allowed code not approved by the console maker to execute on the console. After that, the same thing happened with save files on The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and most of the LEGO film adaptations on Wii, and Cubic Ninja on Nintendo 3DS. Furthermore, bugs in Super Mario World and Pokémon Yellow were recently discovered that cause
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I think that was Ed Tice's point: now that the servers are offline, and given that these old consoles never had an app store analogous to Wii Shop, there are no paid services that one could "steal" with a break-in.
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Securerom rootkits
New Normal (Score:2)
While it is egregious, it is what everything has moved to, and the seeds of this are quite old. Games are released in Beta form, with furious patching for the first month or two, followed by ongoing significant tweaks and bug fixes stretching out for more than a year at times.
Wolfenstein Enemy Territory was the first game I recall that was not playable after the disc install, and that was about 10 years ago.
Games like Battlefield 4 have changed quite a bit from when they first shipped (actually playable no
Finally found a platform? (Score:2)
Except that the PS3 and 360 are 10 years old at this point?
This is just lazy and a poor effort (Score:3)
I don't hugely care about PC games or very much the sillyness of MGS anymore but good lord, this is a terrible move.
Some countries have data caps. I haven't read the article, or googled a damn thing but I'm going to make my guess right now and speculate this game is at least a 30gb download..... probably more like a full 50. In my case, that would be 50% of my monthly allowed internet quota.
Someone specifically buying a retail copy to avoid this is going to get stung.
Super lame.
Konami
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What kind of horrible person would sell a game second-hand and keep the key? ... ok, I did. But that was back in the days of dialup when online gaming was a rare thing. I didn't think it would matter.
If you happen to be the one who brought a bundle of old game CDs on eBay that included Half Life and Opposing Force, sorry about that.
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I buy used pc games on eBay.
Even without CD key.
Cause its dirt cheap.
Then I go to gamecopyworld.com and grab the patched executable so it bypasses the need for online.
For games that require steam, you can download the nosteam dll you swap the nosteam "steam.dll" with the original and now enjoy game without needing steam.
And download another dll that redirects multiplayer so you can play online using free shards
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Maybe you should upgrade your PC? I understand that 38.5MB [imgur.com] is a lot of ram and resource hogging when you've only got 128MB in total, but that's your own problem.
On top of that I've yet to actually see any kind of serious conflict with steam. The biggest problem usually comes from older games and the overlay which may or may not work properly due to how graphics drivers have changed, which in turn causes conflicts of various kinds, usually crashing. But that's not any different from alt-tabbing, which man
Re:So can I sell my used copy? (Score:4, Insightful)
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It amazes me the people that defend game and software maker immorality. Good for you!
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And what, they should work for free?
Lots of work goes into making these games. If the price is too high then don't buy it. They'll either lower their prices or make games that are more affordable... whatever can give.
On the flip side I'm pretty sure I have you figured out:
1. You live with your parents
2. Your girlfriend drives you to work because you don't have a drivers license or a car
3. You work level 1 help desk and think you should be head of the company because you're so smart
Re:So can I sell my used copy? (Score:4, Insightful)
And if you return it and get a "second" license so that you retain your right of first sale, then you're not stealing. Software "licensing" should not be able to take away your right to sell something after you've bought it (so long as you don't keep a copy for yourself). It works with DVD and Blu-Ray. That's why companies are trying to say "physical media is dead" and convince the next generation of people that it's true.
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If enough people prefer the convenience of digital media over the ability to resell it then yes, physical media will end up dead. It's already going that way, not many people are bothered by the fact that they can't resell the licenses of the programs, audio and video they buy from places like the App Store and Google Play. Media streaming is also becoming much more popular with services like Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go, Spotify, Apple Music, etc... where it is cheaper and more convenient than buying physical ver
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I buy DRM-free video all the time. It's convenient, since all I do with DVD or Blu-Ray is break DMCA and rip them anyway. But physical media is a nice backup if you get rid of the storage cases. And streaming things I don't own is much better than the old business model of rental. But DRM-laden video that I bought, tied to a service that could disappear with my videos is not a situation I want to be in. I only buy a movie so I can watch on a whim 10 years from now when it may be near-impossible to find
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I buy DRM-free video all the time. It's convenient, since all I do with DVD or Blu-Ray is break DMCA and rip them anyway.
It's convenient to go out and buy physical media then rip it to a digital copy? I'm not sure that could be much less convenient.
I only buy a movie so I can watch on a whim 10 years from now when it may be near-impossible to find, physical or streaming. The new model doesn't fix that at all.
The new model is to remove the "ownership", if it still has a few corner case problems that's not going to be seen as a big deal.
I'm not advocating for it, just saying that it solves the "resale" and invasive DRM issues by removing "ownership" and that arguing to producers that they should continue supporting physical media because it allows you to break the DMCA is pointless.
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And if you return it and get a "second" license so that you retain your right of first sale, then you're not stealing. Software "licensing" should not be able to take away your right to sell something after you've bought it (so long as you don't keep a copy for yourself).
Personally I don't want ownership of movies and music. I find it more convenient to just get a cheap subscription to a services that gives me all the content I could dream of. My music and movie needs are completely fulfilled with $20 a month. Even if each member of my family has to pay $20 (x4 in my case) then I'm still ahead of the $80 Satellite + CD Purchased + DVD rentals. The majority of people have spoken and they are willing to compromise ownership. Most people can't be bothered to find a buyer for t
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just get a cheap subscription to a services that gives me all the content I could dream of
Unless you want the shovelware, this does not exist for movies yet. At all. I even have a disc subscription to Netflix but I still have to literally buy some content just to be able to watch it once.
Sure, I have access to enough content that I could never watch it all. That doesn't mean it's what I want to watch.
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And it's not about reselling alone. It's about perpetual access without worrying about the status of any company's financial future.
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I agree. Not all the content is there but the amount of content will continue to grow. There's lots of competition and there's no reason for not having old offerings via stream. The internet of things is adapting to this new way to getting media and 10 years down the road it will be far better.
As for music I find all the music I need. The music streaming industry has been doing it for longer and aren't plague with the same network challenges as movie streaming.
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And it's not about reselling alone. It's about perpetual access without worrying about the status of any company's financial future.
For music and movies this is not an issue since multiple services are available and you can simply cancel your subscription with one service and go to the next.
As for games, steam has done a good job. I have a 10 year old steam game that I can still run today. With companies like Steam who actually care about the gaming industry we are in good hands. It will force the competition to follow suite if they aren't already leaning that way.
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I dunno, have EA and friends started paying overtime yet?
Robbers [theguardian.com] getting scammed isn't going to get much sympathy, especially when they're themselves trying to scam the public out of their resale rights [wikipedia.org]. Let the games industry become respectable if they want to be treated with respect; and if they continue acting like a bunch of evil overlords, they should bloody well expect the public to side with the rogues looting their ill-gotten gains - their very products depict e
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I dunno, have EA and friends started paying overtime yet?
Unpaid overtime is a huge issue across the corporate world and seems to be especially true of specialized labor such as programmers, engineers and management. The problem is that people are willing to accept large salaries with the understanding that they will need to put extra hours to accomplish the work. Problems arise when the work load is too big and the employer expects the work to be done outside the 44 hours. In the case of management the Canadian government has them categorized a non eligible for O
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THEY want to "sell" it to you (as in you pay money and that's the end of their woes) ,but they don't want you to own it
They sell you a license, they don't sell you the software. Ultimately this is going to a service-based model where you won't even get a license, you will just rent some resources from them to play the game for a time instead. Then all your problems of not being able to understand the concept of licenses and the confusion around copyright and reselling software licenses will go away.
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No, they sell me a physical disc with software on it.
This misunderstanding is why a service-based model is ideal for you.
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And if they want to get paid it is up to them to figure out how to do so
They sell a product. You choose to buy it or not. Nothing needs to change there unless you start using the product without paying them then they will find a way to make you pay and usually that means you experience will be shattered such as forced DRM or other equivalent.
Nowhere in my consideration for all of this is whether or not other people in the chain are getting anything
It's absolutely not your responsibility to allow them to monetize the product as long as you play fair. Not playing fair = worst experience down the road. Our society is plague with rules and blockages because of people who don't care about
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That is not what has happened here. One person has advocated for theft (yes theft, not copyright infringement - the next person to buy the game is now deprived of the CD-key), because "you couldn't reliably resell/buy used copies." There's
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Regarding Steam DRM, you're conflating two separate things: one thing is DRM, the other is the ability to get your games back in case of hard drive failure. Most such services will give you this ability regardless of DRM. Good Old Games, for example, allows you to get your games back and has no DRM. The Humble Bundle
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How would Gamestop buy it? You would presumably be given a key to activate on Steam in the box. Once activated it's attached to your steam account. The box/DVD becomes worthless, even if the game itself were on the DVD.
Gamestop hasn't bought used PC games since the mid 2000's.
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i wish a new MGS starred Raiden again.
You might be interested in another series starring what Raiden becomes after he learns to bend lightning to his will: Mortal Kombat.
All your games... (Score:5, Funny)
What happen? ....
Somebody set up us the STEAM.
We get signal.
What!
Main screen turn on.
It's You!!
How are you, gentlemen!! All your GAMES are belong to us. You are on the way to pwn3d4g3.
What you say!!
You have no chance to survive make your time. Ha Ha Ha Ha
Take off every INSTALLER!! You know what you doing. Move INSTALLER. For great justice.
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Epically well played.
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Mine was full install but required using Steam anyway. The DVD just sped up the installation (even counting the drive to the store and back).
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Weird. I don't remember that at all. Skyrim had a full DVD with the binary install. I've never installed Steam in my life.
It was originally possible to just buy Skyrim without Steam. May still be, even. It is/was packaged as one of Microsoft's featured "Games for Windows". Now that Steam sales have pushed the Steam version out to many many machines (including mine, and I am a long-time and consistently outspoken critic of Steam...*) there's probably many copies of it available on eBay. I wouldn't know how to spot the ones which require Steam, though, if it's not obvious on the box.
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I have two thoughts about this:
First, I find it worrisome, but not as much as when it impacts the non-game software world, i.e. the world of operating systems and productivity software, stuff that either is something everyone uses, or people use to make money, or both. What do you do if your job depends on your computer booting, which it refuses to do?
Second, I don't know if you have noticed or not, but some software companies (Microsoft, for instance) don't even try to hide the fact that there is nothing
Re:The frog is boiling (Score:4, Informative)
Could be worse. I bought a software upgrade to an oscilloscope. This is what I got:
A UPS package. Inside covered by foam peanuts, was an envelope. Inside was a bubble wrapped box. Inside fancy box was a card. On the back was ... ... a URL.
Ok, and a code. Still, there were only 2 lines. By logging into my account, entering the code, the SN and other information about the scope, I was given a license code for the software upgrade.
Type the code into the scope, and voila! Feature is unlocked.
Re:The frog is boiling (Score:5, Interesting)
I had something similar with logic analyzers from HP. I ordered an upgrade to enable new features on about 50 logic analyzers.
A week later the shipping department called me. Asked me to come get my delivery. I asked them to drop it at me office. They laughed and said, no you need to come unpack it.
Got downstairs and found a full pallet, shrink wrapped with boxes. After 2 hours of tearing down the pallet to individual boxes, I opened one up. Inside were foam spacers holding a smaller box - the size of a legal sheet of paper, about 4 inches thick. Inside that box was another set of foam spacers, holding a paperboard envelope. Inside the envelope was a single sheet of paper. With a single license key printed on it. A 60 digit license key, mind you.
I had 50 boxes of individual license keys. I spent 3 hours unpacking all of them, then another 10 hours going to each individual logic analyzer to type them in. Mind you, you couldn't just put any key in any logic analyzer. It had to match the serial number, so you had to search all the papers to find the correct one.
Works upgrade experience ever. Thanks HP! (Now called Agilent, I suppose)
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RAID cards often use a semi-functional token to enable write caching. To cache safely requires the controller incorporate a battery, which is commonly sold separately. No battery, no caching - it's a technical problem, can't be overcome. The non-technical limitation is that the batteries (In Adaptec, anyway) have a cryptographic chip in them that authenticates to the controller, so you can't just stick in any li-ion cell in - and those batteries are sold at a ridiculous price.
http://www.ebuyer.com/702930-l. [ebuyer.com]
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The difference is that you have the right to put free software on a DVD+R and put the DVD in the box. If others in your Internet-poor area want free software, you can bring your laptop into town, download it, and burn copies.
Re:The frog is boiling (Score:5, Insightful)
Hate to break it to you, but things are cheaper nowadays. I can't even begin to think what my 1000-game Steam library would cost, or the size it would take up in real disks / packaging. Probably several SHELVES judging by the DVD's I have in front of me.
And, to be honest, my girlfriend bought a tablet Windows PC - the cheapest available - and it came with a year of Office 365 for up to five machines. We've since installed all five copies of the latest office. Back in the day, to do that legitimately, would have cost a lot more - hell, it could easily have cost upwards of $500-1000. Sure, next year we have to pay a pittance to keep it up, but we also get all the new versions too, and the option to use what we want.
That would have been unthinkable before online downloads. And, even now, if you buy volume editions on a proper licence of Windows, Office, Server, Exchange, etc. they are ALL downloads. You can pay extra for a DVD, but who the hell is going to do that?
To be honest, factored over the life of software, downloads are not a huge deal. And Steam is as "permanent" a licence as you can get nowadays. Why that stops replayability, I don't know. And the used game market is dead because I can get my own copy in a year's time for less than a used copy would ever be able to go for. We actually cut out a middle-man there.
To be honest, when done properly, it's hard to argue against it. Certainly my Google Play and Amazon Instant Video libraries are more useful, convenient and cheaper than anything on DVD too. And when it comes to DRM done properly, it's hard to pick fault with Steam, to be honest. There's a reason I have 1000 games on it. I'd be shocked if they cost anywhere near the cost of 1000 DVD-ROM's, even blank ones, plus the cost of storing those online for 24/7 download for 10 years, let alone the licence to the software in the first place.
Out of print (Score:2)
And the used game market is dead because I can get my own copy in a year's time for less than a used copy would ever be able to go for.
Provided the game hasn't been pulled from the market. Some licensors let publishers adapt their IP on the condition that the game be sold only for a limited time. Tetris DS, for example, went out of print after two years while Nintendo's other best-selling DS games didn't, and the average selling price of used copies of Tetris DS on eBay shot up.
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downloads are not a huge deal.
They are when you don't have broadband and a game is a 15+ GB download. I'm a big fan of Steam, and while I personally have a nice 25+ connection, I know some people that are stuck on wireless and even satellite internet. It'd be easier if they bought the game, loaned me their library, I download/install the game, copied it to a DVD or USB drive, mailed it to them, and they copy the files over to their machine and install the game (this does actually work for Steam).
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Not really cheaper. There's a price point that companies hit and it stays the same for many years regardless of inflation. Ie, $60 is a common point for games. If you buy the box with a DVD and no DRM you pay $60. If you get a digital download thus eliminating the cost of printing and distribution, you pay $60 also. At one time people predicted that digital downloads would reduce costs, but in practice it has not dropped the price of new game at all. Steam has not reduced prices of new games at all, an
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I found it amazing that you could get the legendary edition of Skyrim that includes all DLCs for less than the cost of one of the DLCs by itself. Digital-only downloads has done nothing to lower prices of games and has actually done a lot to keep the prices higher for longer periods of time. No inventory pressure to reduce costs to clear out the shelves or the clogged warehouses.
That said, GOG keeps the prices lower than Steam although it doesn't have new AAA games.
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I would pay extra for no-DRM. I can back up myself to USB thumb drive.
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And no one complains, because everyone is an in-home shutin these days. No one ever shops in person, it's online only. People are gushing about how they get their diapers and groceries delivered to their doorstep. So of course, these people are ecstatic that they can download a game instead of stopping at a local business and supporting their economy. They don't want a real game anyway because most of them play the game once ever and then have to throw it away, since only losers will play a game that's