EA Is Now Officially On Steam, Spore Loses SecuROM 354
Trevor DeRiza writes "Today, Valve and EA revealed that this week's earlier rumors were true: Spore (and other EA games) are coming to Steam. As of today, Spore, Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack, Warhammer Online, Mass Effect, Need for Speed: Undercover, and FIFA Manager 2009 are all available for download on Steam. In the coming weeks, EA will add Mirror's Edge, Dead Space, and Red Alert 3. On the official Steam forums, when asked whether or not Spore would contain the dreaded SecuROM DRM that contributed to it being the most pirated game of 2008, a moderator replied, 'It does not have third party DRM.' EA has also finally launched a 'de-authorization tool' to free up limited installation slots."
Several readers have written to point out other news about Steam today: they've begun selling games priced in local currency for European customers. The only problem? Their conversion rate seems to be $1 per €1, somewhat less favorable than the current exchange rate, which is roughly $1.40 per €1.
AKA (Score:5, Funny)
Re:AKA (Score:5, Funny)
Re:AKA (Score:4, Insightful)
From the summary of the article "'It does not have third party DRM.'".
A statement like this could mean anything like:
-EA has removed all DRM from the title
-EA has purchased the SecuROM code, and is still wrapping the game in this DRM
-EA has come up with some other DRM scheme on it's own, details to come
If this person was in HR, and was called for a reference, they would probably say something like "I would recommend nobody before this person for a job."
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Re:AKA (Score:4, Insightful)
What happens in the year 2020?
Will the server still be up-and-running to "authorize" my playing of Spore? I doubt it. And even if it is still operational there's a possibility a new EA CEO decides to "change strategy" and revoke all licenses to the Steam corporation, thereby deauthorizing all Steam users from playing EA games.
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A night out can carry no expectations of being long lived whereas a video game only has artificial restrictions. I buy games to play off and on for as long as the hardware lasts. In 20 years time I might just want to play any of Valve's games. The same as it's been over 20 years since Mario Bros and I'll still play that on my real NES.
With PC games there should be a reasonable expectation that if something worked one day on one set of hardware/OS it should work forever even after the developers and publi
Re:AKA (Score:5, Insightful)
P.S.
>>>Honestly, I don't understand this attitude
I don't understand the attitude that anything older than 5-10 years is not worthy of keeping. I still have favorite movies that are around three-quarters of a century old. "It's old" is not reason to discard good entertainment, and that applies to games as well as movies.
Re:AKA (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>Balders Gate was released in 1998. I still play it and enjoy it about once a year.
Well there you go. I bet if it had DRM it wouldn't even work anymore, due to the server going down, or the owner of that game simply deciding "we don't want people playing BG anymore; let's make them buy it again".
Whoever holds the key controls your access, and they can withdraw the key whenever they feel like it. It's a perpetual rental, not ownership.
European prices (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure why the slashdot editors have decided to combine two unrelated steam stories, effectively denying the localized price story its own discussion. Maybe nobody reads slashdot in Europe? I'd say that, for anyone interested in using Steam living in the EU, the huge price increases are much bigger news than the EA thing.
How huge? For example, Call of Duty 4 went from 49,99 US$ to 71.97 US$ overnight, according to TFA. As a result, for most (all?) games on Steam it is now cheaper to buy them in brick-and-mortar stores, and you get a box too!
It looks like the message is "If you want to be free from Securom, you'll have to pay more. Actually, scratch that, you'll just pay more regardless."
Re:European prices (Score:4, Insightful)
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Oh bugger. I've just checked, and they have turned the beta off. Now I can only buy in sterling and the prices are higher than normal retail! Screw that valve, you just lost a loyal customer.
Re:AKA (Score:5, Insightful)
Steam is DRM laden.
How can Steam fight DRM?
Re:AKA (Score:5, Insightful)
Steam is DRM laden.
How can Steam fight DRM?
Steam's DRM, in my opinion, is much less intrusive than SecuROM. Sure, it requires an authentication server. Sure, it runs in the background while you're playing the game. But it's much less intrusive and much more transparent than installing a device driver (or something along the lines of that) that's hard to remove and putting a hard limit on the number of times a game can be authenticated.
Think of it as a "gateway drug" to what I hope will be a DRM-free future, like what iTunes did with its less restrictive DRMing (and eventually, the lack of DRMing) of music downloads (yes, I know that iTunes still DRMs a majority of their content, but that's because Apple's deal with the RIAA restricts them from DRM-free sales).
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The driver issue is the dealbreaker for me, i don't want ridiculous DRM code touching the kernel, ever. Using rootkits to prevent removal of kernel code is even more absurd.
Re:AKA (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, don't bring drugs into this. Drugs' spokesperson announces that drugs have no affiliation what so ever with DRM and do not wish to have their name tarnished by the association.
Re:AKA (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but DRM will never go away as long as piracy still exists. Zero-day and Day-one warez cannibalize PC game sales, and as long as DRM prevents that, they're golden.
Steam is really no better, it's just that it hasn't had the same sort of character assassination that SecuROM and Starforce have gone through because they happen to have made HL2.
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Re:AKA (Score:5, Interesting)
DRM in and of itself isn't evil, in fact Steam brings a lot of features that make it actually appealing to me.
No media, no serial numbers, just a single username and password for all my games.
Re:AKA (Score:5, Insightful)
No media, no serial numbers, just a single username and password for all my games.
Free unlimited downloads, relatively automatic updates, etc... Though changing the install directory could be good.
I bought Crysis through the EA store download method as an experiment. While I captured the download file that should allow me to reinstall, I'm not sure I'd be able to today. With steam, that wouldn't be a problem.
I have to agree, I like steam. They manage to do online download gaming right.
Steam doesn't suck any more? (Score:5, Informative)
I see so much praise for Steam these days. Has it improved significantly over the monstrosity I swore off ~four years ago? I am talking about the years when you could not play a Steam game offline if you did not put yourself into offline mode while still online. Steam trying to authenticate itself killed the network at dozens of LAN parties, and that behavior could not be stopped without closing Steam.
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I haven't fucked with Steam since they banned the account linked to my copy of Half-Life 2 with no provocation and no warning. They refused to amend the issue in any way. DRM is a bad idea as long as the company handling it has the ability to take your games away from you.
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Re:AKA (Score:4, Informative)
The crysis binary you captured includes a hashing mechanism that will only allow the installer binary to run on that computer.
So yes, it will allow you to re-install, assuming you don't change whatever vital components they use to fingerprint the host.
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And then theres the ridiculous GTA4 bullshit.
Steam + GFW Live + Rockstar Social Club + SecureROM.
I mean FOR FUCKS SAKE ASSHOLES... enough already!
Re:AKA (Score:5, Interesting)
No reselling of your games...
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I sell PC games all the time. I just sold off Star Trek Dominion War for $40 via amazon.com
Re:AKA (Score:5, Interesting)
Any game over $35 that I buy on steam, I put in it's own account. That way if I want to give it away or sell it, I'll just give away the one account.
Re:AKA (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM in and of itself isn't evil, in fact Steam brings a lot of features that make it actually appealing to me.
No media, no serial numbers, just a single username and password for all my games.
You forgot "no right of first sale".
If you can't sell it, is it really yours?
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More to the point, if it walks like a duck and looks like a duck, and I can use it to pick up pretty girls. Do I really care if it can quack like a duck?
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Only if you have a quacking fetish, which, after hearing about you using ducks to pickup girls, i have to wonder...
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Re:AKA (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sorry friend but you are confused. (Score:3, Informative)
It may not be logical to you but that don't make it wrong.
Peace,
Mild Bill
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Just think of it as a consumable, rather than an asset.
You don't expect to be able to re-sell a restaurant meal, or a pint of beer, or a night at the movies. Do you "own" them? Maybe not, but I don't see many people whining about that.
Re:AKA (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that you can't resell it might matter it someone, put it doesn't to me. I can count on one hand the number of times I have sold my computer games... zero.
Even if you sold every single computer game it just means you are giving yourself a $10 discount in the future. Whoop-de-fucking-do. Personally, I find the fact that I can never lose a video game again to be vastly more useful than the fact that I can't pawn it off.
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And all it takes is one database quirk to lose them all at once. Or one person to steal/guess your password. No thanks. I guess I've bought my last PC game from EA.
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Which is why my ATM card isn't linked to my main checking account, it's on a secondary account with only a thousand or so in there. I'll risk the robbery for my games- the probability of being robbed and the robber taking video games are fairly low compared to the chance of a programming glitch. Or Valve going under. Or some employee at Valve deciding I'm a cheater. Or Valve deciding to start charging a monthly fee for access to Steam. DRM only causes problems, I will not support it in any form.
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"Spore's DRM is Half-life'd"?
It is an improvement, after all...
>.>
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You can play without an internet connection (within restrictions) after you have set up the machine using an internet connection. You can play at your friend's house, but not without an internet connection.
Most importantly, you cannot sell your games or loan them to your friends, as you don't own them. And if Valve decides you have violated their terms of service and cut off your account, you lose all the games you "owned".
If they can take it away, then I never really owned it.
Steam limits you a lot. You ju
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Yes, but Steam has assured us that in the eventuality of their auth servers going down, they'd give us ways to continue playing.
Also, any computer than can run the Steam client can install and play any game you've purchased via Steam. An unlimited number of installs, without the need to authenticate, then deauthenticate as you install on a new system.
Yes, it's DRM, in a technical sense, but in a practical sense, it's almost a liberating as owning a 100% un-DRMed game CD that does not do disk checking.
I woul
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I think Gordon Freeman would come busting through a vent and crowbar down some rentacops (for their ammo).. push a few buttons and BAM, steam games saved..
Re:AKA (Score:4, Insightful)
Steam is DRM. It controls what you can and can't do with a product you have bought and paid for. It's dependent on activation servers, which it contacts every time you launch a game, just like Spore was going to before the outcry.
In a very meaningful sense it's less abhorrent than SecuROM, as it doesn't go out of its way dig its tendrils into the OS, breaking random things and throwing hissy fits if it finds innocuous software it doesn't like. There's no bullshit "activations" to use up, and it doesn't leave bits of itself behind when you uninstall it.
But in other ways it's worse. You don't really own a Steam game. You can't loan a copy of a Steam game to a friend, or sell it to someone, or even give it away for free, except in specific cases where Valve decides to let you. If something happened to Valve, or they just decided they didn't like the cut of your jib and aren't going to let you play your game anymore, you'd be shit out of luck.
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To put it another way, while I've given up the ability(for now) to lend/sell/give away my games, on the other hand I'm also able to play any games in the future with relatively no problems, simply by re-downloading it.
As the success of iTunes and such shows, the ability to redownload your purchases whenever you want often trumps the portability/sellability of physical mediums.
As all my friends are either non-gamers or get the same games anyways, it's not a big deal there, and I like occasionally playing an
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You *can* still sell all of your games with Steam. What you can't do is sell *some* of your games.
Personally, I really enjoy going back and playing games 5 years or so after they were new, and come back to them 5 years after that and so on. Steam makes that a breeze. Trying to install and patch old games if I've switched PCs a few times and the company went out of business is a real pain. Of course, if Valve goes out of business I'm screwed, but the moment they srated selling Pop-Cap games, I stopped wo
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Steam is DRM, but it's very clever DRM. As for not being able to share games, just give your friends your account information. Oh, yeah, I mean, if you can't trust them you might have some problems... but, I trust all my friends... I think...
That's a good question to ask someone, "Do you trust your friends?"
"Oh yeah, I sure do!"
"Yeah, but would you let them use your Steam account you've spent like, 600 dollars on?"
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Re:AKA (Score:5, Insightful)
Nor can more than one person play from your steam game list at a time. What if I want to play TF2 while another of my household plays another online game from my list? You can't. You can hack about with offline mode for single player games, but for multiplayer, only one person can play from your list at a time. This has become more of a problem as time goes on. Short of creating a new steam account for every single different game, they've very effectively tied your entire list of software to single-user only - it's even more restrictive than secuROM in it's way.
Now, steam makes up for it with the plus points in some ways, but we should be wary of cheering on putting more and more of our games at a single point of failure.
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Finally! (Score:5, Informative)
Now I can buy Spore! I knew they'd drop it sooner or later and then I can finally buy it.
Wait... why would I?
Maybe the lesson here is, if you avoid DRM like the plague, you avoid buying overhyped games as a beneficial side effect.
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Well I was excited to try it, and I will now.
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Aren't all games over-hyped?
I'm still excited to play it.
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No. Not all games are over-hyped.
Really good games, for instance, are so under-hyped that they never get mentioned at all. That's why no one buys them.
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Re:Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
And once people start buying the game, it stops being good. Haven't you ever heard the term "Sell out"?
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Lets rephrase:
"we've replaced a very restrictive form of DRM with another form of DRM. How do you like it?"
opportunist (166417): "I LOVE IT! *hands cash*"
This is not the drm you are looking for.
Steam is DRM - its better, but still DRM.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
Steam is DRM - its better, but still DRM.
But maybe it'll convince EA that at least over restrictive DRM IS an issue - and SECUROM, limited installs, complicated activation schemes and all that is the incorrect method to go about doing DRM.
Or maybe a correct wording would be 'you can't get something for nothing' - you CAN get consumers to accept DRM as long as you offer true advantages to go along with it. I happen to like the idea that even if my house is struck by a meterorite and everything is destroyed I'd be able to play my games again as soon as I got a new computer and an internet connection.
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It is as usual a matter of magnitude and a question of how much you're willing to accept.
Yes, Steam imposes a form of DRM. So far I didn't decide that I accept it, contrary to your assumption. I know your plight, and I miss the sarcasm tags just as much as you do.
The question is now, how much do people accept? Steam offers a solution most people find acceptable, so it will prevail. It does not allow you to play more than one game from your account at the same time, it puts your game to some extent into the
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I know you caught the sarcasm, thankfully.
I would like to just see the DRM dance end, really. When DRM that people don't notice is "perfected", the same situation as now will occur: The smart people will figure out how to get around it, and the rest will happily lap up.
I have portal on my steam account which I rarely if ever use; should you wish to play it you can use mine. Just leave me some comment with a way to contact you or something.
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's getting more annoying as time goes on. For instance, I bought a few games for the kids to play on the laptop. Last night, I wanted to play Left4Dead but couldn't because Steam was logged in on another PC.
Steam should allow the client to run on multiple PCs and then just ensure the same game isn't being played.
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This is good...Maybe. (Score:2, Interesting)
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What are the benefits exactly? Digital download?
I don't know why Steam is so popular, seems like another point of failure to me. Someone please sell me on Steam.
Re:This is good...Maybe. (Score:5, Insightful)
Digital download. Ability to download your games on as many machines as you want (and play on one at a time, which I consider fair). Integrated grouping/friends-lists with Steam Friends and a built-in matchmaker.
It's pretty excellent.
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The only major feature Steam is lacking IMO is storing and being able to download your save games. Having your game installed at your buddy's house doesn't really matter much if you can't pick up where you left off.
Yes, you could just copy the save game files and take them with you, but it's something that could easily be seamless on Steam's part and should be.
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On one or two of their proprietary games, yes. I'm talking the saves of every game you have, Valve or non-Valve.
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http://bluehost.com/ [bluehost.com]
You're welcome. :D
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You can't do it legally. With steam, you know that it's legal because they're explicitly enumerating that right in the terms of your license and providing the mechanism to do it.
And that ignores the additional benefit that you don't have to worry about misplaced or damaged original media (free download is a lot cheaper than "cost of media plus nominal fee plus S&H" where available. And faster, too), or that nonsense about "insert disk to play" that other software uses.
Sure, it's DRM, but it's DRM done
Re:This is good...Maybe. (Score:5, Interesting)
it can be perfectly legal without steam, it's just up to the distributer to be more reasonable with thier t&c's.
But they aren't, so Steam it is.
the question you need to ask yourself, is is piracy more or less of a problem now than before DRM? what's that, it's just as big of a problem??? that's right DRM isn't the solution. kthxbai.
The question you need to ask yourself, is piracy more or less of a problem now for Steam-only games than it is for non-Steam ones? and the answer is, from what I've seen, that it's much less of a problem now. Yes, pirated versions do exist but most of the people I've met who've played HL2 have done so on a legit copy, which I can't say for Crysis or CoD4 for example. Therefore, by your own argument, Steam *is* the solution.
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So you should be able to play your games on as many computers concurrently as you want?
Gee, I can't imagine how that doesn't screw the publisher.
Idiot.
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Is there any other kind?
Or does "digital" now mean "not on CD"?
Re:This is good...Maybe. (Score:5, Funny)
Is there any other kind?
Back in my day we only had analog downloads! And we were glad to have any at all! Why, if we wanted to play a video game one of us had to mentally interpret and reconstruct the current running through our hands back into the original binary! Then we had to crack the DRM - by slamming our heads just right against a stone wall to purge it from our memory. And we were grateful for the opportunity!
...
Then our father would cut us in two wit' a bread knife.
Re:This is good...Maybe. (Score:4, Interesting)
I know I'm being a douche but radio stations used to transmit programs over the air that I would record on cassette for my Commodore 64.
If anything is an analog download that would be it.
Re:This is good...Maybe. (Score:5, Funny)
i prefer analog downloads using real steam. unfortunately, it took me several ruined hard drives to realize that analog steam downloads are incompatible with digital storage media. but i finally got a water tank installed in my computer, and it's been working great ever since.
see, whenever you download something the steam travels through a network of pressurized pipes--a series of tubes, if you will--until it finally reaches the computer, at which point it has to go through the Steam Condenser System Interface (SCSI) before it's finally written to the liquid state drive.
it is quite dangerous since the pipes are filled with highly pressurized scalding hot steam. if the network link ever becomes oversaturated it can easily result in packet loss and 3rd degree burns. but i think it's worth the risk. analog steam is perfect for cloud applications and downloading vaporware.
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EA was only partially at fault. Dice just designed the game badly and didn't test worth a damn against Vista clients before releasing it to the masses. Now whether or not that EA forced them to release early is something else, but just look at the SIZE of the patches for BF2 and BF2142. 512MB for the last BF2 patch...compared to the smaller 16-30MB patches for CoD4. It just screams bad early design.
Well. (Score:3, Interesting)
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There was an "extended download" option (about an extra $5) that you would have unticked to save some extra cash on that purchase.
I got the 2 x-pacs for BF2 in the same way, I have since lost my BF2 disks but I can still download the update packs.
Not defending this opt-in, just stateing that at the time you purchased they were doing that kind of thing, I was "this close" to opting out as well, then I figured, what the hell.
No problem (Score:5, Funny)
The only problem? Their conversion rate seems to be $1 per â1, somewhat less favorable than the current exchange rate, which is roughly $1.40 per â1.
Yeah but they don't have to physically ship pixels when they change money. Pixels are heavy, bytes are dense.. it's a complicated system of pipes and transmission lines.
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It's not complicated. It's a series of tubes. It's as simple as that!
Is this really an improvement? (Score:5, Insightful)
Its been widely hypothesized that EA's intent with the DRM on Spore was not really to prevent piracy, but to impede second-hand sales. Doesn't Steam do exactly the same thing? Can you feasibly resell a license/copy of a game purchased on Steam?
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I don't know about Spore, but you can de-authorize Half-Life and sell that component.
You can also sell the Steam account as a whole.
Run as Admin (Score:2, Interesting)
Now why, why on earth would Mass Effect be required to Run as Administrator?
For most of the games it also says "INTERNET CONNECTION AND END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT REQUIRED TO PLAY." Well, yeah, Steam games already require that. Are they trying to say that Offline mode is disabled for that particular game? There an extra EULA hand-crafted by EA on top of the Steam one?
This all sounds very suspicious to me.
Nice Try, but No (Score:2)
It may also be worth pointing out that, since a company the size of EA believes Steam is a reasonable substitute for SecuROM, that Steam may not all the harmless sugardrops and fairydust that its supporters have been adamantly claiming all these years. Which is, pretty much, what I suspected all along...
Schwab
Re:Nice Try, but No (Score:5, Insightful)
No one is claiming anything about steam.
It is what it is.
A service that allows you to buy(rent), download your game to any computer with the client, and play. It has a functional offline mode that works for every valve developed or published title I have played. It has introduced me a to few indie games that were fun. The prices are good, and I've bought most of my games on discount. It has community features that I find useful. It keeps my game up to date.
It is the only authentication system that actually gives you something in return for authenticating your game, and it doesn't bitch about me having virtual drive software.
The only major issues I've had with a game on steam was when a publisher(THQ not Valve) decided that the steam authentication wasn't good enough and decided it needed another DRM solution on top of steam, and it didn't let me actually play the game while their authentication severs were buggered.
Steam is what it is. Nothing more nothing less.
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It is the only authentication system that actually gives you something in return for authenticating your game, and it doesn't bitch about me having virtual drive software.
Well, there's also stardock [stardock.com]
, but their game list is more second-tier, if you know what I mean.
Steam is winning on number of games in my list right now, mostly due to their offering package deals quite frequently, as well as the 75% off deals. Even though I have a physical CD somewhere, I might just buy their 75% off($5) Stalker deal right now.
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I love stardock's games.
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Or, it could mean that EA has finally seen the light and is trying to be an actual videogame company instead of the marketing-driven behemoth pushing yearly crap it has been until now, and is now trying to sell good games in consumer-friendly formats for a change.
Call me naive, but after Mirror's Edge I'm willing to give them the benefit of doubt, and if IBM could change, so can EA.
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I think you accidentally a whole verb.
C|N>K
Wait a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am seeing praise here that they are dropping the SecureROM for Steam.
Why?
The way I see it, I still have to rely on some kind of authentication server in order to play my games. What if 10 years down the road I want to play some spore, and Steam is no longer online. What then?
Sorry, but I still refuse to buy until I have a hard copy in my hands that I can install at any place any time.
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:4, Interesting)
I find that very unlikely though. Steam would be bought out and passed around before it would go away. Its like trying to imagine a once popular website going away. Think about the sites from the '90s you dont use anymore, like excite.com or ubid.com. They're STILL there.
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Sheesh... (Score:2)
"The only problem? Their conversion rate seems to be $1 per 1, somewhat less favorable than the current exchange rate, which is roughly $1.40 per 1. "
Man, this is a huge step in the right direction and this all you can fucking think of?
Exchange rate not 1:1, some better, some worse (Score:2)
Contrary to the headline, I think the prices are all "locally adjusted". Left 4 Dead is now £26.99 where it was $49.99 (£33.34), so that is discounted. However World of Goo was $19.99 (£13.33) but has now gone up to £16.99.
So I'll carry on checking against amazon.co.uk / Game boxed prices for big releases. For indie titles, it's always worth looking at the $ price they charge on their own web site, which are sometimes more and sometimes less than what Steam
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Ah, oops, headline was talking about EUR prices, I am talking about GBP. That *is* insane if they're suddenly asking 50EUR for Left 4 Deaad ($70) though.
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They even released their company report to the public! That's a cool company.
Well, their method worked... at least for you. That is not a "Company Report"; it's a "Customer Report". The two things are very different. The latter is a kind of advertising. From a business perspective it makes sense to release such reports. It makes the consumer feel as though they're part of a community. At the end of the day though they're another business doing buisness-like things--nothing new here.
From a business prospective, it's important to create DRM that doesn't prohibit the user, but still protects your product at the same time.
Great observation. But I don't see how you can support that. How did Stardock create DRM that protecte
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The more I read Stardock's report, the more I feel that they're just playing the masses and producing "spin". For example:
* Legitimate complaint: Requiring the user to always be online to play a single-player game. Though we do think publishers have the right to require this as long as they make it clear on the box. *Borderline: Requiring the user to have an Internet connection to install a game. If the game makes this explicit on the box, that's one thing. Customers should be able to make informed purchasing decisions.
And, from their "Gamers Bill of Rights":
Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game
Don't these things seem contradictory? They're just pretending to be on the customers side when they're, in reality, no different to any other company. They use weasle words. They say things that "sound good" to, perhaps, make them seem like they're on the side of legitimate purchasers. I am not sure they are though.