Game Distribution Platforms Becoming Annoyingly Common

The Escapist's Shamus Young recently posted an article complaining about the proliferation of distribution platforms and social networks for video games. None of the companies who make these are "quite sure how games will be sold and played ten years from now," he writes, "but they all know they want to be the ones running the community or selling the titles." Young continues, "Remember how these systems usually work: The program sets itself up to run when Windows starts, and it must be running if you want to play the game. If you follow this scheme to its logical conclusion, you'll see that the system tray of every gaming PC would eventually end up clogged with loaders, patchers, helpers, and monitors. Every publisher would have a program for serving up content, connecting players, managing digital licenses, performing patches, and (most importantly) selling stuff. Some people don't mind having 'just one more' program running in the background. But what happens when you have programs from Valve, Stardock, Activision, 2k Games, Take-Two, Codemasters, Microsoft, Eidos, and Ubisoft? Sure, you could disable them. But then when you fire the thing up to play a game, it will want to spend fifteen minutes patching itself and the game before it will let you in. And imagine how fun it would be juggling accounts for all of them."

Game distribution

[smittyoneeach]

Game distribution
A tragic solution
The most horrid trick
Since the disposable Bic
Burma Shave

Re:5, 10, 20 years down the road

[IsisTheDamned]

you don't have to wait that long - hellgate london achieved this in less than five years...

Re:Tell me about it!

[Anonymous Coward]

psychical media

Now that's a whole new distribution paradigm ;-)

Re:Steam and Electronic Arts

[sopssa]

So now I work for Microsoft, Opera Software, Steam, Google, Infinity Ward, Logitech and (interestingly) Red Hat. That makes my work days 56 hours long, which leaves me -32 hours per day to dick around. Man.

This is a real problem

[dangitman]

The proliferation of game distribution platforms is very annoying. Which is why I am the CEO of a company that is introducing an innovative new product that distributes and manages game distribution platforms.

Re:Steam and Electronic Arts

[PopeRatzo]

Valve has stated before that if they do go belly-up they would release a patch so that you could play all of your games without getting onto the steam network

In legal circles, that's known as the "I promise not to cum" clause.

Getting the finger from the cloud.

[GrantRobertson]

This is the problem with frikkin cloud computing. Everybody and their brother wants to reach down from that cloud and stick their finger in your pie. When they are done they just give you the finger and you are left with a useless mess in your pie-tin.

Just imagine a sick cross between Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel and American Pie.

Re:Steam and Electronic Arts

[shutdown -p now]

So now I work for Microsoft, Opera Software, Steam, Google, Infinity Ward, Logitech and (interestingly) Red Hat. That makes my work days 56 hours long, which leaves me -32 hours per day to dick around.

Ah, so you're an H1-B!

Re:Dawn of War 2

[Hatta]

I loved the original - I met a guy playing it in an apartment I rented in Amsterdam's red light district after Expedia failed to book my hotel - thought "wow, someone made an awesome looking 40k game!"

You were stranded in Amsterdam's red light district, and the best thing you could find to do was play video games?

Re:Tell me about it!

[sabt-pestnu]

I was going to reply with some amusing-but-pithy comment, but I don't have the activation key.

Doesn't Bother me

[Anonymous Coward]

I p2p all my games. I let the fools who buy deal with all of the bullshit.

Re:A common annoyance, not just in gaming

[PGGreens]

I just know that it'll all be worth it if I ever decide to get an iPhone. The Apple Mobile Device Manager has been warming up in the background for months!