Gal Civ 3 is ready for alpha - $99 on Steam

[aaatoysandmore]

ORIGINAL: flanyboy

I wonder if devs will respond to the downward pressure on prices that sales are driving by increasing prices above what they want to sell at so the sales sell the product at their target price providing the illusion of a sale. Retail stores especially clothing and furniture are notorious for that practice.

ORIGINAL: Cauldyth

Uh, $99?

Yep, Penny's just got caught using this practice and they are going to suffer for it. I was reading it in a news report just last week. you can fool some of the people some of the time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. [:-] Penny's was doubling prices on things and then running sales off ads for 1/2 price. Too funny. Glad they got caught.

[gradenko2k]

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns
You’re trying to compare Apples to Oranges. When you pay top dollar at Matrix, you own the title and can play it years from now if you wish. With Steam it’s a rental and if Steam ever goes defunct like many past game publisher’s have (Talonsoft, Paragon, Microprose, SSI, etc.) your entire game collection goes poof and turns into cyber dust.

The above listed publishers and dozens/hundreds more were strong successful companies in their day, but nothing lasts forever. Who knows when it comes to tech, tomorrow could see some new innovation completely change the way you buy products and cause Steam to go belly up the way downloaded games put stores like Babbage’s out of business. Personally I prefer to own my games and like a hard copy I can hold in my hands and put in a box to pull out whenever I like down the road.

Jim

None of your examples really makes the case that a customer would forever lose access to his games in the event of a digital distributor going belly up, or even a publisher/distributor deal. Mind you, someone who bought AGEOD Rise of Prussia in Steam can still play and download it at any time.

[Hertston]

ORIGINAL: Ranger33

At the end of the day, it's entirely optional for everyone involved, so I don't get all the wailing and gnashing of teeth from people who don't want to buy in. Just reeks of "Stop liking things I don't like!!! WAHH!!"

Paying may be optional, but suffering the inevitable decline in game quality this model promotes is not. It simply boils down to this, which scenario would a publisher/developer prefer?

1. We have to get the game just right so it's as good, if not better, than any direct competitor, so it gets great reviews, and we get great sales that first keep the company going and secondly fund our next project.

or

2. We have already received 2/3, if not more, of potential total revenues through Kickstarter, early access and pre-orders. While it would be great if we release the 'next big thing' at the end of the day, it's not really that important as long as the game isn't total pants. And even if it is, we just release as early as we can get away with, put out one or two cosmetic patches for show, and then move on pronto knowing most of our customers have already done likewise.

Not difficult, is it?

[histgamer]

Kohl's is a chain here that does that but its not as shady as that they permanently price high and always run sales so they don't actively change prices they just charge more for items not on sale than they really want to sell them for that way they can have continuous sales. I think that's the more likely route. You can't perpetually sell AAA games at $5 and drive down customer pricing expectations without driving costs (quality) down or pulling up base prices.

ORIGINAL: aaatoysandmore

ORIGINAL: flanyboy

I wonder if devs will respond to the downward pressure on prices that sales are driving by increasing prices above what they want to sell at so the sales sell the product at their target price providing the illusion of a sale. Retail stores especially clothing and furniture are notorious for that practice.

ORIGINAL: Cauldyth

Uh, $99?

Yep, Penny's just got caught using this practice and they are going to suffer for it. I was reading it in a news report just last week. you can fool some of the people some of the time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. [:-] Penny's was doubling prices on things and then running sales off ads for 1/2 price. Too funny. Glad they got caught.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: gradenko_2000
None of your examples really makes the case that a customer would forever lose access to his games in the event of a digital distributor going belly up, or even a publisher/distributor deal. Mind you, someone who bought AGEOD Rise of Prussia in Steam can still play and download it at any time.

Sure some individual developers may offer you the chance to re-download a game you bought via Steam if Steam goes defunct, but the vast majority of developers will not. First it makes no business sense, they gave up a large chunk of the sales price to Steam for their hosting and distribution service. If Steam goes down then the individual developers will have to pick up the cost of creating and maintaining their own service without having the benefit of the revenue the game created in the past to pay for such things.

Second it will also depend on the legal licensing rights in the deal they signed. Some may have given up the rights to sell/host their own game in exchange for a larger percentage of the profits or something. How many times do we read about developers who want to revisit their old games and modernize them but they are prohibited because they cannot obtain the rights to do so because they gave up those rights in the deals they signed with their publishers years ago? It will all be on a case by case basis, but I have no doubt that the vast majority of your Steam hosted games will become cyber dust.

Edit: Almost forgot, read the fine print over at Steam, you do not own the game you paid for, Steam does. You merely bought the right to play their game and they can cut you off whenever they feel like it and you can do nothing about it.

Jim

[Alchenar]

You have never ever owned a video game. Whatever form you bought your game in, retail or digital distribution, you bought a license to use the software, not the actual software itself.

Having the CD in your hand is not some magic legal silver bullet, nor are companies that exist to make money by selling games secretly plotting to cut you off from the games they have sold you because they are evil.

[gradenko2k]

There isn't really a precedent to claim that all or even most Steam owned games will turn into "cyber dust" given that there are significant numbers of games that already use Steam purely as a distribution service sans DRM such that copying their install folders into your favored form of back-up will work about as well as backing-up a Matrix games installer and its serial number.

If anything, the decision to activate Steam's DRM features is purely on the publisher/distributor themselves.

[Alchenar]

ORIGINAL: gradenko_2000

There isn't really a precedent to claim that all or even most Steam owned games will turn into "cyber dust" given that there are significant numbers of games that already use Steam purely as a distribution service sans DRM such that copying their install folders into your favored form of back-up will work about as well as backing-up a Matrix games installer and its serial number.

If anything, the decision to activate Steam's DRM features is purely on the publisher/distributor themselves.

Stop posting and do your turn!

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Alchenar

You have never ever owned a video game. Whatever form you bought your game in, retail or digital distribution, you bought a license to use the software, not the actual software itself.

Having the CD in your hand is not some magic legal silver bullet, nor are companies that exist to make money by selling games secretly plotting to cut you off from the games they have sold you because they are evil.

Never implied they were evil, just that the agreement allows them to cut off service and you the consumer have no rights in such a circumstance to demand a developer or even future publisher honor your purchase of the title. With a CD in my hands I can load and install my game at will and am not beholden to obtain a “by your leave” from any other distributor first before I can install and play the game I paid for.

Don’t get me wrong. I am 100% happy to have a service like GoG host my games, but with them I can make backups of my install files and keep hard copies myself to guarantee I can load the title at will any time in the future should they go belly up. With a service like Steam, that itself is the DRM scheme, you cannot do so without first circumventing their scheme that requires games shake hands with their servers first before launch.

As I’m no programmer I have no wish to use a DRM service like Steam that would need to be circumvented to bypass their DRM scheme and I see absolutely no value to me at all in their service. I’d much prefer to pay a premium price to keep a company like Matrix in business to guarantee I can buy games from a publisher who respects their customers and doesn’t want to control and track what they do with the games they buy.

Jim

[Greybriar]

$100 is too much.

[Alchenar]

You are way more likely to break/scratch/lose that CD in your hand than have one of the major digital distributors go under.

In fact, I've lost more games to Windows 8 than I have to whoever I bought SWAT 4 off who got bought up by someone and turned into gamefly or whatever terrible service it's called.

e: and if people are willing to throw $100 at Stardock for early access to GalCiv3, good for them! I'll wait and see how it pans out.

[Rising-Sun]

Just wait awhile, Steam will drop the price for discount (trust me) infact just alpha and not even close to be finish. Beside i already seen a dozen users are upset with the game, some due to tech problems and other craps. So i would wait.

[Jevhaddah]

ORIGINAL: Alchenar

You have never ever owned a video game. Whatever form you bought your game in, retail or digital distribution, you bought a license to use the software, not the actual software itself.

Having the CD in your hand is not some magic legal silver bullet, nor are companies that exist to make money by selling games secretly plotting to cut you off from the games they have sold you because they are evil.

I do not know where yoo live but in Europe It's different.

http://www.vg247.com/2012/07/03/eu-cour ... tal-games/

Cheers

Jev

[histgamer]

Even in Europe the games specifically state you don't own the game, the question really is not what the game companies say, it's what the courts say. The right of first sale exists in the US as well but that doesn't mean game companies don't call it a license with that said the bigger question is game companies ability to enforce the license.

ORIGINAL: Jevhaddah

ORIGINAL: Alchenar

You have never ever owned a video game. Whatever form you bought your game in, retail or digital distribution, you bought a license to use the software, not the actual software itself.

Having the CD in your hand is not some magic legal silver bullet, nor are companies that exist to make money by selling games secretly plotting to cut you off from the games they have sold you because they are evil.

I do not know where yoo live but in Europe It's different.

http://www.vg247.com/2012/07/03/eu-cour ... tal-games/

Cheers

Jev

[gradenko2k]

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns
Don’t get me wrong. I am 100% happy to have a service like GoG host my games, but with them I can make backups of my install files and keep hard copies myself to guarantee I can load the title at will any time in the future should they go belly up. With a service like Steam, that itself is the DRM scheme, you cannot do so without first circumventing their scheme that requires games shake hands with their servers first before launch.

As I’m no programmer I have no wish to use a DRM service like Steam that would need to be circumvented to bypass their DRM scheme and I see absolutely no value to me at all in their service. I’d much prefer to pay a premium price to keep a company like Matrix in business to guarantee I can buy games from a publisher who respects their customers and doesn’t want to control and track what they do with the games they buy.

Jim

You can already do this with Steam games

http://steam.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games

It is the publisher that decides to include DRM with their titles, not Steam/Valve itself.

[aaatoysandmore]

ORIGINAL: gradenko_2000

There isn't really a precedent to claim that all or even most Steam owned games will turn into "cyber dust" given that there are significant numbers of games that already use Steam purely as a distribution service sans DRM such that copying their install folders into your favored form of back-up will work about as well as backing-up a Matrix games installer and its serial number.

If anything, the decision to activate Steam's DRM features is purely on the publisher/distributor themselves.

If that were true then why are all games that are also sold on steam don't patch from other sources like Gamersgate, Greenman Gaming, Amazon.com etc etc? I've read the fine print and some games will state if you bought this game thru steam you must patch it thru steam. Outside patching processes will not work. Like Crusader Kings II for instance that used to be on Gamersgate as well as Steam. You got the patch from one or the other but not both even though it is the same game. So, yes steam and gamersgate have their OWN .exe files when games are released separately for each. If it's exclusive to steam only though no download or patch from gamersgate or anywhere else will work. Same with mods, steam doesn't allow some mods to work on the steam client edition.

Also, I'll give you another example that steam controls your games. Reformat your hard drive. Reinstall that game using your backup without ever installing the STEAM client and tell me that game works. Even in offline mode Steam makes a check to see if that game came from Steam and is activated. Your lil backup service is only as good as that harddrive it's stored on with the Steam client active. Remove your steam client and reformat that drive and you'll see what happens to those games you got on steam.

Herein lies the difference between say a Matrixgames .exe file and Steams. You do not need any type of client to use the setup.exe, with Steam you do.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Alchenar
You are way more likely to break/scratch/lose that CD in your hand than have one of the major digital distributors go under.

And there’s the real difference between you and I. I’ve been alive long enough to know for a fact nothing lasts forever. For quite a long time the net was dominated by AOL online, no one thought at the time it could ever go away due to how powerful and dominate it was in its time. When it fell it fell fast and people were still so delusional about its fall that Time Warner was talked into buying it for a vast sum of money far in excess of its almost worthless value at the time.

Today Steam dominates its market, I have no doubt at all that someday there will be no Steam. You on the other hand have faith your purchases will be around for decades, good luck I hope you are right but I doubt you are. Anyone who wants to compete with Steam needs to innovate and come up with ideas that lessen Steam’s value to its customers. When a successful competitor does finally come along, they may innovate Steam right out of the marketplace. Who knows what may happen, with tech things can change overnight and they do with quite a bit of regularity.

Jim

[gradenko2k]

ORIGINAL: aaatoysandmore
Also, I'll give you another example that steam controls your games. Reformat your hard drive. Reinstall that game using your backup without ever installing the STEAM client and tell me that game works. Even in offline mode Steam makes a check to see if that game came from Steam and is activated. Your lil backup service is only as good as that harddrive it's stored on with the Steam client active. Remove your steam client and reformat that drive and you'll see what happens to those games you got on steam.

Herein lies the difference between say a Matrixgames .exe file and Steams. You do not need any type of client to use the setup.exe, with Steam you do.

You mention Crusader Kings when that's really the best example of what I'm talking about. Install Steam, install CK, copy the installed folder out of the Steam directory and into another hard drive, or burn it onto a disc, or put it on a USB stick.

Assuming you're still running a Windows machine 10 years from now and the media survives, you can boot up Crusader Kings from that folder without ever having touched Steam.

[aaatoysandmore]

Well, I thought monopolies were against the law? If Steam can get soul rights to the delivery of a product (have to use their client to play), isn't that a monopoly no matter who can "sell" it? It comes down to the question of if you have to play it on Steam why not just buy it on Steam? IF Steam goes under Gamersgate can't do anything about it even if you did buy your game from them. Eventually Steam is going to get displaced by the laws I think. But, in a since it's like Apple and Microsoft for years Microsoft owned the world but now who's on the rise and who is worried? Wins8 didn't do anything good for Microsoft it just turned more people to MAC's. I know I will always go toward the less intrusive and customer friendly component in the long run. Prices are getting reasonable and Mac's can do everything a PC can now justabout. If I can play my games on a Mac my next computer will be one. See what happens when you treat your customers like cattle or sheep...they stampede on you. No longer support XP was the end for me. This forcing people to upgrade or tough luck is BS. Even old 57 chevys still get parts support nowadays. [:D]

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: gradenko_2000
You mention Crusader Kings when that's really the best example of what I'm talking about. Install Steam, install CK, copy the installed folder out of the Steam directory and into another hard drive, or burn it onto a disc, or put it on a USB stick.

Assuming you're still running a Windows machine 10 years from now and the media survives, you can boot up Crusader Kings from that folder without ever having touched Steam.

Most game installs today make needed registry changes/additions, so this won't work if the game in question does this. Also I can pretty much guarantee any Steam game install adds tons of extra stuff on top of game additions to your registry and I bet their exe won't work if any of it is missing.