I’m not sure about that. Thanks to Steam, I’ve bought many indie games. Without Steam, I wouldn’t have even known these games existed.
That’s incredible but not surprising. I really hope sales of AC2 drop dramatically, the only thing the people making those bonehead decisions will understand is money. Of course I’m sure in any event the PC version of AC2 will have an inordinate amount of support costs, in no small part due to the DRM issues… We’re screwed either way.
If sales of AC2 drop dramatically they will blame the pirates.
Generally, those kinds of DRMs are de-activated 6 to 12 months down the line, when the amount of sales has trickled down to almost nothing anyway. The point of these DRMs is to screw with borrowers and/or used sales (and, hopefully, piracy - but we see how well *that *works) when the game is still a hot item.
It’s not that I dislike Steam as a games publishing entity - on the contrary, they’re doing a rather good job, yet (I still paranoidly dread the day when they’re bought out or some guy like the boss of Activision winds up at their head).
But the software itself is so fucking clunky and annoying…
I’m sure AC2 will be pirated intensely. This is a sure case of “even the people who buy the damn game will play a pirated version,” once they lose their progress due to an internet hiccup, or they can’t play because the DRM server is down. They’re BEGGING people not to buy their game.
I would imagine they’d be smart and decent enough to do this, but there are no guarantees. If there’s one industry full of collosal dicks, it’s video game publishing…
Steam is an online distributor, not a publishing company. They front no money for development(except maybe for Valve games, ofc). AFAIK, listing a game is free, but they take a 40% cut(much smaller than a traditional publishing company). Developers also keep their IP rights, and can distribute it in any other way, including competing digital distribution sites.
In other words, its just a store. It can’t swallow anything, because ALL it does is sell stuff.
Yeah it could very well be that I’m being naive but as of right now, I’m completely trusting of Steam. They can do no wrong! Although when they do turn evil, I’ll probably be the one hardest hit. 
Moreover, I have no idea how I might play the game years down the line, when they’ve stopped maintaining servers or even forgotten about the gamne. And even if they have the best of intentions, the company won’t last forver. There’s a lot of turnover in the industry.
I was pissed when I bought Mass Effect, and found there was no gurrantee I’d even be able to play it ten years from now. I still pull out roms for old SNES games (my cartridges having long since gone dead), or sometimes grab my copy of Fallout or Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I doubt I will ever play Mass Effect again and again, and that really limits its value to me.
I paid 5 bucks for Mass Effect, at that price i can’t complain about what will happen ten years from now. See Steam is popular not because it’s some incredible service that solves all DRM problems, they just offer really good prices that make you not care about the other stuff.
Are you sure about that 40% number? That seems somewhat steep, but for all I know it could be the best in any industry, no idea. I always thought it was closer to 25-30%. Thought I’d read something like that somewhere… but since my memory is vague you’re probably right. Just wondering where you got the info.
I think 40% is the magic number most retail stores bump up their products. They’ll buy something at cost then bump it up 40% to sell it for a profit.
Yup, because once you take into account the costs of doing business, that’s really a minimum. Many businesses must mark up things 100% or more, just to stay in the game. Of course, some stuff gets discounted, too.
Yup, but the thing is, while everyone is distributing their stuff through Steam, no game studio or collection thereof is working on developing their own distribution infrastructure. As far as I’m aware, no other on-line store is even competing with them, either. So if Steam suddenly decided to act the dicks, everybody would be caught with their pants down as they’re wholly dependant on them to sell their games, in the short term at least. Independent studios making games sold exclusively through Steam even more so.
Not that it’s a real consideration, admittedly - as I said, it’s merely my baseline paranoia at work. Doesn’t change the fact that the Steam software and the hoops it makes you hop through to play your games (or, as the case may be, to be stuck fuming in front of a popup saying “Launching game right now, honest” for an hour…) are mondo annoying.
Direct2Drive and Impulse are fairly well established competitors to steam.
www.gog.com is sort of similar. They just have a ‘no DRM’ philosophy. Prices are comparable on older games. Same people who did The Witcher.
I love Steam. I’ve bought over two dozen games over Steam; in fact, I got the first Assassin’s Creed game for ten bucks during their last holiday sale. Assassin’s Creed II probably wouldn’t even be on my radar if it weren’t for Steam. Unfortunately, there’s this little blurb on the Steam store’s Assassin’s Creed II page:
So not even the Steam version will be exempt from this ridiculous DRM. I do not pirate games, but as long as this DRM is in place on top of Steam authentication, no sale.
Just saw this on Joystiq and thought it might be relevant to the discussion.
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/08/ubisofts-pc-drm-verification-was-out-because-servers-were-atta/
Though I whole heartedly agree with PC gaming’s need for tougher DRM this just didn’t work. They should patch the game to disable the DRM checking thing and try a different approach on another game.