Hey Best Buy: Vivendi sucks, and now so do you.

The BBQ Pit
1

So a story appeared on Slashdot today that some Best Buy stores have broken the ship date on Half-Life 2. This is almost certainly the result of them getting scooped by Meijer stores on the release of Halo 2. Some absolute Mensa-level mental titan at Best Buy said “Hm. Can’t let them other stores beat us to releasing a game - guess we’ll have to break our contract with the publisher and send out a memo. Release the game! We shall be first this time, yea verily!”

One problem: Half-Life 2 is not Halo 2. Halo 2 is a console game that, as far as I can tell, doesn’t require activation or any of that bollocks. Half-Life 2 is a PC Game that has already been distributed online to people who purchased it. Best Buy, you are late, and you will always be late. In ten years, people won’t be buying their PC games from you anymore. But I digress: the point is, you don’t have to go into a store to buy it, it’s already out on the web. You download it from the software authors (Valve), update it, and then wait. Because Vivendi (short tangent here: YOU GREEDY BADGER-FISTING MONKEY-FELCHERS) wants all the copies to activate at once, you do have to wait until the game is available in stores before the copy on your hard drive will “go live.” This is essentially a by-product of a lawsuit that Vivendi (the publisher) filed against Valve (the software team) because they are greedy motherfuckers who would only wince during an enema of molten silver because they weren’t getting their asses injected with molten gold instead.

Vivendi, to put it bluntly, sucks. So what does Best Buy do? Clearly oblivious to the legal entanglements and encumbrances on their product, they start selling the boxes early. Now, your typical Slashdot or Penny Arcade reader knows that the copy they bought is locked until the release date, and is willing to do other things until that magical day comes – buying microwaveable foods, paying bills early, barricading the door, sealing windows against outdoor light, etc. – content in the knowledge that it will work when it’s supposed to.

Joe Sixpack does not know this. He may have heard some hype that Half-Life 2 is going to be the best game released for the PC ever, period, and that it will usher in a grand era of peace and unity and everyone will get a pony &c. &c, but he won’t bother himself with learning any of that geeky stuff accompanying the release – and he shouldn’t have to. If he is a gamer who splits his time between my favorite hobby and something like, say, NFL football, woodworking, or child-rearing, he has that right. I welcome him to the fold, because I want him to enjoy the game as much as I do! …and because he makes an easy target when we play multi-player.

So Joe goes to Best Buy today and sees that Half-Life 2 is on sale there. “Wow!,” he says, “It’s early! I’ll get this box, take it home, and fire it up before the weekend’s over, and get in a few frags.” Not fucking likely. He takes it home, installs it from CD, and it doesn’t work. He can’t return it to Best Buy, so he’ll probably be a little pissed at them. He may even go there to complain, in which case the store drones will shrug cluelessly. His only recourse will be to blame “the guys who made this piece of shit.”

I submit that Joe Sixpack doesn’t know the difference between Valve and Vivendi, nor the difference between software authoring and publishing. In his haste to blame “the guys who made it,” I think he’s going to cast aspersions on Valve. Hopefully, after playing the game, all will be forgiven. Nonetheless, Best Buy has put Valve in the shitty position of having to honor a promise they didn’t make, presumably for the sake of grabbing a greater share of the retail pie.

So, Valve: bummer. Things will be brighter by Friday, when the game is officially released. Enjoy!

Vivendi: Fuck you again for your greed. And for making me wait an extra month for a game I already bought, ahhhh, lemme think… fuck you. And, hm, because I feel like it, one more hearty, sincerely felt “fuck you.” And one for flinching.

Best Buy: You Morons. Not only are you greedy, but you’re stupid. When someone in the marketing world introduces a paradigm shift in how PC games are sold, someone at corporate HQ (maybe someone in marketing or sales?) should read up on it. Their job is marketing and selling games, they have a metric fuckton of industry magazines glossing passively in their waiting room, unread, and they should fucking well be aware that this game is not just another action sequel. Whoever’s job it was to know that ahead of time, whoever released the memo saying “ah, what the hell, sell it early,” you’re causing Valve to have a shitty weekend when they should be having the last relaxing weekend before the game goes live. You totally shit all over them, and you don’t even realize that they’re on their way to making your business model obselete. You syphilitic brain-dead dinosaurs. I hope that the Valve model for software distribution catches on, and finds you flat-footed, knocks regional profits all to shit, and I hope you’re left holding the bag. You totally inconsiderate asshat: fuck you. And another one for flinching. You cry-baby.

2

I know exactly jack squat about any of this. I’d just like to note that I’m impressed that you correctly identified that gold has a higer melt temperature than silver. It’s exactly that kind of geeky accuracy which gives a proper insult its power.

3

Jurph, allow me to hand to a crowbar :smiley:

4

Thats not what he said though. The wincing is because it’s silver which is not worth as much as gold. They're not wincing from the pain. They're wincing because they could have gotten a more enima.

Carry on.

5

I’m unclear on who’s decision it was to make a game that requires online activation for playing even in single player mode. Was it Valve or Vivendi?

6

Well I’ll be damned. Well, that sucks.

7

manhattan, while I would love to take the full weight of your compliment, I’m going to have to beg off: while I might draw a distinction based on melting point, the main reason it’d be so hard to give those asshats a liquid metal enema would be the extraction of their heads. Once extracted, I think you’d find them unworthy trophies - I’ll bet dollars to donuts that you can’t find more than a handful of Vivendi marketroids who honestly know the periodic properties of gold or silver. They just know that if they’re getting their poop-chute silver plated, they’re missing out on the gold.

By the way, in the immortal words of the Warden from Alien[sup]3[/sup], “this is rumour control”: Valve designed and created Steam, which requires authentication just once to work (not each time you play). It is not unlike Windows XP in that regard. The benefits of Steam outweigh the one big weakness (viz., you can install, but not play, the game if Valve’s servers are down or refuse your connection), at least to me. I recognize the potential for shenanigans down the road but it doesn’t keep me up at night.

Benefits:

  • theoretically prevents retailers from the arms race of who will break street date first (see above)
  • allows a user to play any game they’ve purchased on any PC that has Steam installed (validation is of your user account, not your CD-key)
  • no CD need be in the drive (for laptops this is a huge bonus)
  • instant patching
  • “pre-loading” means I have the game installed already; when Valve presses the Big Red Button at 12:01am, I can play while you’re in line at Circuit City or EB.
  • I’ve been playing the multi-player version (Counter-Strike: Source) for several weeks already… and bugs that were in it when I started playing are not in it, and are not in my version of HL2. Boxed versions have to wait in line at the server farm.

Detriments:

  • greedy asshats can sell “crippled” box copies before street date, and non-savvy customers get boned
  • authentication before single-player mode works means people will still inevitably crack the game
  • one-time authentication minimizes possibility of shenanigans/spyware/etc.
  • ten years from now, if Valve goes bankrupt, no servers will exist to authenticate re-installation (i.e.: Half-Life 2 will never be abandonware).
8

While I agree with 99% of what you say, don’t be too quick to exclude valve from the greedy department. I don’t know if you saw the 17 page article at gamespot, but Gabe Newell said that buy selling the game online they make @ $31 instead of $7. That’s all well and good, but it’s not like we’re seeing any cost reduction here. I still paid $49.95 for my pre-load, when (in total theory) it could have cost me $24 less. Hell, even a 5 or 10 dollar discount for the online purchase would have been nice. The money is just going into different pockets.
Now, I know it took 5 years and about $40 million to make… but the point still remains they found a way to cut their costs, and it doesn’t translate to me at all.

As for Joe and his ire for Valve, I totally agree. I never would have thought of it like that. I would have just laughed at BB and the strife they’d get for returns/complaints, but yeah, in the end it’s “who programmed a game this way, those dumb fucks!.” (sigh)

9

Why’s this in the detriments? Am I missing something?

10

Ah, damn me for not double-proofing. That was originally about how the authentication would still lead to piracy, but I think that software piracy is always going to exist. You’re right, it’s a plus.

As for cost-cutting, they charge what the market will bear. I’m not going to pit their pricing, because if it’s too high, you don’t have to pay it. They want to charge $100 for a game? I’ll wait two years until it’s in the bargain bin for $20. I haven’t bought an EA game for opening sticker price ever, because I know they wait six months, do an expansion, and then wait another six and release them as a “Gold Edition” or some shit. Six months later, the Gold Edition is down to $25 and they throw in a strategy guide. It works just fine the day I bring it home because they’ve had 18 months to patch it. Half-Life 2 may be the first game I buy at full sticker in a while.

11

from Valve.

heh. i don’t know the full story and it will be nice to know why Vivendi is Evil, beyond what has been said so far, but here’s my impression anyway…

[ul][li]it appears steam was introduced after Vivendi was contracted as the publisher, why is Vivendi the bad guy for wanting to protect their margins?[/li][li]no cds, no manuals, no reason whatsoever that the steam pricing should remain the same as retail. that is simple greed. [/li][li]can’t think of anything good to say about Best Buy. maybe the employees were instructed to advise their customers about the authentication date?[/li][/ul]

12

I’ve gotta jump on the “not too much sympathy for Valve” bandwagon too. They’re totally banking on their one success, and seem to be ignoring the groups that helped them have that success. The original Half-Life is an excellent, excellent game. Built originally off someone else’s engine, agressively marketed by a huge (but granted, evil) publisher, and ensured longevity by the team of modders that came up with Counter-Strike. Now, they want to control the entire distribution channel so that they can get the highest profit.

As much as I like the idea that someone could just come up with outstanding content and get billions of dollars of success out of it, I know that that’s naive. As much as I hate marketing-speak and marketing teams, I’ve seen just how important they are. They’re the ones who are guaranteeing that I have a steady salary, not just any number of brilliant designers and artists. You need both to make a go of the games industry, and any group who says you can do one without the other is just being arrogant.

That said, Vivendi does suck. A lot.

As for Best Buy: eh. They’re extremely convenient; there’s one at just about every other exit. I don’t even have to go to an EB unless I’m looking for something extremely esoteric; chances are good that whatever I’m looking for, Best Buy will not only have it, but have dozens of copies of it. And that’s not a bad thing at all. That’s what they do, that’s what they’re there for. I’m not going to bother with the hassle of downloading something online – I’m just going to head down to the store and pick up my copy and be done with the whole transaction in 10 minutes.

That doesn’t justify breaking contracts and internal shady dealings, of course. But as far as the “outdated channel of distribution” rhetoric: eh. Retailers aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Valve can bank on downloads because they’ve already built up their name because of retailers. How are the titles that aren’t huge best-sellers like Half-Life supposed to manage? Just by word of mouth?

13

The game comes out tonight at PST midnight tonight, not Friday, unless I’m missing something.

And as for piracy, well: one of the biggest major sources of piracy is the fact that things aren’t available at the same time all around the world. Even if the game is eventually cracked, you have to give Valve credit: the game goes on sale worldwide in just a few hours, yet the playable game STILL has yet to show up on piracy sites. Methinks the pirates who were used to working at the BestBuy storerooms, ripping open a box early, playing it, cracking it, and then releasing it before the game goes on sale were foiled this time. And at 12:01 PST, the game will be available to everyone in the world, all at once. Sure you could still get a pirate version when they come out, but now youhave no really good reason not to just suck it up and buy the game.

14

I got the Vivendi from the title confused with the execrable typeface Vivaldi and was prepared to join in the Pitting. But, alas, I was wrong. Carry on.

But Vivaldi is really fugly

15

why?