How Valve Will Single-handedly Save PC Gaming

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10 Jul 2012 20:07 #26037 by garfi3ld

A good read from a friend of mine over at Bright Side of the News

Valve cannot and will not hide behind a claim of being a victim of piracy, but rather innovate around it. By decreasing the price of CS:GO to $15 and the price of DOTA 2 to free, they have effectively de-incentivized piracy and at the same time have significantly increased their legitimate audience. By decreasing the price, Valve made CS:GO and DOTA 2 affordable to almost everyone, and as a result of pure economics, their market is expanded. What does this mean? More people are going to buy these games and whenever more people buy a game, computer hardware sales go up, bringing the entire PC gaming industry with it.

 

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/newsv2.aspx?id=3138


Wes

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10 Jul 2012 20:16 #26038 by garfi3ld
You guys should check this one out :)

Wes
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11 Jul 2012 05:08 #26058 by L0rdG1gabyt3

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11 Jul 2012 18:24 #26062 by drpain
The age old piracy argument is getting stale if you ask me. Obviously if the game is of high quality and priced accordingly people are going to buy it but at the same time if the game is crap and charges premium price for it and nobody buys it the publishers or studio automatically pulls the "blame piracy" card.

How about those devs just fess up and admit their game was buttslop and nobody wanted to play it and the people who pirated the game was going to pirate it anyways.

If you really look between PC games and the console games you will notice that the 360 and Wii are heavily pirated as well but nobody cares to point that out at all and just automatically blames the PC side of ruining the industry.

Also piracy aside, how about studios taking gambles on new and different IP's instead of making another Battlefield of Duty: Modern Killzone clone and breath some fresh air into the industry.

Just my 2 cents. Still a good read on the article.

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11 Jul 2012 21:04 #26066 by garfi3ld
I agree

I do think that pirating on the PC is easier than on a console, but the core issue is that piracy isn't really the problem in the first place. I also know a lot more people are willing to pirate a game that they thing sucks.

Wes

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11 Jul 2012 23:33 #26072 by drpain
Oh without a doubt its easier on the PC since all the tools are pretty much click and go but it is getting easier for the consoles especially the 360. Obviously not Dreamcast easy haha but for someone with a little technical know how it's pretty straight forward.

I'm very guilty of "renting" games that suck I used to do it all the time when I was going to school and living in Michigan and didn't have much money to spend.

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12 Jul 2012 00:13 #26076 by Twodavez

drpain wrote: I'm very guilty of "renting" games that suck I used to do it all the time when I was going to school and living in Michigan and didn't have much money to spend.


With the invention of "free weekends" on steam where they can allow you to download and play a game for a limited amount of time, why not allow us to rent a game for a week for $5, if we like it, they give us the $5 back towards the full retail purchase of the game, if we don't wanna buy it, they keep the $5 and disable it from our steam account? It would allow the people who wanna try a game to do it without being forced into piracy!?!?!?!?
If only the companies thought this way, instead of just giving hackers new projects. The only way to prevent you from playing a game it to require internet authentication, but i'm not sure why we couldn't unplug the WWW at a LAN and create our own to fool STEAM into thinking we had bought all the games? It's obviously a huge task, but so is reverse engineering a game to create key generators and the such to offer it on a pirated site...
Just sayin', it's going to happen, at least try to profit a little from it as the maker steam!

“Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” - Mark Twain

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12 Jul 2012 00:20 #26077 by drpain
Yeah, something like that could work. I think OnLive does something like that were you can rent the game or atleast play it for like an hour or 2 but it's been awhile since I have fooled around with OnLive.

I'm sure we all remember back in the 90's and early 00's we had the shareware and demos out that would let us play a level or a single multiplayer level as long as we wanted.

Don't know why that went away especially on the PC since the consoles get demos for the games.

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12 Jul 2012 00:21 #26078 by Dreyvas

Twodavez wrote:

drpain wrote: I'm very guilty of "renting" games that suck I used to do it all the time when I was going to school and living in Michigan and didn't have much money to spend.


With the invention of "free weekends" on steam where they can allow you to download and play a game for a limited amount of time, why not allow us to rent a game for a week for $5, if we like it, they give us the $5 back towards the full retail purchase of the game, if we don't wanna buy it, they keep the $5 and disable it from our steam account? It would allow the people who wanna try a game to do it without being forced into piracy!?!?!?!?


99% of games on Steam sell for $5 during the sales anyway. The only ones that don't are the big multiplayer titles. Any other game you could just play through once for $5 and be done with under your system, none of them would ever sell at full price while new. This would be horrible, not only as a business decision for Steam but also for the developers as well. I mean, unless you want them all to go bankrupt. Let them keep making the money off their shiny new games and sell them later for cheap, no need to change anything. :)

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12 Jul 2012 00:22 #26079 by Dreyvas

drpain wrote: Yeah, something like that could work. I think OnLive does something like that were you can rent the game or atleast play it for like an hour or 2 but it's been awhile since I have fooled around with OnLive.

I'm sure we all remember back in the 90's and early 00's we had the shareware and demos out that would let us play a level or a single multiplayer level as long as we wanted.

Don't know why that went away especially on the PC since the consoles get demos for the games.


Steam has demos for nearly every game as it is. I wasn't aware it ever "went away".

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12 Jul 2012 00:51 #26080 by drpain
They don't have Demos for everything just whatever the publisher gives but at the same time you used to just hit up your favorite game site on the web and download a demo.
I used to use Gamers Hell back in the day but now it's nothing but crapware titles pushing demos.
Go to STEAM and see the new Ghost Recon but guess what? No demo to try the game so heading over to the Bay instead.

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12 Jul 2012 00:52 #26081 by Twodavez

Dreyvas wrote:

Twodavez wrote:

drpain wrote: I'm very guilty of "renting" games that suck I used to do it all the time when I was going to school and living in Michigan and didn't have much money to spend.


With the invention of "free weekends" on steam where they can allow you to download and play a game for a limited amount of time, why not allow us to rent a game for a week for $5, if we like it, they give us the $5 back towards the full retail purchase of the game, if we don't wanna buy it, they keep the $5 and disable it from our steam account? It would allow the people who wanna try a game to do it without being forced into piracy!?!?!?!?


99% of games on Steam sell for $5 during the sales anyway. The only ones that don't are the big multiplayer titles. Any other game you could just play through once for $5 and be done with under your system, none of them would ever sell at full price while new. This would be horrible, not only as a business decision for Steam but also for the developers as well. I mean, unless you want them all to go bankrupt. Let them keep making the money off their shiny new games and sell them later for cheap, no need to change anything. :)


Well obviously it's a a good idea to let people play for a few days or i even like the idea of hours better. If a game can be beat completely in 2 hours, it should only be worth $5 anyway. Not all games get to the sale and if you miss it, it makes for lots of SAD Pandas. How many people bought Killing floor after the free weekend that happened to fall on a LAN OC event? It was only a $20 game if i remember correctly. I know i bought a game due to the LAN free weekend. I'd be more apt to "rent" COD or BF3 for $5 for a weekend to play at a LAN, instead of having to dish out the $60 it costs new...
And for games that are made for multiplayer, the demo isn't going to cut it. Let me see the whole game for a few hours or a day for cheap. Then when it goes on steam sale, i'd be more apt to buy it, or just get it for free at that time since i've paid my dues towards the game...

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12 Jul 2012 01:35 - 12 Jul 2012 01:37 #26083 by Dreyvas

Dreyvas wrote:

Twodavez wrote:

drpain wrote: I'm very guilty of "renting" games that suck I used to do it all the time when I was going to school and living in Michigan and didn't have much money to spend.


With the invention of "free weekends" on steam where they can allow you to download and play a game for a limited amount of time, why not allow us to rent a game for a week for $5, if we like it, they give us the $5 back towards the full retail purchase of the game, if we don't wanna buy it, they keep the $5 and disable it from our steam account? It would allow the people who wanna try a game to do it without being forced into piracy!?!?!?!?


99% of games on Steam sell for $5 during the sales anyway. The only ones that don't are the big multiplayer titles. Any other game you could just play through once for $5 and be done with under your system, none of them would ever sell at full price while new. This would be horrible, not only as a business decision for Steam but also for the developers as well. I mean, unless you want them all to go bankrupt. Let them keep making the money off their shiny new games and sell them later for cheap, no need to change anything. :)

Twodavez wrote: Well obviously it's a a good idea to let people play for a few days or i even like the idea of hours better. If a game can be beat completely in 2 hours, it should only be worth $5 anyway.


You say it's obvious, but I fail to see how. Two hours isn't a reasonable amount of time to beat most games, but you could probably play through most in a day or two. Again, read my previous post. This would absolutely murder sales of new games. See ya, indie devs.

Twodavez wrote: Not all games get to the sale


I would disagree. Virtually all Steam games go on sale, even if it takes a while.

Twodavez wrote: and if you miss it, it makes for lots of SAD Pandas.


This is Steam's problem how? They put the sale out there and you weren't paying attention. Sorry about your luck. This is why I keep Steam sale notifications enabled, they're extremely good for, you know, notifying you of sales. :P

Twodavez wrote: How many people bought Killing floor after the free weekend that happened to fall on a LAN OC event? It was only a $20 game if i remember correctly. I know i bought a game due to the LAN free weekend.


Right, it went on sale in conjunction with the free weekend. Not sure what you're after here.

Twodavez wrote: I'd be more apt to "rent" COD or BF3 for $5 for a weekend to play at a LAN, instead of having to dish out the $60 it costs new...


They're just too popular and this is never going to happen. Sorry. Why would they rent it to you for $5 when they know you'll buy it for $60? Even if not, no skin off their noses. They can't hear you over all the money they're making.

Twodavez wrote: And for games that are made for multiplayer, the demo isn't going to cut it. Let me see the whole game for a few hours or a day for cheap. Then when it goes on steam sale, i'd be more apt to buy it, or just get it for free at that time since i've paid my dues towards the game...


Again, these games are so massively popular that they can sell them for $60 new and keep that price point for a while. They don't have to provide demos, everyone has played these types of games and the gameplay just doesn't change that much between titles.
Last edit: 12 Jul 2012 01:37 by Dreyvas.
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12 Jul 2012 08:26 #26103 by Leonresevil2
Steam still has room to improve. OnLive does have a good system of actual demos of games based on time, rather than some pieced demo standalone that suffers all the launch bugs and either turns off players or wastes dev time as they have to patch 2 versions of the game. Steam could do this case by case, and set times based on what the devs request (no renting indie games to beat in a lunch break).

Steam also has to clean up their act and crack down on some released. Revelations 2012 should've never seen daylight, let alone be SOLD for MONEY. The only reason this game doesn't make me rampage is that it's so awful that it's funny to watch funny streamers play it. But I still feel their pain. I know I'm condemning myself for eternity for watching, but I know that hell will probably be composed of playing this game, so I'm just preparing myself.

I think PC gaming is relatively safe and strong, and the lacking consoles are only helping to make it better (aside from some of the games they put out). Valve isn't the only company out there, and if they become just 'as-good' as other platform leaders, they could really hold PC gaming back. But I trust that they will think and do well. And stop selling any old Source engine trash that anyone develops.

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