Agree. Banks do this though, and clearly they get away with it just fine. If it happens there it will happen anywhere.
No chance of improvement in the near term I'd say, most today are not interested in meeting commitments (marriage, job obligations) so trying to make contracts more binding is definitively a losing proposition - there's always some excuse.

Shortly after birth. Been changing that stupid EULA to Life on a regular basis ever since.





(sorry - probably confused it with Half-Life, from me quoting the wrong thing. Jokefail)

Like total war and CiV it was meant to play only on steam because of the DRM features therefore prices rarely drop similar to what you also see in Sims, DRM = Higher Prices.

I play the pirate CiV 5 with all expansions and I wouldn't give 57,88€ = 76$ for everything especially with a complete broke diplomacy which they will now release an expansion to try to fix diplomacy but they will milk another 27€ = 35$...

So the total milking of Civ 5 is at 85 € or 111$ :D !!!

i actually like steam

yes you can't sell your games (not that i would otherwise do that often) but you can very often get them at bargain bin prices if you wait for the opportune moment (read: summer and xmas sales)

as fenrir007 said, i think valve is trustworthy enough, mainly because their CEO GabeN is not only a boss, but has worked with games themselves in the past and knows what the community likes or despises in general and has a feel with the gamers, looking at how to please them and keep them attached

certain company's are led by people who only see games as a product you sell to morons who pay tons of money if it copies whatever is the most popular game and do not care about how the consumer feels

The prices rarely drop? Haha no. Civ V goes on sale pretty regularly. This year alone it's been on SIGNIFICANT sales several times, And it has already dropped the base price from 50 dollars to 30. Even the first expansion has gone lower in price. Here, have this useful link to see price history.
http://steamsales.rhekua.com/view.php?steam_type=app&steam_id=8930

Yeah, no. Steam does not enforce higher prices, if anything it is being the fault of your local publisher if they are inflating the game's price, because Civ V Gold (which is Civ V with all expansions EXCEPT Brave New World, which is not released yet) has been a total of 12.5 dollars. With the Brave New World preorder? Well yeah, the figure inflates a bit (the preorder was like 26 dollars, but brazil got a pricing fuckup so it was 2 dollars for a couple of hours).

Yeah, no. DRM does not imply higher prices, being steamworks does NOT imply higher prices (hell, see Square Enix/Eidos's games, they drop FAST and they are steamworks), so your argument is wrong from the very start.

Yeah that's really what it boils down to for DRM to me. There are arguments about what is or isn't DRM. For me, it's whether or not some external force is trying to prevent me from using the product unless I agree to some terms after I already paid for it

I don't know if you agree with this, but I would take it a step further by saying that the EULA is trying to do all of those things in the first place. Some might argue that it's buyer beware, but I don't. It's not just that they're trying to change the terms of the original EULA, which seems to be what's really eating you up (and should be), it's that they're trying to force that crap on me in the first place.

I consider an EULA the same as I do the trash in my garbage can. The reason is that it wasn't presented before the offer, acceptance, and consideration were completed and so I don't really care what's in it because it wasn't part of the deal. It's just that they didn't try to enforce the EULAs with DRM before. GOG's EULAs aren't much better but there isn't DRM packaged with them.

In the case of Half-Life 2, I didn't want any of that crap. It wouldn't be such a big deal if they would refund me but they wouldn't because it wasn't defective and I opened the shrink wrap. I beg to differ about the defective part, but they claim it was made defective by design, working as intended I guess.

I think an EULA is trying to be both a license and a contract in one but it does a really piss poor job at either one. Even if it was a contract, a click on a button isn't a signature. Where is the witness? There isn't any meeting of the minds. Shit, even a lease I signed to rent a house one time had all one-sided terms for the property manager. Some of the other roommates were saying, "Just sign it" but I asked the PM to change some terms before I agreed to it, such as they couldn't come into the house whenever they wanted before 10 p.m. to check things or show it to a prospective renter. They did change that so they would give 24 hours notice unless it was an emergency, complying with state statutes. That term most likely wouldn't have held up in court if left as is, but I would rather avoid having to go to court in the first place if problems arise.

Some say that EULAs won't have much bearing because nobody reads them. I say it's because they're shit in the first place.
True, and like banks, people will use Steam as long as their is some convenience for them to put up with all the other B.S. One of the main reasons people like a bank instead of a credit union is because banks have a lot more ATMs around to get cash out of, even though their terms are benefits more for the shareholders than for the customers.

CIV 5 Sucks only with the Gods and Kings with all expansions & packs is it worth buying :) under 30$ .... What is the price for all packs and expansions?

So yeah I wouldn't give money to Civ 5 Alone :X

Civ V Gold (which is Civ V with everything except the yet-unreleased Brave New World has been available for a total of 12.5 dollars.
I am KIND of in your boat where I regretted paying for Civ V alone, but I completely disagree about Gods and Kings sucking. It did not make it a drastically different game, but it built on what needed to be built. Everything seems to indicate that Brave NEW World will be pretty much the Beyond the Sword for Civ V.

That's what I said only with Gods and Kings is it that it doesn't suck but Diplomacy is still broken, well I haven't seen CiV 5 gold at 12$ usually europe prices are much higher.

Civ V Gold's been 12.5 dollars 3 times. And you could've gotten it through someone else, since it has no region lock.
http://steamsales.rhekua.com/view.php?steam_type=sub&steam_id=25544


[url=http://isthereanydeal.com/#/page:game/price?plain=sidmeierscivilizationv]http://isthereanydeal.com/#/page:game/price?plain=sidmeierscivilizationv[/url]

Yeah, gOg has its own EULA that raises eyebrows here and there but there's that key difference - the DRM you and I both apparently dislike. gOg treats us as adults, says "here's the EULA: click to agree, and we trust you will abide by the restrictions." Steam says, "Agree or you will not play the games for which you already purchased the license, maybe even several years ago under a much different EULA."

That's the crux of it - even if one reads the current EULA before making a purchase, the potential retroactive lock-out caused by future EULAs means that anyone's game shelf is in jeopardy with the next blanket change.

Re: adjusting the contract. We're in the process of doing the exact same thing with some land we're buying (see the 'Bitch about life' thread). The restrictions on the properties say no business activity of any kind is allowed. We said, "But hey, what about my non-intrusive business with no signs, no customer traffic, no noise, etc.?" And the developer is going to have the legal restriction altered. That's what a real agreement looks like - two or more parties negotiating to work out a deal amenable to all. EULAs backed-up by DRM are more of an all-or-nothing where your only option is buy or not-buy. Well, then I guess Steam titles - for me - are not-buy. Lesson learned, and money now spent elsewhere. They won't miss it since I'm in the tiny minority of customers who balked at that particular EULA change versus the millions who don't have a problem with it, and thus there is no reason for them to change course and roll back the restrictions.

And that's okay that other customers don't have a problem with it. To each their own and all that. But changing the agreement mid-stream, with the lock-out DRM to back it up, is absolute crap for the customer. Anyone who posts griping about big business doing this or that crap to employees or customers and similarly does NOT have a gripe about the EULA-DRM game seriously needs to reconsider some positions.

I'm just glad I learned this lesson with but a single title on my Steam shelf - incidentally NOT purchased at Steam or any other digital distributor. For those with even 10 titles it is, as you say, tantamount to coercion. Is it really a choice: upwards of $500 worth of release-day-priced AAA titles gone bye-bye, or agreeing to whatever it is the EULA says so one can continue to play those titles?

Similar, but one key difference is that I can pull my money from that bank and put it elsewhere with no loss - or a just very small one. Actually, we just did this last November / December, and it didn't cost us anything but some legwork. Can't do that with Steam and many other digital products.

With the marketplace being more and more digital-only as time passes, this is something we all need to keep our eyes on. Sadly, convenience will trump the other concerns, especially as the market leans toward younger buyers.

Agreed. There are reasons EA has been voted the worst company in the U.S. Sure, there are other companies that affected peoples lives more negatively, but for me, just strictly looking at the ethics of how to do business, it's atrocious. I don't think EA is any more deserving of other companies that frequently do the same thing though.

I wonder what people would think if a person went to JCPenney to buy some clothes and when that person took them to the register as usual, the sales clerk rings them up and asks for the total amount; the person pays and the sales clerk bags up the clothes without removing any security tags or ink tags. The person takes them home and discovers this and asks for them to remove the tags. Handing over a really disgusting letter, detailing XYZ and that they'll will be checking in on you frequently to make sure you comply "Gladly, just accept this agreement first." "Um, no thanks, that wasn't part of the deal. Just give me my money back and you can keep the damn clothes." "Sorry sir, we don't do that." So now that person can take the clothes with the security tags home and study how to remove them or take them to a group of people that have done it numerous times before and are quite good at it. Then, JCPenney can say that you and that group are pirates and are "stealing".

Yeah the only Steam game I've ever bought was Half-Life 2. It was a collector's edition too. When I took it home all giddy it was like a slap in the face. I didn't buy it from Steam. I still call that duress because they won't refund you. I'm just out the price of the collector's edition without ever even playing it if I don't like it I guess. I stopped buying PC games about 2008 when most every game started using DRM. Why the hell wouldn't EA give refunds for the new SimCity? They give out some codes for more DRM-laden games so that you will be even more locked in and have more to lose. That's not a refund but still some people were expecting everybody else to sing EA's praises for how nice they were.

DRM is what made me try to figure out the motivation behind it and try to figure out the root problem. So, I've become kind of peevish towards IP in my age.

It makes a little more sense if you're paying a subscription to use their service, but why put that on a boxed game that was same as any other boxed game? Why say "Buy" instead of "Subscribe Now"? It's dishonest. If it's presented as a purchase, I take it as a purchase.