Bron: Is steam evil? Of course not.
Lou: Steam is
EVIL Well, I certainly cannot argue with your logic. Nice, pic, btw.
Bron: Is steam evil? Of course not. They have a perfect right to offer games via their service and I think they are trying to do it right.
Anamon: Well if they're trying, they're certainly not doing very well at it, at least in Europe. Already in the UK, the prices they ask for games are sometimes twice as high, or even higher, than those in retail (perfectly sensible - asking more money for less product). Then look at mainland Europe and it gets even worse because of their 1$=1€ "calculation".
When I buy new full-price games, I usually order them from Amazon UK. In a retail store, I would pay almost double the price. On Steam it would be pretty near
three times as much as I pay on Amazon.
Apart from that, services like Steam would have to either junk the DRM, or orient their prices according to game rental, not retail sales, considering your whole expensive Steam game collection goes kapoof once someone pulls a plug somewhere in the world, or some company goes bankrupt. Kind of like Gametap: a flatrate price (I think its $10/month) for unlimited access to 1000+ games. It's nothing for me, as I like to own the games I play, and play even if my Internet connection or some far-off server is down. But it's certainly a fair price for what it is.
Bron: (...) GOG treats me fairly and I will treat GOG the same. Win/Win.
Exactly. If you think you can fight or prevent piracy, then you're just being stupid. I know many publishers know this but still have to act stupid (i.e. implement DRM) because their
shareholders are stupid and demand it. But the fact remains that in the digital world, piracy is a fact, and there is only one way of getting people to pay for your product: treating them with respect and giving them their money's worth in return. This is
exactly what GOG is all about. The problem is that services like Steam actually ask money for a version of the game that is quality-wise far inferior to the pirated one. That's
not a punchy sales argument.
I totally agree with everything you say. By 'doing it right' I meant using DRM techniques that do not break their customer's computers or load malware. But, yes, their prices are too high, I don't need their "service" -- and even their DRM is wrong-headed and offensive to *me*. But not to everyone. Hard as it is to believe, some people are happy with steam. I know. Makes me scrath my head in wonderment, too, but it is so. So, I was just trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.
But as we both agree -- the company who has really figured it out is GOG. ;)
