EA Gets Ready to Throw Down With Steam - UPDATED

[ckam]

************, Steam is a good service. Making more of the same kind of programs is just stupid. Ugh, there's not much else I can put into words for my frustration over this.

 

[Loge]

While it is true, that Valve did the same thing when launching Steam, one must not forget, that the digital distribution market was a lot smaller. Steam effectively "kickstarted" the market into what it is today. If you want to open a new market, you need convincing arguments and a bit of positive pressure to get customers to change their habits.

Now the market is established and EA's move is a really bad idea in my opinion, especially with their customer service history.

 

[synobal]

While it is true, that Valve did the same thing when launching Steam, one must not forget, that the digital distribution market was a lot smaller. Steam effectively "kickstarted" the market into what it is today. If you want to open a new market, you need convincing arguments and a bit of positive pressure to get customers to change their habits.

Now the market is established and EA's move is a really bad idea in my opinion, especially with their customer service history.

You need to remember Steam didn't start out as a digital distributions service it started out as a patching system for Valves games. People hated it too, because it was typically less effective than just downloading the games patch and installing it. Then it started adding components and features until it's the amazing service we have today.

 

[ultimateownage]

Nah, I new they were trying to turn it their way. But it seems Steam is also going to not sell several other games in the future. Their competitors are forced to sell games that install onto Steam, I don't see why Steam shouldn't be willing to do the same.

And really, is market fragmentation really a factor if you never move from you chair while you hop from seller to seller?

I see where you're coming from, but I'm inclined to disagree. Imagine if Activision made a retail store; now if they had a store and they wanted it to get more popular, surely they would want exclusives? And they make games right? Why not make their games exclusive! Then Gamestop are down another publisher. Soon, EA follow. Then Ubisoft. And Take Two, Sony, and Zenimax. THQ.
See where I'm going with this?
This isn't fragmentation I worry about; it's saturation. No one wants to have to have an account on a piece of Digital Distribution Software for every single publisher they buy their games for.
The other outcome is that instead of developer exclusives there are just hundreds. Then you'd have loads, so you can get the best offers. But what would the Retail copies install to? This is why I like Steam being big; it means that I can pool most of my games in one place and it makes multiplayer miles easier.

I get a headache every time I think about the gaming industry, because between this and the Consoles, I really have no idea where it's going and what's going to happen. We're all just gambling at this point.

 

[Owlly]

In THIS situation the only reason you can justify a challenge for Steam, is that, with their monopoly as me ntioned earlier, could make/has made them lazy, otherwise, I can't see the merit in having another company challenge steam..i mean the prices will never be lower, as they are publishers, and the titles being exclusive means they can effectivly name their prices, and its gonna be really inconveniant for people who want to buy EA games, but who will now have to donwload a whole new set of what will essentially be poorly maintained bloatware, as we all know, EA is less than stellar when it comes to its tertiary systems and developments, so really, this will only cause problems for EA, in that their sale will drop with people mrefusing to download YET ANOTHER lump of software, for the customer who wants to buy games (lord, i hope BF3 isn't on Origin)

they really are shooting themselves in the foot for what is essentially a stab at inconvienincing players

 

[Jeffrey Rodriguez]

Go EA! Hopefully we'll see more of this and more publishers will do their own digital distribution instead of going with the pile of dung that is Steam.

 

[s0m3th1ng]

All this is doing is narrowing their potential market and costing them customers. Really, REALLY bad attempt at a cash grab. Steam has got the digital purchase system for games on lock-down no matter your opinion on it.

 

[Big Bruce]

The heavy is Valve
The engineer is EA
The wrench is Crisis 2

The heavy is very symbolic

 

[bombadilillo]

Go EA! Hopefully we'll see more of this and more publishers will do their own digital distribution instead of going with the pile of dung that is Steam.

Haters gotta hate.

 

[metaphysical]

this is just stupidity beyond words.

 

[Wyatt118]

This is like Canada trying to invade Russia, it just won't work out. This will just end up being a poor economic decision for EA.

 

[Jeffrey Rodriguez]

Go EA! Hopefully we'll see more of this and more publishers will do their own digital distribution instead of going with the pile of dung that is Steam.

Haters gotta hate.

And, Valve fanboy sheep will will always follow the flock while bleating about haters.

Steam is an iron fist wrapped in a velvet glove, and shouldn't be praised. But fanboys fully support steam taking over retail. It doesn't make sense to "buy" games from steam, when you don't really own them. All games that you purchase are locked into the service, meaning that if something happens to your account, you lose everything. Not to mention that it's a service that has it's share of problems with the client, and lousy customer support.

 

[bombadilillo]

Go EA! Hopefully we'll see more of this and more publishers will do their own digital distribution instead of going with the pile of dung that is Steam.

Haters gotta hate.

And, Valve fanboy sheep will will always follow the flock while bleating about haters.

Steam is an iron fist wrapped in a velvet glove, and shouldn't be praised. But fanboys fully support steam taking over retail. It doesn't make sense to "buy" games from steam, when you don't really own them. All games that you purchase are locked into the service, meaning that if something happens to your account, you lose everything. Not to mention that it's a service that has it's share of problems with the client, and lousy customer support.

So you get a boner when EA makes its own service thats the same? You said good for them, so you really dont have a problem with the system, just valve.

Go on and hate son. Its delicious. MMMM good, your tickling my fanboy.

 

[RA92]

In other news: I'm buying ME3 from a store, skipping BF3 even though I was mildly interested, and buying no future EA-published games until they knock this crap off.

I don't think they're going to keep BF3 off Steam if they're still on with their misguided belief of being able to top CoD in sales. They need to shift as many units as possible.

 

[[Gavo]]

Soooo EA's trying to fight Steam?

Ha, ha, ha. Have fun fighting a monopoly. If they make ME3 Origin-only......massive nerdrage will come.
Also,

The heavy is Valve
The engineer is EA
The wrench is Crisis 2

The heavy is very symbolic

Awesome.

 

[Dys]

Nope, I'm pretty convinced that steam is offensively overpriced.
A quick look at their main page shows the following in the Australian region:
The witcher -$74US
Duke Nukem -$79.99US
Brink -$89.99us
red faction -$79.99
Even the rip off local department stores generally match those prices (or beat if you consider the cost of bandwidth), the more reasonably priced independent stores charge closer to $60au (~$63US) (which is well under the steam prices, and still more expensive than ordering overseas for $50au and paying a few $$s postage).

Snipping the rest

Whoa, whoa, you're using the Australian version as an example? You mean the country that historically has the most overpriced and arbitrary edit: censorship system of video games in the history of gaming? Don't you remember when Yahtzee payed $100 for Mirror's Edge, because he lives in Australia?

That makes yahtzee a fool. The most I've paid for a boxed copy of a PC game in the past few years has been $60.95. The price is determined by the seller, the obscene prices on steam are purely because they think they can get away with them. Did you know that steam went so far as to block the ability of 'gifting' games from one region to another? And steam accounts that are set up in one region and used in a more expensive region are regularly blocked. Valve are encouraging this trend of obscene pricing with their absurd region locking...

First, Valve aren't the ones that determine prices on Steam. The publishers of each individual game does. Complain to them for overpriced games.

See above rant. They may not get to decide 100%, but they have absurd region locking policy and, when boxed copies from stores can be cheaper (I don't frequent at game stores, but last time I went game shopping I saw black ops for $60au-this was within a week of release) the "they don't determine the price" argument doesn't excuse it. Especially if we're talking about how EAs platform could potentially succeed (fun fact, EA DO control the price of their games, and can sell them for whatever damn price they want to attract people to their online service).

For the "bad features":
First, is there actually a game digital distribution system that lets you play the game before it's finished downloading?

The complaint is about when they're updating, not the initial download. And yes, all other platforms that I've used will let you play a game while the update files are being downloaded (either paused or actively downloading in the background). This amazing, groundbreaking ability to download updates then later patch them at your leisure was discovered way, way back when patches were first made available. First, you'd acquire the patch in its completion. Then, you would install it. If you're internet cap ran out or connection died, it didn't prevent you from playing the unupdated version of the game.

Second, you claim that it doesn't store user credentials on the PC, and if the "cache is cleared", you can't "relog in" (I'm assuming this means offline mode.) You do realize that the cache IS storing user credentials, if it lets you log in offline? And by deleting the cache, you're deleting user credentials? Which will make you unable to log in offline?

Look, that was a mess of a point so I'll straight up admit that it's my fault there's confusion with what I meant. To (hopefully) better explain my issue, I'll give an example:
The university I go to blocks pretty much all connections (even pop email is blocked). I have a horrible timetable, and have many dead spots in my days. I tend to counter this by using my laptop to game at uni during said breaks, however, my laptop is also used for work. The horrible issue is, that any instability in my system that necessitates a reboot fucks steam (even battery failure can have this effect). I can no longer log in as 'offline'. This is very frustrating.

This is, of course, part of the nature of how steam works and I get that its a DRM first...only, I see no reason why if it can retain the username/password from a previous session why it can't also retain the information that I was logged in and online a few hours before (and automatically switch to offline mode)....It's more of a bug than a design flaw (in that I doubt valve consciously decided for the system to work that way), but it is irritating.

Now, the system crashing is an issue, I agree. And they should try to make the system as stable as possible, though I very rarely, if ever, have had Steam crashes.

It isn't frequent. In fact, it would be fair to say it crashes rarely, but because of how harshly it penalizes users when it does crash I felt it should be mentioned. This would be solved if the above mention bug were to be ironed out (it crashes, but automatically logs back in offline).

And if you want to remake the cache, just go online again to connect, then switch to offline mode right away.

An INTERNET connection is not always available, especially if one isn't home or one has gone over their data cap.

"Forces its advertisements on its users" you can turn the sale popups off in the options.

That option is periodically reset with platform updates (in fact, I think it may be reset every platform update). Again, there would be a simple fix to my frustration here, but after some 10 years it hasn't been addressed.

Valve have been one of the better developers to their customers for some time. They didn't say PS3 games were inferior, they said it was a much more difficult platform to develop for, which is true, due to the nature of the system. And how exactly is the DRM in Steam "draconian"? You seem to be under the impression that all DRM is automatically "draconian", and that's simply not true. "draconian" means "rigorous; unusually severe or cruel", neither of which I find Steam's DRM to be, considering that it lets you install and play all your games on as many computers as you want. If there's a game that restricts the installs to a certain number of computers, that's the GAME'S PUBLISHER doing that, NOT STEAM.

See, I'm a bit of an oldie in these gaming communities. I remember that, back before steam, DRM was a code printed on the back of an instruction booklet, a requirement for the games disc to be in the tray and occasionally some form of write protection on the disc. Needing to go online to validate or a game, having to use only a single source for downloading patches and having to run a non-essential program in the background were all unnecessary, way over the top and a general pain in the ass. While other publishers have interpreted steams success as gamers being masochistic and, as such, have delivered much more horrible DRMs, steam still is, at least in my eyes, extreme and hugely unnecissary.

Also, worth noting that this response isn't only at the dark freak. I've had PMs and several replies on this thread and I want to make it clear that I'm not saying, by any stretch that steam is "the worst" or whatever. It has some very irritating bugs that could easily be fixed and have not. imo the reason they are not is because PC gamers are not immune to the rabid fanboyism of the console wars. The "I have an xbox, xbox is superior" train of thought it was alive and kicking within the steam community, if people stopped rabidly defending their choice of platform and actually gave objective criticisms everyones experience would be improved. [

b]Every[/b] platform, DRM, and design choice is flawed (this includes the best, the worst, the mediocre and the undeveloped), when someone points out a flaw it isn't necessarily a flat out attack on that product, merely an observation. If everyone was level headed enough to make the same observations, the problems would be fixed.

As the thread is about the possibility of EA launching a competing product on steam, and whether it could or could not be a success, the answer is it certainly could be. We haven't seen the product yet, but EA have a huge library of popular IPs that people will buy, EA have direct control over the price of the games they sell (meaning they could easily undercut valves prices on steam) and, if they are smart, they will model their system off of steam, imitating or developing on the features that people like (ie masses of free shit in TF2, free weekend trails of multiplayer games etc) and cut out the things people don't like (the shit I've been crapping on about through the rant). Hell, they could even add in some cool features (savegames could be backed up online, single player games do not need the client to be running after they have been authenticated ->whatever). And, as many people have no doubt realized, having a platform that can actually compete with steam can only be a good thing.

 

[Andy Chalk]

See where I'm going with this?
This isn't fragmentation I worry about; it's saturation. No one wants to have to have an account on a piece of Digital Distribution Software for every single publisher they buy their games for.

Sure, but I'm not seeing a problem. Valve gets a pass because it was first with Steam? It gets a tremendous competitive edge, sure, but I have no problem at all with publishers trying to launch their own distribution platforms.

For one thing, I don't envision a situation in which every platform would need its own background software. Just as easy to make a program phone home on its own when it starts up. I also think it's extremely unrealistic to think that we'd end up with more than a few publisher-specific platforms. EA and Activision, sure, but Take-Two? THQ? Codemasters? For most of them it would be far more economically feasible to do a deal with an existing service.

As I've said before, I have zero interest in digital distribution anyway so it's not going to affect me one way or the other. But realistically speaking, I don't see why it would be problematic for anyone; you shop at Steam, you shop at Origin, you shop at GOG, you shop wherever, but your ass never actually leaves your chair.

 

[Jeffrey Rodriguez]

Go EA! Hopefully we'll see more of this and more publishers will do their own digital distribution instead of going with the pile of dung that is Steam.

Haters gotta hate.

And, Valve fanboy sheep will will always follow the flock while bleating about haters.

Steam is an iron fist wrapped in a velvet glove, and shouldn't be praised. But fanboys fully support steam taking over retail. It doesn't make sense to "buy" games from steam, when you don't really own them. All games that you purchase are locked into the service, meaning that if something happens to your account, you lose everything. Not to mention that it's a service that has it's share of problems with the client, and lousy customer support.

So you get a boner when EA makes its own service thats the same? You said good for them, so you really dont have a problem with the system, just valve.

Go on and hate son. Its delicious. MMMM good, your tickling my fanboy.

No I don't use Origin or Steam. I buy games on Gamergate or GOG, or just retail. I hate any type of DRM on my PC, it's why I mostly stick to console gaming. But, as it stands right now Steam is sitting on cloud nine with its monopoly on a sub par service and DRM client. So yes I applaud any type of competition that might knock them down a peg. And, even if Origin's service is pretty much more of the same, at least from all reports it runs a little smother.

And, kid if you want to be so crude, no. No type of PC gaming service will give me a boner, my wife does that.

 

[Gefft]

if people are so against steam? what do you use to play your games? and are you even around at xmas time/4th of july week? stuff is so cheap its not funny.

intrusive bs, do you have like 20mb of ram or something?

imo most games arent even worth full price when released (eg Duke nukem & red Faction)and im happy to wait for the price to drop or simply not play it at all, eg MW2.

also, you don't "own the game"? if steam shat itself 2night, id have all my games in my apps folder, go find an exe fix and continue playing. hardly the end of the world. that also applies to offline games?

bandwidth? im pretty sure NZ has the crappiest broadband in the world yet i am on an average plan that i can DL steam at not bandwidth cost (slow but free) its called patience.

if steam took 10 year to get where it is now, how long will it be before origin gets to this point ( provided they are stealing most of their ideas from steams progress ) the software will still no doubt have problems.

i just dont understand how people can bash steam so badly but not suggest any better?

if its so bad then what do you use? do you people even play games? the fact that steam removes most DRM and makes the system so simple is enough for me to keep using it. my copy of red alert 3 is forever locked away in EADM never to be played again because its so unfriendly for me.....

 

[WoodenPlanck]

I don't think EA ever did that, I think that's Impulse from Gamestop.

Could you please expound upon that thought, I am rather curious to understand what you mean. I'm also curious whether you are simply just calling me a liar.

Back on Topic: I think this will be really interesting to see how this Origin venture plays out. EA is trying to play a similar game in business that they always have: Push the less established out, or buy them up. Except, this time, now EA is the less established actor.

Considering Steam is now entrenched with it's network of titles, community, etc., will people bother just because of exclusives? Ultimately it will be the quality of service EA renders. Honestly that is what is on trial for EA right now. Confidence is down, especially when considering what has happened with Sony.

Will EA prove to make wise decisions and offer value to their customers? Or will short-sightedness and pride end up choking out what they intended to create?