Poll: Steam: God's Gift or Piece of S**t

[Dodgy]

Valve/steam sets the prices for the games on their store. Developers often highly suggest a price for games but as we have seen in the past companies are allowed to charge what they want. Its like the batman AA release, it went out at $40 because wal-mart made a typo.

If say eb games charges $20 for a game new then why does steam still charge $35-40 for the same game. If they dont set the prices then why is their such a big difference. Six months after a game comes out the publisher rarely give a shit what its selling for.

Total and utter bullshit. Not much more to say about that. The devs choose, Valve doesn't.

 

[scotth266]

Really good, but the compatibility issues are really annoying when they pop up. Steam players on Titan's Quest cannot play with non-Steam users, for instance.

 

[mikespoff]

It's great.

The only disadvantage that it has over physical games is transferability - I can't lend a game to a friend very easily, as I could with a physical disc. (I'm not talking about both playing it simultaneously, I'd be happy to deactivate it from my PC at the time and have only one active installation - just as if you were lending a book to a friend).

Other than that, I have no complaints. Games are about half the price of retail (in Australia), and the sales are awesome. The potential for indie titles to reach a market is also great.

 

[Dodgy]

Look around. After 2-3 months every retail chain has different prices on games. Wal-mart, eb/gamestop, best buy, valve all charge different prices. Thats not the developers anymore thats the stores price. The publishers suggest what price to sell games at. They cant legally tell anybody what to charge. They set the launch price to whatever publishers want to stay on their good side but after a few months and thats when the majority of the sales take place the price is basically set on whatever the retailers want. Valve could charge less and actually have more incentive then other stores because they dont actually have to have stock.

They pay a certain amount and valve/other stores mark up the price.

You keep pushing the same point because you don't like the service, fine, no worries, but you're making me tired now. I could look back for the article on RPS a long while ago where all this is explained for you but I don't know if it's worth the effort. If you feel particulary strong about your point, I suggest looking around the site for the quite revealing article concerning Steam, it's pricing and the publishers.

In the meantime Plain Sight was 1,35 ?. Indie developers getting loads of cash due to Steam. There is no arguing with that.

 

[Skelebob124156]

Steam is horrible the DRM fills me with a unbridled rage to punch valve in the face and it dosen't even work there is no safety for developers in it, it only makes things worse portal and L4d? would have bought if it wasn't for steam so I pirated them.

Valve seriously stop it, if you must hang on to pissing in gamers faces at least make it optional.

 

[Azure Sky]

I live in australia, any internet you have pales in comparison to the downright bullcrap that is australias excuse for internet.

And yet, im completely fine with steam updates.

That being said, i dont like the idea of people being forced into steam.

This.

While I think steam is brilliant, I do have one large problem with it.
I want to play my games offline damn you!! >.<

Anyone else go away for an extended time, long car trip, flight, etc and think "Man, I really wish I could play though some *Insert steam game with awesome single player* to pass the time."?