Steam = OnLive

[MrShowerHead]

OnLive sounds little fishy for me.....

As for Steam..... Well, the only reason I have Steam is because it came with Mount&Blade Warband(which was odd) So I really don't mind it.

Although it gets annoying when I want to play Warband I have to connect to Steam. Ughh......

 

[Ekonk]

Let me put that in perspective: Steam is like Brave New World, and OnLive is like 1984. Neither is perfect, but the former gives away free drugs and sex and whatnot.

Ridiculous comparsion, but pretty funny - don't you think?

That's kind of awesome and true. I would give this comment a thumbsup if I could, but happily this isn't youtube.

 

[Hiphophippo]

OP is confused. OP seems to think that buying a game at a retail store means you own it.

OP is wrong.

...I'm sorry..what?...If I buy a game at the store, I'm allowed to play it whenever I want, and do with it whatever I want. Thus, I own it.

What are you talking about?

If you buy a game at retail you're still only buying the license to the game. Same as buying a digital copy of it. The only thing that changes is the packaging. There are still allowed to stop you from playing it at any time and for any reason. Be it restricting access to the game's servers or coming to your house to take it from you.

No really.

 

[manaman]

Steam is awsome - how dare you give it negative connotations. Also ya, as said above you can play stam games forever... and it's beautiful.

Steam is not awesome. Steam is the enemy almost as much as Onlive is.

...because it is different. ¬_¬

Yes, and all know that we shouldn't like anything that is diff...

Wait a minute, I see what you did! Being different or not has nothing to do with why I don't like steam. Proper digital distribution I am in favor of. The Steam and OnLive flavors are a bit to bitter for me.

 

[dududf]

Only a COUPLE of games like thism and OP is extremely overexagerating.

Keep in mind that if Steam ever crashes, or potentially if your computer crashed while Steam is running (and this has happened to me), you will need to reconnect again before you can go back to playing anything, even in offline mode. And sooner or later, it or your computer will crash, or you'll get a new computer, something where you won't be able to play until you connect again.

So, while I don't see Steam vanishing anytime soon, it does carry the same concern as OnLive, where if Steam is gone, so are your games. That's all fairly standard fare for any digital service though, things can't possibly go well once the service itself goes away. My main issue with Steam though, is the fact that you still need to use it for games you bought at retail, I'd rather pirate than pay for a boxed copy of a game that I still don't really "own".

It's some where in the terms of use that if steam ever goes down, they'll release the steam cracks for each game, and have them hosted for 2 months (both the cracks and games). In that time you have to personally back it up.

Also, my point remains in regards to what the OP said. Steam=/=Onlive.


Their similarity is like trying to compare Red Faction Guerrilla with Prototype. They have a similar feature, but everything else is very different.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Steam is awsome - how dare you give it negative connotations. Also ya, as said above you can play stam games forever... and it's beautiful.

Steam is not awesome. Steam is the enemy almost as much as Onlive is.

...because it is different. ¬_¬

Yes, and all know that we shouldn't like anything that is diff...

Wait a minute, I see what you did! Being different or not has nothing to do with why I don't like steam. Proper digital distribution I am in favor of. The Steam and OnLive flavors are a bit to bitter for me.

Hmmm, a little slow on the uptake are we?

Anyway, I can't speak for OnLive as I've never used it, but as for Steam the only reason you have to be online to play the games is because Steam also provides a sorta community and it logs your play time with your games and, with some of them, gives achievements. And as others have already mentioned, there's the offline mode.

 

[Laughing Man]

At least with Steam you get the copies. Of course its still licenses, but these licenses are good for the lifetime of Steam and of the game, not an arbitrary date set by a subscription service that is trying to compete with Steam's free service. Thats where my issue is. OnLive is trying to be like a streaming version of Steam, but is more comparable to the original plagued Steam, not its current version.

Iam sorry but that statement is unequivocally incorrect, Onlive IS NOT trying to be a constant on version of Steam, it isn't even competing in the same marketplace. Steam is and always will be aimed at gamers and gaming rigs. Onlive is aimed at folk who don't have enough power in their rigs to play even Source based games. In fact Onlive is coming out of the blocks as what it is from the word go Steam started life as nothing much more than a form of DRM for Valve games and has slowly grown to what it is over the last decade. Onlive won't grow much beyond what it is now if it ever survives long enough to grow at all.

Finally both the mediums have their own concerns. Onlive you never own the game once you stop paying for it or once they withdraw it from their service the game is gone along with any evideance that you ever owned it. At least they have the deceny to say that this is the situation. Steam has the potential to be even worse. If Valve went tits up then do you really think that as their company dies they would spend any time and resource on making sure that all your Steam games work once their servers are gone? It's great to think that Valve are some sort of gift to the PC gaming community but when the shit hits the fan I am willing to bet Valve will do just what any other company does, look after number one. This makes it worse than Onlive, as I said at least from the word go you know what the score is with Onlive but with Steam in a worse case sceanrio you could be left with a bunch of games that you technically own but cannot play, Like I said worse case scenario but it's a scenario all the same.

 

[manaman]

Steam is awsome - how dare you give it negative connotations. Also ya, as said above you can play stam games forever... and it's beautiful.

Steam is not awesome. Steam is the enemy almost as much as Onlive is.

...because it is different. ¬_¬

Yes, and all know that we shouldn't like anything that is diff...

Wait a minute, I see what you did! Being different or not has nothing to do with why I don't like steam. Proper digital distribution I am in favor of. The Steam and OnLive flavors are a bit to bitter for me.

Hmmm, a little slow on the uptake are we?

Anyway, I can't speak for OnLive as I've never used it, but as for Steam the only reason you have to be online to play the games is because Steam also provides a sorta community and it logs your play time with your games and, with some of them, gives achievements. And as others have already mentioned, there's the offline mode.

Steam is a perfect PR success, they dressed up the negative aspects as bonuses and sold what is essentially a very restrictive DRM scheme, that only does two things most others do not. It allows you to transfer your games (and only some, third party DRM installs on top of Steam can be more restrictive), and allows you to go offline with some games once you have them installed.

It's not going to be all that long before these trends start to shift the other way as they already have started to.

I prefer a more open form of digital distribution, there used to be services that allowed you to download disk images, which you could then burn, or run from the drive if you wished.

I swear I am not slow on the uptake at all either =P.

I wouldn't even be opposed to OnLive if it was just a subscription based pay to play service. Such as paying a monthly fee allows you access to their library of games to play as you please. Or even a tiered system which allows you so many hours of play up to an unlimited $XX per month plan.

 

[The Amazing Tea Alligator]

Steam is awsome - how dare you give it negative connotations. Also ya, as said above you can play stam games forever... and it's beautiful.

Steam is not awesome. Steam is the enemy almost as much as Onlive is.

...because it is different. ¬_¬

Yes, and all know that we shouldn't like anything that is diff...

Wait a minute, I see what you did! Being different or not has nothing to do with why I don't like steam. Proper digital distribution I am in favor of. The Steam and OnLive flavors are a bit to bitter for me.

Hmmm, a little slow on the uptake are we?

Anyway, I can't speak for OnLive as I've never used it, but as for Steam the only reason you have to be online to play the games is because Steam also provides a sorta community and it logs your play time with your games and, with some of them, gives achievements. And as others have already mentioned, there's the offline mode.

Steam is a perfect PR success, they dressed up the negative aspects as bonuses and sold what is essentially a very restrictive DRM scheme, that only does two things most others do not. It allows you to transfer your games (and only some, third party DRM installs on top of Steam can be more restrictive), and allows you to go offline with some games once you have them installed.

It's not going to be all that long before these trends start to shift the other way as they already have started to.

I prefer a more open form of digital distribution, there used to be services that allowed you to download disk images, which you could then burn, or run from the drive if you wished.

I swear I am not slow on the uptake at all either =P.

I wouldn't even be opposed to OnLive if it was just a subscription based pay to play service. Such as paying a monthly fee allows you access to their library of games to play as you please. Or even a tiered system which allows you so many hours of play up to an unlimited $XX per month plan.

Peopl ay that there's DRM on steam, but besides the DRM that'd be there anyway I'm not understanding what people mean. As I've said before, me and my friends LAN men of war al lthe time using only my account. What's going on?

 

[Plurralbles]

Not going to worry about it too much. Console people were the ***** of microsoft when they decided to just rip down servers so... not a big deal- I hav emore faith in an entire distribution service staying alive long enough for me to not care if it goes away.

 

[Mr. Gency]

I see what your saying but Steam doesn't charge a fee to have an account and Your account isn't deleted if you stop playing for a while.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Steam is awsome - how dare you give it negative connotations. Also ya, as said above you can play stam games forever... and it's beautiful.

Steam is not awesome. Steam is the enemy almost as much as Onlive is.

...because it is different. ¬_¬

Yes, and all know that we shouldn't like anything that is diff...

Wait a minute, I see what you did! Being different or not has nothing to do with why I don't like steam. Proper digital distribution I am in favor of. The Steam and OnLive flavors are a bit to bitter for me.

Hmmm, a little slow on the uptake are we?

Anyway, I can't speak for OnLive as I've never used it, but as for Steam the only reason you have to be online to play the games is because Steam also provides a sorta community and it logs your play time with your games and, with some of them, gives achievements. And as others have already mentioned, there's the offline mode.

Steam is a perfect PR success, they dressed up the negative aspects as bonuses and sold what is essentially a very restrictive DRM scheme, that only does two things most others do not. It allows you to transfer your games (and only some, third party DRM installs on top of Steam can be more restrictive), and allows you to go offline with some games once you have them installed.

It's not going to be all that long before these trends start to shift the other way as they already have started to.

I prefer a more open form of digital distribution, there used to be services that allowed you to download disk images, which you could then burn, or run from the drive if you wished.

I swear I am not slow on the uptake at all either =P.

I wouldn't even be opposed to OnLive if it was just a subscription based pay to play service. Such as paying a monthly fee allows you access to their library of games to play as you please. Or even a tiered system which allows you so many hours of play up to an unlimited $XX per month plan.

If it is elaborate DRM scheme, then it's one I can live with since it allows me to download and install the games I've purchased onto any machine and as many machines as long as they have the Steam Client installed on them. Any third party DRM can't be blamed on Steam.
Best of all Steam's service is free.
I can't really comment on OnLive because I'm not familiar with that service (I'm pretty sure I said that already).
BUT if you're really that anal about it IGN does offer Direct2Drive (D2D). I've bought a few games from there and they seem alright. No client installs required.

 

[Dexiro]

With OnLive you have to maintain a subscription, and have to be online for every second you're playing a game.

With Steam you can play offline, the server providers are very trustworthy and once you pay for a game you own it forever.

 

[guardian001]

Recently I've been seeing lots of people complain about how OnLive is terrible because you are "renting the games at full price", and you are not really owning the game.

But doesn't Steam work the same way?

The difference is that even when OnLive is up, you still need to pay a subscription fee to access the games you own. Steam doesn't charge you to play games you already own.

True, you can't access all of your games when steam is down (You can access some though.) The problem with the OnLive system is not accessing your games when OnLive is down, the problem is accessing them when OnLive is up. The problem is that they're turning every game into a subscription service. If you don't pay your monthly fee, you don't play your games, even though you already payed the games themselves.

 

[Flying Dagger]

The same way that one person having a good experience doesn't mean that everyone has, doesn't mean that if one person has a bad experience, everyone will.

I've not really had many problems with steam.
Maybe if I do I'll regret the hundreds of pounds I've spent on it.

 

[Swarley]

If Steam is a sports car, OnLive is a space hopper.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Actually I think the bigger difference is that with Steam you actually have something running locally. Steam also has an offline mode where installed games can be played locally without a connection (onLive of course can't do that). Both processes are essentially renting but Valve has promised to "give" people the games if they go under. They might not but or they might, I don't know but I'm guessing that changing some key and encryption lines of code is all they need to open the games up. Also Steam is presented as a way of "buying" games and OnLive is a service for playing them without purchasing any particular game (correct me if I'm wrong). Its a Sudo-"game buying" service against a game playing service that works something like Netflix. There actually quiet different.