Steam Users Can't Play Modern Warfare 2 Until Thursday

[Zac_Dai]

This could well have been a deal done with brick and mortar distributors who wanted to find some kind of way of hurting digital distribution on a very specific high profile title. Gamestop in particular is very much against digi distribution since it cuts them out of the picture entirely. This is, of course just a guess.

You'd be pretty much on the money.

I remember Stardocks CEO Brad Wardell saying how much of a powerful influence retailers have over publishers. This is why we have staggered release dates and unfair pricing from region to region in digital distribution.

 

[ReverseEngineered]

So, why buy games on Steam? It takes several hours to get the game downloaded (especially if you don't preorder), the game is tied to your account (which they could pull at any time, for any reason), you can't just bring it to a friend's house to play, and now you have to wait extra-long to play? This is getting ridiculous. The only advantage, aside from not having to get off of your ass to buy the game, is that you can't lose the disc -- but then again, if it wasn't for SecuROM, we could make a (legally-entitled) backup copy anyway.

Digital distribution is a great idea, but they're doing it all wrong. They are trying to lock the software up tighter, enforce ridiculous street dates, and otherwise fuck with what should be a simple concept: buy the game and play it. No limitations on where, when, and why: just let us play our fucking games.

If I didn't already have a bunch of games on Steam, I would drop them in an instant. Their slow servers, buggy downloads, and now late street dates are making what little service they offer useless.

Valve, you make great games. Please stop making a shitty distribution and DRM service.

 

[chieften]

by the way, the actual matches are not really being hosted on steam. they are hosted by players. that also means that whichever player is lucky enough to be the host has an advantage of having the lowest ping.

 

[Caprice0083]

That sucks, I don't see why the delay for PC users. Rather play my games on my 360 vs my computer (Laptop mind you)

 

[Rekuiem]

PC was supposed to be a safe haven from all this crap, what happened...? I'm sitting here staring at Steam spit in my face with its nov 12 only launch date. GRRRRRR

 

[Lordmarkus]

More expensive and you get it later.

Now that's just fucked up.

 

[Treblaine]

Oh NOES! People have been waiting for this game for six months, another 48 hours is just so... err... why is this a big deal?

It doesn't matter how much this game is hyped, I NEVER buy on launch, it is ALWAYS worth waiting for the fist round of review and performance benchmarks to come out to see if it is really worth a purchase.

Good things come to those that wait.

 

[katsabas]

Big deal. So they get their itch cured a bit later. What, are they gonna have a seizure or something? Jeez... I hate impatient people.

 

[Strategia]

I just requested a refund for my pre-order on Steam. If they refuse, well, big deal, I've got it pre-loaded anyway. If they agree, I'm going to check local stores to see if the price is lower in stores here as well, and just to get a physical copy. So while it ain't exactly a win-win situation, at least it's don't-lose/don't-lose.

well this isnt news, anyone who bought the steam version already know about the 11/12 release date. Its not like its the first thing you see when u turn on steam for the pass month

Actually, the release date was pegged at the 10th as recently as last week.

 

[Hafnium]

Big deal. So they get their itch cured a bit later. What, are they gonna have a seizure or something? Jeez... I hate impatient people.

The problem, if you hadn't noticed, is that it's the straw that broke the camel's back. It's like someone mugged you, broke your nose, and THEN threw your shoes in a river.

So yeah, I see why people are annoyed over all this.

I was kind of interested, and my buddy was without a doubt going to buy it, but now neither of us will for any platform.

 

[MGlBlaze]

PC gaming is dead anyway.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA AHAHAHAHAHAH! *wipes tear* Hah...hah...heh...

Oh god, you're serious?

PC gaming dead? Oh, please.

Although Activision and IW does seem to be doing everything possible to piss off their consumer base on the PC side of things. It's like they're trolling all of us!

 

[GamingAwesome1]

Well, that's utterly pointless. It does rather seem Activision is bent on screwing over the PC gamers.

At last the tides have turned! Now we, the console owners get to brag!

I don't mean that in a serious way.

That's somewhat random, what with there being no rhyme or reason to this.

I'm going to try some crazy, crazy satire here.

"What's that? The console versions of The Orange Box haven't been updated for 4893 months? Well, I couldn't hear you over the noise of the hitsound while using an AC-130 in multiplayer! Zing!"

*cries*

Touche. Touche......

 

[Crunchy English]

Y'know, this whole "Exclusion" of PC gamers sort of reminds me of Nintendo's actions toward the "Hardcore" faction. This is another prime example of going where the money is, rather than dancing with the one who brought you.

Sadly, not much to be done. Don't buy the game? Fine. It'll just give them excuse not to produce on your platform of choice. Buy the game? Fine, but expect a substandard experience. They win, PC Gamers lose. Console gamers benefit for being willing to pay more money. As a console gamer, I feel kinda bad, but I don't think I have a responsibility here, do I?

Cut to me, a few years down the line "First they came for the PC gamers.... and I did nothing".

What's really troubling is that gaming is officially a "lifestyle" now. And that means we've given up our power. It used to be "give the people what they want", but as IW is demonstrating, they can pretty much tell us what we want. If we want to play this game? We want to play it on the consoles where they have a complete monopoly on DLC and where fewer extras need to be thrown in.

And I can't help but think where this will lead: Sure, the PS4 isn't the ONLY system you can play Final Fantasy 28 on, but if you try to play it on the other systems, half the characters are missing and you have to pay an extra 15 dollars for the last couple chapters. How much does a PS4 cost you ask? $3900 of course, but if you're a "real gamer", you kinda have to own one so some people are going to pay it. Hell, even an indie game needs to be on PSN 3.0 if its going to make money.

I know I'm rambling, but the point is, if boycotting a product, purchasing a product, or appealing directly to the developer/publisher no longer has any effect? Then gamers are helpless children under the thumb of these companies, and all modes of agency have been removed from us. How long until we're fed up with being gamers? Would they push that far?

 

[katsabas]

Big deal. So they get their itch cured a bit later. What, are they gonna have a seizure or something? Jeez... I hate impatient people.

The problem, if you hadn't noticed, is that it's the straw that broke the camel's back. It's like someone mugged you, broke your nose, and THEN threw your shoes in a river.

So yeah, I see why people are annoyed over all this.

I was kind of interested, and my buddy was without a doubt going to buy it, but now neither of us will for any platform.

Again, it is only 2 freaking days. So what? You waited for, only you know how long and now you get mad cause it is delayed by a mere two days. Games usually get delayed for months, take Bioshock 2 for instance. At the bottom line, it is my opinion. And your buddy, since he was waiting for this game, will undoubtedly break sooner or later. Why? Because.

 

[TZer0]

The game stinks of failure on all points. That's what I think.

 

[Hafnium]

Again, it is only 2 freaking days. So what? You waited for, only you know how long and now you get mad cause it is delayed by a mere two days. Games usually get delayed for months, take Bioshock 2 for instance. At the bottom line, it is my opinion. And your buddy, since he was waiting for this game, will undoubtedly break sooner or later. Why? Because.

I have never been angry about this, as I wrote, I was slightly interested, and my friend was pretty excited and tried to get me on board. Then with the news about dedicated servers gone and all that, we both lost all interest.

I'm pretty used to delays for games I like, so that doesn't get me riled up much. Furthermore, I have been very interested in several games and then completely lost interest because of similar issues as with MW2.

Besides, we'll soon be playing Dragon Age on pc (which will be glorious ), so I shouldn't care about this, yet I do, cause I think these are bastard moves from the developers.

 

[Abedeus]

What's next? They will be making it so that servers are open only for 8 hours a day?

1. Higher price.
2. No dedicated servers.
3. No custom maps or mods.
4. DRM FOR STEAM?! ARE YOU INSANE?!

And now this. I ignore the controversy, because it's on all consoles, but come on.

remember back in feburary, there was a MMO being released, one that had been in development for nearly a decade. it was being made by a small company as a flagship title, little to no actual marketing was given to it, thinking not too many people would be intrested.

then came Feburary 26, 2009.

the ammount of people wanting to play the game crashed their subscription server, the game server was under constant stress and crashing, within two hours a strict limit of 10,000 players were allowed in game and even them the servers had trouble. for the next five months only 200-500 people would be allowed to purchase the game per day [monday to friday] to keep server stress to a minimum.

History can repeat itself if we do not listen.

more than likely IW is continuing last minute server stress tests for MW2 for the steam bought one, though I dont know how that would really mean that retail copies get to play on the same servers before the digital ones.

Also, Darkfall really wasnt that great to be honest.

10000k? Aion had 3k lines on every server except for one or two French or German ones on release, and the limit is 5k per server. You know why only 200-500 bought the game a... month? Because Darkfall sucks. It's so bad, it doesn't have more than 2 reviews, one 70/100, the other 20/100. Metacritic's community average is 6.7, pretty crappy.

Oh oh, and check out this:

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/modernwarfare2?q=modern%20warfare

Ignore reviews, they just took console reviews and splashed them on the PC version. Look at the user score - 1.4?! This is what I call "heavenly retribution".