The New Steam Killer?

[Epona]

On downside is you don't own the games though and you need internet.

To be totally honest, you don't legally OWN any game you buy these days. Mind you, if you buy retail you have a physical copy so it's pretty easy to lie to yourself that you do own it but you don't.

And I've always got internet. Well, 95% of the time. And Steam will let me play whatever I want offline so I don't sweat it much. There will come a point, probably in both of our lives where everything is always online. Everything. Always. Games are just trying to get there a little early.

No, you legally own the games you BUY and the only thing standing in the way of that is DRM. So you legally own what you buy DRM puts limits on it. You can see that when you compare PC games (physical copies) with console games where the only difference is in the DRM and how that changes everything.

Not exactly. DRM is a bit of a misnomer that people have the tendency to misuse or mislabel. Traditonally people view DRM as things like Steam or online passes, things of that nature. Wherein effect it actually encompasses anything used to manage digital media, hence the name digital rights management.

When you buy a console game, what you're buying is the license to use it. Not the game itself. Case in point: Some games come with day one dlc already loaded on the disc that still must be purchased for use. If you OWNED the game on purchase legally everything on the disk would be yours but that is clearly not the case. Mind you, not EVERY publisher uses this sort of shrink-wrap EULA (google it) but nearly all large ones do.

Buying a game in the store does not mean you own it. It means you've purchased a license to use it. Semantics perhaps, but the publisher retains all rights of the product hence why you're not allowed to do with it as you like, IE bundle it up and make it available on torrent sites online. They own it.

You do not.

Sorry no. Wal Mart nor Gamestop nor Target nor any other retailer sells a license to you, they sell the game to you.

You have been told you don't own the game but the only thing that enforces that is DRM. No law prevents you from reselling, giving away or destroying your copy of the game. Think about it.

Let me give you an example of what has happened. Let's say you buy a new car and it has technology in it to prevent you from reselling the car. When you question it you are told, you never really owned any car you bought, you just licensed it's use. You wouldn't believe it with cars and you shouldn't believe it with games.

I'd type more but I gotta go.

 

[Hiphophippo]

On downside is you don't own the games though and you need internet.

To be totally honest, you don't legally OWN any game you buy these days. Mind you, if you buy retail you have a physical copy so it's pretty easy to lie to yourself that you do own it but you don't.

And I've always got internet. Well, 95% of the time. And Steam will let me play whatever I want offline so I don't sweat it much. There will come a point, probably in both of our lives where everything is always online. Everything. Always. Games are just trying to get there a little early.

No, you legally own the games you BUY and the only thing standing in the way of that is DRM. So you legally own what you buy DRM puts limits on it. You can see that when you compare PC games (physical copies) with console games where the only difference is in the DRM and how that changes everything.

Not exactly. DRM is a bit of a misnomer that people have the tendency to misuse or mislabel. Traditonally people view DRM as things like Steam or online passes, things of that nature. Wherein effect it actually encompasses anything used to manage digital media, hence the name digital rights management.

When you buy a console game, what you're buying is the license to use it. Not the game itself. Case in point: Some games come with day one dlc already loaded on the disc that still must be purchased for use. If you OWNED the game on purchase legally everything on the disk would be yours but that is clearly not the case. Mind you, not EVERY publisher uses this sort of shrink-wrap EULA (google it) but nearly all large ones do.

Buying a game in the store does not mean you own it. It means you've purchased a license to use it. Semantics perhaps, but the publisher retains all rights of the product hence why you're not allowed to do with it as you like, IE bundle it up and make it available on torrent sites online. They own it.

You do not.

Sorry no. Wal Mart nor Gamestop nor Target nor any other retailer sells a license to you, they sell the game to you.

You have been told you don't own the game but the only thing that enforces that is DRM. No law prevents you from reselling, giving away or destroying your copy of the game. Think about it.

Let me give you an example of what has happened. Let's say you buy a new car and it has technology in it to prevent you from reselling the car. When you question it you are told, you never really owned any car you bought, you just licensed it's use. You wouldn't believe it with cars and you shouldn't believe it with games.

I'd type more but I gotta go.

I'm going strictly off the EULA printed inside the manual that you agreed to just by ripping off the shrink wrap. That is the reality of it, I'm afraid.

 

[Epona]

On downside is you don't own the games though and you need internet.

To be totally honest, you don't legally OWN any game you buy these days. Mind you, if you buy retail you have a physical copy so it's pretty easy to lie to yourself that you do own it but you don't.

And I've always got internet. Well, 95% of the time. And Steam will let me play whatever I want offline so I don't sweat it much. There will come a point, probably in both of our lives where everything is always online. Everything. Always. Games are just trying to get there a little early.

No, you legally own the games you BUY and the only thing standing in the way of that is DRM. So you legally own what you buy DRM puts limits on it. You can see that when you compare PC games (physical copies) with console games where the only difference is in the DRM and how that changes everything.

Not exactly. DRM is a bit of a misnomer that people have the tendency to misuse or mislabel. Traditonally people view DRM as things like Steam or online passes, things of that nature. Wherein effect it actually encompasses anything used to manage digital media, hence the name digital rights management.

When you buy a console game, what you're buying is the license to use it. Not the game itself. Case in point: Some games come with day one dlc already loaded on the disc that still must be purchased for use. If you OWNED the game on purchase legally everything on the disk would be yours but that is clearly not the case. Mind you, not EVERY publisher uses this sort of shrink-wrap EULA (google it) but nearly all large ones do.

Buying a game in the store does not mean you own it. It means you've purchased a license to use it. Semantics perhaps, but the publisher retains all rights of the product hence why you're not allowed to do with it as you like, IE bundle it up and make it available on torrent sites online. They own it.

You do not.

Sorry no. Wal Mart nor Gamestop nor Target nor any other retailer sells a license to you, they sell the game to you.

You have been told you don't own the game but the only thing that enforces that is DRM. No law prevents you from reselling, giving away or destroying your copy of the game. Think about it.

Let me give you an example of what has happened. Let's say you buy a new car and it has technology in it to prevent you from reselling the car. When you question it you are told, you never really owned any car you bought, you just licensed it's use. You wouldn't believe it with cars and you shouldn't believe it with games.

I'd type more but I gotta go.

I'm going strictly off the EULA printed inside the manual that you agreed to just by ripping off the shrink wrap. That is the reality of it, I'm afraid.

The EULA is not a law.

 

[Echo136]

Pretty much a terrible service. It is good on the surface, especially because I dont have a top notch computer anymore, but you dont own the games. As soon as you miss a payment with Onlive and cancel the service, even temporarily, you lose all the games you bought. I'll stick to steam.

 

[Weaver]

It just doesn't really make sense to me.
I can pay onlive a monthly subscription fee PLUS full price for a game; then play it at a maximum of 720p with input lag and sucking a shit ton of my incredibly limited bandwidth. Then if I ever stop paying them my games vanish and I just dumped money into thin air.

Or I could just buy a boxed copy for the full price of the game, play it at 1080p, zero input lag and I can play it whenever I want.

It's just a sub-par gaming experience IMO.

 

[Worgen]

On downside is you don't own the games though and you need internet.

Same is true for Steam.

Yeah though, even if you pay full price for a game on Onlive, you quit paying your monthly fee and you can't play the game anymore.

you can play steam games offline though, onlive is literally streaming the games from another location so any sluggishness in your net connection can mess it up

 

[Epona]

Pretty much a terrible service. It is good on the surface, especially because I dont have a top notch computer anymore, but you dont own the games. As soon as you miss a payment with Onlive and cancel the service, even temporarily, you lose all the games you bought. I'll stick to steam.

Yes that was the biggest problem for me. You need to pay an ongoing fee to enable access to games you paid full price for and you have to use up alot of bandwidth when playing. This is important if you have a bandwidth cap or if someone else is watching Netflix.

For example, Borderlands is the same price on OnLive and on Steam. Same with is Deus Ex: HR. So where is the benefit? Why I pay $50 for a game on OnLive that I have to keep paying a fee to continue to play when for the same $50 I can get the game on Steam, download it once and then play anytime I want (in higher quality), online or offline until such time as Steam goes under?

 

[Legion IV]

On downside is you don't own the games though and you need internet.

You dont own your steam games either. have no ownership, just a license to play.

Digital distribution like steam needs to die.

 

[Waaghpowa]

Edit: OK so after having used it a bit more, im going to agree with most users here, and say it sucks.

Aside from all the other posters are to why it sucks. Another reason it sucks goes as follows. You know how the resolution was bad? Well that's because it has to reduce it in order to give you a decent stream of the game. Lower resolution, less data to stream. Sure, you get the benefit of never having to own high end hardware, but this seems more like a way for the casuals to get into games. The kind of people who would normally buy a console because it's "easier", and since Onlive removes the need for a console, it's even easier than that. Keep in mind I'm speculating.

Anyone like us who actually care about our games is going to think it's a shit service, especially since many of us live outside the US and the lag is absolutely fucking stupid.