UK Retailers Accused of Blacklisting Steam-Required PC Games

[GaryH]

I can't remember the last time that I bought a game from a shop. I get my PC games on steam and order my console titles from various websites. I do this because it's extremely convenient.

They're shooting themselves in the foot here and I can't help but laugh.

 

[grigjd3]

It's a shame because steamworks is some of the nicest DRM one comes across on the PC platform. Anyhow, the brick-and-mortar stores aren't realizing the problem they are facing. If it's not going to be steam, it will be someone else. The stores aren't providing any added value. If I can download a game directly to my computer, I don't have to go to a store and deal with some annoying sales rep who is going to do their damnedest to sell me the latest Call of Duty game which I have absolutely no interest in. Now, if these stores found a way to add value to the transaction rather than make me feel like I have to slay some floor salesman to get at what I want...

 

[Comando96]

Good luck getting this past the UK's courts when Valve take you to them!

This would be classed as commercial discrimination (refusing to sell a product if a particular brand is associated with it) and therefore... you can't ban them, and if you do then you can only do it for so long before the courts bugger you.

 

[Knusper]

I don't really think it makes much difference. The last time I walked into GAME (which was a long time ago), they had hardly any PC games at all.

Either way, I can't see how anyone benefits from this.

 

[Stavros Dimou]

It's a shame because steamworks is some of the nicest DRM one comes across on the PC platform. Anyhow, the brick-and-mortar stores aren't realizing the problem they are facing. If it's not going to be steam, it will be someone else. The stores aren't providing any added value. If I can download a game directly to my computer, I don't have to go to a store and deal with some annoying sales rep who is going to do their damnedest to sell me the latest Call of Duty game which I have absolutely no interest in. Now, if these stores found a way to add value to the transaction rather than make me feel like I have to slay some floor salesman to get at what I want...

The problem is that after a game that uses Steam as its DRM is registered in Steam,it becomes forever attached in somebody's Steam's account.
There are lots of people who return opened games to stores either because they never heard of Steam and now that they learned how it works they don't want the game anymore,or because they bought a game that was broken and want to take it back to the shop and get a refund.

Retailer's can't say no to these people,because it's in legal consumer's rights to return a product that is broken or doesn't work as advertised.

The problem is that Publishers won't take back registered games either,and retailers end up having hundreds of games that are already registered to some Steam account,and they can't sell to anybody.
The games are charged,and retailers have to pay from their own wallet for all these hundreds of games,and I think it should be reasonable that they can't afford it.

Steam forces retailers to loose large amounts of money,without a fault from the retailer's side.

 

[rbstewart7263]

Andrew Ryan:"Gregory dont come whining to me about market forces and dont expect me to punish citizens for showing a little initiative. If you dont like what steam is doing than I suggest you offer a better product."

 

[Baneat]

I believe Steam should be optional, never mandatory. Steam functions like an anoying DRM, I remember buying Half Life years ago and yet I couldn't install it with the disc because I needed to register it on Steam. It wasn't till years later when I got internet access that I could finally play a game I bought.

I support any game retailer that doesn't want to sell games with that horrific DRM.

Indeed. Though I kind of like steam, I agree that it should always be optional. Unreal Tournament 3 did this, and I loved that it did this. You could install it normally, or you could activate the product key on Steam and install it that way.

I wish more games did that.

O' RLY?

I have a boxed copy of UT3 and whenever I install it it's without steam, what do I do to activate it on steam?

 

[Watchmacallit]

What do retailers expect? Alice: Madness Returns in store, $110 on PS3. In Steam? $50 Australian. If the stores are going to rip us off that badly on a game that didn't have a high budget like MWF2 they can honestly screw themselves.

Although...I do like talking to this girl at EB, real cutey, knows a lot about games too.

 

[YunikoYokai5]

My god, what is the average download speed of people if downloading a game is faster then going to the shops I knew my 52kb (normal for my area) per second was pathetic but geez. Downloading Ratchet and clank on my PS3 took over 24 hours. If I download anything through my PC, I'm unable to download anything more than 2 hours before my connection clunks out and I need to start again. Downloading the Dragon Age 2 Soundtrack (about 805MB) was going to take 4-5 hours (connection clunked out everytime during my 4 attempts, had to download using my university connection...which did it in 10 minutes) Going to the shops takes about...25-30minutes if traffic is eh, I can also go buy a book in the process!

Personally, I'm not a huge PC gamer, if my Gamestation doesn't hold what I want, I get from Play or Amazon (Play mostly). I've never bought anything through steam and if I need a program running in the background to get it, forget it. I'm one of these people who prefer a hard copy (for me, its just better security if my PC goes on the blink and if I ever want to play the game again without raping my internet connection)

 

[Irridium]

I believe Steam should be optional, never mandatory. Steam functions like an anoying DRM, I remember buying Half Life years ago and yet I couldn't install it with the disc because I needed to register it on Steam. It wasn't till years later when I got internet access that I could finally play a game I bought.

I support any game retailer that doesn't want to sell games with that horrific DRM.

Indeed. Though I kind of like steam, I agree that it should always be optional. Unreal Tournament 3 did this, and I loved that it did this. You could install it normally, or you could activate the product key on Steam and install it that way.

I wish more games did that.

O' RLY?

I have a boxed copy of UT3 and whenever I install it it's without steam, what do I do to activate it on steam?

Open Steam, go to "add a game" in your games library, and choose "activate a product on Steam".

Then put in the UT3 product code and there you go.

 

[rvdm88]

The same £20 game sold on Steam - or another digital retailer - would not only earn 1C £14, it'd reach its coffers much sooner.

It would also mean that i wouldn't have to
get out, buy a train/parking ticket,
spend more money
being in deep shit when the cd breaks.
Wait for mail delivery to come by with my game when ordered on "brick&mortar" webshops.

Yeah...
This would actually be the last thing standing between steam actually pricing their games "acceptable" instead of having to keep a artificially high price in order to keep retail stores happy and in business.


Why isn't that more games come with "optional" steam keys, like UnrealTournament3 or SupremeCommander.
I do see the fckin annoying GFWL and EADownloader popup and nobody is making a fuss of that?

As a gamer I would rather like to see GFWL and EADownloader/origin at the bottom of the sea than Steam, steam's awesome!

 

[Not-here-anymore]

many of the UK's largest game retailers were threatening to refuse to stock PC games that integrated Valve's Steam service into the package.

According to Russian PC publisher 1C Company, those threats have materialized - and UK retailers have told publishers that if their game mandates Steamworks, don't expect to see it on their shelves.

There's a big difference between a game integrating Steamworks and mandating it. If a game's avalible to buy on Steam and in a retailer, cool. If I buy a game from a retailor and take home my shiny new disk only to find it's just a particularly solid activation key for a Steam game (lookin' at you MW2) I'm going to be annoyed.

I agree wholeheartedly.
Anyone living in halls at university or staying in a boarding school or (other examples I can't think of) will probably be prevented from accessing gaming online in any way, be it xbox live, steam, psn, or anything else.
This means that a steamworks-mandated game is unusable. It's an expensive coaster. The original bioshock had this problem, and that doesn't even have a multiplayer component.
Given the number of areas with restricted internet access in the UK, demanding that users register their games via steam (or online at all, realistically) is utterly ludicrous.

 

[Rodrigo Girao]

If I buy a game as a physical copy, it DAMN BETTER be fully standalone. I simply don't buy games with DRM.

 

[thepyrethatburns]

I don't get how it's sleazy or low. It's like refusing to stock the PSP Go. Sure, you make some initial money off the sale but, by selling it, you're advertising for a service that is designed to eventually put your store out of business. Given how the industry is eagerly racing towards DD-only, I wouldn't be inclined to help that along either if I had a brick-and-mortar shop.

Even without that, it's no more "sleazy" than Wal-Mart not stocking AO-games. A business has every right to say "We won't stock this". From the sound of it, the retailers in question are just letting 1C know that. Frankly, most of the people who are going to use Steam have the internet connectivity to just download it themselves. Those who don't would probably just take the game back to the store and complain that it didn't work.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

I'm sure this strategy is a winning one. How will people ever find out about steam if it isn't included in a game sold by their favorite retail store?

Retail for anything that can be shipped = dead. Like the music "industry" lawsuits this is the last gasp of a dinosaur going extinct.

 

[Sebster 105]

I'm confused, Brink in the UK uses steamworks, is available in stores but isn't available on steam.


HNNNG

 

[Saulkar]

I really sympathise with these guys. The way digital disribution is going, Valve have basically set up a monopoly, and will, in the same way as Microsoft and Apple did, probably be very very hard to dislodge now.

What I see Valve as having done is very sneakily gone behind everyone's backs, and very under the table, and set up Steam before the advent of digital distribution, and I think in the coming years we are going to see their company practices get very ugly as theystruggle to maintain their vice-grip on the industry.

But yeah, Valve are teh aw3som3s, greatest videogame developers, they made half life and thus everyone must worship the ground they walk on. Anything I say will just be ignored and get me attacked by the legions of Valve fanboys, when they're not being bent over the table by the ep 3 release date.

I whole heartedly agree with you! My biggest and most legitmate gripes with Steam are the complete elimination of second hand sales, no 10 dollar plan thing, but complete elimination! I tried to install my brothers copy of F3AR on my computer like I did with his Crysis 2 and he with my Mass Effect 2 but I was told that because the key had already been used once it was no longer valid. Combine that with the fact it is overtly easy to have your steam account banned, and in the process LOSE all your games with no hope for redemption. Kid at my school lost about 600$ plus of videogames because he used a preloaded unrefillable card and attempted to buy a game but the card was several dollars short so they suspended his account until the transaction could be completed but since the card cannot be refilled his account was put on permanent suspension. When he called customer support they refused to cancel the transaction thus in the end he loses 600$ worth of games. I seriously do not want assholes like this holding a monopoly on the industry!

 

[Atheist.]

This will only bring their demise sooner. Going against Steam at this point is a very poor choice.

 

[Imp_Emissary]

(Sorry. Needed more room.) *What you said.*

I don't really see how you can call Valve the bad guys here because they were the first to really get serious about digital distribution. The possibility for using their power for evil is there, but as of yet I (personally) have seen none. The "evil" ones here are the retailers. They are using their power to force developers to do what they want them to do. Valve only has a monopoly with Steam because no one else is trying (very successfully) to compete with them for the market. The retailers could all compete if they put they're time and money into making their own digital distribution systems, but instead they choose to try and muscle out the competition. Yes Valve MAY become the Video Game Overlords if no one steps up to challenge them, but if you don't want that to happen you should get mad the retailers for not trying to compete with Valve. You can't get mad at Valve for making good business decisions.