UK Retailers Threaten to Ditch Steam Games

[Callate]

I'm of mixed minds. On the one hand, my reflexive reaction is to say: "What tiny portion of the PC games market is unaware of Steam and thus threatened by its inclusion in retail games?" There are certainly plenty of people who wouldn't choose to use Steam to buy their games because of limited Internet access, but I have to suspect that the number of people who have unrestricted broadband Internet connections and will suddenly be made aware of a new purchasing option by the installation of Steam on their computers is really quite small.

On the other hand, I don't inherently wish the brick-and-mortar stores ill, and while Valve seems like a fairly benign entity in the world of electronic games (especially compared with some of the schenanigans of businesses like Activision, EA, and Microsoft), it's good to remember that company policies rarely become more customer-friendly because of a lack of serious competition. Power corrupts, etc.

 

[HentMas]

OK
I know "STEAM" is great and all, but... doesnt that "creates" a plataform among a plataform?? for example, i buy a steam game, and install steam, then i HAVE to have steam installed to play

all cool and good isn´t it??

but then, i buy a Windows Live game, and i HAVE to install windows live, so i have 2 platafroms from which to launch games, Steam, and Windows Live, that sounds OK i guess

then we have XFIRE and other web retailers

that means that for each purchase, i have to have some kind of DRM installed, so if i want to get the best deals, i have to be hopping from 1 of the 3 mentioned "plataforms"

get my drift??

or, i couldalways go to STEAM

wich in turn gives them more power

and money

and opportunities to have better deals

the issue here is not STEAM per se, the issue is that NO other online retailer offers what steam offers, and they have no frikken way of "out doing" a plataform that actually "works"

have you ever tryed to play with games for windows live?? its ugly and difficult and intrussive

have you ever played with STEAM??? you probably dont notice it untill a "pop up" shows saying your friends just got online... or you won an achievement.

Idealy people wouldnt need a DRM system, but here you have it, of the evils the lesser.

 

[PurplePlatypus]

They are only cutting off their own nose to spite their face. Retailers in the UK barley sell PC games, and they wonder why steam is beating them with its wide selection and generally good prices?

 

[fletch_talon]

That seems fair.
A game store selling a game which requires steam is essentially advertising for a rival store.

It'd be like Macdonalds having the KFC Colonel's face printed on the inside of big Mac wrappers.

 

[tavelkyosoba]

http://www.game.co.uk/Games/PC-Games-and-Downloads/_/N-1z13fvfZ1z13mn1Z68a/

And that is why Steam has 80% of downloaded games.

Seriously, try to find one game which is cheaper to download than buy physical.

I've found 1 so far.

I bought Just Cause 2 ($15 cheaper) and a Fallout 3 ($5 cheaper), and just recently Fallout 3 New Vegas ($5 cheaper) from Amazon.com for less than the steam price.

Even $5 less, plus shipping, leaves an extra $2 in your pocket.

In fact, Amazon.com recently ran a buy 2 get 1 free promo for ANY 3 games from ANY platform. I picked up a Wii title and a couple PC titles and saved gloriously over what I would've paid on steam for the two PC games.


It's not hard to undercut steam just that little bit or to provide other services/deals/incentives to boost sales just as Amazon does.


by the way, 007 on wii is AWESOME.

 

[DanDeFool]

Why can't they go for the middle ground? I mean, if some of your customers are going to opt for digital distribution, why don't you just buy fewer copies from the publishers?

I guess because they want everyone to buy retail. Well, how about this: How about you get publishers to lose all that bullshit DRM on DVDs, and then maybe we'll start going back to hardcopy purchases. Until then, SecuROM can suck my ass, Sony's rootkit can get a root canal, and Best Buy can fry for all I care. Steam is offering a superior product at (frequently) a superior price point, and that means retail is going to lose.

 

[DanDeFool]

by the way, 007 on wii is AWESOME.

Good to know. I was thinking about picking that one up.

 

[tehroc]

As far as I'm concerned the publishers should just cut the brick and mortar stores out of the loop, which is a win win for publishers since you can't resell Steam games.

Face it stores, digital distribution is here to stay and your obsolete. You will soon fall like Blockbuster did to Netflix (curse me too for not investing in netflix a year or two ago when I started the service, their stock values has doubled since then)

 

[bloodychimp]

I'd care if there were good new PC games that weren't made by Blizzard (who has there own kick ass digital distribution service), Valve (who owns steam), or indy developers (whose games retail stores aren't stocking anyway).

 

[JediMB]

To be fair, it's unreasonable to expect retailers to charge less for a physical box copy than a digitally distributed game. There is a heck of a lot more involved with a "bricks and mortar" shop.

I have to disagree. I usually find physical copies of new releases to be cheaper than the purely digital equivalents in the Steam store. My physical copy of Fallout: New Vegas was ?5-10 cheaper than what it went for on Steam.

Not if I'd gone to GameStop, though, since GameStop don't exactly make an effort to offer good deals for their customers.

But, anyway, I have to say that I like having Steamworks in my games. It's a good service, with loads more perks than disadvantages. And it doesn't stop me purchasing physical copies of most of my games, giving a good chunk of the profit to whatever store gave me the best deal.

 

[Terramax]

So they're going to improve their sales of games they hardly stock anyway by ditching half of them?

Right then.

Nail on the head.

I went to Gamestation yesterday and they have 2 SMALL SHELVES of PC games, and a third shelve for 2nd hand ones, pretty much all games for 0.50p because they're a decade old (Virtua Fighter 2, etc).

 

[LoganN]

(1)According to Wikipedia: Number of games using Live released in 2009: 16. Number of games using Live released thus far in 2010: 13 (counting Chaos Rising and Episodes of Liberty City as separate games). Hmmm...
To be fair, Wikipedia lists five games planned to be released this year with Live, although it's likely that only Tron Evolution will see a release date before the end of this year (Fable 3 PC is pretty much guaranteed to miss this year, Australian Rules Football has been rescheduled to 2011, CarneyVale: Showtime is formally AWOL and Flowerz's out of nowhere).
(2) Perhaps, but when Steam launched, there was no competition. When GfWL launched, it was explicitly competing against Steamworks (i.e. there was no Games on Demand yet, that didn't come until two years later).
(3) I stand corrected, unless you consider "time = money". Microsoft is notoriously slow at publishing patches, and woe betide you if they reject a patch. In comparison, Valve has one check ("Does the Steam Overlay still work?") which, frankly, if very difficult to fail. Thus, they are far, far quicker with the patches. Faster patches = better PR = more sales due to word of mouth.
(4) Largely because they haven't released a PC version of one of the games they publish since Gears of War. With Fable 3's delay, excuse me while I be skeptical about their support for the system.

I could also point out GfWL's other failings (e.g. locking you out of online saves if you go offline, undisclosed and arbitrary install limits, etc.)

1. That is a valid point. I wasn't talking about the games though, I was talking about the service itself. It has expanded a lot this year, but still no where near as big as Steam. Games on Demand was just added this year, and in four days it gets expanded.
2. Yes, but it still stands. Most of the hate that comes towards GFWL is only because of a loyality to another service, such as Steam. There is still a large part of the market that hates anything that has to do with online.
3. The patching certification is a double edged sword. It has the potential to catch game-breaking bugs, while slowing down the patching process considerably. Some games, such as Dead Rising 2, have had patches released in three days. Others, it can take a while. Either way, Timegate, the makes of Section 8, have said that Microsoft told them they are scaling back the certification to make it a lot quicker, or even getting rid of it completely. So, apparently, Microsoft agrees with you on this.
4. True, but there are reasons for that. They had to get the Xbox into living rooms to build that brand. They are a huge corporation with many different goals. Now that they have managed to do that, they are focusing on the PC, Phone and Xbox to build up LIVE Anywhere, something that was debuted at E3 2006.

The last two things you said are wrong. Saves are profile locked, the same profile has access to saves, regardless of if it is online or in offline mode, and install limits don't exsit for games purchased from the store. The install limits on boxed copies are only for the games that aren't tied to your account.

 

[Something Amyss]

OR, and this is a CRAZY thought:

They could actually run sales and promotions that would make buying from the retailer more attractive than on Steam!

I know, it's an insane thought that competition should be a core part of capitalist economics.

Competing with Wal-Mart always works. It's a similar idea, superficially clever but realistically ignorant.

 

[Aurora219]

OR, and this is a CRAZY thought:

They could actually run sales and promotions that would make buying from the retailer more attractive than on Steam!

I know, it's an insane thought that competition should be a core part of capitalist economics.

That's all well and good, but the reverse equivalent is that every Steam game you buy online had to come with an unskippable advert for Gamestop or Game or something, and possibly vouchers off your next purchase at one of them. Steam wouldn't do it.

 

[ItsAPaul]

Like I said on /v/, there's no reason to own physical copies of games anymore to begin with so I'm not seeing the problem here.

 

[SmokingMirrors]

Seems somewhat reckless from my perspective but then, such actions are common amongst the fearful and Valve has certainly become a most intimidating presence in the industry with their ever expanding virtual platform.

Before anyone seeks to assail me with false labels, i'd like to note that I am in no way a "fanboy"- I'm simply pointing out a fact that cannot be denied.

 

[DaxStrife]

Reasons why I picked up "Fallout: New Vegas" on Steam instead of retail:

1) I originally wanted to get it at a local GameStop, but as a Collector's Edition. I went in a few weeks before to make a pre-order, and they told me they didn't have any because they didn't think there was going to be enough demand. I said good day.
2) It was going to require Steam to run, from what I had read, so I thought I might as well cut out the middle-man and go straight to Steam for the purchase since it would be the same price in the end.
3) Steam pre-loaded the game, so I didn't have to attend a midnight release to get it as early as I could.

 

[fundayz]

I can't say I blame retailers, they are just doing what they can to protect their business. However, I think they're shooting themselves in the foot and this might just encourage even more people to use Steam. Specially with all the sales that Steam has.

What's a customer going to do when their closest game store doesn't have a certain PC game stocked? Start a crusade so the publishers stop releasing game on Steam?
Of course not, they are just going to purchase the game from Steam, possibly for a lower price, and move on with their lives.

The only way this might even get close to working would be if they ditched both PC and console versions of the games, which won't happen since that would put more pressure on them than the publishers.

Retailers are fighting a losing battle against digital distribution. Retailers are going to have to innovate their business model in order to keep their customers. I can see retailers being replaced by vending machines in malls; we already have them for iPods and the like, i'm sure making them for games wouldn't be hard.

 

[HellsingerAngel]

I really don't like this news. I especially don't like that people are praising the possible monopoly of Steam. Here's the short of it, from my personal experience:

I recently had an issue where they refused my credit card during a Steam deal. Worried that there was something wrong with the card, I used it at another store and it worked fine. I also needed to buy something from Amazon.co.uk, so I made my purchase with the same card and everything was fine. Kept the digital reciepts, just in case. Tried my Steam purchase again and my acocunt was locked.

So I sent in my ticket, dated October 26th, and asked for some asistsnace with both getting my card acceptable on their site and getting my game at sale price. They were very keen on replying (only a day!) and went straight to work. They had asked if I could check with my bank and credit card company. I did, as instructed and found nothing to be amiss. They then give me a message about a week later, dated November 2nd, that there was an issue with my particular bank's cards and they were working on it. BloodBowl had just come out and I had attempted a purchase off Steam, because I really wanted it then and there. Huzzah! It worked. However, I wasn't sure if it was a fluke or they had fixed the card (they gave no indication) so I shot of a quick reply on the 2nd saying I had been able to purchase something and if my card was fixed permanently and what of my Steam deal I had never gotten.

November 11th and I still have no responce. Why? Because they don't need to. They have a confirmed purchase and the sale is done. If they had any decent competition at this point (God bless GfWL but it's still chugging up to speed right now) then they would have had to do what any other store would do: honour the deal or risk losing a customer. In the end, I've lost faith in the only digital distributor and have to go through a pain and a half to find particular PC games, some of which I can't even play (mostly THQ/Relic, which I absolutely love and will miss) because they use Steam, a company I believe is amassing too much power of anyone's good.

By why stop there? When Steam gains a stronger foothold, those dirt cheap prices could skyrocket for all they care. As a company gets bigger, it needs money to perpetuate itself and those nice little $50 games could jump to $80 because they have no competition left. We've already seen how ahrd it is to try and construct a competitor through what is GfWL, so Steam could rule the market for ages before being toppled. It's one monster to another these days: GameStop and Steam alike. Too much power in one company is not good for our industry.