Valve Discusses Charging Customers Based on Popularity

[Ziadaine_v1legacy]

It's a good theory, but on many accounts there's alot of flaws in it.

With the whole Credit store for hats creators thing, They only ever pick 1-2 artists from all the submissions and use multiples of their creations. Somehow that is maddeningly unfair considering only 2 players every....4-5 months would be allowed to gain such a prize.

Like I said, good theory but Newell doesnt think correctly for EVERYONE, not just the elite and hat-hungry.

 

[darkcommanderq]

This is one of those, 'good ideas' that is going to go HORRIBLY wrong. 1st off, what defines a 'good' player in the first place? Second off, what stops a bunch of idiots forming a system to promote themselves as 'good players' once said conditions for 'good players' is found.

Honestly valve dont be retarded and base things off popularity. People are dumb, and this system will only promote that stupidity.

Im going to use a really old game as an example. Gunz the duel. A Fantastic F2P Action MMO that was based on in-game exploits. Once you became familiar with the exploits of the game and made a new char, people in the lower levels would think you were hacking and group kick you. Is it that persons fault they are 'that good'? NO ITS NOT. Honestly dont trust the masses, they will inevitably do something stupid and ruin it.

 

[Nautical Honors Society]

Nope, you should never charge anyone extra money to unlock features of a game they own. Once they buy the game it is theirs even if they are a jerk...just police them without monetary charges. Extra $100 for using voice? Really? Wow.

Actually, the article talked about giving discounts for good behavior, and that jerks would only ever be charged full price.

No the article talks about charging "jerks" extra money for basic features on top of the game at full price.

Here's a quote...

"Now, a real jerk that annoys everyone, they can still play, but a game is full price and they have to pay an extra hundred dollars if they want voice."

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

I've heard this before from him.

And it's still a great idea.

The only argument I've ever seen raised against it is that you'll price too many people out of the game with the system, meaning fewer people will be on servers for those who do buy the game.

But that whole argument against this system is based on two assumptions: (1) that the particularly "bad" players who would be priced out make up a large enough part of the playerbase that server populations would be too low without them and/or (2) that Valve will do a bad job of creating and implementing the scale.

Addressing the concerns:
(1) This is unlikely to price out anyone. We're talking about reductions in costs. Games aren't becoming more expensive and cost will be, at worst, equally prohibitive as it is at present. If they did something like charging more for voice for "bad" players, they also have an incentive to avoid charging so much that any but perhaps the absolute worst offenders are actually priced out. Spoiler alert: Valve is a business and likes to make money. And that "worst" segment that they actually may want to price out is typically a very small proportion of the playerbase.

(2) This is also something of a two-parter. First, they're going to create the scale that nets them the most profit, so once again they're going to avoid pricing people out as much as possible. This isn't intended to prevent the "bad" people from playing these games, it's intended to give them an incentive to stop acting in a "bad" way. Second, people seem to have an idea that this will make it possible to "grief" people by manipulating whatever is used to score behaviour. Valve isn't that dumb. The system will be set up such that griefing is impossible, unlikely, or easily reversed. At the very least, I'm certain they'd be very responsive to anyone filing a claim that people tried them in this way.

 

[Doom972]

What about those of us who don't care for multiplayer? I don't see while someone should get games for free while I still have to pay. I really like Steam lately and I've already bough a handful of games there. I just hope they keep it as it is and make more discount sales and packages.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

Nope, you should never charge anyone extra money to unlock features of a game they own. Once they buy the game it is theirs even if they are a jerk...just police them without monetary charges. Extra $100 for using voice? Really? Wow.

The "already own" argument against locked content is incredibly flawed. Did you knowingly buy a product with disabled features that cost more to unlock? If you did and you didn't pay the fee to unlock them, by definition, you did not buy a game with those features. Your argument only holds if "the game" that you bought actually had those features, but it didn't.

And then everyone tries to salvage the argument by claiming that the features are on the disc and you bought the disc, so withholding them just for the sake of money is unethical. First, buying the disc is not the same thing as buying all of the content on it. If you want those to be the same thing, you're going to become a very unhappy person very quickly when you realise how hard this would make legally distributing hardware containing intellectual property. Second, by that logic, selling virtually any product is unethical. Third and perhaps most importantly, the reason they're on the disc is because it makes distribution of the features easier. They could just as easily not put them on the disc, but that would mean the difference between a simple patch to enable the content and actually having to patch in the content. It's hard to make an argument that it's less ethical if they're on the disc and disabled than if they weren't included at all given that the only time it makes a difference to the consumer is when they do want to unlock the feature, in which case leaving it on the disc is advantageous to the consumer. If you don't unlock the content, the decision of whether or not to include it on the disc is completely inconsequential to you as a consumer.

And when talking about a platform like Steam, you can't even claim that you own the entire content of the data just because you purchased hardware containing all of the data.

 

[loc978]

Eh, it's an interesting idea on paper, but since it only covers online multiplayer, it has nothing to do with me... I hope I at least just get to pay the normal full price, as a non-participant in this. Penalties for being a loner would suck.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

But I like being a dick. Plus loads of people could really exploit this.

 

[Nautical Honors Society]

Nope, you should never charge anyone extra money to unlock features of a game they own. Once they buy the game it is theirs even if they are a jerk...just police them without monetary charges. Extra $100 for using voice? Really? Wow.

The "already own" argument against locked content is incredibly flawed. Did you knowingly buy a product with disabled features that cost more to unlock? If you did and you didn't pay the fee to unlock them, by definition, you did not buy a game with those features. Your argument only holds if "the game" that you bought actually had those features, but it didn't.

And then everyone tries to salvage the argument by claiming that the features are on the disc and you bought the disc, so withholding them just for the sake of money is unethical. First, buying the disc is not the same thing as buying all of the content on it. If you want those to be the same thing, you're going to become a very unhappy person very quickly when you realise how hard this would make legally distributing hardware containing intellectual property. Second, by that logic, selling virtually any product is unethical. Third and perhaps most importantly, the reason they're on the disc is because it makes distribution of the features easier. They could just as easily not put them on the disc, but that would mean the difference between a simple patch to enable the content and actually having to patch in the content. It's hard to make an argument that it's less ethical if they're on the disc and disabled than if they weren't included at all given that the only time it makes a difference to the consumer is when they do want to unlock the feature, in which case leaving it on the disc is advantageous to the consumer. If you don't unlock the content, the decision of whether or not to include it on the disc is completely inconsequential to you as a consumer.

And when talking about a platform like Steam, you can't even claim that you own the entire content of the data just because you purchased hardware containing all of the data.

Everyone who buys the games should be allowed to the same content. If one person can use voice then everyone should. Police after the fact, and penalize with money. That's what bans and suspensions are for.

And no I did not read all of what you wrote so no need to respond.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

Nope, you should never charge anyone extra money to unlock features of a game they own. Once they buy the game it is theirs even if they are a jerk...just police them without monetary charges. Extra $100 for using voice? Really? Wow.

The "already own" argument against locked content is incredibly flawed. Did you knowingly buy a product with disabled features that cost more to unlock? If you did and you didn't pay the fee to unlock them, by definition, you did not buy a game with those features. Your argument only holds if "the game" that you bought actually had those features, but it didn't.

And then everyone tries to salvage the argument by claiming that the features are on the disc and you bought the disc, so withholding them just for the sake of money is unethical. First, buying the disc is not the same thing as buying all of the content on it. If you want those to be the same thing, you're going to become a very unhappy person very quickly when you realise how hard this would make legally distributing hardware containing intellectual property. Second, by that logic, selling virtually any product is unethical. Third and perhaps most importantly, the reason they're on the disc is because it makes distribution of the features easier. They could just as easily not put them on the disc, but that would mean the difference between a simple patch to enable the content and actually having to patch in the content. It's hard to make an argument that it's less ethical if they're on the disc and disabled than if they weren't included at all given that the only time it makes a difference to the consumer is when they do want to unlock the feature, in which case leaving it on the disc is advantageous to the consumer. If you don't unlock the content, the decision of whether or not to include it on the disc is completely inconsequential to you as a consumer.

And when talking about a platform like Steam, you can't even claim that you own the entire content of the data just because you purchased hardware containing all of the data.

Everyone who buys the games should be allowed to the same content. If one person can use voice then everyone should. Police after the fact, and penalize with money. That's what bans and suspensions are for.

And no I did not read all of what you wrote so no need to respond.

TL;DR version: that's like knowingly buying an edition of a book without a particular chapter in it, claiming that you therefore "own the book", and insisting that you are therefore entitled to a free copy of the chapter or that the publisher is unethical for selling you a copy without that chapter when more expensive editions do have it.

By insisting that everyone should get the same thing, you eliminate the cheaper option for people who didn't want the content, which in turn means you price out more people, which in turn means the publisher has to charge a higher price for the single product to continue to turn the same profit. So that attitude helps no one.

More simplistically, your view is based on the idea that by purchasing something, you should somehow be given ownership of parts of it that were explicitly not included in your purchase.

 

[ExplosionProofTaco]

Hmmm... Intriguing Idea, but I imagine it will be easy to exploit this system.

If they had this system on Xbox live, Everything on the arcade would cost thousands of dollars.

 

[ExplosionProofTaco]

Hmmm... Intriguing Idea, but I imagine it will be easy to exploit this system.

If they had this system on Xbox live, Everything on the arcade would cost thousands of dollars.

 

[DeathWyrmNexus]

It technically puts the price of your game in the hands of the reporting system, which can be just as lousy as the people in the game...

 

[mooncalf]

Sounds horrific and wonderful all at once.

 

[mdazfrench]

? . . . . Gabe, there are times I really wonder just why the hell they let you speak for the company. Actually checked my date to make sure it wasn't April 1st again. Elegant in concept, impossible in execution, and one of the few things guaranteed to alienate EVERYONE.

 

[The Cheshire]

Well, my main reason not to play online is because it's all full of cunts, and I already have to tolerate too many in my daily life to search for them online

 

[Low Key]

Well, no one ever said Gabe wasn't ambitious. It'd be interesting to see how they'd handle people complaining that they can't use advertised services despite griefer status. Charging however much extra per feature could be considered extortion even if it were written into the EULA.

 

[Aprilgold]

Bad for EVERYONE!
If I let my friend play on a server, and the server decides to ban him, then its fair that he is banned from said server, unless Steam is going to put out official servers on their games allowing people to get this as an extra side thing, and not a whole thing, then I could accept it, because then I wouldn't have to be nice to the troll that is abusing everyone so that I don't have to pay 100$ to use the mic again. Its literally stupid to try and control someones server, its their server, they have admins, and they will ban if needed, no need to try and remove trollers from the community, because there will ALWAYS be some. If I'm being trolled by someone, and write some mean things about said person asking if the nearby admin could kick, or even ban him, then I could be told that now I have to pay 100 dollars to use the online component of a new game I FUCKING PREORDERED! It would work if they added in a feature to where you get a clean slate every few weeks or something. Again, if it were something like valve had servers dedicated to this, or a clean slate idea, then it may work, but at its state right now, its just not going to work at all. I don't know, what do you thoughtful people at the escapist think of this?

 

[Sabinfrost]

My generation teabagging was a cause for laughter and payback, not an insult.

I think kids these days have taken it too far.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Doooo EEEET! Doooooo EEEEEET!