Pemalite said:
pokoko said:
That being said, it is rather odd how many people see Value as "the good guys". | It's because they earned that.
Just like CD Project Red has earned allot of respect... And in essence was allowed to spend a little of that banked respect on the "Cyber Punk" trademark garbage.
If it was a company using the... I dunno... Scrolls name it would be a completely different kettle of fish. Shit would hit the fan.
Valve reinvigorated PC gaming.
They brought the cost of games down for PC gamers.
They made PC games more accessible.
They pushed a community-centric focus on games, allowing for things like mods and multiplayer to prosper.
And so much more.
They have also made some of the best games of all time and actively supported those games years after release.
Microsoft had abandoned PC gaming to focus on Xbox. EA and Ubisoft never gave a crap about PC gaming... The PC pretty much had Blizzard and Valve, so obviously PC gamers are going to rally behind those companies.
But once Microsoft, EA and Ubisoft realised there was 180+ million PC gamers and a 30+ billion dollar market... They have tried to claw themselves back into the market with mixed results.
shikamaru317 said:
That makes me want to buy digital games a whole lot less. I know physical has alot of upfront costs as well; the disc, the in-case inserts, the case itself, the cost of shipping the game to retailers, and the retailers cut of the sale, but there's no way they're losing 30% on physical sales, or else they couldn't afford to sell physical games at $10 late in their life. | They get their 30% cut even with Physical.
The difference with Steam and PC is that... A developer can cut out the massive chunk that a publisher demands, allowing developers to sell directly to consumers via Steam, that can bolster profit margins by a good 30-50% or more per sale.
Or you could be like Blizzard, EA etc' and not have your games on Steam at all and sell it via your own stores. Blizzard keeps 100% of a sale that way on PC, meaning it doesn't need high volumes to print money. (Although, they tend to sell a bucket load of games anyway.)
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None of which erases criticism. It doesn't work like that. Credit for the good things you do doesn't write over the bad things you do.
As for bringing the cost of PC gaming down, competition did that, though Steam eventually won against all the other digital distribution services that sprung up. Part of that was the Steam client but the main reason was their DRM.
I'm not sure what you mean by "supporting", either. When I worked with Microsoft, it was a running joke that pretty much everyone had a support redirect except Valve. Someone had a problem with a Valve game then it was basically, "I don't know, maybe check out their forums?" Which I found out for myself later on. It took two weeks for them to send an email to address a problem I had with Portal not working with Windows 7 and the email was just a copy/paste that had nothing to do with my situation. Of course, I'd already found the solution on the forums before then.
I see no reason to pretend they have no faults. Valve admitted their support was bad. This is a company that makes money hand over fist. There are no excuses.
http://steamed.kotaku.com/valve-is-not-psyched-they-got-an-f-in-customer-service-1691308332
Edit: Where is my formatting? This website absolutely sucks.
