loves2splooge said:
There are very, very few PC game companies that have a DRM-free policy. If you were to simply not buy games without any DRM at all, you wouldn't have a whole lot to choose from (unless you pirate). I have financially supported companies in the past that implement DRM but you do the same and you LIKE IT. You like being violated and taken advantage of by these companies. That's the difference between you and me. You are paying money (and even voice your support for this scheme) to companies that implement a draconian Steam DRM that removes your right to resell a game (taking away any true ownership over the game). That is even worse than the standard disc check DRM you find with most PC games and with console games. And if I do buy a PC game with a standard disc check, I'll crack it and no worries. I still retain true ownership over my copy of the game. The Disc check DRM is probably the least of the DRM evils since usually it can be circumvented easily anyway. Yeah sure it's illegal but you aren't risking anything by downloading a crack from a website (lol @ the praying to god nobody finds out comments). Now downloading ISOs off torrents, that's risky. But not downloading directly via http. And even when I don't crack or mod to get past the disc check (ie. I don't mod my 360 so I use the legitimate discs for that all the time), it's not a big deal having to put the disc in your drive every time you want to play. I'm not phobic to the concept of physical activity. At least you still own the thing and I have never once damaged a game disc to the point of rendering it unplayable. Not once ever. It's nice having a real collection and knowing that if you ever need money one day for something, you can always sell your old games and come up with the money. And it's nice being able to rent games instead of paying $50+ for games that you might not end up liking anyway (oh what's that? You can't sell your $50 Steam game that ends up dissapointing you? Too bad. First-sale doctrine Nazi Jabba the Hutt says no resale for you!) What if one day you had a car accident, you lost a lot in potential wages and you had to start selling things in order to make ends meet? You know how much all your Steam games would be worth in that kind of scenario? ZILCH. NADA. NOTHING. You don't truly own those games. At least you can sell your retail console games and some of your retail PC games still (I say some because lots of retail PC games unfortunately force you to permanently tie your serial key to your account, making it worthless as a sellable asset). And boy have I ever heard some really bad horror stories related to Steam. I remember some guy mentioning online in a forum that Valve closed his account after using Steam for FOUR YEARS and lost ALL of his games because they suspected that the account was being hijacked by someone else. Now that guy can't get back his account and his games. He's fucked. That's what happens when you don't truly own your games. If that's what you want the future of gaming to be, then fine. Drink the Valve/Steam koolaid. And I do vote with my wallet... by not buying any Steam games. I have yet to buy a Steam game. I considered doing so one time (Vampire Bloodlines at $20) because the game was hard to find in physical form and I couldn't be arsed to figure out how to get by the game's DRM after trying to pirate it but decided not to buy it because I wasn't exactly desperate to play the game. So I went without the game. I have only bought a grand total of five digitally distributed games ever (none from Steam, 1 from another PC DD service, 3 from XBL, 1 from XNA). I mainly avoid buying digitally distributed games. The cost-benefit analysis would have to heavily weigh into the pros for me to consider going DD. ie. If it's a digitally distributed-exclusive game that I really want to play (or the digitally-distributed version has a feature that I really wanted. ie. online multiplayer matchmaking) or the game is so stupidly cheap that it doesn't matter. Ideally, the Steam business model won't be infecting the console game market. But I have a feeling it's only a matter of time. Because gamers are foolish enough to think that you are doing them a favor by taking away their consumer rights provided that you sweeten the pot (No disc checks! Oh look, achievements! Friends lists!) Achievements and community integration are great but it's not necessary to enjoy a quality gaming experience. At the end of the day, achievements are just e-peen and if you want to keep in touch with your gaming friends, exchange IM screenames and use IM for communication. And I've already gone over disc checks. There is a strong used games and rental culture in console gaming so hopefully they won't embrace and accept digital distribution. They have allowed XBLA/PSN/Wiiware and DLC to creep in unfortunately but Xbox 360 On Demand games have largely been rejected thankfully. At the end of the day, you're not paying to buy. You're paying FULL PRICE to RENT. That's what you get with Steam. God help you if you ever need to come up with money fast. You won't have any games to sell to bail you out. That's the benefit of owning actual physical property. You have assets that you can turn into capital when needed. |
Yeah... that actually didn't refute anything in my post and was a giant waste of time to read. Thanks for that. You ignored the fact that steam is actually a BENEFIT for me.
I don't even have to break any laws to do it either!
