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Antabus on 12 November 2010
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Scoobes said:
Antabus said:
Foamer said:
Antabus said:

Yeah. If I buy a game from a retailer, I don't want to install some advertisement service with it. Remove forced steam installs from retail games and everything is fine.


Advertisement service? Jesus.

The installs are 'forced' because the publisher has chosen to use Steamworks, which offers a whole shitload of free services saving them development money and adding value for customers. Valve sells GfWL enabled games on Steam without crapping themselves that users are going to be installing the GfWL client and being exposed to Games on Demand. Again, if retailers are so bothered that customers are going to be seduced by Steam, then they need to come up with more compelling offerings or get out of the way as they're starting to look like dinosaurs.

1. Yes, advertisement service. You do notice that every single time you start steam, there will be a lot of ads on your screen. If you like those ads, that is fine. I just don't like when a paying customer is forced to install adware on their computers.

But since you seem to know that those installs aren't forced, you might be able to tell me this:

2. If I buy a game from retal which has some sort of steam crap on it, do I have to install and register the steam ad service? If I don't want to install it, can I play the game? Can I sell the game or is it locked to steam account?

1. What ads? When Steam loads up it goes to the Steam store page. I don't think that counts as ads otherwise every home page would be counted as adware. Before that it may load some update news. Again, not ads. Otherwise, all digital download platforms would be counted as adware. And doesn't X-box Live have ads? Yet people also pay extra (on top of the game price) for that. You can even change what shows up on the taskbar in the settings so the store doesn't even show up. You calling Steam an ad service doesn't make it true.

2. That's the one disadvantage of Steam as a platform. Essentially, when you register your game, you're signing up and purchasing a subscription service for that game. You can't sell on your game as you've essentially registered for the service. For many however, the benefits of Steam as a service greatly outweigh the disadvantage of not selling the game on.

It's also worth remembering that when you purchase and register a game with Steam, your purchase ceases to be purely physical. You can't sell on something that's digital as their is no degradation in the product.

1. If those update news are the ones which tell you that there is a 10% discount on game X, they are ads. So is the store frontpage. XBL does have ads and I don't like them either.

But I did not know about that you can disable store (and propably those ads if they are "steam instant messages"). It was not possible the last time I tried to block those. You made me take another look so thank you. :)

2.

Yeah. Steam is DRM and a bad one. I don't want to support DRM. Why do you want to support DRM? Is there some reason for that? Why you should not be able to sell a digital download?