Why Steam is Awesome, and How You Can Make Live Free

[Alby_da_Wolf]

Squilliam said:

Alby_da_Wolf said:

As I wrote in the first part you answered, I don't pretend to get for free expensive online services, but just basic online multiplayer, the P2P one, that requires little to no effort at all from publishers' servers. If the server is hosted on the players' consoles or PCs themselves, why on earth should they pay a fee for it?

And about the second part, making people pay also for basic online multiplayer is a business model followed only by a minority of gaming enterprises, if the majority is fine with making pay only for premium features, it's just the natural way of things that majority will prevail. Boasting the approval of large, but minority, gaming communities, won't make them become the absolute majority.

Why should people pay full price for a game after the development and marketing expenses have been more than covered? Why should they when there are a lot of games out there with a free to play system? Convince me that they shouldn't and you've convinced me noone should pay for Live.

Go in punishment behind the blackboard, I'd expect something better from you!    You perfectly know that paying for a game license or a fee for a publisher run game server is totally different from paying the publisher a fee for a distributed server purchased together with the game and actually run on the players' machines themselves. I wrote more than once that I don't object to pay full price (*) for licenses or publisher-run game servers and obviously they'll want a profit margin on them, I just don't want to pay for P2P multiplayer, unless I desire optional premium features. Obviously the optimal choice between P2P or publisher-run servers depends on the game and a flat fee to play every MMOG would be very favourable for a lot of gamers, but it isn't for gamers playing mostly P2P multiplayer. So, if I wasn't clear enough, I never meant that nobody should pay for Live Gold, I just don't find a honest deal to have to pay it if I'm only interested in P2P multiplayer, but I'd be more than glad to pay it if I liked fee-based MMOGs and Gold included one or more MMOGs I like, in that case it would be a very advantageous offer. But would third party fee-based MMOGs publishers find this deal advantageous?

Anyway, every deal is made by two complex parts, sellers with their products, costs and desired profits, buyers with their needs, tastes and desires, and the money they can and are willing to spend to satisfy them. Given the sellers' offers, buyers vote with their money, and XB360 market share and the part of them subscribing to Gold exactly reflect how the market accepts and likes MS model. And unless this model isn't forced on me too without any choice, I'm perfectly fine with people liking it and findinge the deal advantageous, I never wanted to demonstrate they shouldn't, it's actually only MS competitors' task to offer them a better deal, if they can.

(*) If full price is too much for me, I simply give up the advantage of playing the game when it's new and I wait for it to go budget, it's a honest deal, if I pay more I receive more and sooner, if I pay less, I'm served later (although often I actually receive more, a debugged game and some expansions included). I so love deep pocketed early adopters kindly indirectly financing saver gamers!