By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
20happyballs on 08 June 2013
Edit Thread
Scoobes said:
youarebadatgames said:
thekitchensink said:
I am very tired of reiterating the same counters to these same claims over and over again, but here goes. We do not exist to serve the needs of the developer. They exist to try to please us. It is not our responsibility to manage their business and make up for their inability to properly manage their finances and growth. And yes, they actually are selling us a disc. Unless you're going to try and tell me that when I buy a DVD, I don't own a digital video disc, but a 'license to watch the movie,' which would be the stupidest thing I've ever heard. We never heard a peep from them about disliking the used game market and how it was so amoral until they discovered a way to block it out or take a piece of the pie themselves.

And don't try the excuse that we don't complain when PC games have DRM-no one liked it there either, and it's why PC games get pirated exponentially more often than console games.

The long and short of it: if you don't think what they're doing will affect your buying decision, more power to you. But to try to spin this into anything that can be remotely positive for the consumer--that is just incorrect in every conceivable way.

People didn't like Steam at first, but now it has probably done the most of anything out there to decrease piracy.  The only people who still pirate are the ones who will never pay for it anyways, and are willing to risk using a crack.

If you don't like the price of admission, don't buy the system, don't play the games, and go build your own DRM free console.  Bitch all you want, but voting with your wallet matters, and I bet nobody will give a shit in a year once these consoles get released because it's all talk no action like the COD boycott that did jack.

There are some minor but fundamental difference between Steam and Xbox One:

1. There is no cost of entry with Steam. You already have PC or Mac hardware and you can download Steam for free. The actual puchases cost money but the service is free at the point of entry (and can remain free in its entirety if you only play F2P titles). Xbox One is a console where you have to pay in excess of $300 before you can access any content.

-If you're gonna game on your PC, you're probably gonna buy more expensive parts than what you really need just so that you can play the games on your PC.

2. Related to 1, on PC, Steam isn't the only service available. Off the top of my head there's also gog.com, GMG, Origin and GFWL. All are free at point of entry and competing for the same consumers. This drives the different services to provide sales and lower prices.

- There's also the PS3.

3. On PC there are plenty of workarounds for people who don't want to use Steam. You can purchase a game on Steam and download a crack to play fully offline whilst having all the advantages of keeping the game tied to your account. Or you can use a different service altogether that has less restrictive DRM.

-Um. That's probably against the user agreements you digitaly sign. It's not intended...maybe even illegal.

4. On Steam, I can play games I've purchased from many years in the past. I have Half-Life 2 from release on there as well as older games from earlier generations. With XBone, when the next generation ends, what happens if the hardware is no longer compatible (e.g. due to another change in chip architecture)? The XBone can't play 360 games, so games that are tied to an account are not going to translate across generations as they do with Steam/PC. The next part of this is what happens when MS turn off the XBone based servers? Are those games going to be accessible at all?

- True. No disagreement here. 

5. PC and console markets are quite different and have diverged a fair bit. Digital took off on PC because normal retailers greatly reduced the amount of PC games on their shelves. There was a gap in the market that digital services fulfilled so players are/were more forgiving. However, it's not like people don't still complain about this, but as I said in point 3, workarounds and competitors exist due to the open nature of PC.

- This is not really an argument against used sale implementation.