Good DRM vs Bad DRM

[Pemalite]

slowmo said:

They "chose" it because the best game on the platform was exclusive to Steam, it took several years before Steam became anything like benficial to the consumer.  Don't rewrite history to make it seem like it was alwyas this benevolent service.  I'd argue that most of it's better services came out when it directly copied some of XBL's feature set.

Best game? Hardly. Half Life bored me to death and I still jumped on board.
In-fact, statistically you are completely far left it's almost humorous.
Half Life 2 sold what, 15 million copies? Steam has roughly 50 million+ players (That's larger than Xbox Live or PS+ folks!)
That then makes it roughly 30% of users on Steam actually own Half Life.

As for copying the XBL feature set, again. That's almost laughable, Valve never rushes things, like ever. - There is a reason why websites such as "Valve time" exists, it's because they take there time to release anything, even if it takes them decades.
To copy the Xbox Live feature set, release it in a relatively stable condition in under 10 months for a company that is actually really *tiny* from a manpower perspective is an incredible feat, not to mention Valve doesn't even consider Xbox Live to be a competitor to Steam, they're on completely different platforms so there is no need to copy something in 10 months that may have been a big gamble at the time.

Besides, if anyone should copy anyone, Xbox Live and the PS+ should both take a page out of Valves book and actually have some sales to write home about. - I'm talking 75% of entire publisher catalogues. - That kind of thing benefits the consumer greatly.