Summing up Steam Options

[Thomas Kaira]

Mostly this thread is directed toward the viewpoint that Steam is killing the PC Gaming market, which I tend to agree with.

As most of you are now aware, today was a very disheartening day, as Bethesda confirmed that they 'sold their soul to the devil of PC Gaming' and are packaging Steamworks for ALL copies of Skyrim, including retail.

This has caused a massive divide in the BGS forums, as hot-headed debates have cropped up about the Steam platform. And already I have seen a large number of people stating they are canceling pre-orders over this announcement, and still more who would have if it were not for brand loyalty to Bethesda Game Studios.

But why is Steam becoming the devil of PC Gaming? Why have the PC gaming audience taken such vapid offense to this announcement? Well, I recently found this post over at BGS, and was quite impressed by it, so I am reposting it here.

Unfortunately, as it has been confirmed that SteamWorks activation going to be mandatory for Skyrim DVD's, I have cancelled my pre-order. As you may guess, this was not an easy decision for me, given how much I was looking forward to Skyrim, both playing it and working on it. Maybe more than anything in the last ten years?

(If you're wondering what SteamWorks is: it's simply a physical media, ie DVD, version of Steam which installs Steam and activates the DVD through it requiring the DVD key, which then can't be reused or sold. The end result is that there is no difference whatsoever between buying the title on DVD or through Steam.)

I will eventually purchase Skyrim, probably through Steam since there's now absolutely no difference between buying it online and on DVD any more, once it goes on sale (about half-price is the buy point), or as a used DVD. Used. Yes, Valve, I'm going to buy it used. (see below,) but I am certainly not paying $150 for a collector's edition (was waiting for the announcement and was going to upgrade to the CE if there was no mandatory Steam) or even $60 for a standard edition, for something I won't really own and has restrictions all over it from a company that I consider unethical, possibly even illegal in its business practices. Obviously this refers to Valve not Bethesda!

I am sure that Quarn will still work on the USP and will have plenty of help from other modders in the interim... I'll just be late to the party. Depending on when Skyrim is half price, it may be quite late. But as I was planning on sticking around for years until it's perfected, this isn't much of a loss.

Here are the reasons I will not buy a full-priced version of this game and my grievances against Valve and Steam. Many of these you've heard before, but some I've never seen for unknown reasons:

(The obvious one): Steam tells you that you can't resell the game(s) you paid for: When you purchase either online or buy a SteamWorks-enabled DVD, it's linked to your Steam account (which you must create if you don't have one) and the Terms and Conditions indicate that you aren't to resell it. Therefore, you don't really own it (the whole concept of "software as a service" is invoked.) While this has long been an unfortunate side-effect of buying online, it has only recently started to be applied to even physical media.

Valve is deceptive: I've checked the covers for several SteamWorks-enabled titles, and none of them, including Skyrim, have either Valve's or Steam's logo(s) anywhere. It is not stated in the system requirements on the cover, on the publisher's site, or on the seller's site that SteamWorks activation will be required. The only way to find out is to read the comments of purchasers after the game's release, or to try to install it. If you preorder a physical DVD, this means that you get it on release day, before it's been publicized that activation is required, and don't find out until you unwrap it and start installing it, and by then many retailers won't return it. Thankfully Bethesda at least told us up-front about it. Many companies do not.

Comment: This is true. I have checked the boxes for both of the Steamworks games I own (Fallout New Vegas and CoD: Black Ops). Neither of them give any clear indication that Steamworks is present. This is stuff the consumer should be able to spot within five seconds, but instead it gets hidden in fine print on the back of the box.

Valve's registration practices may actually be illegal outside the U.S., perhaps even within the U.S.: A fundamental of contract law is that terms and conditions must be presented to the buyer before the transaction is concluded. Recent court decisions in the U.S. may have upheld the practice of the EULA contrary to this, but this precedent has not been established elsewhere, nor for reselling of physical media, nor for a third-party company never mentioned before the conclusion of the transaction. It's said that car analogies work well, so here's one:

Imagine you buy a GM car from Bob's Motors. All records of the transaction only mention GM and Bob's. You pay for it in full.
When your vehicle is delivered, you start it up for the first time and something from CarCo Inc. pops up on the dashboard display. You've never heard of CarCo before this. It tells you that in order to use your vehicle, you need to activate the software of its onboard computer. To do this you'll need to connect your vehicle to the internet by plugging it into a provided ethernet or RJ45 jack. Don't have a cable or internet connection? Too bad; you can't use the vehicle you paid for, even though it would never need an internet connection for anything other than this registration that is completely not required for its purpose of being a vehicle.
Furthermore, it tells you that you don't own the vehicle you bought; instead CarCo owns it, and you are licensing the vehicle from CarCo, may not resell it, may not remove this activation requirement or will face criminal charges, may not drive the vehicle to geographical regions that are not explained which have different vehicle prices, and by powering on your vehicle to find this out, it is now no longer new so you are ineligible for a refund. You have no recourse and are stuck until you register and agree to CarCo's conditions that you had no idea of before buying it!
When you finally connect your vehicle to the internet, you find you need to download a GM update half a gigabyte in size before you can finally drive it. Unfortunately, you live out in the country and have only one dial-up phone line for an internet connection. If you tell the rest of your family not to use the phone in the interim, it will still take over two days to download.
You call your dealer and pay for the vehicle to be towed into town and pay for an internet connection to download the update from. Finally, your vehicle works, so you drive it home.
One week later, your vehicle stops working again. Another CarCo update has appeared saying that it hasn't authenticated you in a sufficient amount of time, and you need to connect to the internet again in order to be able to use it. As this is only an authentication, you figure you can do it over dial-up without needing to pay for another tow into town. So you reconnect and authenticate again...
...Only to find out there's yet another, mandatory, update. Small blessing: this one's only 200MB. It will only take an entire day to download. And of course you can't use your vehicle again in this time as once the CarCo application finds that there are any updates available, they must be installed before it will allow you to use your vehicle, as it wouldn't want you to drive a vehicle that didn't have the latest and greatest software, would it? (What it doesn't tell you is that the only thing that the update "fixes" is that utilities to get rid of this ridiculously unnecessary authentication and forced patching, developed by angry customers like you, won't work anymore.)
So you grit your teeth and tell your family to stay off the phone for an entire day.
Finally, the update downloads and installs. Unfortunately, it has a bug in it. Your vehicle's computer now crashes on startup, and so your vehicle can't be used. GM blames CarCo, CarCo blames GM, and you do a lot more bicycling after this. You can't return your vehicle to the dealership or sell it used, so you've effectively paid for nothing.
(If you think this last part is ridiculous, read the post at the beginning of this thread where this really happened to a long-standing forum member and modder with the Fallout 3: New Vegas mandatory patch.)

So, how long do you think it would it be before CarCo was sued into the ground?
Why is software magically exempt from the laws and business practices that govern everything else?

Please keep in mind that a common misconception is that you can stay in Offline mode with Steam forever, and that patches aren't mandatory. These are both wrong. You can go offline, but there is a timeout, and eventually you're going to have to connect to play "your" game. Also when you first install a Steam game, you must install whatever updates are available. Also I have heard from several people that even if you tell Steam to ignore updates, occasionally it will decide to install one anyways. Once it finds there is a required update, you must install it. So the analogies above hold.

Valve's business practices are anti-competitive, and this may also be illegal - When a retailer sells a SteamWorks-activated DVD title, which they may not even know has this requirement, it then installs the full Steam client which displays ads to purchase future titles through Steam rather than the retailer... Valve is cutting the throats of their own retailers. The Steam client also, as noted, attempts to prevent reselling, which may again hurt the retailer's business as many sell both used and new products (Amazon, EB and GameSpot are three examples.) This may qualify as an illegal anti-competitive restriction of trade as the free market price of the game is being set only by Valve rather than through reselling, and the retailer is being forced to advertise something that directly competes against and undercuts their own business in order to sell a product, without being told of this.

SteamWorks activation destroys the incentive to make a good product - Reselling is a customer's defense against shoddy product, and allows the market to set the price of the product: if the market is flooded by low-priced resells of an overpriced, poorly-made product, the manufacturer will have to reduce the price if they expect to sell any more of them to compete with the used ones. A good product that has lasting value will have correspondingly fewer resales and thus a higher price for them.

SteamWorks punishes the PC platform - Console (XBox360 or PS3) physical media editions of the same titles don't require internet activation and can be resold without any restrictions whatsoever because it is assumed that they don't have network connections. One of the excuses for the activation requirement on the PC platform is "piracy", but this exists to no less of a degree on consoles via the use of mod chips so that unauthorized copies of discs can be used. So, why don't the same games require activation on consoles too then?

Steam DRM doesn't even work: .. at least, not to prevent illegal copying. Here are the SteamWorks-enabled titles. Just for giggles, I pulled the names of the first fifteen 2011 releases and started searching. Within ten minutes, I'd found cracks, etc. for all of them except one (which I guess didn't sell well enough to warrant cracking.) The entire premise of DRM is cryptographically flawed, because the end-user is being given both the lock and the key. It's only a matter of time before it's discovered how to remove both. Fallout 3: New Vegas, for example, is a SteamWorks game, and was successfully cracked on release day.

Steam's reselling restrictions don't even work either: If the player knows of the requirement beforehand and doesn't mind not having the title with the rest of their Steam games, they can just create a new e-mail address and new Steam account for each title and sell the accounts' names and passwords along with the DVD. This is a violation of Valve's TOS of course, but if you won't tell I won't.

That's enough out of me.

Now, a bit of input from me:

1. Steam's reputation is greatly divided, some praise it for its convenience, while others loathe it for how much effort is made to force it down our throats. The community is not separated by a Grand Canyon as they are a Marinara's Trench about Steam.

2. Steam rescinds your right to resell a game you did not like. You are stuck with it. This is guaranteed to leave a sour taste in people's mouths.

3. Valve will get in serious legal trouble if this trend continues. They are this close (><) to violating U.S. Antitrust laws with monopolistic business practices right now, and I fully expect someone to jump on them the INSTANT they step out of line.

4. What will happen if Steam gets shut down? It will be the absolute death of PC gaming. As has been said, PC gaming has literally sold its soul to Valve. If we lose Steam at this point, PC Gaming dies. Full stop. We need an alternative to come along, and soon, before Valve find themselves glued to a courtroom seat (that will be the beginning of the end, once Valve is accused of Antitrust violations, they will never recover their reputation).

And personally, I'm really waiting for a potential Extra Credits episode about Steam, too. Given how divided the community is over Steam, it will make for some good analysis for them.

This post has been edited by Thomas Kaira: Aug 18 2011, 03:52 AM

[King Coin]

I'm not happy at all about this but I'll still get the game.

[haute ecole rider]

Welp. That does it. I've avoided downloading and using Steam on my Mac (I have enough with the Apple DRM stuff - y'know, iTunes and App Stores). I've just never could justify the need to install a Steam client on my Mac.
Haven't been motivated enough by what I saw to do the same for my Win7 partition.

Unless things changes, I guess Skyrim won't be coming to my desktop at all. There is no way I'm downloading Steam for a game that I'm already iffy about. I'll just listen to everyone else and read Skyrim-inspired fan fiction and enjoy the game that way.

[King Coin]

I may buy the game, then look for a cracked copy online just to avoid Steam.

[SubRosa]

Let's not also forget what happens if Steam decides to shut down your account? All the games you paid for go bye-bye.

Or how about when it patches your game without your consent? Patches typically break save game compatibility. Kiss goodbye the 50 hours you spent playing, and start all over again. Until the next patch forced down your throat does it again.

I will not play a game that requires Steam. If that means spending the rest of my life playing Oblivion, Morrowind, Doom, etc... I am fine with that.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Aug 18 2011, 04:43 PM

[Thomas Kaira]

I may buy the game, then look for a cracked copy online just to avoid Steam.

Let's not go there, KC. You can get banned just for mentioning such intentions on most TES forums, including this one.

[King Coin]

Bah it's just wishful thinking anyways. I've never pirated a game and I'm not going to start with Skyrim.

[Helena]

Well, that settles it: I won't be getting Skyrim. I don't want Steam, and if a game forces me to install Steam in order to play it, I'm not going to buy it.

[grif11]

What I want to know is why are bethesda doing this?

Luckily, I'd have to get the console version since my computer can only just run minecraft with the lowest graphics setting (but plays spore with medium graphics fine?)

Anyway, I can see bethesda losing a lot of sales. First it was closed cities, now this!

[Black Hand]

Forget it. It's not worth my anger.

This post has been edited by Black Hand: Aug 19 2011, 04:32 AM

[Kiln]

This is another reason that I prefer gaming on consoles. It is total BS what they're being allowed to get away with. It shouldn't be legal, period.

[Destri Melarg]

I agree with Kiln. This marks the first time since the game’s announcement that I can say that I’m glad to be on the console.

First, let me say that despite all of our protestations this is the direction that we are heading. Publishers and developers should be excited about Steam. Let’s face it, a publisher makes more money from the person paying $60 to download the game via Steam than it makes from having to manufacture that same game on a hard disk and then maintain a suitable inventory of hard copies in a warehouse somewhere. After that those hard copies have to be shipped to a retail outlet, all so the retail outlet can take a hefty cut of the profits by selling that game for the same $60.

Here’s the thing that bothers me though. Buying the game via Steam represents the consumer’s endorsement of video games (alone amongst all artistic media) as a service, not a product. Skyrim is not an MMO! It should NOT be sold using the same business model! I don’t begrudge those who swear by Steam and all of its features. I just don’t want to have any service shoved down my throat, nor do I wish to be told that I cannot play a game that I have purchased without consenting to an unethical business practice. As I see it the Steam model indicates that you are not paying $60 for the game. You are paying $60 to lease time to play that game.

We have all come to expect the release of expansions and add-ons for our favorite games. This has become the norm. We (to my knowledge) have never insisted that horse armor and Frostcrag should have been part of the original f****** game that I dropped $60 for! Just how far do these companies want to push their consumer base? If/when the practice of mandatory Steam (or equivalent) becomes accepted as the norm it will mark the end of my interest in gaming.

I was looking forward to making Skyrim the game in which I finally made the shift to the PC. That simply isn’t going to happen now.

[grif11]

Im guessing steam dont like people modding their games either. Another thing that puts people off.

Oblivion itself was fun, but when I played a modded version, I felt like I hadnt played the same game. It was like having lived your whole life eating vanilla icecream, and then being shown hundreds of flavours (root ginger, my favourite!).

I was hoping to start proper modding, but I guess its back to the babys first mod game, Spore. <sigh>

[Ahrenil]

Well I guess i'm going to be in the minority here, as in I feel quite haapy with Steam in it's entirety.

For one I kind of agree with the Steam policy on not being able to resale your games, mainly because game resales kill developers. For a developer, they get all their money from that first sale, that first sale is what matters to them. Someone buys the game full price retail, new, plays through it and goes. "Whelp, I had my fun, time for someone else to try it" and trades it into GAME or Gamestation or the like. All that money from the trade in and resale goes directly to the shop, absolutely none of it goes to the developer.

Through the Steam system customers just learn to be careful, and developers become more harshly critiqued. This has a two fold bonus, one is that I don't find myself spending as much money as I used too, buying games and selling them off. Secondly, because the games are so widely reviewed and critiqued by the community, developers can't get away with "Lets make a half-assed game and release it anyway". If it's not worth the money, people will not buy it, we've seen game quality sky rocket recently and I think this new attitude has something to do with it.

While this may be considered the worst thing possible in the current market trend we have, I do agree with the system.

Secondly, I do not agree that Steam is deceptive. I just picked up my Fallout New Vegas box and it says on the back "Requires internet connection and free steam account to activate". What's more, not having that on the box is not necesarilly Steam's mistake, that's the publishers mistake for not informing their market. Steam neither made nor published the game, they're just offering a tried and tested platform for the developers, and the players, that in my own experience has been user friendly and really really efficient.

I'm not an economist, so I can't say about the legality of the system, but I can't help but think in the sue culture growind today, if there was an argument that would stand against Steam at the monent it would have been made by now.

As far as it "Killing" PC Gaming, I really can't see it here either. Quite the opposite in fact, Steam works so hard to promote PC gaming since that is what it is, that is all it is. In fact the model is so effective at selling and promoting PC Gaming we've seen other companies, such as EA, attempting to adopt it.

Anyway, thats my part.

[Thomas Kaira]

Well, I'm probably not going to let the presence of Steam stop me from getting the game, because it actually is tamer than most in terms of DRM.

The real problem most people have is being forced to download third-party software they don't want (nor should they be obligated to install) on their computers when a game uses Steamworks for DRM. The game is already available via digital download on Steam, so Steamworks makes the retail purchase of a game no different in any way to buying the game through the client. This can be seen as anti-competitive, as it gives the impression that Valve is trying to usher out retail sales in favor of everyone going through them in the future. If this is indeed the case, they will be in violation of U.S. Antitrust, and I don't want to see them go down because Steam really is a good service.

Yes, I say again, Steam is a good service. The problem is it's too good; Valve knows this, and they are exploiting it.

Let us hope a solid competitor arrives soon that can give Steam a run for its money. In order to do that, they must treat games as goods rather than services, and provide competitive price points with flexible DRM that encourages modding. The only other option is to watch Valve crash and burn when they finally cross that line and get in trouble with the courts. And personally, I'd prefer the option that doesn't result in PC Gaming being completely destroyed.

[Ahrenil]

Except it's Bethesda who have chosen to use Steam, rather than Steam forcing Bethesda to use it. Rather than Steam itself pushing out the competitors through bullying, it's simply so good that people are happy to use it. I don't think Steam should be punished for being too good, if other competitors can't keep up with it surely that's their own issue. Steam shouldn't be handicapped for it.

What's more there are competitors, such as EA's Origin, or Games for Windows Live. But personally I think that just complicates the issue, since Games for Windows live is universally despised for being useless, it's thankfully fallen out of use now, and developers are using Steam instead (Apart from EA of course though they're a publisher). And having to have three or four different accounts for all your games would just get on my nerves after a while.

I'm also not sure where this Steam kills modding argument has come from, Steam is amazing with modding games. All of my Oblivion mods work fine with it, Half Life and other such games have tons of mods for them, hell one of them got so popular Valve offered the creator a job. (Gary's Mod for the Source Engine).

What's more the purchase of a game through retail is VERY different to buying it on Steam. Mainly because A. You have a hard copy of that game, you can take out a disc and look at it. You have the manual, you have any additions that come with that game in the box. B. You can install that game at any time you want, you may not be able to immediately play it but you do not need an internet connection to install it. C. With the purchase through steam, rather than retail, you never have to worry about losing a disc or it getting scrathed. Your games are wherever the internet connection is just a few clicks away. It made it so useful for university since I don't have to fill boxes with my games anymore. D.Steam is far, far cheaper. A retail game is around about £40 where I live, while Steam rarely goes over £25 for the games I buy. What's more it does so many deals with the developers you have an incredible chance of getting the game significantly cheaper.

This post has been edited by Ahrenil: Aug 20 2011, 12:45 AM

[Thomas Kaira]

D.Steam is far, far cheaper. A retail game is around about £40 where I live, while Steam rarely goes over £25 for the games I buy. What's more it does so many deals with the developers you have an incredible chance of getting the game significantly cheaper.

See, that there is a very real problem. Steam is not only selling games for dirt cheap, it's the ONLY distributor selling for dirt cheap. Imagine how other digital distributors will take to this when retail is finally phased out. Steam offers such incredible deals on games that it is now capable of completely shutting out the rest of the market for PC games, and this WILL come to blows when retail PC games are eventually dropped from store shelves (read: it's already happening). Instead of paying for a box copy using Steamworks through Amazon, for instance, EVERYONE is going to switch to Steam because A: The game uses Steamworks, which means you're going through the Steam client anyways, and B: The game is significantly cheaper to buy through Steam than it is through any other means.

Now do you see the anti-competitiveness to Valve's marketing? Developers make a conscious choice to use Steam, that is true, but Valve is quietly assimilating them into their Blob, or Borg cube if you want. The sooner the public realizes this, the sooner we can prevent Steam from collapsing in a tornado of lawsuits (not that I think this is reasonable, but that is the American mindset, after all).

This post has been edited by Thomas Kaira: Aug 20 2011, 01:00 AM

[Ahrenil]

The thing is Steam is cheaper with the developer's consent. They charge what the developer is happy for them to charge, and often with the sales I find the same game also on sale elsewhere.I often spot stuff cheaper on steam and grab it on disc from Amazon, like I did with New Vegas. What's more I don't think retail will be fully phased out for a long time, simply because people want their game immediately when it comes out, even if that means waiting in line for a day for it to come out.

What's more the novelty of having a physical copy of a game, rather than just having your information on a server somewhere, is a very big draw to a lot of people, that's not going to just die out overnight. I am sure one day retail copies will be phased out. But that's nothing new, old mediums are being replaced all the time as technology progresses.

I am sure other companies will catch up to Steam, but just because they're not at that point now is no reason to demonise Steam. It's not that Steam is being Anti-Competitive, it's that there are no other competitors yet. And this is changing, EA is a massive conglomerate of publishers, and that's pulled itself from Steam now. But this again just creates more problems, with multiple systems you're going to have some going for exclusitvity on titles, which just forces people to chose a slightly different layout.

Finally, and once more, I do not see Steam as ever getting sued into the ground. For a few reasons, one it would be bad for business. Steam is a massive, well funded, and successful company. It will know the law, it obviously is doing things right, and it is not in their interest to put themselves in a position where they can be shut down for something like that. If it does ever get sued every other system will run into exactly the same problem if Steam does. Lastly, if Steam is doing something wrong now they would have been shut down by now. I can't see any forseeable occasion where the free market's decision to switch to Steam results in Steam being punished.

[Thomas Kaira]

Anyways, I think it's time we stepped off our soapboxes and gave everyone else a chance to respond now. You make some excellent points, and I'm glad I was able to debate those with you.

By the way, my dislike of Steam is not passionate, and I am certainly willing to put up with it for a game like Skyrim. I just hope they get some competition soon, because so far, Steam has been very hit-or-miss in terms of customer satisfaction. Until they get some competition, Valve unfortunately has no inclination to do something about that.

[Zalphon]

If Steam goes down...then that means I lose access to NV and eventually, Skyrim. I'll be really mad if that's how it happens.