Dear Valve/steam fans,



yes, i hate steam too. and yes i have over 30 games on steam that i can't do anything about it besides finding cracks if there's ever a time i want to move out of steam.

yes steam is technically responsible for causing FPS to be dumbed down to TF2/COD/BF
yes steam is also partially responsible for dumbing down the MOBA genre.

and yes, i also know that there's way more good than bad steam has brought us.

Additional steam info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(software)


update 20120801:
Steam updated EULA to prevent being sued. From a consumer standpoint, you're further stripped off your rights in case anything goes wrong with steam.

source:
http://kotaku.com/5930705/now-valve-is-try...-suing-them-too

^
in reply to the above legal issue (20120805 update)


20120807 update on monopolization in general:

tldr skip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REC4xwpX26g...tailpage#t=750s

This post has been edited by Quazacolt: Aug 7 2012, 02:38 AM

Point 1
we cant do much until steam/valve changes their ToS but that will unlikely happen cause, whats the point of having Steam in the first place

Rest assured, they did mention should they go out of business (so unlikely to happen in the next few years) they would make all games on your account DRM free

Point 2
Multiplayer fps wise, i think it escalated with the release of COD 4 to the point where it became Battlefield vs COD

CS on the other hand had been very quiet but still played by tons of 'loyalist' of the old school fps

So with the release of TF2 which was bundled with the Orange Box initially, needless to say that it drew a lot of gamers due to its bargain price. 5 games for one price was something rare back then. Valve began to churn out updates for free while COD release updates for cash, so to certain consumers like me, i would prefer TF2 though i do enjoy COD 4 in CC with my friends from time to time.

I would agree with TotalBiscuit, i cant name any P2P MP Fps that can topple the main 4 being CS, TF2, COD and BF. It's just the immense power of these brands that draw people to it. When you suggest a free fps game, first thing that pops out from your head is TF2 due to its immense popularity though some might disagree with this. We have a larger choice of selection now being Tribes and Blacklight.

Point 3

I don't really get the dumbing down MOBA/ARTS genre part


My personal opinion
Steam brings more good than bad, the only bad part is being what if steam suddenly go full retard with its market leader/monopoly status and they really need to work on the servers.


The good side is, im confident enough to say that it changes the lives of many gamers around the world for a greater cause. We can see pirates buying originals now, we can play and connect with gamers from around the globe easier. The number of tools that Steam provides just makes it easy for us gamers.


TLDR Version
- Steam brings more good than bad
- Steam will unlock your games if they go bust
- Not many MP FPS can compete with what i call the big 4 ( CS, TF2, COD, BF) due to content and quality
- Dont get dumbing down moba/arts part

name me another MOBA that isnt DOTA/LOL/HON that is either cheap or free to play and very popular at the same time

Steam is a digital distribution platform.

Yeah, I can see how its Steam's fault EA and Activision puts out load of crap.

Here's a hint. Both EA and Activision are run by idiots who knows nothing about gaming.

Smite, Super MNC

This post has been edited by Shuuu: Jul 21 2012, 09:43 PM

the MOBA/ARTS genre is pretty much limited to these 3 unless you want to include the upcoming Smite

its a very niche genre i must say with the bulk of such players coming off from DotA and then moving on either towards LoL, Dota 2 or HoN

generally these 3 games had a better pool of players than previous MOBA/ARTS games like Demigod is because they fulfill their needs

Demigod did things well aside from a few things that killed itself of, if i recall correctly, there was only 12 heroes to choose from while the other 3 games had more than 100 (not sure about LoL)

Bloodlines on the other hand, well i'll say it came out quite late to grab a piece of the pie. It was released 1 year after HoN was released. Being a late player and having gamers already stick and dumping money into HoN/ LoL, not much people would change to a new game and having to relearn the whole mechanics, heroes, items and skills again

Rise of the Immortal was a terrible game, Smite and Super MNC are 3rd person with MOBA/ARTS element, Chaos Online is the Korean version of DotA (thats why you dont see them in Dota 2 much)

There is not much of games in this genre to began with and the success of these 3 games was how quickly it responded to the needs of DotA players (dedicated servers, replays, matchmaking)

LoL found it success due to a more different game mechanic, rune system, and a supposedly more 'balance' and 'fun' and simple (debatable) while HoN had a large player base from DotA players

Dota 2 with a nearly 70k players at peak at a moment (which will continue to rise) is due to having the support of a huge company, having Icefrog and Eul onboard and keeping true to its roots

The other MOBA/ARTS game just have nothing to offer to these gamers other than being different

watched the video?

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Added on July 21, 2012, 10:21 pmnot yet released/popular?

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Added on July 21, 2012, 10:24 pmoh man demigods was a good attempt, however alas people were too entrenched down in dota back then

but yea, thats the whole point of my video/pointers i've made on top:
there isn't much choice for us consumers!

let's say you like demigods or smite over dota/hon/lol, however your friends don't, you will end up playing alone or against random public friends/enemies.

that's just discouraging to every new player trying to move on/try out something different

This post has been edited by Quazacolt: Jul 21 2012, 10:24 PM

I dont know about you guys

1. In marketing/sales point of view, Valve/Steam done nothing wrong. Is a competitor job to knock down other company. If you got a business of your own, dont you wish to knock out your competitor so that more customer comes to u?

2. "You gotta use money to make money". Heard of that phrase? Steam use money on developing DOTA2/TF2 to attract customer come to steam and yeah, as the video guys said, you get hooked buy games on promo and stuff, steam get to earn their money at the other end so basically the same thing.

3. I think this is a positive way that the other developer will try to do better on their games, blaming valve/steam wont get their customer back, let alone profit.

4. Ah yeah, I can see the long term damage that steam can do. Also at the same time I also think that "How many ppl that play actively a game for several years?". Ppl get boring and they move on other games, so it doest seem that valve kill at games market out there.

5. Admit it, we all dont really like client. Before GOG, Gamersgate, Origins come, updating a game can be really hard sometime especially those eurpean games like The Wither, Sacred 2. Steam make it easy for me. For me, steam conpensate my will not having a client on my PC by doing a good job on that. Seriously, without steam client model, how long do you think until Origins or any other "client" can follow?

My Conclusion: So basically is like blaming on something that still havent really happen (I still dont see it now, just so you played a good games, doesnt mean other doesnt enjoy your so called crappy games) on steam for doing such a good job. Same theory as, just so you like transformer very much doesnt mean that others doesnt like Voltron.

nothing much devs can do right now on the ARTS genre, would you compete with those 3 juggernauts and still hope to make a profit? Even i wont lol, its just too risky

choice wise, there are always choices, just choose the lesser evil in my case steam is

total biscuit has his point, in the long term this steam is bad for consumer as well.

and Valve is a cancer among all developers, no developer likes to share their cut to valve. Never.

And only way to stop this shit is to

have mega publisher+ all developers should just gang up on valve and develope an open source digital client,that is equally powerful.With 1 thing, the client are only responsible for grouping the all ur games together/storing Cd-keys etc in 1 client for consumer. But the game download/patch server are link all the way back to the developer ftp server themselves. So in other words,the page for the game, the Download bandwidth/ ftp server, patching server, are all maintained by developer itselfs just like how facebook work now. With everything maintain by developer, there is not need for developerto share the cut to 3rd party, games will be cheap this way also.

then Consumer also get 1 client only = Everybody win

I mean how expensive can manage just login and CD-keys? every developer share the cost can make this common server run flawlessly with ftp/patch server running on their own.

Who said they were right?

EA is a crap company. They don't care about making great games. EA themself admit that Dead Space 3 must sell 5 million copies, and they are making it appealing to the mainstream to achieve that.

They admitted that if a game cannot sell that much they won't invest in it. In other words, they are making generic games ONLY. How is that Valve's fault that EA only wants to sell to the mainstream gamers?

I don't care what Valve does. It has nothing to do with EA company policy.


And btw, Steam is just a software.

1) no one said they've done anything wrong. and yeah easier said than done. i mean, you're a malaysian right? tmnet is the big bad evil, so its a competitor's job to knock down tmnet right? heh.

2) and your point is?

3) how is this positive when steam is willingly (or unwillingly) monopolizing the market? how does monopoly encourages other developer to do better on their games?

4) so you're saying that steam/valve killing games can be a cause that people does not actively play a game for several years?

5) steam IS THAT CLIENT that you're referring to. what if steam is down/busy/inaccessible? (which has been time to time for me, and many other people who aren't fanboi enough to look pass that)
and no, the best way is to NOT have a client/DRM model at all.

this isn't so much of a blame as it is to create awareness on an impending problem that will definitely be a problem if it gets out of hand. you may not see it now, but when it hits you, there is simply nothing you can do to prevent it or alleviate it.

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Added on July 21, 2012, 10:57 pmyeah very realistic point of view.

however for choices, although i'd like to disagree, unfortunately it is often the most logical thing (or choice) to do
in this case, relatively : tmnet

This post has been edited by Quazacolt: Jul 21 2012, 10:57 PM

thing is, valve handles all the upkeep cost of the servers and the bandwidth and the patching system is far easier than the ones by microsoft

logically speaking, giving 30% of your profit to use a system where you can patch your games easily, and not having to pay for bandwidth, free marketing as well as tapping the potential consumer base of nearly 30 million users sounds like a good deal to me

we all fear the day valve become full retard and personally i hope that day never comes and all form of drm, client becomes one (steam preferbally XD)

Reminds me of Classic WoW players that I often stumble across when I visit WoW Forums , people who claim that Classic WoW were the best and stuff and like how the new WoW - has pandas and pokemon. Things have moved on , yes Steam is not 100% savior nor devil.

All companies care for profit. Let me take Blizzard in terms of WoW , the reason why they make it casual friendly (aka dumbing down the game) is to get more people. It goes the same to TF2 as well , I am quite sure original orange box players would know the difference of old TF2 and new one. The new one , they have added tons of things and made it appealing for casual players.


As for steam , you could view it as a monopoly but its helping people in like our country for people to afford and buy legit games , where can you get L4D2 or something for a cheap price. If Valve sells prepaid card in Malaysia , it would be a huge hit

the cost can be huge, and which developer/publisher want to fork out that upfront cost? not to mention they will be competing to steam directly which is already established.

its a decent idea, however practical or not, in the end it still boils down to financing/marketing decisions which is kinda on the bad side

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Added on July 21, 2012, 11:03 pmso you're saying, that even if valve feeds you shit, you're more than happy to eat it all up? is that what your standpoint is?
again, we're talking about valve/steam, what EA does, is their problem. i am not talking about EA

also, steam is not just a software, it is an online DRM platform.
case in point, if you cannot login steam, you have NO ACCESS TO YOUR GAMES WHATSOEVER EVEN IF THEY ARE ON YOUR HDD

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Added on July 21, 2012, 11:04 pmwhat if they do not go bankrupt/close down? there are many other "shit" publishers/devs out there, however most of them did not go bankrupt/close down either.

This post has been edited by Quazacolt: Jul 21 2012, 11:04 PM

it is not good deal to some developer who is capable to do everything themselves. And u are not developer, u are not valve, u do not know how much these developer pays valve. Valve do not offer steam as charity by charging the upkeep cost without profit.

There is a reason why some developer choose to avoid using steam, they is the reason why EA move all their future games within their server. Maintaining server urself sometimes is cheaper, it also allows u to choose ur best provider to maintain the servers. EA do not have to pay valve's cut of profit.

Server upkeep cost alone is cheaper than paying someone pocket(valve) + server upkeep cost.

With these big guys like EA/Ubisoft moving out, u'll see the reason why they hate to share their cut to valve.

If I am an Indie Developer , I don't mind Valve handling everything for me. Yes they take a slice of the pie , but I do not have to worry about processing payment , run a server , pushing updates , or even have to worry about people haxxxoring my game (Valve provides their anti-cheat SDK). Plus I could do weekend promotions that could help to promote the game. What more when the client runs on Linux/Mac/Windows. If my game can run on these platforms , I can pretty much get people from different OSes to purchase. These stuff are appealing for Indie Developer

hey glad you'd bring WoW up. i too used to praise the heavens to even a point worship WoW. however it was clear that WoW (or blizz) has pretty much played their role in dumbing down the MMORPG genre as well. many competitors has since risen up and claim to be the "WoW-killer" and many has since then failed.

i've played that mmorpg since closed beta, way back then what, 7-8 years ago? but yeah like you said, things have changed.
so many years of the same thing (essentially), eventually one would get bored. i've since then quit before cataclysm came out (though i still bought the collector's for collection sake lol), and have yearned to have an mmorpg that could be better than WoW ever was. i guess i can only wait in vain as things are going lol.

and yes, that is true. casual players make up the bulk of their income. hardwares will never ever will be their source of income considering how low their player base is and even hardcores will eventually move on (real life obligations, work etc) while casuals will have a longer lifespan in terms of game replay-ability (for many reasons, one could be they havent finish a game as fast as hardcores would, thus take longer to play)

and yes, i have mentioned that steam has done more good than it did bad (hell , most of the things i or the video aka total biscuit mentioned are things that have YET to become btw) however there is no denying on the potential of problems that may become.