Totalbiscuit goes apeshit on Steam

[Zavon]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW5tn7NoRqo&feature=youtube_gdata_player


Thoughts on this guys?

[Marou]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW5tn7NoRqo&feature=youtube_gdata_player


Thoughts on this guys?

He totally missed the reason people demanded it be on Steam (not going anywhere, not obtrusive or annoying) or GoG (DRM Free). Only it being in one of those 2 places ensure you will still be able to play it in 10 years. If you have to download a DRM'd version with an updater directly from the developer as soon as that developer folds it's gone forever.

The crucial bit he didn't consider is that there is no point in buying a game with DRM tied to the developer's servers, since many of the great dev studios of the past are dead as a doornail. Including Black Isles who made the original BG games the people doing the remake of. What good is a remake if the dev folds in 6 months cause it wasn't successful and you have no way outside of piracy to reaquire the game? Is stupid.

[Zavon]

What about all this valve has an evil monopoly of evil crap?

[Marou]

What about all this valve has an evil monopoly of evil crap?

It's the same argument the EU makes against Microsoft every time they give away software for free in Windows. "Microsoft including a web browser in Windows is killing competition! Monopolists!" It's a very European point of view. Anything is acceptable unless it becomes very successful, then it's evil monopoly even if the company has behaved well.

Valve is a private company, so is GoG. It's logical to trust Gabe Newell and the GoG owners to be a better steward of your digital goods than an anonymous team of venture capitalists and investment bankers from a publicly traded corporation. In a corporation the only motive is profit. In a private company run by gamers, as long as things are profitable the motive behind actions can be completely altruistic. Even if you assume for a moment that investment bankers would want to give you free shit, purely altruistic actions by a corporation can result in lawsuits from the shareholders. Not pursuing maximum profits is a dereliction of fiduciary responsibility.

[Zavon]

I've purchased like 16 games this summer--games I would have never paid full price for. If that doesn't help developers, I dont know what does.

Further, it seems to me that free games line tf2 and dota would force developers to have to be more innovative and interesting.

[Marou]

I've purchased like 16 games this summer--games I would have never paid full price for. If that doesn't help developers, I dont know what does.

Further, it seems to me that free games line tf2 and dota would force developers to have to be more innovative and interesting.

When IE3 came out it was better than anything else in the market and was included in Windows. It killed the pay software browser market (Netscape) who basically had a monopoly before that point. I don't think that it has stifled web innovation.

His argument is that first person shooters are dead because of Valve, but how many of us bought Killing Floor or ArmaII? 100 yearly substandard rehashes of the TF2 formula are dead as pay to play titles, and good riddance. If a hundred hypothetical MOBAs with shitty cash shops are dead as a result of Dota coming out, good on Valve.

[Zavon]

Yeah exactly. Arma 2 is a perfect counter example. Its a shooter that has been very successful on account of its innovation. The third one will now be a guaranteed success because its devs decided not to be formulaic. Isn't this a good thing !?

[ofrm1]

Yeah exactly. Arma 2 is a perfect counter example. Its a shooter that has been very successful on account of its innovation. The third one will now be a guaranteed success because its devs decided not to be formulaic. Isn't this a good thing !?

The third one will be a guaranteed success because the DayZ team has said that they plan on moving their project to ArmA 3 when it releases.

[Marou]

The third one will be a guaranteed success because the DayZ team has said that they plan on moving their project to ArmA 3 when it releases.

I'd buy Arma III even if the DayZ project shut down. It's a great engine for sandbox fps stuff, and even (without) DayZ I'm sure there will be tons of cool shit in the vanilla product, and mods.

[Graveworm]

He totally missed the reason people demanded it be on Steam (not going anywhere, not obtrusive or annoying) or GoG (DRM Free). Only it being in one of those 2 places ensure you will still be able to play it in 10 years. If you have to download a DRM'd version with an updater directly from the developer as soon as that developer folds it's gone forever.

The crucial bit he didn't consider is that there is no point in buying a game with DRM tied to the developer's servers, since many of the great dev studios of the past are dead as a doornail. Including Black Isles who made the original BG games the people doing the remake of. What good is a remake if the dev folds in 6 months cause it wasn't successful and you have no way outside of piracy to reaquire the game? Is stupid.

I think Trent Oster's tweets show that you have the wrong idea. To sum things up, they are required to use some form of DRM as per their agreement with the holders of the Baldur's Gate IP (Bioware, I believe), they are trying to make it as minimal as possible, and they don't have any illusions about it actually preventing piracy.

We're still sorting through DRM options, but we're trying for a lightweight system which meets the requirement and doesn't hassle the user.

Source

Part of our agreement is to use our DRM solution on the title. We're trying to dial it back to be painless.

Source

Personally, I think DRM doesn't work. Either you spend forever developing an ironclad, bad-user experience DRM or you go halfway.

Source

I agree 100% that DRM is never a solution. DRM is a part of the games industry and most business deals have some mention of it in the terms

Source

We'll stick with the Mac and iOS stock implementation. Our goal is to code games and not DRM solutions.

Source

[Ziel]

I agree with TB, partially...Or rather, he agrees with me.

I don't think he once used the term "evil monopoly", but they certainly have a scarily large percentage of what I suppose you'd call the "online distribution market". We're lucky that it's Valve in this position for now, lets just hope they don't change their ethos over time.

As for TF2/Dota 2, again I partially agree. "Free-to-play" is definitely the future of games, but a F2P FPS of TF2's quality is simply too expensive to come out of anything but a large company. I don't think I can fault Valve for that, but what I can fault them for is being willing to make a loss on "X" in order to increase their market share of "Y". You create a barrier-of-entry by doing that and that's where you enter dangerous territory. Again, we're fortunate that they're among the more "likeable" of the big developers in that regard.

Edit: And yeah, Arma isn't the sort of game that'd be affected by TF2. A good example would probably be Gotham City Imposters...That game deserved far more attention than it got, but for whatever reason they decided they wouldn't make it F2P and thus it was a far less appealing prospect to a lot of people than simply playing TF2 for free.

[Taolas]

I think when there's an opportunity for a company to take advantage of people in evil ways for what they see as a gain, it will eventually happen. Blizzard devolved to pushing Diablo 3, EA constantly devolves, Square rapes final fantasy with China quality.

[Valec]

The third one will be a guaranteed success because the DayZ team has said that they plan on moving their project to ArmA 3 when it releases.

Not confirmed. DayZ might, in fact, be a standalone game. A similar system to what Minecraft did(pay system, that is) was mentioned.

So, the third one will have similar numbers to the second one(pre-DayZ), unless Rocket does actually port it to Arma3. It's well worth noting that the game sold pretty unimpressingly until DayZ.

I think when there's an opportunity for a company to take advantage of people in evil ways for what they see as a gain, it will eventually happen. Blizzard devolved to pushing Diablo 3, EA constantly devolves, Square rapes final fantasy with China quality.

Blizzard hasn't really been Blizzard for awhile. That might change if Vivendi successfully sells Blizzard Activision. Or rather, the idea that Blizzard Activision could 'buy themselves out' could potentially bring them back to making good stuff. Doubt it though.

[Boxy Brown]

I just hate how companies are placing more and more restrictions on what you can and can't do with a product that you purchase.

[Sillywilly]

I just hate how companies are placing more and more restrictions on what you can and can't do with a product that you purchase.

Because he summed up my thoughts on the matter.

[Bragi]

^^

Word.

I could only listen to about 3/4 of the video because, 1) that's the most annoying British accent I've ever heard.

Seriously. After 45 seconds I wanted to punch his mouth.

2) It's just really hard for me to care about gaming issues. Re-framed as an IP question in general that can apply to any form of IP (like movies, music or patents) he did bring up some interesting points on the future of IP rights management. TB's rant reminded me of an interesting TED talk given during the SOPA/PIPA fiasco--about the need for states and private entities to recognize that the Internet has brought about the need for serious changes in IP rights management and come to some kind of sensible solution that isn't simply "treat your paying customers like criminals." His point about forcing customers to log into the server to play even though the game is installed on the hard disk was well received. I didn't mind that kind of DRM at first--but then my Internet went out about five weeks ago and I wanted to play some D3--and I haven't played since.

3) Despite making a few good points, he also relied on some hasty generalizations, mischaracterizations and slippery slope arguments. Valve has a monopoly? Is that why I bought D3 direct from Blizzard/Activision? Is that why I just downloaded Skyrim and Prototype off of Xbox Live? (And a week later Skyrim's price was slashed on Steam, caveat emptor.) Can I still go out to a store, or online to Amazon and buy the game on physical media? He prognosticated without backing his predictions up with any kind of real, cogent argument. He doesn't need to present me with a time-series analysis or anything; but he does need more than just "this is the future of gaming because I'm mad." He's long on sizzle, short on steak.

4) The game he was playing looked like a combination of Warcraft 3 and mediocrity (...so just Warcraft 3).

5) By the time I was done listening, it was already about 12 minutes of more-or-less stream of consciousness ranting by a pissed-off nobody with an iPad and an inflated sense of importance; and we have more than enough examples of that kind of waste of human life already.