I have a heap of stuff on Steam. I love Steam. I think the anti-Steam zealots are a bunch of idiots. I think game-pirates are self-entitled free-loaders worthy of our disdain, scorn and condemnation.
If Steam was hit by a bus, I’d go to a torrent site, download cracked versions of the games I bought on Steam and keep playing them. Then, I’d cry a-not-remotely-silent bunch of tears and get on with my life.
I think the biggest threat to Steam isn’t any of those scenarios, but this one: The big broadband providers band together and implement broadband usage caps- say 40-50GB/month on broadband accounts. This may happen in North Carolina next year.
That would kill DD, as the costs would skyrocket for their biggest customers.
Personally, the scenarios you mentioned are a big reason I don’t keep all my eggs in one basket. I use Gamersgate so I have two baskets (and often the keys work on Steam or vice versa)
Australia has had download caps since forever (really), and in recent times those caps have gone way up. Providers can’t band together and agree to caps, it’s illegal. Even if they could, imagine if they do - then one of them realises how much they could make by offering 200GBs or unlimited. Competition will mean that there will always be competitive internet plans with unlimited or effectively unlimited data.
What if I get hit by a bus? Who’s going to play all my steam games?
In USA, and a lot of areas in the world, often theres only one provider for your area. If theres only one option, theres no freedom.
I tried to cover that with the “ISP’s reign of terror” scenario. There are related scenarios, like “Be Net Neutrality be dawned” where all ISP’s can start asking Steam for a cut <mafia>or else… </mafia>
Most areas in the US, there are only one or two ISPs, that’s not the case in Australia, so that wouldn’t work. Also, collusion laws in the US aren’t enforced, so this is a legit concern.
Time Warner’s response in North Carolina to two cities deciding that doing it themselves beat Time Warner’s service was that it would be more cost-effective to bribe the state legislature into banning other cities from doing it then actually improving their service.
This is why I think this is a legit possibility, at least for some areas (and North Carolina is a fairly large state)
That said, I think the chance for the telcos to pull this off is closing, as give ten more years, people would protest much more strongly.
That’s basically my take on it. Chances are Steam won’t go down all at once, there would be some kind of warning upfront (lesser sales, media announcements etc). If that where to happen, I would propably try to play some of the games in my backlog with a bit more urgency, but other then that I wouldn’t loose a lot of sleep over it. There’s just not a lot of games in my steamaccount that I have played and would still go back to in a few years time… In fact there’s not a lot of games I go back to anyway. Only Diablo 2 comes to mind…
Steam is, by far, the most valuable online game retailer, with an estimated sale value probably in the billions. The likelihood that it will just “go away” is very, very slim. Far more likely is that in some indeterminate future Steam is bought out by one of the major hardware/software vendors - Microsoft, Apple or the like - and slowly dies a lingering death over a decade or so.
Billions? That would be quite the asking price.
So, in what way does Impulse being taken over by a larger company with more financial muscle mean it’s no longer competition to Steam? Was D2D even available outside the US?
If they have revenue of 100m a year or so, it’s completely reasonable to ask that amount, esp. if they have a lock on 90%+ of the market. If Zynga - a company that lampreys on Facebook’s coattails - is worth a billion, Steam is surely worth much more, esp. considering that they’ve become almost the default platform for PC gaming in general.
I’m sure a while ago Valve/Gabe Newell mentioned that, should a worst case scenario ever happen, there’s some sort of failsafe in place incase Steam ever does go tits up.
Whether that’s changed since Steam became pretty much the main digi-distribution service for just about every publisher I’ve no idea, mind, although I dare say different publishers will probably have different views on what happens to their games over Steam/Valve’s say.
There is no damn way Steam will be able to legally release codes for every game they sell. Publishers would have a cow.
I’m guessing all Valve games and those using Steamworks will be fine.
But then I also think publishers will face perhaps too large a backlash if they did try and block literally everything. Steam’s success is as much a benefit as a curse in that respect.
For example, somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but when EA removed their games from Steam, they didn’t take them off anybody who had already got them, right?
I’m sure that if the worst happens, Gabe will press all of our games onto DVDs or bluray discs (depending on what our Steam specs indicate way have) and then mail them out to us. There’s no reason to think that he also won’t have manuals printed out for us on nice paper with the box art on the front.
Heck, it sounds so nice I kind of wish Steam would go out of business tomorrow! :)
Well, all games will “be fine” thanks to already working cracks and Steam spoof methods.
Sure, but Steam is still running. In any case, Steam is not the supported platform of choice for EA games even if you have legacy titles on Valve’s service. You’ll get no more updates or DLC. I imagine if Steam went down, EA Origin would be tickled pink.
I’m pretty sure that the packages will also include a pony.
Yeah. The only way you’d “lose” all your games is if you didn’t have them DLed to your HD and had no idea how to find cracks. All the MP-only games like TF2 would be dead of course.
ISPs continue to charge more for bandwidth? Uh, at my place of work (verru big) our per meg price for service dropped by about fifty percent since I started here. Hi we are selling shitloads of bandwidth at ever lower prices.
Of all the things, that is the least likely of the things. Well, verizon will keep fucking you, but them we can’t do anything about because last mile har har har.