Steam Sux! andor Rox!

[babaganoosh13]

My main beef with Steam, is that it logs me out of Offline mode after a month, and I have to lug my computer to my parents just to log back in again. High speed in the sticks just isn't economically viable for me.

[LadyCrimson]

I was thinking about the game Majesty:Fantasy Kingdom Sim (RTS) and how in the first release, one could get single heroes to pick up multiple "stat bonus" items from the ground. It was one of those things where as soon as I made a post about discovering it on their forums, the first patch right after changed it so heroes who already had one of those items wouldn't pick up any more. Aw, darn, no more Super Monks. Heh.

 

Anyway, I still have that 1st-release game disc, so I can still goof around with that fun little glitch a while if I want, before installing patches/expansions. And my thought after that was....I can't do that with Steam.**

 

 

 

 

**well, you can, sometimes, if you buy a game at release and then feel like filling up HDD's with entire Steam game installs, one for every single patched version. Which I did with FNV a few times, until I got fed up with trying to keep all those install versions straight....not to mention the space and/or mod changes for each version...

[babaganoosh13]

Big indie sale on Steam right now.

[alanschu]

One thing I find interesting is how guarded Steam is (and it's not just Steam, but digital retailers in general) about its sales numbers.

 

Interesting side point in this article which is examining NPD's retail report.

[Zoraptor]

That article is just too long, point could be made with a lot less wordage. And to be honest I find anyone saying that NPD's biggest blind spot is steam rather than, say, not taking the rest of the world outside the US into account to be just a tad... overfocussed on one thing which they obviously like rather a lot themselves. NPD is good for what it is and so long as people know what it is that's fine. It's certainly better than, say, VGChartz which might as well be guesswork.

 

I'm not surprised about how secretive DD sellers are, the information is commercially sensitive after all. You do sometimes get figures though, TWitcher 2/ CDP/R gave a breakdown of digital sales vs physical and to an extent by vendor (around 1 million sales total after 6 weeks; ~75% retail, 19% Steam, 5% GOG, 1% others) though of course this somehow ended up being reported as variations of "80% of TWitcher's sales were on steam" and not 3/4 of Twitcher's sales were retail. That does rather suggest that retail is not quite as dead as some of the more evangelical make it out to be.

[alanschu]

I agree that NPD's focus on the US is a restriction, though if one is looking specifically at "how are things doing in the US" I suppose it's valid.

 

Some people still get numbers out, it is true.  SimCity was reporting 54% of SimCity's sales were digital (I imagine numbers like these are more common on PC, but I may be mistaken).

 

Though Venture Beat comments that digital sales were up 39% this February compared to last February, so there does seem to be some indication that digital transition is continuing to occur.  And it was $960 million dollars, so not like a Steam sale that increases sales by 300% (from 10 to 30 ).

 

I do agree that retail is still important, however.

 

Does that Witcher 2 information include a breakdown on platform?  Curious how well it did on the 360 compared to the PC.

Edited March 27, 2013 by alanschu

[babaganoosh13]

Any major release, I've pretty much got to buy a physical copy of. I didn't realize how big DA:O was, and that sucked out nearly half of the monthly download limit there. All of the Rockstar games are that bad as well, not to mention Rage.

[alanschu]

Yeah I think that will continue to play some influence on Retail demands.

 

I haven't had a meaningful download cap in lowly Edmonton since probably 1996, which has been pretty nice.

 

I think my current cap is 100 GB but to exceed that in a month would require me to significantly change my internet habits (i.e. start downloading videos/movies or something).  I have never come close fortunately, and it certainly makes digital distribution adoption much easier.

[babaganoosh13]

It's 60GB here. If I got it at home, besides all of the stupid up-front costs, or 3 yr contract, for $50/month + fees, I would get 20GB/month. I would blink and go over that even without downloading games.

[alanschu]

Haha.  Games is pretty much my only principal big download.  I occasionally watch things on netflix, but don't even have torrent software or things like that to help eat up my bandwidth.

 

Fortunately the provider I have doesn't have me on a contract (though the competitor does require contracts).

[babaganoosh13]

That's the problem here. We don't have enough competition. It's in Rogers and Bell's best interest that we don't use a site like Netflix. Even Shaw's are much better than those two, but are available in a lot less places.

 

I need to hook up a few hundred dollars worth of equipment just to get it at my house.

Edited March 27, 2013 by babaganoosh13

[Zoraptor]

My cap is a staggering 4GB (no typo) of 22Mbps* goodness which is one of the reasons I'd never use steam even if I didn't have a philosophical difference with it- one 'bad' update or deciding to install ex internet rather than from disk without me noticing and it'd cost me more in excess than the game cost itself.

 

The info from TW2 sales was from prior to the launch of it on 360- after around 6 weeks of sales I think- so there's no platform breakdown there and I don't think they've released any info on 360 vs PC sales. PC sales are definitely higher though, it's 'only' sold an extra million copies since the 360 version was released.

 

*Heh, except they sold me a 4G modem when their network is still militantly 3.5G, so it's 11.2Mbps for all practical purposes.

[alanschu]

I have 25 Mbps which I find plenty fast.  But 4 GB urgh....

[LadyCrimson]

We use Comcast Business (ya ya I know, Comcast, ew) and for that premium, we have no cap. (Non-Business Comcast is 250GB I think)

 

But caps are one reason why I can't condone an "all digital" future yet. Not just severe limits that many still have to deal with, but the infrastructure (the "pipelines") to make such consistently viable in many areas without issue still isn't there, as the demands go up faster than they can build/revamp it.

[Mamoulian War]

Seriously 22MBps and 4GB limit? How you do not burn that in less than a two days? Would it not be better for you to have slower speed for cheaper fee, if you are not downloading anything big?

[Zoraptor]

I also have glorious dial up at a majestic 55kbps 28kbps due to line quality as a backup! I have on occasion had better access via work or when I was flatting, ADSL is by far the 'best' option if available (slower, but caps are typically multiple 10s of GBs) but it is only available in higher population density areas than where I am now. The telecommunications/ internet stuff in New Zealand is monumentally stuffed though, through multiple government decisions and the monopoly lines provider doing zero improvement for nearly 20 years while making billion dollar annual profits.

[alanschu]

Haha I had do deal with 28kbps when growing up because we were out in the country.  Finding a download service that let me resume downloads was pretty much a top priority.  Fortunately we still didn't have a cap, so I downloaded a lot over nights.

[Mamoulian War]

I am using ADSL myself as well, max 5Mbps, but unlimited downloads... though the only things which I am downloading are emails and patches... so my monthly usage is somewhere between 500MB and 10GB depending... with median being somewhere around 1GB... I was thinking about faster connection, but I would really not be able to use it to the fullest, so it would be to me just wasted money... I am just sticking to relatively slow option (we have available up to 100Mbps for not very steep prices in my city, and it is possible to share the connection between neighbours, if they are not complete morons )...

Edited March 28, 2013 by Mamoulian War

[alanschu]

5 Mbps is still plenty speedy.  I was on 7.5Mbps for a long time and the only reason why I moved up to 25 Mbps was because they offered me a long time customer deal so the cost was literally the same as 7.5Mbps.

[BruceVC]

I also have glorious dial up at a majestic 55kbps 28kbps due to line quality as a backup! I have on occasion had better access via work or when I was flatting, ADSL is by far the 'best' option if available (slower, but caps are typically multiple 10s of GBs) but it is only available in higher population density areas than where I am now. The telecommunications/ internet stuff in New Zealand is monumentally stuffed though, through multiple government decisions and the monopoly lines provider doing zero improvement for nearly 20 years while making billion dollar annual profits.

 

I can empathize with living in a country that has relatively slow Internet access.

 

We only have 10 Mbps ADSL. Also almost our ADSL connection use your standard copper phone line. Of course fibre optic is a better medium for transmitting data and there are infrastructure investments and fibre optic being laid in the ground in certain places in South Africa. I am waiting for the day when I'll have a direct fibre optic connection from my house to the ISP point of presence

[Gfted1]

Dial up? *shudder*

 

I have Comcast both at home and at work with 32Mbps and 52Mbps respectively. No limits as far as I know, or at least Ive never hit one and been charged extra. Speaking of which, I always assumed that MMO's would really suck up the bandwidth but two of my games that I play a lot are online (WoW, D3). Either they dont use much bandwidth or I have virtually unlimited capacity. Does anyone know generally how online games operate?

[BruceVC]

Dial up? *shudder*

 

I have Comcast both at home and at work with 32Mbps and 52Mbps respectively. No limits as far as I know, or at least Ive never hit one and been charged extra. Speaking of which, I always assumed that MMO's would really suck up the bandwidth but two of my games that I play a lot are online (WoW, D3). Either they dont use much bandwidth or I have virtually unlimited capacity. Does anyone know generally how online games operate?

 

 

Yes Online games that aren't FPS can easily be played on slow lines. All that is basically transmitted across the line are key strokes as the MMO client sits on your PC. About 3 years ago I use to only have  512 Kbps and I played many MMO with people sitting overseas that use to have 10-15 Mbps and I never had any issues. With a FPS you will  be at a slight disadvantage as latency can effect per second response times. But its doesn't you mean can't play. If you think about it logically when you play an MMO you are connecting to a server somewhere in the world that thousands of other people are also connecting to. It doesn't mean just because you have a fast line you will have quicker response during the game as other factors will slow down everyones connections speed. Like the number of network hops and the speed of the connection of the network card on the MMO server

[Humanoid]

Up until the second expansion, I believe WoW officially supported dial-up connections as part of the minimum system requirements. So yeah, not a whole lot to it.

[ringgold99]

well, back to the original post about steam, I have mixed feelings about it.  It is good for some games and bad for others (like Skyrim).  I personally find it too restrictive when implementing Skyrim updates and updates for mods from the Workshop, but for other games it is okay.  I prefer to play without it when I have that option from the gaming company though.

[JFSOCC]

So ever since Prison Architect made it on steam greenlight, the introversion forums have flooded. So, mixed blessing methinks.