I mean seriously, what is the matter with this guy?
First he decides to stir up a pointless ruckus by complaining that Valve’s Steam service is exploitative of the little guy, a conflict of interest for Valve, and untrustworthy – an act for which he is universally condemned, and called much harsher names than I’ve called him.
Then today he decides it’d be wise to further assify himself by accusing Valve/Steam’s position on PS3 sales as “childish fanboyism.” This while Pitchford’s outrageously mediocre Borderlands is – wait for it – #1 on Steam’s sales charts, and his company, Gearbox, is collecting 70% from each and every one of those Steam sales (assuming they have a fairly standard Steam contract). What is Gearbox collecting from their 2K retail contract? Well, again, assuming it’s a standard games industry agreement, you’re looking at about 12%-18% per unit.
Yeah, Randy, Steam is the problem. You headline-slurping moron. Stop squealing for attention and make a better game.
Let’s take a quick gander at my Steam main window.
Wow, it really does seem like Valve is pimping their own games at the expense of others, doesn’t it? And I see that super-indies like World of Zoo and Shattered Horizon are barely getting coverage at all. Seems very exploitative to me.
In a recent IGDA podcast, Tom Buscaglia positively swooned about Steam, saying they were great to work with, that they paid on time, and that they outdid every other digital distributor in terms of sheer corporate gentility. Let’s not forget also that were it not for Steam, companies like Introversion and 2D Boy would almost certainly be little more than headstones, their cleverness and innovation left for archaeologists to puzzle over.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, however asinine it may be; and I’m sure that Steam isn’t perfect. But for Randy Pitchford, who runs a company that exists solely because of the kindness of Valve Software, a company that’s whined its way into undeserved AAA status based solely on its relationship with Valve, to attack this new distribution channel while raking in millions from Borderlands’ only partially deserved success (the game is good at best, more likely okay; will mostly be recalled for what it did wrong and will soon be forgotten altogether), for some reason that really offends me. The alternative for Borderlands was its retail contract, an agreement with 2K games that is doubtless proving lucrative (after all, Steam only sells in the PC space, and Borderlands is very obviously an inept console port), but simple reductive mathematics tells us that 70% developer royalty per unit on Steam beats 14% developer royalty per unit via retail channels. And yet Steam is somehow the bad guy in this.
There is one Steamy issue that does cause me concern; both Stardock’s Impulse online service and IGN’s Direct2Drive have refused to carry upcoming blockbuster Modern Warfare 2 because the game comes bundled with a mandatory Steamworks installation. Steamworks manages saves, online presence, and various other actions of a game through a single unified SDK, and I can understand why Impulse and Direct2Drive are hesitant to sell a game that bundles the software of their competitors. But Steam is not requiring this bundle – or, rather, it is, but only because Modern Warfare 2 developer Infinity Ward used those tools to create a portion of the game’s functionality. This is not exactly the same as Microsoft bundling IE4 with Windows 98 to force out competition. After all, Valve has every right to not carry an Unreal Engine 3-powered game, given that Valve owns and markets the competitive Source engine.
And yet, Borderlands is Unreal 3 powered. So is Mirror’s Edge, Bioshock, Shattered Horizon, etc etc etc. Call me a Steam fanboy, but I see it this way: while Pitchford whines, and Direct2Drive chest-beats, and Impulse squeals about how it’s the real indie homestead, Steam dominates – not through evil, or exploitation, or squeezing the little guy, but through savvy business practices and a recognition that in this day and age, getting the games to the players is more important than the games themselves, even if getting them to the players means shooting the same damned horde of Skags and the same stupid raiders every time you leave town no matter how many times you’ve shot them.
I think you ought to be in charge of the dictionary. “Assify” needs inclusion.
It is a great term, no doubt about it. Also, great article and one more for the “what the F are they thinking” column. Is Randy Pitchford insane??? I literally shat fire back when HL2 demanded we install Steam and refused to use my legit copy of Half-Life 2, installing the cracked, Steamless version instead (five long years ago!!! Can Steam be so old???) and yet, today I actually suggest it to my friends as the best digital distributor ever. And I never ever bought any Valve games through Steam. I mostly buy indie stuff there because the selection is so great and the service so good. Of course, they are ripping us over here off with unrealistic exchange rates, so they are not perfect, yet I just can’t believe Pitchford’s being serious about this.
Thank you both – and write to Webster! I will happily take control of the dictionary. First order of business: remind the world that “alright” is not a word.
Meho, our Steam experiences sound identical. I was offended by the whole idea when Half Life 2 came out… then, for a year, Steam was nothing but a Half Life 2 Sales Device, as it offered nothing else. Suddenly, though, it became this lifeline to the digital gaming world, and the first thing I install when I’m reinstalling Windows. When did that happen??
You must give us an editorial about prices and exchange rates, because I and (I suspect) other westerners don’t fully understand what you guys are dealing with in your region. Americans tend to live in a world that contains only America, and are often baffled when we learn that the rest of the world exists and has its own problems. When we find out it does, we tend to bomb it. With Eastern Europe becoming one of the leading powerhouses of game development, how can its citizens be stuck with unfair exchange rates and unreasonable purchase prices?
Would you like us to bomb you (again)? We can do that! We love bombing things!
Heh, Steerpike, you jest, yet those two and a half months when you guys were bombing us were probably the most relaxed two and a half months of my life. Sure, I had no job and no money but at least I could catch up on all the reading and gaming I was neglecting because of my job in months prior to it (I was working ten hour shifts back then which may be seen as natural in the USA but over here that’s some heavy duty work). Amazingly, we had electricity almost all of the time: apparently, the sophisticated NATO “graphite bombs” created to knock out power lines without damaging them could be defeated with brooms. Or so the myth goes.
So, anyway, yes, I will do a small writeup about the prices and accessibility to the market from my perspective but bear in mind that it will mostly consist of whining.
“Alright” is not a word? A quick lookup on dictionary.com confirms that it is indeed accepted in informal writing, but that in more formal writing the full “all right” should instead be used. Fascinating.
Yet when you type it here, or no doubt in some word processor it wouldn’t appear as an error. Kind of like how “irregardless” is socially acceptable, but is definitely not a word; rather a double negative. Unless you’re George W. Then you put “irregardless” in the same sentence as “misunderestimate.”
I feel ashamed and dirty that I love to use “alright” so often. I’ll never say it again. Even if I do love imitating Kyle MacLachlan’s character from Sex and the City who loves to say “alrighty!”
My life long dream (as Homer Simpson so very often loves to announce) is to perfect and master use of the English language before I die. I’m quite fond of it, even though I embarrassingly (and so North American-ly) speak no others.
I used the word “love” far too excessively in that comment. There were also too many parentheses.
Must. Kill. Self.
“Alright” is not a word?”
It is if you want it to be! : )
Not alrighty though… that makes me think of Jim Carry.