Most people agree that Microsoft’s original Games for Windows Live initiative was a bust: pushy, buggy, intel-grabby, hard to navigate, intrusive. It demanded information people didn’t want to give, it often simply didn’t work, and it seemed like a very sad attempt to glue online console functionality to the rip-roaring freedom of a PC. It did not go over well.
Well, next month they’re relaunching it – the online store side, for the most part – and claiming to ditch the bad in favor of the good. They want to compete with Steam. But just as Microsoft was completely unprepared for Google, Microsoft is completely unprepared for Steam. As I’ve said before, it is the new IBM: immense, but irrelevant.
To be honest I am a fan of Microsoft. I don’t like everything the company does, obviously, but as a person who works professionally with Adobe products, it’s recently been brought starkly to my attention how wise and generous Microsoft is compared to that other monolith. Adobe is literally pricing itself into piracy – its monopolistic greed is forcing the hands of even otherwise ethical customers. If you’re the kind of user who does a little of everything, you need the Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection.
$2,600.
If you’re able to get a student discount it drops to $899.
I don’t dispute that the programs within the CS are solid apps that took time and money to build. But if we’ve learned anything from Steam, it’s that price cuts, particularly massive ones, are the solution to unit sales and piracy. Valve has released statistics indicating that if you cut the price of a game by 75% you see an 18,000% increase in unit sales. Adobe can make vector art programs, but it clearly can’t do the fucking math.
Microsoft has never been egregious in its pricing. I mean, sure, I wish the stuff was cheaper, but I wish everything was cheaper. We all do. Reasonably, though, I can’t complain about the company’s pricing model. I bought the full version of Office in 2003, for… like… $199 I think. And I suppose it’s about time to go to Office 2010, for, like, $199 I think. Seven years. Adobe, meanwhile, is committed to releasing a new Creative Suite every 18 months, and is introducing backwards incompatibility so you essentially have to upgrade. And by “upgrade” I don’t mean “upgrade prices,” because Adobe seems to be phasing that out while Microsoft is still sticking to it; I mean “upgrade” like “bend over and take $2600 every 18 months.”
What does all this have to do with the GFW relaunch? Well…
It’s that I basically don’t oppose Microsoft. I think the company has failed in many glaring ways, and I think it’s quite obviously sabotaging PC gaming to support the Xbox, but I also think the company is doing what it can to accomplish its mission: “A computer in every room of every home, running Microsoft software.” Fair enough.
Here’s an odd thing to consider, though: Steam demands the same information from its users that GFW does. And unlike GFW, Steam Sniffers are constantly running in the background while we play our Steam games, quietly gathering usage statistics and hardware information to feed Valve’s data-hungry maw. You can opt out, of course, and you can play Steam games offline, but they don’t make either as easy as it could be. Why do we give Steam a free pass when we look so suspiciously at GFW?
Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’d marry Steam if such unions were legal in this country. My brother once said “if Steam sold breakfast, that’s where I’d order it,” and he’s right: I buy practically all my PC games from Steam these days. My Steam folder is something like 95GB. And I do willingly share my hardware and usage info with Valve, because the reports they produce from that information are fascinating. Why wouldn’t I share the same info with Microsoft? Because I wouldn’t. Assuming GFW bothered to ask, I would opt out from sharing that information first thing.
For at least a year after launch, Steam was basically a platform for Half Life 2. It was kind of a joke. There was nothing for sale but Half Life 2, none of the Friends stuff was available; it was stupid. A stupid pointless memory hog that people only ran when playing Half Life 2. Then things changed and Steam became THE marketplace. Hell, I’ve seen articles about indie or obscure games, felt interested, and thought “if it’s on Steam, I’ll buy it, otherwise I won’t bother.” I am an agent of The Man!
Part of it is because I’m comfortable with Steam and DO NOT want to run three memory hogging digital download clients on my system. I’m sure Stardock’s Impulse is glorious; no thanks. I manage enough friends lists as it is. And I suspect that Microsoft’s GFW relaunch will mean a lot of good stuff is included – after all, as we know, Microsoft tends to get it right starting around version 3, but never version 1 – but I still have no intention of using it. If a game I really want to play absolutely requires it, I’ll do two things:
- Blast said game here for being so shortsighted
- Buy the game because I’m weak
Microsoft’s new GFW relaunch even looks like Steam. It’s very clear they think they know who they’re competing with. And I still can’t satisfactorily explain why I don’t mind Steam when I freaking hate Ubisoft’s anti-piracy approach, don’t use Impulse, and will avoid the GFW relaunch for as long as I can (hopefully forever) when it arrives next month. It’s funny, these double standards.
Email the author of this post at steerpike@tap-repeatedly.com.
My problem with Microsoft’s GFWL is their support. I’ve never been more frustrated dealing with customer support then with these piles of human waste (I don’t normally refer to people as such either.)
The handful of times I had to call their support line, I felt like they were going out of their way to be rude, unhelpful, and even misleading.
I think Steams support staff is pretty useless as well. They take almost a week to respond to support emails, usually long after you figured out a solution yourself. But they aren’t dicks about it.
Steerpike is extremely right on almost all points. “Hell, I’ve seen articles about indie or obscure games, felt interested, and thought “if it’s on Steam, I’ll buy it, otherwise I won’t bother.” ” Too true. I mean, the ease of dealing with Steam is almost sinful. I played a pirated version of VVVVV for friggin’ months, refusing to pay for it before they put it on Steam then I bought it basically on day one. Because it’s so easy to manage all the games and other stuff through it.
Alos, those massive price cuts? I end up buying games I already have on disk, just so I don’t have to open my drawer and look for the disc, put it in a tray and bother with installing it. Like, today, I bought Arkham Asylum – it was on a 66% discount. I don’t need it. I plazed the game already, I have a perfectly good PS3 version, I am not sure I’ll ever play it through on PC but it was measly 17 Euro and now I can, on a whim, instal it on ANY PC I sit at and play it for as long as I desire…
This is exactly the reason I don’t want Stardock’s client on my computer… They make great games and everything but… another client? Shit, no. GWFL??? They’ll have to give free handjobs with games before I start thinking about it. GoG is the only thing I can still tollerate alongside Steam due to having no client but no DRM either and thus working almost like Steam.
I think we have the capacity to trust only one service at a time. You are married to Steam and you love it. You trust it (I’ll refrain from using ‘her’), you primp it removing gnats and ticks while managing your games list, you’ve done the vetting and she has won your heart simply by being first in the door and being good enough. There’s no need to employ more than one service to do the same thing and it’s funny that we view other attempts as hackneyed. Maybe that’s an example of consumer bias, where we tend to overrate our satisfaction with things we’ve chosen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_good_enough
She’s also soft, and she smells nice.
I just buy directly from the developers if the game is indie, steam sucks too much money for my liking.
I don’t give Steam a free pass. I hate Steam.
It’s obvious that game companies use Steam because Valve shares its revenue with them.
I hate stealth use of my data.
People use Steam because it works. And it usually works quite well and is non-intrusive and for the most part it doesn’t get in the way of actually playing games.
I’ve been pretty happy with XBox Live, which also, for the most part, doesn’t get in the way and works pretty well.
If GFWL in its earlier incarnation had been more like XBL, there wouldn’t be any problems– I’d have accepted it and would probably use it for games that didn’t show up on Steam and would generally not worry about it too much. I might not run it on boot like I do Steam, but I at least wouldn’t groan whenever a game popped up the damn GFWL login screen.
GFWL, however, IS intrusive, DOES get in the way of playing games, and is largely annoying to use. Let’s see… Installing and playing, say, Zeno Clash from Steam required paying for it, clicking “Install,” waiting a bit, and running the game.
Installing and playing Bioshock 2, though, which requires GFWL, was a whole separate thing. I bought it from Steam, so it downloaded and installed pretty easily. But then I ran it, and oh, it wanted to download and install some giant GFWL patch. So I let it do that, which took a long time (consider here that I’ve already downloaded the whole game– letting me think I was about to play it and then forcing another download on me was just cruel), and THEN it wanted to reboot my computer. What?
So, okay. Download, run game, more downloading, a reboot, and I should be able to play my game now, right? Well, no, actually. There’s another download, of a patch for the game. Then I have to sign in, which takes forever for no obvious reason. And then there’s some kind of glitch where I have to sign in again, oh, and another download. At this point, I’ve been trying to actually play this game for over an hour.
With Steam, this kind of behavior is almost totally unknown. Steam is pretty good about keeping itself up-to-date and not getting in the way of just playing some games. I’m willing to share data and not worry about it much as long as the service works and I feel like I’m getting something worthwhile from the transaction. With GFWL, it’s not worthwhile because GFWL is so intrusive.
I agree. After my upgrade I downloaded GTR-Evolution from Steam and it came already patched. I then installed Red Faction: Guerilla from DVD and then the GfW:L update would freeze, locking all four cores at 100% when trying to do it in-game. I had to finally download the patch separately and install it by hand to avoid this problem. To me, when your patch tool can’t patch, that’s a problem.
We have a Sandisk music player that has the same issue and it’s really a shame since the existing OS has a problem that destroys the rechargeable batteries when it’s sitting in a cradle that was an after-market sale. But when the OS patcher can’t patch the problem that defeats the reason we bought this model over the iPod, which was that the unit came with a replaceable battery. This is just shoddy customer care and MS is aligning themselves with that camp with their issues. For me, GfW:L games are now sale only items… I wont avoid them completely, but I wont pay more than 5-10$ for them (excluding (sadly) the unholy mess that was F1-2010 which is both Steam AND GfW:L)
One thing that I find so irksome about GfWL is the way the simplest bits of information are presented:
– Sign in or die! Failure to sign in will prevent you from saving progress or changes!
– Update now or die! Failure to update will prevent you from signing in to Live!
– The terms of the Eula have changed. Agree to them or die!
This last happened tonight with F1 2010 with directives 2 and 3 coming down the pipe. Except the new EULA was presented in French, with no chance to escape. Fuck that. Uninstalled, and that will be the last GfWL game I purchase.
Dear Games for Windows Live,
FUCK OFF.
Regards,
Mat C
Mat, you seem upset about something. I can’t put my finger on what it might be. But I’m very sensitive to the emotions of others and I think you’re upset.
I really do!
Mat, it seems you’ve stumbled into the beast on your travels around the Steam Summer Camp? Thankfully I’ve never witnessed the monstrosity. Fallout 3 has it but it doesn’t do a thing unless you’re logging achievements or some such bollocks.
“I think Steams support staff is pretty useless as well. They take almost a week to respond to support emails, usually long after you figured out a solution yourself. But they aren’t dicks about it.”
After I got locked out of my account through my browser at work because it wouldn’t send the Steam Guard key to my email address and the troubleshooting page links didn’t work, it took Steam support over a day to generate a generic response which was absolutely useless:
“Please be patient as you will eventually receive your code.” The code was never received. After that response I disabled Steam Guard myself at home through Steam. Steerpike, you had issues with Steam Guard didn’t you?
I’m upset that Games for Windows Live exists, Matt.
I finally installed F1 2010 after picking it up for the joyous price of £6. It was late last night and I thought to myself “Hey, why not have half an hour to take my Virgin Racing car around Bahrain and kick off my debut season?”. Mrs Mat C was in bed reading and it seemed the perfect opportunity. So I load up F1 2010 and this is what happens.
Enable Autosave? Yes. Error: YOU CANNOT AUTOSAVE WITHOUT LOGGING INTO GFWL. OK, I’ve seen this shit before with BioShock 2. I’ll sign in with my old Xbox profile. DOWNLOADING PROFILE, MASSIVE UPDATE REQUIRED. OK, download update please. DOWNLOADING. 5 minutes later.. ERROR – YOUR PROFILE DID NOT DOWNLOAD, RESTART GAME AND TRY AGAIN. Sigh. I restart the game (which first requires getting through a huge, unskipable in game start up), then get some more messages. PROFILE FOUND – DOWNLOADING PROFILE. 5 minutes later, my profile is downloaded. Then.. THIS GAME REQUIRES AN UPDATE, RESTART YOUR GAME NOW. Fuuuuu. OK, download updated, can I play the game yet? SIGN IN NOW OR YOU CANNOT SAVE, YOU MOTHER FUCKER. Yes yes YES, for the last god damn time just let me SAAAAVE!
That took about half an hour, by which time my drunk, irritable and full of BBQ wife was moaning at me to come to bed (and not for any of the good reasons). But I risked having my balls strung up and stayed up way past a time I consider sensible the night before work, determined to get at least SOME F1 game time in, just to prove a point to GFWL for wasting my time.
I’ll probably get home tonight to find it’s not saved any of my progress and needs to update my entire PC.