60 réponses à ce sujet

[akridine]

badkenbad wrote...

Valve does not determine what goes in the package sold on Steam, the publisher determines that. Raging against Steam is pointless.

Thats why i asked if Bioware endorse what steam are doing, it seems strange that steam offers less than direct2drive and the EA store

[Xiphias]

akridine wrote...

Xiphias wrote...

Well the UK has been ripped off all round for special editions. The CE is lacking the metal/wood case that the rest of the world gets and has no cloth map or any of the other extras like the mug.

It was even looking uncertain whether we'd get stone prisoner at one point, but as we did we do have one of the best value normal editions.

Your a legend mate, that info, plus the discount you've given me has made my mind up, the best deal so far is the EA site, i get more ingame items than any other site and for a 25% discount i can deal with not having the CE staff i wanted.

If you want to know anything about the EA System for DA let me know, although I'm off to bed now so you won't get the answer until tomorrow. Short version: From what I've seen it works much like impulse with a program (EADM) to download (and patch?) that doesn't need to be run to play the game. I specifically asked about future downloads because of their past time limits but was told that I'd be able to redownload DA any time I liked.

Modifié par Xiphias, 28 novembre 2009 - 12:25 .

[Monstruo696]

Steam is a publishing platform, not a publisher.  They do not determine price or contents, unless it's a Valve or Valve sponsored game.

Now that it's in bold letters, I would appreciate it if you people could stop needlessly berating Steam for your ineptitude.  Thanks.

Modifié par Monstruo696, 28 novembre 2009 - 01:12 .

[Schepel]

"- Should anything happen to Steam or Valve, the TOS you sign whenever you buy a game basically says that Valve will refund you the price of all your Steam bought games, meaning should the company/service fail, you will get all the money you spent back."



Even though you're quite right, this is of course a bad joke. An insolvent company cannot pay its debts. It's the nature of the thing. If it goes, your games are toast. However, it's an acceptable risk when you compare it to the risk you take with owning a hard copy. You may break, scratch or lose discs. If that wasn't enough, there is a cd key, usually on a slim piece of paper, without which you're royally buggered as well.

[akridine]

Well i've bought the game from the EA store and its downloading now, thanks to Xiphias i got the best deal out of all the sites.



Thank you Xiphias you've been a massive help and i can't say how much i've apprecited your input in this thread

[Seifz]

Just to make sure it's clear to everyone, the following statements are all true:

1.  All new copies of DA:O, whether collector's edition or standard edition, digital or physical, come with Blood Dragon Armor and Shale.  If the Steam UK package doesn't include those items, you should be on the phone with EA UK.

2.  The physical collector's edition does not come with Warden's Keep.  The Digital Deluxe Edition does.

3.  Pre-orders have nothing to do with any of this.  The pre-order bonuses are something entirely separate.

Default137 wrote...

Drig44 wrote...

lolsteam, use Direct 2 Drive. I don't even get why people would want to use Steam which prevents you from doing what you want with your game when you can use D2D with no restrictions.

Well, lets take a look shall we.

- Dedicated Severs you can download off of Steam, and Steam will support them.

- The ability to easily talk to friends in game, as well as invite them to games, it will do the work of setting everything up for you, no router hassle, just send the invite, and your playing together.

- No discs needed, its all saved to your account.

- Generally cheaper games, my friends who live in other countries often get screwed over by D2D, who doesn't seem to understand that other countries have different currencies, Steam more often then not allows them to buy games for a reasonable price ( ala, $50 like we pay here, or around that. )

- Achievement system for almost every game on Steam.

- A new deal on games every week, usually for 50% off, if the game you want to buy is not on sale, just wait a few weeks, and you'll usually be able to buy it for at least 25% off during a weekend sale, during holidays, this usually becomes giant 75% off sales on some games.

- Should anything happen to Steam or Valve, the TOS you sign whenever you buy a game basically says that Valve will refund you the price of all your Steam bought games, meaning should the company/service fail, you will get all the money you spent back.

- If a game stops working, due to a new OS, bugs, or just becomes unplayable for you for whatever reason, you can send in a petition to Steam Support, which they will look over, try to find if there is a way to fix the problem, and if there is not any fix available, will refund you your money should they feel that is the only way. I have several games from D2D that no longer work due to me using Win7, and that is quite literally just wasted money now, had I purchased them over Steam, I could have easily had them try to help fix my problems, and if that failed, would have most likely gotten a refund on my purchase.

That's all well and good, but...

1.  Steam (Valve) can change the ToS whenever they want to, without notifying you that they did so.

2.  You are forced to patch your games, even if the newest patch breaks the game.  This is especially problematic when graphics drivers act up with a new patch, or when you don't want to patch so that you can continue playing with some unpatched friends who aren't using Steam (think NWN persistant worlds), or when you just don't want the new patch (because it made the game too easy, like 1.01 did).

3.  You need an Intenet connection to play a single-player game!  That's absurd!  Am I the only one that likes to install single-played games onto my laptop when I travel so that I have something to do when I'm sitting around in an airport or waiting for a train, or whatever?  Internet connection!  Bah!

4.  If you don't get the game on sale (I certainly wouldn't be willing to wait 3+ weeks or more for a DA:O sale when everyone else gets to play on launch day!), you end up paying full price and not getting any of the physical material that you would otherwise have.  No box art, no metal case, no physical manual, etc.  Why are you paying full price when you don't need to compensate them for materials, packaging, shipping, stocking, and sales?  Bandwidth and server maintenance isn't even close.

Besides, the social site here tracks my achievements for me and I can just use any of the dozens of instant message clients out there to "chat" with my friends.  Which I don't really want to do in a single-player game, mind you.

[akridine]

I'd like to know EA's stance on this? if the publisher decides how the game is sold why is steam ripping people off but the EA store is offering the best deal out of all of them?



I was a loyal customer of steam until today, from now on i'll buy direct from the publisher

[Seifz]

eisberg77 wrote...

Seifz wrote...





That's all well and good, but...

1.  Steam (Valve) can change the ToS whenever they want to, without notifying you that they did so.

2.  You are forced to patch your games, even if the newest patch breaks the game.  This is especially problematic when graphics drivers act up with a new patch, or when you don't want to patch so that you can continue playing with some unpatched friends who aren't using Steam (think NWN persistant worlds), or when you just don't want the new patch (because it made the game too easy, like 1.01 did).

3.  You need an Intenet connection to play a single-player game!  That's absurd!  Am I the only one that likes to install single-played games onto my laptop when I travel so that I have something to do when I'm sitting around in an airport or waiting for a train, or whatever?  Internet connection!  Bah!

4.  If you don't get the game on sale (I certainly wouldn't be willing to wait 3+ weeks or more for a DA:O sale when everyone else gets to play on launch day!), you end up paying full price and not getting any of the physical material that you would otherwise have.  No box art, no metal case, no physical manual, etc.  Why are you paying full price when you don't need to compensate them for materials, packaging, shipping, stocking, and sales?  Bandwidth and server maintenance isn't even close.

Besides, the social site here tracks my achievements for me and I can just use any of the dozens of instant message clients out there to "chat" with my friends.  Which I don't really want to do in a single-player game, mind you.

Why do people keep on spreading lies, or are they just ignorant about Steam?  Which one are you Seifz?  Numbers 2 and 3 either you are a liar or are ignorant.

1- I'll give you that, proabably true.

2- Go into the Steam UI. Go to 'My Games' tab.  Right click any of your games.  Go to Properties. Go to Updates. Change "Always keep this game up to date" to "Do not automatically update this game"

3- I have been playing all my single player Steam Games on my laptop for the last 5 years.  It is called logging into Steam in offline mode. You only need to play the game once while logged in through the internet, after that you can play in offline mode.

4- This is true for all Digital Distributions systems, Steam, Gamersgate, Gamestop, Direct 2 Drive, Impulse.  Has something to do with the Brick and Mortar stores complaining, plus also for people who do buy through Digital Distribution, all that extra junk like the box, the manual, ect was something they never cared about in the first place.  In the 17 years I have been a PC gamer, I always threw that junk away, except for the manual I might have kept it there was something useful in it, though rarely though it did.

I'm not at all a liar.

2.  That's fine if you already have the version that you need.  What if I decide to install DA:O on my laptop before I travel?  What if I reformat my hard disk, or want to reinstall my game for some other reason?  Steam automatically downloads the latest version, even if that's not the one that I want.

3.  An Internet connection is still required to install games, and to validate them for the first time.  That's just not always an option for me.  Optical discs are very portable and I have no trouble bringing a bunch of games with me when I travel (I travel a lot, if that wasn't obvious).  I can install the game that I want to play when I want to play it.  I'm not going to load my little 120GB hard disk up with any game that I might want to play while I'm gone.  It's not rare that I'll be without an Internet conneciton for many weeks.

4.  So?  You can't ignore a system's flaws just because they don't bother you specifically.

5.  And another thing!  Downloading 20GB takes a long time, even with a fast Internet connection!  I installed the game from the DVD much faster than I would have been able to download and authorize everything through Steam.

6.  Steam also nullifies the right of First Sale.  I can't gift my game to a friend, nor can I resell it to a third party.  That should be illegal.

[Eshme]

I wouldnt say they dont hold their promise, until they make false ones. But its kinda unfriendly to call so much gifts, if in the end you still have to buy it. Thats more like low moral level of american homeshopping lol.

[Taleroth]

Except it does come with Blood Dragon Armor and Stone Prisoner. They just over-edited the store page when they removed the pre-order bonuses. It's not listed, but it's included.



Of course, you could just ASK them. But then when they realized their mistake, you couldn't OMGWTF BARBECUE VALVE IS TRYING TO RIP US OFF WTF I HATE YOU GOD!!!!!!

[Monstruo696]

akridine wrote...

I'd like to know EA's stance on this? if the publisher decides how the game is sold why is steam ripping people off but the EA store is offering the best deal out of all of them?

I was a loyal customer of steam until today, from now on i'll buy direct from the publisher

For the mother****ing, umpteeth time.

VALVE/STEAM DOES NOT SET THE PRICES.  

Steam is the vendor stand, not the vendor. 

The cake shop, not the baker.

The bank teller, not the bank.

The car dealer, not the car manufacturer.

The prostitute, not the pimp.

Modifié par Monstruo696, 28 novembre 2009 - 05:35 .

[Eshme]

Afaik vendors set their own prices. And Steam is on some occasions no less than co publisher. Prostitute was a good one

[I saved Star Wars :D]

Seifz, whatever you think of Steam I think it is a bit unfair to list as a weakeness the fact that you need an internet connection the first time you want to play. That would be like me complaining that I need a car to pick a game up from a shop!

[ZeroRate]

Well I bought steam standard UK and got Blood Dragon Armor and Stone Prisoner. DDE is a rip off in the uk no matter where you buy it because the three DDE items are GAME uk exslusive so they're not in the DDE UK.

[Xiphias]

eisberg77 wrote...

2- Go into the Steam UI. Go to 'My Games' tab.  Right click any of your games.  Go to Properties. Go to Updates. Change "Always keep this game up to date" to "Do not automatically update this game"

If we're going to discuss steam lets get the facts right. From experience I know that option only does what it says. i.e. it only stops the game update downloading as soon as you launch steam, steam will still require you to download the latest version before you can actually play.

Personally I don't like steam. It's behaviour would be fine if it was optional, but it's not. Quite a few games, including some high profile ones, now require steam to run and in that situation I think it's ridiculous that steam functions the way it does. It should allow people to play games how they want to, not force you to do it one way.

I could add another half dozen complaints easily, from the single friends list to that irritating steam community popup.

[Xiphias]

eisberg77 wrote...
Hmm, then how am I playing a couple of my Steam games that have not been updated for a very long time, even though there is an update for them on Steam?  Sacred 2 is one of them, I am still playing the 1.34 version, cause the 1.4 version was causing issues for me for some reason.

I guess it varies with game then.

Which is another problem with steam, they don't provide enough information. Even the basics like download size is missing and it'd also be nice to know what the DRM is and whether the game needs the steam client running to launch, and whether it can stay unpatched.

Modifié par Xiphias, 28 novembre 2009 - 05:10 .

[Jolly Teaparty]

I have issues with the Steam program itself on my computer that friends of mine also have, so it's quite flawed. Brilliant when it works smoothly though. Fast internet connection you see

I find myself fascinated with Steam because it's just such a clever concept. I have strong opinions on the subject of DRM and Steam is, as far as I'm concerned, the first workable model I've seen for PC game DRM. It lets the publisher protect their product in a way that also gives something back to the consumer. To me, not having to worry about storing a game disc is a big deal because I am lazy and have lost discs in the past. I also love the Steam community interface, though admittedly you can use this with boxed versions of the games too. Throw in auto-updating and unlimited re-downloading, great stuff!

I was recently flirting with the idea of buying all my future games on Steam but I think publishers forget Steam or something because you get some peculiar price discrepancies arising. A lot of the time it looks like someone just forgot to update it for a few years. Also I don't know that I believe Steam has no influence on the surprisingly high prices, I hear they take a large cut and this may make it impossible for publishers to offer better prices to Steam buyers.

I think I'll largely stick to just picking up special offers on Steam. Maybe one day if they completely redesign the platform and make it run better.

Modifié par Jolly Teaparty, 28 novembre 2009 - 05:13 .

[Jolly Teaparty]

Xiphias wrote...

... it'd also be nice to know what the DRM is and whether the game needs the steam client running to launch, and whether it can stay unpatched.

They do tell you about the DRM, check out Crysis for example. If it doesn't say I believe the deal is that Steam is the DRM. As for the Steam client thing, don't all Steam games require the client running to launch?

[mdeeRocks]

I bought regular edition from Steam (I buy all my PC games there just because of convienence) and got Stone Prisoner and Blood Armor with it.

I only had to pay for Warden's Keep.

[DaeFaron]

well, yeah games wouldn't update if your in offline mode. I still don't get why anybody wouldn't want to just go to the store and buy it physically, so if something goes wrong you can reinstall quickly without having to spend awhile downloading the install file again.