Download platforms

[Dog Pants]

Steam is a good thing, I think we can pretty much all agree, but there are more platforms out there than that. EA have just launched Origin, Microsoft have GfWL, and there are a whole bunch of other services out there which stick mostly to letting you buy games. Are multiple platforms good or bad though? On the one hand, competition is a good thing, driving them all to strive to be better than the other guys. On the other, do we really want to have to launch three or four very similar programs in order to play our games. With this comes the social side of things, friends lists, in game chat, basically what xfire offers us but with our games built in. Again, do we really want four different friends lists on our desktops? I have two in xfire and Steam, and that's really one too many. Maybe the future will be a program that unifies them all into a single launcher, but for now it looks like we're stuck with having multiple platforms. What do you bummers think? Handy social tool or more bloatware?

[Joose]

Im torn, as i can see both sides of the argument.

On the one hand, having only one platform that does everything means a monopoly. If the only place you can get stuff from is Steam, then what Valve decides is law. There is no competition, if someone wants to do something with their game that valve doesnt like you are fucked, and if steam suffers an outage you are left with no games.

On the other hand, its handy to have all of your stuff in one place, with one launcher. Steam works very well, wheras Origin and GfWL dont (although I dont think they are as satanically evil as people make them out to be, they certainly are not up to Steams level of polish). And the monopoly argument doesnt hold much water; Steam essentially dominates everything already, and Valve seem pretty reasonable to games devs, their prices range from fair to insanely cheap, and I cant actually remember the last time there was an interruption of the service to the point that it stopped me doing anything.

TL;DR: Conceptually, I can see the argument for diversity. In reality, I would very much like for everything ever to be on Steam please.

[Killavodka]

I can put up with multiple platforms as long as they work well. If they sell good value games and offer good services in-game and out.
Would be nice if they could work together to create one platform though.

[Thompy]

On a related note what do you think of the whole $1=/=£1=/=1 Euro arguement? Reading steam forums you never find any reasoned arguement to explain why it's wrong. I keep meaning to do research into it but the thing that always screams to the front of my mind is that things cost different amounts in different countries. Simple example, products may cost way more in country x than country y, but country y has to pay way more income tax. I think it's fair to say most western European countries and America have a broadly similar cost of living, so if you pay a bit more for games, you'll be getting a break somewhere else along the line. I could well be missing some vital point to counter that thinking though.

[Dog Pants]

I din't really think it's fair to be paying £40 for something that's worth $40. Apparently with the Euro so strong compared to the pound at the moment you can visit somewhere like Dublin and be paying £10 for a drink, because it always cost about 10 Euro but now the currency values are so close. I don't know what you're getting at with the balance of more expensive games vs cheaper stuff elsewhere, but I know that if a game is £40 I won't buy it. If it's £40 on Steam I can generally buy it for £30 off Amazon (like I did with BEEF3, instead of Origin).

[Thompy]

What I'm getting at is that you can't just look at exchange rates.

Another example could be exchanging money to french coinage and buying a quite a bit more alcohol over the border than you'd get if you spent your pounds in the UK. People don't complain about that difference. Just because a game costs £30 doesn't mean Euro folks should be able to buy the game at the direct exchange rate. It costs what it costs in their country. Ultimately everthing offsets each other so once you count up all the money you spend to live, just because games cost more in your country doesn't mean you're being ripped off.

Or something? Honestly, I'm pulling at what could be tenuous ideas, but it seems to make sense to me

[Dog Pants]

Ah, I see your point. Even so though, I know what the value of a game is, which is at most £35, so trying to charge me £40 because a game is $40 is both treating me like an idiot because the value isn't equal, and ripping me off because games aren't worth £40.

[Thompy]

Admittedly it does seem oddly convinient when prices are the same in all currencies, like they are trying to trick people. But when you hear people asking for the euro prices to be the same numerical value as sterling prices, you only have to look at this to see that games do cost more. 44 Euro vs £30. Current exchange rate should make that 34 Euro to £30. So asking to pay 30 Euro doesn't seem right. (Quick sketchy research).

To not derail the thread too much, the reason I brought it up was it's one the reasons many don't like Steam. Maybe if there were more platforms they'd get cheaper prices. But I can't see it happening for new games, and Steam already has insanely good deals on a regular basis.

Personally I'll stick with Steam pretty much regardless. I had to control myself from spazing out when I learnt I couldn't add THREEF to my library. Oh the humanity

[Joose]

I think I see what you are getting at, but the difference is that wine in france is a physical object that is subject to import/export costs. French wine costs less in France partly because it has had to go less far and hasnt been taxed up the bum as a result (I know, I know, thats a bit of an oversimplification, but you get my point). However,it costs basically the same for a company to release a game on Steam, regardless of where they are releasing it.

In other words, when you buy wine cheap in france, the guy making the wine makes the same profit as if you buy that same wine in England. But when you buy a £40 game, Valve and chums make (marginally) more money than if you had paid $40. Which is stupid.

...and brings me back a bit closer to the multiple vendors camp. In a "Steam or nothing" world, your choice would be to pay the inflated price, or not have the game. At the moment, with multiple ways of getting the game, if its £40 on Steam, we can go elsewhere.

[HereComesPete]

EA have tried again with origin, so far in it's beta state it's very basic and it has problems. You have a friend list that doesn't import to games. Various beta versions exist and the iterations and changes are a mystery. Chat doesn't work when it feels like and worst of all is the prices, EA are greedy cunts.

GFWL is a strange one, it used to be horrendous, a truly laggy, backward, breaking, steaming turd. But now it's really not too bad. I think if MS started to use it as a totally independent games buying platform that launched outside of a game then it would annoy me more. As it is it's a slightly awkward way of inviting people to a game of spehs mahreens.

Steam is the daddy, it's easy to use, has useful features, never seems to break ever and has pretty much constant sales of games. It can work in offline mode so it's not an always on drm method. It patches and notifies and the likelihood of it ever going wrong and us losing our games is not impossible, but it does live right next door to impossible.

In terms of the 1 currency = 1 a.n other currency when that isn't the case, they point the finger at the developers who use the steam distribution platform. And a lot of the time they do actually release valve games at different price points. But they cop out of giving a reason as opposed to an excuse.

In terms of income tax or cheaper products being the offset, we fall into monetary mechanisms - Mr Johnson pays less for booze, games, fuel and fags than we brits do. But he gets less personal allowance and pays more taxes on just about everything else, including a higher vat rate.

An example - If country x products cost a lot more than country y products and country y's income tax is far higher, then it's possible that country y has a far high minimum mandatory state pension amount and country x has extortionate fuel prices. In turn this means that the organic product consumption of country x is far below the recycling rate of country y and as such y has better road networks.

Yes that does read as an absurdity, but all things interlink in generating what a product should cost in each country. I feel each country should have an appropriate price point for each product and it should be reflected in all available methods of purchasing. To charge 40 whatever for each country when available spare income differs quite a bit means some buyers always lose out on an identical product unless they get someone in the cheaper country to buy the product.

tl;dr -If you look through the different EU Amazon's you'll see that an identical product has different prices, steam should do the same.

[FatherJack]

Mr Johnson pays less for booze, games, fuel and fags than we brits do. But he pays more taxes on just about everything else

What else is there?

[Mr. Johnson]

In terms of income tax or cheaper products being the offset, we fall into monetary mechanisms - Mr Johnson pays less for booze, games, fuel and fags than we brits do. But he gets less personal allowance and pays more taxes on just about everything else, including a higher vat rate.

That's true except for the games bit, we pay more on electronics, games and dvd's which is why I end up buying my multimedia from Britain and my hardware from The Netherlands. As for taxes, we currently have the highest tax rate in Europe if I'm not mistaken*, and that worries me because it's not running particularly better than other countries. I really don't know how countries like Sweden do it, but I suspect it has something to do with the mentality of the inhabitants.

But to get back on the topic of distribution platforms, I would really some good honest competition but it seems like prices are set in stone here, I pay 50 euros for a new AA-title game whether it's on origin, steam or Gfwl. Or 60 in case of Call of Duty games, which is just criminal.

*I feel I should add that due to being unemployed, I don't have to pay any taxes so I'm not personally afflicted ...yet.

[mrbobbins]

Mr Johnson pays less for booze, games, fuel and fags than we brits do. But he pays more taxes on just about everything else

What else is there?

Mattentaart?

[Mr. Johnson]

Those are 5 for 6 euros. That's a serious bargain right there!

[Dog Pants]

I done made this into a blog article, ma!

http://www.geekinpublic.com/?p=185#more-185

[Dr. kitteny berk]

I done made this into a blog article, ma!

http://www.geekinpublic.com/?p=185#more-185

and some might argue, our personal date.

datas, shirely?

[Dog Pants]

Thank you proof reader!

[HereComesPete]

I think the part

...(and increasingly consoles too)...

Seems to downplay what I see as a very important part of console gaming. I can't find stats after a quick google, but evidence from my console buddies suggests even those who only play occasionally tend to steer toward multi-player, with console play consequently being mostly about shared experience and not the single player games.

I could be entirely wrong however and been brain warped by the billions in advertising thrown at showing off the latest wii/kinect/move accessory.

[Dog Pants]

You're probably right, but rather than downplaying it I was just not talking about it since I don't own one.