Hello Dale_,

Please explain what you mean by this statement. Are you saying that I'm not allowed to resell my copy of (for example) Halo 2 to someone?

If you are, then you are not correct. That is all I'm saying.

I really don't get the mod argument. What are the two most modded games in history? Half-Life 1 and Half-Life 2, both use Steam. But now all of a sudden Steam would cripple modding in Civ5?

Respectfully disagree with that assertion.

It wouldn't be much of an issue for Civ5, not because having a constantly changing version makes modding harder (it does) but because 2K doesn't patch games often.

As I've explained, due to the Berne Treaty copyright law is applied in country of use, not country of creation (unless both are in the same country).

What is this "difference" that you are talking about?  Usually when someone claims something, they say it.  

Anyways, as I said in my last post above, due to the Berne treaty copyright law is applied at country of use, not country of creation (unless both coincide).  And since I am in Australia, Australian copyright law is what I'm using for the basis of my comments, not US copyright law (which wouldn't apply in my case since copyright law is applied at country of use, which in MY case is Australia).

I think we maybe have had enough of the your law my law jumbo in here please Could we see if we can stray back to the more narrow path that is the topic?

Valve is a US company- US law would apply.

One thing I'd be interested in is whether Valve did anything in violation of the Sherman Act.

I strongly suspect 2K got some monetary gift from this.

I do not see the problem with steam, although I can see why this would be a blow for SD and impulse - just like it is a blow for every digital cliënt that sells software other than steam. This will not stop me from buying civ v as I have little doubt that it will blow most strategy games out of the water - maybe even including EWoM. That however will not stop me from playing Elemental at all, as elemental will still be awesome, no matter what the competition does.

Woohoo two great games coming this fall!

Cough should of got the OEM version for significantly less cough (or shopped around). COUGH!

Exactly. Valve is an international company. Its only based in the US (headquarters).

I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that they, Valve and 2K sell more legal copies of their games in the US than any other country, and probably some countries combined.

For now ...

Although you have to admit that between the vast majority of Video Game market share lies within the United States and Japan. Therefore, saying that an International (Video Game based) Company should not be considered International because the majority of transactions are in either United States, Japan, or both would be an unfair statement.

That would be like saying that World War I and II are not world wars because the "majority" of the fighting took place in Europe. Or, equally, it would be like saying the only participants in World War II were United States, Britain, Germany, Russia, and Japan. As opposed to the many, many nations that actually participated.

If it's true as I read here that only 20% of customers download games while the rest still buy the disk, that means only a small fraction of t2/firaxis customers will be downloading civ5 in the first place. Giving steam a monopoly, if that is in fact what is going to happen by default because of steam's business practices, means the civ people will even be missing out on some of those download sales because of customers preferring other download services or not liking steam. If steam has 70% of the download market, as I read here, then that will be 30% that may not buy civ5 because of the steam decision. So of the total market, mathematically that works out to 30% of the 20% which download games and around 6% of the total market that may not buy civ5 because of the steam decision. 6% may not seem like a lot, but for every potential 1 million sales, that's 60k of lost sales. At $60 a shot, that's a loss of $3,600,000.00. for setting up their download sales exclusively with steam. I wouldn't exactly call that chump change.

Another thing is that downloading games and using services like steam is still relatively new. Many people have little or no idea how these things work yet. The majority of those people who buy the disk and then go to sign up and use steam are going to be in for quite an education experience. Signing up appears easy enough, but there is a lot of things you need to know and learn if you are someone new to this sort of thing. And I would guess that a fair proportion of people will run into difficulties. From the civfanatics forum, here are a couple of links to posts describing problems people had using steam:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9180669&postcount=31

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=9177450&postcount=29

Now these people were probably more experienced using things like steam than the average person buying a disk at a store. Since one has to install steam and run it at least periodically, everyone buying the game will have to learn how to use the service. Someone brand new to this gaming concept, like quite a few will be, are going to have real headaches when these kinds of problems manifest themselves. They wont know what to do, and since they wouldn't be expecting such complications, they are going to be pissed off big time.

Back when civ4 came out, there were all sorts of compatibility problems and some programming bugs. It took them a while to fix that mess. Integrating a 3rd party's software into the civ5 programming will likely increase these usual new release compatibility/bug problems even more. This is much more complicated than just putting the game on steam to sell it like they did with civ4, it's mixing steam and firaxis programming together in the same product. That alone should make for some interesting problems down the line. I see a major train wreak approaching for t2/firaxis with civ5.