Excellent write up there Nick, thank you for including all of that information.  It's difficult to argue against such transparency, however it works both for and against VALVe as a whole.  I do agree with your last line, and VALVe's method is vastly superior to Kotick's method.  The absolute bare-basics is: VALVe do new things in new ways, thus generating more income.  Kotick/Activision find new ways to charge more for the same thing, thus generating more income.

My primary issue is not with Valve's goals - I think a company in today's world needs to do more than the usual press release crap of Activision Blizzard if they expect brand name loyalty, and Valve do this in new and exciting ways, such as the Portal 2 information leak that was completed with an update to Portal.  Their games are also of an extemely high calibre, and they tend to take their time on something to get it right (Half-Life 2: Episode 3) or provide a lot of post release content to make a purchase more attractive in the long term (Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source).

My primary issue with Valve isn't with their game development, but rather with practically everything else Newell mentioned.  As a service, Steam is incredibly unreliable and they have an almost complete lack of customer service in any and all regards.  They're simply not capable of delivering the quality of service needed to operate at the level.  Their reach is well beyond their grasp.
Numerous cases of over-charging, double charging, etc., for titles have been reported, and the general response from Valve is it's not their problem.  They also have the standing policy of never un-banning an account, and a ban from one title on an account bans the entire account and voids any and all licences connected to it, resulting in people losing thousands of dollars of software because they cheated in one title.
Valve also have some shady business practices in terms of Steamworks, which as you mentioned is intentionally shackled to their store.  Forcing other people's customers to be Valve's customers is entirely unethical, and screams of a company who don't have faith in their services gaining steam (no pun intended) on it's own merits.  It's less about providing a high quality of service or transparency - if it were, why does Steam check for updates at start up, then announce random updates once hte program has started which require a program restart, while background downloading with no notification of what its downloading - and more about ensuring a high volume of customers, which provides them with more muscle in terms of negotiating contracts.

While I can appreciate what Valve are trying to do, I've pretty much lost faith in them.  Left 4 Dead 2 is a good example of their shifting business focus, and the E3 surprise could have quite easily been Left 4 Dead 3, and no one would've been surprised.
Now that they've got enough muscle with their customer numbers on the PC, they've moved over to the larger console market, with the PS3 being the only console willing to allow a developer to operate their own service on it.  The decision was less about providing a better customer experience, and more about gaining better numbers of customers.

I use Steam, but I don't buy full products on it that aren't made by Valve, and I don't buy full titles that are shackled to it like Civilization V.  God forbid they over-charge me for Civilization V and then ban my entire account for charging back their account for my money after they ignore my emails and delete my forum posts.  If I had to pick a single company through whom I had to go through to game on the PC, Valve are not the ones I would pick.

I am not sure if I agree with this idea. Today's world pretty much says Activision Blizzard can do whatever the hell they want and their fans will by the game regardless. Lack of dedicated servers, 15 dollar map packs (part of which are recycled maps), splitting a game into 3 parts. If  anything, 2K just wants a piece of that. I mean get rabid fans to give you more money, funnel them to one service, start charging the hell out of them for small incremental additions they label DLC. Sounds like a gravy train to me. Personally, I've seen a lot of expansion packs these days featuring less and less often because of the DLC released around them.

In any event, Activision Blizzard has no reason to change. Most their players aren't knowledgable about the subject to care, or just don't care in general. I saw a couple of people surprised by some issues with MW2, but those 15 dollar map packs and 25 dollar mount sales... what do they care if they lose some fans when they've got others willing to pay 2 or 3 times what was lost by the people turned off by the business practice.

And how is that necessary in order to prove Aractain's assertions regarding my opinions are false?

Answer -- it isn't.

Aractain put false words into my mouth.  Correcting that didn't require stating exactly which decisions of Newell's I don't like.  The salient point is that his false choices were incorrect, and I gave the correct reason which you quoted.

Your expectations are just that -- your expectations.  I accept responsibility for what I do.  I do not accept responsibility for what you expect me to do.

I wasn't vague.  I presented information essentially uncommented upon, for the reader to draw their own conclusions from.

This is the fallacious argument Ad Hominem -- personal attack implying I think I'm superior.

The intention of my post regarding Newell was to put out information essentially uncommented upon and let the reader draw their own conclusions.  I did that.  You expected something different and now criticize because I did not meet your expectations.

Sorry, I was trying to draw a clearer line between what Valve means and what it actually does.  Obviously I didn't.  I'm in support for a company being more one-on-one with it's customers.  Valve does this in part, with it's Portal 2 information leak, which I can assure you fans really enjoy.  However, Valve are trying to become a faceless corporation with their Steam service - their customer support system is almost entirely automated, and all replys to your emails are copy/paste answers to ensure complete compliance with their terms of service agreement - so their contradicting itself.  They want Stardock's loyal fanbase, Microsoft's level of industry control and Activision Blizzard's profit margin.


And there is the problem.  The mindset of "ROFLCOPTER A business is truying to make munniez, and you think theys evil? ROFLCOPTERTEABAG11!!!111ELVEN IMA BUY CoD51 DAY ONE BITCHNOOBS!" sums up the majority of Activision Blizzard repeat customers.  Educating these people is the only way to put a top to the industry wide shift towards Activision Blizzard's business practices, and if we were actually capable of educating those morons we could solve around 95% of the worlds problems overnight.

Seriously... To me, you sounded like you were saying X. I posted that.

Then you start attacking my post for trying to "put words in your mouth". You know, rather than saying "Thats not what I mean". In fact it sounds like that IS what you mean (you want Gabe to focus on making better games rather than profit), and you are just trying to deflect my observation.

I make a half serious observation and you try and dismantel it rather than replying to it or ignoring it - the man doth protest too much!

 

If Gabe Newell says "I want to give more people access to this service without them knowing" for example, I would say that it sounds like hes saying he wants to intall steam with windows or maybe with a rootkit.

Thats not me saying "OMG GABE NEWELL WANTS TO USE ROOTKITS TO RAISE STEAMS MARKETSHARE!!".

There is a difference.

 

As for Steam, I do not like the power they are getting to hold in this market, it needs compition to force steam to improve their services, the quaility and ultimately their attitude. That cannot happen without serious opposition because steam is still the BEST choice for both developers and customers (compared to antiquated services like Gamespy and faliures like GFWL).

I totaly think the way DLC is moving forward as oppossed to expansion packs (and thier value) is troubling and is probably the main draw for publishers over the savings on using Steamworks rather than rolling their own.

 

Impulse is already late, Reactor is way late (as in we needed it ages ago). Hurry up guys.

Reminds me of those "scratch and win" days at M&M where with every purchase you win some kind of discount, up to the whole thing free.

And he's right. The overwhelming majority of users don't care if Steam knows what hardware they have if in exchange people make games their computers can actually play, instead of what we got back when PC game makers assumed everybody had a $3000 PC and upgraded yearly.

Also, see Facebook. Privacy isn't something the average user cares about a whole lot.

He's right about that too. With Destiny's Embers, even Stardock is getting in on the tie ins to other mediums. If people like a game world enough to want more of it, why not give them what they want? (Just hire some decent writers for the love of god. I'm looking at you, Blizzard.)

Also not a surprise, it's been known for a while that they can dramatically boost sales volume on games by dropping the price and having sales. The current high price only sticks at all because the day 1 buyers will pay it, and selling it to them at $20 when they would buy it for $50 doesn't make a lot of financial sense (and on the consoles, Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo dictate what the starting price is).

Of course it's not an accident, I told you that a page ago. The whole reason Steamworks features are offered to developers for free is because Valve gets Steam on more systems out of it. That is the goal. They're pretty open about it.

The main sentiment from this page I agree with is that we need Reactor to be released and do well, to keep Valve honest. Steamworks as it is right now is pretty good for game developers. Steam as a monopoly doesn't have the same incentive to offer Steamworks for free anymore. Competition is good.

Indeed, I actually expect content in posts. You spend entire posts pointing out fallacies and use big words like ad hominem (BTW, ad hominem can't be applied if I wasn't making an argument. When I say that you think you are better than people, that's all I'm saying. I'm not saying your argument is incorrect because you think you are superior. That would be ad hominem. I'm just saying you think you're superior.)

People like bonscott I may disagree with vehemently, but at least he posts actual content and tries to back it up, instead of posting entire posts of nothing, then making some snide remark at the end and saying that other people can't argue anything because "I really didn't say anything."

But you are right. You really didn't say anything.

"I wasn't vague.  I presented information essentially uncommented upon, for the reader to draw their own conclusions from."

"I think some of his decisions make the game worse for me."

I'm still waiting to hear which decisions you think make the game worse for you.

Interesting.  I hit "quote" for Aractain's post (reply #575) and it lists this:

Forums borked again?

Anyway, on to the reply to Aractain...

I accept that you believe that.  Whether you accept you're wrong...  believe what you wish.

Agreed.

I hadn't considered steam and all this before the civ5-steam-only-and-required news.  It's interesting, from an intellectual perspective, how the game industry is evolving.  Same thing has occurred in many other areas. 

They say (whoever they are) that empires have 3 stages.  First the explorers, that chart the way, creating something from nothing (think USA's 'manifest destiny' era).  Next are the managers who take what's been started and develop it, make it work efficiently, make it strong and prosperous (think USA in the 50s-60s or so).  Last comes the users who 'exploit' it, or 'harvest' it, living off what's been created as it slowly declines (think USA deep in debt and crumbling infrastructure and unaffordable social security/etc. programs).

Valve's an empire that's exiting the first stage and entering the second.

I'm old enough to remember journalists -- newspeople who reported news.  Back then opinions were the province of the editorial page.  News was 'just the facts', essentially uncommented upon, for the viewer to draw their own conclusions from.  Today it's different.  Journalists have been replaced by pundits and stenographers, and you can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone shouting out their uninformed opinions.

That you don't think my presenting information in the form of a number of Newell's posts, essentially uncommented upon, for the reader to draw their own conclusions from, is 'content' -- well, I won't comment upon that either.

Have a nice day...

Dad used to say "the less you expect of others the happier you'll be".

Most of us have to learn things the hard way (like me    ), meaning it'll have to get a whole lot worse before it gets better, and then any improvement will be temporary until the lessons are once again forgotten.  You know this, yet fight the good fight anyways.

Salute!

Nothing like reporting and then throwing in ""I think some of his decisions make the game worse for me." without saying anything more specific. "Essentially uncommented upon." Hah.

I've asked you 3 times to actually clarify which of those decisions make the game worse for you, and you've avoided doing so all three times. This journalism defense is a new one.

Why are you so afraid of stating your opinions? They can't be that tenuous, can they?

Petulance is unbecoming.

Let's try for asking me 4 times, shall we?  Maybe that'll help you to have an even nicer day

"Impulse doesn't need to be open to be able to play the games you bought off them."

 

Not all games delivered by STEAM needs your STEAM app to be open. A lot of titles, including all Paradox Interactive titles (EUIII, Vicky2, HoI3), have no DRM at all, you can play it without STEAM, you just use it do download the game.

 

The company/publisher decides if he wants or not the STEAM DRM or just use it as a digital publishing tool. Same thing with Steamworks.

 

So, don't bash STEAM, they are offering a service. The problem lies within the companies that relies and search this kind of service. I already bought my Civ V - standart edition, because not even my endless admiration of Sid Meier will make me pay extra 10 dollars for a civ that historically has always been part of the package and is already done and integrated in the game.

 

I use STEAM and IMPULSE. Both of them are open right now. I also use GOG (Good Old Games) for my good old games!

[quote who="Faust.br" reply="584" id="2777941"]"Impulse doesn't need to be open to be able to play the games you bought off them."

 

Not all games delivered by STEAM needs your STEAM app to be open. A lot of titles, including all Paradox Interactive titles (EUIII, Vicky2, HoI3), have no DRM at all, you can play it without STEAM, you just use it do download the game.

 

The company/publisher decides if he wants or not the STEAM DRM or just use it as a digital publishing tool. Same thing with Steamworks.

 

So, don't bash STEAM, they are offering a service. The problem lies within the companies that relies and search this kind of service. I already bought my Civ V - standart edition, because not even my endless admiration of Sid Meier will make me pay extra 10 dollars for a civ that historically has always been part of the package and is already done and integrated in the game.

 

I use STEAM and IMPULSE. Both of them are open right now. I also use GOG (Good Old Games) for my good old games!
[/quote]

I use Steam fairly frequently. Every game I have purchased from them, so far, when you start the exe. loads up the steam client first and then the game. It's a legitmate concern and not a "bash".