Empire using Steam; Gamespot interview/preview

[Zenicetus]

You have a point.

OTOH, I'd like to play MTW or STW (since I dislike the more recent TW efforts) but AFAIK I cant without screwing with the video drivers and other components of the reasonably modern PC that I have here in NJ. While it's true that Steam may go out of business, it's more likely that changes to the PC hardware and OS will render ETW unplayable before that happens.

Sure, that's a valid point too. There's a window of time beyond which you can't reasonably expect to play older computer games, unless you keep an old PC around just for that purpose. But I think many of us would still like the same window of time we've had with previous games, for playing on older platforms that can still run these things. Invasive DRM shouldn't be the limiting factor there.

I have a bunch of games in my closet that I've re-installed over the years. Heck, I might want to revisit Rome one of these days, and re-install RTW for a little Phalanx-busting action. And I can still do that, as long as I don't jump too many generations of hardware and OS into the future. I don't think that's too much to ask for, when we're paying $60 for a game.

If the game companies want to rent us games as a limited-time service, pay-as-you-go for as long as the company lasts, at an appropriate price for a monthly rental, that would be one thing. And I think many of us might go for that. But this isn't what they're doing. They're charging a full commodity price for the game, as if we could use it forever (as long as we have the hardware to run it). But there's a time bomb attached to the game, that may nor not may go off at some future time when the company goes out of business.

[macduro]

If the game companies want to rent us games as a limited-time service, pay-as-you-go for as long as the company lasts, at an appropriate price for a monthly rental, that would be one thing. And I think many of us might go for that. But this isn't what they're doing. They're charging a full commodity price for the game, as if we could use it forever (as long as we have the hardware to run it). But there's a time bomb attached to the game, that may nor not may go off at some future time when the company goes out of business.

Valve has said in some ocasions that if eventually they go out of bussines the will release a steam edition that allows you to continue playing your games offline , without loguin in to the valve servers .
At this moment there are some cracking tools that allows you to do this things , so if Steam eventually closes his doors you can be sure that you will not lost your games.

Steam is a great plataform , it has some incovenients for the customers but offers great things .
The most important thing to now about steam is that it's a plataform for games from valve , valve rent his space to another companies for sell his games online .
The support for the nonvalve games that are on steam is responsability of this other companies ,and sometimes the use to release bad ports to steam , with versions taht are bugged , not fully updated or with very expensive price if we compare it with the retail version .

[nameless]

They're charging a full commodity price for the game, as if we could use it forever (as long as we have the hardware to run it). But there's a time bomb attached to the game, that may nor not may go off at some future time when the company goes out of business.

There's also the chances of your computer blowing up or someone breaking into your house and breaking the computer, and the internet collapsing with a nuclear war breaking out.

SEGA/CA don't have a crystal ball that tells them when or if they will go under.

And besides, as macduro noted, how hard is it for someone to bring out a patch/program to deactivate the STEAM part?