Empire using Steam; Gamespot interview/preview

[Monk]

The problem with anything involving online authorization is the unknowable lifespan of the authorizing company and its servers. What happens when you want to re-visit one of these current DRM'd or online-only download games five years from now, when you'll probably be using a different computer and you'll need a fresh install? Heck, we might even be using a different version of the Internet by then. Are you 100% sure that Steam will still be around then? Have you never re-installed an older game during a dry spell, or just for fun? I do it all the time. PC operating systems have been stable enough that I can load most (if not all) of the games I've bought in the last 5 or 6 years with no problems.

There might be unlocked copies still floating around if Steam goes belly-up... a good company would make sure of that. But that's also a gamble. I think that's a big concern for many of us. Not for everyone, of course. I know friends who go through games a lot faster than I do, and basically never look back at older titles. They treat games as short-term disposables. And to be honest, some genres like shooters are basically disposable after one or two play-throughs. Strategy games, tactical combat sims, and good RPG's can have more potential for long life and re-installation, down the road.

If "renting" instead of true ownership (in the sense of the buyer's freedom to install at any future point in time, hardware-permitting) is indeed be the future of PC gaming, then let's have the game companies just come out and say it. Develop a pricing model that's appropriate for a rental product, instead of this antique notion that a $60 game is a purchase with a guaranteed long lifespan at the user's discretion.

Oh i understand completely what you are saying.

It's the same argument that was brought up in the shadow of the Spore fiasco. When does purchasing a game with intrusive protection grant true ownership and when does it only offer a "rental" status, to steal your term. I do much the same, to use a TW game to illustrate your point STW has been on and off my hard drive numerous times over the last ten years. I've even bought the game on three separate occasions, either from losing the CD-key or just breaking the disk. I love that game and its ambiance has not be recreated in the series sense.

However, times have changed. The gaming industry loses millions of dollars each year from piracy and illegal downloads. It is the single greatest threat to developers and companies, and something that has grown by leaps and bounds in the last five years alone. CD-keys have been replaced by Steam-IDs and in much more extreme cases, by pieces of technology that actually verify if you're using the disk or not, or those that actually limit what you're able to do with the game you paid for. The fear that you will be left unable to play ETW after steam is long gone, however, is one I would not hold. To believe that no one, nowhere, would not attempt to crack the steam encoding is a pretty bold statement. There's always work-arounds.

You have to be pragmatic in the market. IMHO Steam is truly the best option of all the copy-protection systems and offers the least intrusive from my own experiences. There may come a day when a better and more reliable option than Steam presents itself, and when that happens I will gladly sing its praises as well. But with the memories of the recent copy-protection experiments made by EA,(which is to say nothing of SecuROM on Kingdoms!) I take the news of ETW being a "steam powered" game with a grain of salt. So I am smiling, because it could be a lot worse.