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Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2447 Joined: 4 Jun 2009     | |
Copy Clerk Posts: 72 Joined: 3 Dec 2008    |
That sums up my opinion on the boycott. However, they very much seem damned if they do and damned if they don't. |
Muckraker  Posts: 261 Joined: 4 Jul 2008     |
Not totally. Activision is in it for the money I am willing to bet they wont be to happy about stores pulling there products, as even if it is only a little it will hamper their sales (as not every one wants to use the pile of crap that is steam). This will either make them think twice about doing this again or in a best case scenario put out an altered version for sale. Even if they are not that lucky it will make activision think twice about doing this again and even taking a hit on a big name like this is worth it if you have a long term pay off. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 4938 Joined: 10 Jan 2009     | ALL HAIL STEAM! But yeah, it's a move that makes sense for them, even though I doubt that it'll do much in the end. |
Muckraker  Posts: 251 Joined: 16 Apr 2009    |
Purchasing a product from an inferior retailer/service for the sake of market diversity is at best doing yourself a disservice and at worst reinforcing mediocrity. I don't think that anyone here is advocating market monopolies, just saying "oh, well that's cool for valve, because I like them." What D2D needs to do is reevaluate market standards (now set by Steam) and adapt accordingly. They shouldn't have used MW2 as a soapbox, either. Now they'll have hundreds of thousands of loyal customers pissed at them. What they should have done was out this months ago and use their customer base as leverage. Even that would only be a temporary fix. They need to adapt. You can't try to hold the market where you want it, you have to move with the ebb and flow. Adapt or die! |
Muckraker  Posts: 226 Joined: 18 May 2008     | No big lose imo, I've never had a good experience with D2D anyway |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1401 Joined: 17 Nov 2008    | D2D is crap anyway, I'd take steam over it anyday of the week. |
Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 753 Joined: 17 Mar 2009   |
It's just really odd that D2D has in fact sold a few games that require steam before, such as Dawn of War II, Saint's Row II, and I believe Defense Grid: The Awakening. |
Paperboy  Posts: 38 Joined: 27 Jul 2009   | Okay, isn't there a bit of a problem with their strategy? If all the other digital distributors boycott it then people are going to have to buy it from steam if they want to download it (and not pirate it). Their practically giving them a monopoly for this title! Okay I understand that they don't want people to have to download steam if they download it from them, but there going to have to do that if they want to download it legally. Plus if they use one of these other digital distributors more anyways then just downloading steam won't change anything. They'll still be able to get other games from the digital distributor of their choice. |
Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 788 Joined: 28 Jun 2008     | I have Steam, but what the hell is Direct 2 Drive? |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1361 Joined: 25 Feb 2009    | companies dont want to sell the competitors products, i dont see anything weird about that. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2500 Joined: 6 Apr 2009   | I actually think I'm going to support D2D on this. |
Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 834 Joined: 4 Oct 2007   | Direct2Drive is a very required niche for digital distribution. There are plenty of people who hate the need to start up an extra program with unwanted features - Steam - to play their game. They just want to install it and play it. I'm not one of those people, but they have to be sympathized with, and D2D is perfect for that. There are only a few non-Valve games that actually use Steam to its full end. This includes Red Orchestra, Killing Floor, and perhaps a few indie games like Rag Doll Kung Fu (which no one ever plays) |
Beat Writer  Posts: 127 Joined: 25 Sep 2008 |
Quoting just in case a million posts show up before I finish typing. I actually really agree with that, because as others have stated, it is, in fact, not a bad business decision. It makes a lot of sense because, as has been said repeatedly, why should D2D and others sell a product which features and seemingly fully endorses a competitor company? Think of it like this, before Nintendo Power started using Ads constantly, and began to promote other consoles, it would have been unheard of for them to mention, let alone promote, a series on another platform. Unless they singled out the only entry on their own, as they did with Castlevania by omitting non-Nintendo entries to the series on a timeline once. Not that I had plans to by MW2 anyways, because I just don't find those games enjoyable. But Katna314 brings up a very good point about using Steam just to play a game that doesn't even require it (logically, not specifically). Spore is a good example of this. It forces you to turn on EA Download Manager, even though simply playing the game has no use for it whatsoever, it's just another stupid process that's going on in the background slowing down your computer. Sadly, many Valve-made games DO force you to use Steam while playing them, even if you purchased the boxed version that has the discs and everything. I hate having to turn on Steam when I play Portal, but I'm kind of unable to turn that feature off. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1604 Joined: 18 Mar 2009   | Why can't we all just get along? |
Beat Writer  Posts: 205 Joined: 28 Apr 2008  | By God! the PC gaming world is erupting into an all out civil war! QUICK GET TO THE PANIC ROOM! |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1447 Joined: 15 May 2008  |
Dear LORD. Activision Blizzard are up themselves. I can't wait till the whole Modern Warfare thing blows over so we can get back to more important things. On topic: I agree. The idea of D2D selling the game, only to have them "sell" Steam along with it is a stupid idea and they're doing the right thing by not selling it. I don't think it's so much of a boycott. That word is thrown around so much these days. |
Copy Clerk  Posts: 88 Joined: 8 Feb 2008  | Are you all forgetin what happen when you installed DOW II? Not only did you have to install that bullshit of a service GFWL but also Steam. Dont get me wrong I like Valve i just dont want them stickin there fingers in every game i own. |
Anonymous Source Posts: 9 Joined: 21 Oct 2009  |
Me too, nothing like making a hypocritical stand when it's going to have the loudest effect. There is also that my experience using Steam to authenticate a D2D game sucked, I got messages of it not being authenticated for a day before it actually went through. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1640 Joined: 10 Sep 2008  | God damn I hate steam, thank god they are boycotting it. It's stupid how devs force so many layers of DRM that ultimately acheive nothing (also I particularly hate having to use the steam platform, I know that many a fanboy will hate me for this but it's nowhere near as good as impulse). Especially ones like steam that are such a royal pain in the ass to work with (I live in Australia, our internet sucks balls, how about not having stupid update systems that we cannot work around).
Man steam breaks killing floor. I get why they're using it, and in that instance I'm not particularly against it (as nobody else was likely to sell it and it would get banhammered before you can say zombie survival down under if it tried to go retail). The steam overlay kills it (regularly crashes it on all of my mates computers), can't lan 2 offline profiles of the same account (I really don't want to have to buy a game twice so I can play my brother in a lan, every valve game I'd tried this with allows it, as does UT2004 so I don't understand where the baring comes from) and the server connection is hardly perfect (though the ingame one isn't good either). It certainly isn't accurate to say it uses steam to it's full end, it (Steam) isn't executed as well as it is for valve games (again, I'd like to point out how pants on head the updating system is for steam). |
Muckraker  Posts: 337 Joined: 29 Jul 2009  |
The article wasn't even about the pros and cons of DD services, it was about how Direct2Drive was driven to a forced boycott, and that is exactly what it is. Activision set up a lose-lose situation for Direct2Drive, and the repercussions will definitely show in the future. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1640 Joined: 10 Sep 2008 |
Their reasoning behind not selling it is because they are being forced to add in third party software (it so happens it's their main competitor). I'm well aware of what's happening, my point is that I'm glad their doing it outside of their own agenda (I don't particularly care if they promote their competitors), as it's a dick move to force gamers to install steam (especially with games that have no need for it, like dawn of war 2). I'm a little crushed that retailers haven't take a similar stance, as steam still directly competes with boxed copies, hopefully sometime soon this annoying trend of annoying extra programs will be optional. |
Muckraker Posts: 337 Joined: 29 Jul 2009 |
As far as I can tell, you're agreeing with me. Well, maybe not with the retail, since retail and Digital Distribution are two separate venues, each with their pros and cons. I just want to make sure, you think it's a dick move that Direct 2 Drive users have to install steam, because they are competitors, right? If so, then I completely agree with you. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1640 Joined: 10 Sep 2008 |
I think it's a dick move that any platform other than steam is forced to isntall steam. Retail is different from digital download, but they are still competing. D2D are completely justified in refusing to sell the product, and I only wish more distributers would follow suite. So yes, we are in complete agreeance with the D2D issue, and I also think that retail (and all digital platforms) should take a similar path. They don't force you advertise retail when you buy impulse, or promote impulse when you buy D2D so why should distributers cooperate with publishers who give competing platforms special treatments? |
Beat Writer  Posts: 196 Joined: 6 Jun 2008   |
That's actually not true (at least not unless you got it digital download from EADM in the first place). I bought my copy of Spore retail and it runs fine without EADM. (Which is good, since EADM is such a piece of crap that it crashed four times [in a row] the one time I did try to install it, and crashed again [and exited] when trying to run.)
That's true. When I bought Fallout 3 via Steam, I discovered that the achievement system etc was tied into the GFWL crapware. (Good news: you can play without GFWL, and if you do, game startup is much faster. Bad news: if you do, no achievements.) So I can understand (and applaud) their position, even though I like Steam. But I suspect that they've taken it way too late to do anything more than drive customers to their competitors. The dick move is most likely on the part of the developers of MW2, though. Steamworks is specifically targeted as an API for working with Steam, for games sold via Steam. If the games are being sold via other channels, they should be using the APIs for those channels instead. It's long been a pet peeve of mine that if games want to provide achievements, they should include full achievement browsing UI in the game itself, and merely use platform APIs to register them with the outside world when applicable. So a game sold via Steam should get in-game and Steam achievements; a game sold via GFWL should get in-game and GFWL achievements; a game sold for PS3 should get in-game and PSN achievements; a game sold for PC retail (or through a service that doesn't have an achievement API) should still get in-game achievements. A game sold via Steam should never need GFWL, or vice versa. Similarly a game sold via Steam should use the Steam DRM, and one at retail should use something else non-Steam (even though that usually tends to be Safedisc or Securom). There shouldn't be any crossover -- it's a platform packaging thing. |
Copy Clerk Posts: 97 Joined: 24 Dec 2008  | good for you D2D, stand up for what you believe in and dont let the big players push you around It has certainly made me want to buy from you (more often) knowing that some of my money is going to a down to earth organisation that believes in themselves |
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Would have done if it was clear you meant that particular game.