Zachary Amaranth said:
EA isn't allowed to have difficulty with one person.
Yeah, but EA isn't having difficult with one person, it's having difficulty with thousands. One person is talking about his issues here. Just like if one person was talking about their Steam issues here, you'd be able to say the exact opposite.
Zachary Amaranth said:
The_Lost_King said:
maybe because steam is run by valve who are angels and gives our games to us on a gold platter and ea are devils who sold their souls and are trying to get you to do the same /sarcasm
Well, there is that....
Also, EA kicks more puppies per capita than Steam.
But, in all seriousness, and I'll come back to this in a minute, Steam has done a lot to engender consumer trust, EA hasn't.
Zachary Amaranth said:
Angry Juju said:
It's because steam is a good service, they do have errors like these companies but they're rarer so people are willing to look past them. Oh and steam have major sales every other month and give away free games for little to no reason.(I got the witcher and counter strike this christmas, i know my friend got deus ex HR).
Actually, Steam errors like this were far more common and widespread. We're talking one or two people complaining about a lack of activation codes, when Steam has sold out and left thousands in the lurch.
Steam deals and freebies are not "little to no reason." They want to be a monopoly.
No, they don't want a monopoly, they want loyalty. The difference is the difference between EA's approach and Steam's. Origin is about creating a monopoly. It is about forcibly excluding competitors. It's about making Mass Effect 3 and The Old Republic Origin exclusives. A monopoly is about squeezing as much money as you can from your consumer by taking away their choice not to. Building up brand loyalty is about getting your customer to give you money.
The hilarious thing about Steam are all the people who spend ridiculous amounts of money during the major sales, and afterwards are left wondering, "why the fuck did I buy this?" While still going back again with the next sale. And Steam makes bank on every one of those sales.
Unless Origin really gets it's shit together, it's never going to be there. It's what they want, but they're approaching it with the wrong business model. Every time Origin gets caught rifling through your hard drive, triggering a criminal investigation in the EU over data privacy, every time they get caught banning people from their legal purchases for providing technical support on the forums, and every time they get caught saying they'll wipe your purchases after two years, they end up looking like the bad guys, they make that harder, and they get more people who would gleefully crucify them for their actions.
Steam isn't perfect. Put a better digital distribution system on the market, and I guarantee you, people will flock to it, but right now, no one can compete with Steam.
The thing about this is, and it's really stupid, but the thing is, Steam isn't doing anything particularly well, it's just doing everything competently. There are problems, some serious ones, but there are very few egregious failures like GFWL, Origin, D2D or even Impulse have.
Zachary Amaranth said:
SmashLovesTitanQuest said:
I have 44 games on Steam and I never once had any trouble purchasing them and getting them to work. (Apart from slow download speeds during the sales.)
Well, it's never happened to you, therefore those widespread outages that were actually confirmed never happened. I forgot.
The thing is, for all the users Steam has who do have issues, they are in the extreme minority. This isn't to say they aren't valid, but for every user that has an issue, there are many many more who don't. Is this okay? Eh, not really, but if you've ever worked in sales/retail/whatever, you know that it will never be possible to have a 100% satisfaction.
Rednog was talking about his experience with Steam Customer Support, and that runs in almost direct opposition to mine. The longest I've ever seen a customer service issue with them remain open, personally, was two days. Maybe I'm lucky, but both extremes exist.
Zachary Amaranth said:
Signa said:
That's completely different. Those weren't Valve games that ran out of codes, it was the failings of the companies behind the games that ran out of keys that caused those issues.
Except the complaint was that this was an issue of inconvenience in digital distribution services, and that doesn't change because it was "someone else's fault."
Sorry I hurt people's feelings by applying logic evenly, instead of convenient excuses because I like one service and hate all the others.
Yeah, but you're still coming across like you have an agenda, no offense. You might want to work on that a bit.
