One DD service to rule them all, and in the Cloud bind them.....

[Petromir]

THe situation between EA and its Origin service and Valve and it's Steam service has got me thinking, and mad e me revisit an old idea I once espoused on a forum (probably even this one).

The revised Idea is as such that there should be a service that allows you to use all of your DD games from any of the major services. For new purchases this should be automatic, for olsder purchases a small flat conversion fee should be charged if you want your back catlogue added. This should also apply to new hard copies to.

Said system would not only increase choice but encourage proper competion and improvement of the services.

This emans competition would be refocused on the important things, like how good the service is to use, and cost, rather than anti-competitive practices like making things exsclusive to one store. (For the record I feel neither Valve or EA is blameless here, but I know who I suspect is being the bigger idiots here, I wont give thei name here, but suffice to say their company name is usually abbreivated to 2 letters...).

From memory the services that at very least would need to be included here would be:

Steam
D2D
Impulse
Origin

To go with this there would need to be greater clarification both from goverment and from an industry body set up for the purpose on what constitutes reasonable terms and conditions, and protections for the customer, and industry from abuse of the system.

 

[yuval152]

Good idea,but comapnies will never do such things they'd rather get more money by themself so it won't be shared.

 

[wordsmith]

This emans competition would be refocused on the important things, like how good the service is to use, and cost, rather than anti-competitive practices like making things exsclusive to one store.

Problem is, this isn't how competition works. Competition means lower prices ("Look, Steam are selling it for £5, buy it from us and pay £4 instead!"), better service ("We look after our customers better than EA, buy from us instead") and ultimately a more varied experience.

With one service, they can put the prices as high as they like without anyone to offer an alternative. Their service can be as sloppy as they like, because there's no alternative. They can completely block indy developers out of the market, because there's no alternative way to distribute new games.

All in all, competition is a good thing. The thing that needs changing is human nature, and that will never happen.

 

[tharglet]

Nice idea, but you'd need to get the services to agree to allow you to add their stores together.
Atm some of the services are too young, so we're prolly best off waiting and see if the new services actually survive any true length of time.

Way Origin is going, they don't have me as a customer. When you charge more than bricks n' mortar stores, you're really not trying.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Whats needed is far simpler, an collating UI that interfaces with all the different DD services and lets you launch any of your games from a single applet. Select a game, that link will launch the requisite program (some, like steam, require their program to be running), then launch the title.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

I say nay!

That would make the PC another console. It's bad enough that so many people refuse to buy if a game is not on Steam. As I see it they are actively combating what is great about the PC as a platform: freedom of choice.

Any closed system is a bad thing. Steam is bad enough seeing as it requires me to run it in the background. I don't like that. I much prefer GamersGate (even if they are borked right now with slow downloads), seeing as the are much cheaper, has a good bunch of titles and don't force me to run their DRM system to play my games. Impulse is the same. And gog.com for that matter.

Add to that my never-ending moaning about Steam ripping me off with insane prices.

I, much to my surprise, find myself hoping that Origin will be a success and knock Steam down a peg. Might teach Valve to implement prices that don't rip me off and get some better customer support.

 

[RetardedKitty]

Hmmm the idea is good but there is planty of reasoning why it would fail in the posts above mine.... But what if there would be a software/freeware that would just make all the Steam,D2D,Impulse,Origin in to one application. Just one program that makes that instead of four of them you have just one.

 

[Bad Jim]

Hmmm the idea is good but there is planty of reasoning why it would fail in the posts above mine.... But what if there would be a software/freeware that would just make all the Steam,D2D,Impulse,Origin in to one application. Just one program that makes that instead of four of them you have just one.

I think they would insist on using their program so their DRM would be running, their update system would be running, and they can fix their software themselves if people start complaining their games don't work. They don't want to be dependent on third party software if they can avoid it.

It would be nice if you could launch the games from a single front end though. Actually I think it would be pretty easy to hack together. Someone is probably making one on Sourceforge.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Said system would not only increase choice but encourage proper competion and improvement of the services.

Except that's the antithesis of any real corporate agenda. The theoretical ideal of any For-Profit organization is to eliminate their competition so that they could attain a monopoly; by becoming the only source, they have the power to set whatever price they need to (at the risk of collapsing their own market).

"Competition" is a benefit for the customer and check of market balance. Anyone would love to be able to make a lot of money for minimal/little effort.