Saints Row: The Third to require online pass for co-op.

[WanderingFool]

I pre-ordered, so it doesnt bother me.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

You know what's hilarious about this whole scenario? If retail outlets bought a handful of online passes and stuck them in their used copies and bumped up the price, no-one would be complaining.

The only reasons there's a fucking uproar is because the passes are being sold directly to the consumer instead of to the distributor.

I find step 4) STRAP IT ON rather ironic because it is in fact the customer who will be taking it up the ass.

Let's think about what I'm paying for as an Xbox 360 owner who gets this game and play it online. First, I paid for the used game ($50). Second I paid for my Xbox to play the game ($250). Third, I paid for Xbox Live ($10/month). Fourth I paid for my internet ($20/month). Now they want me to pay for the passcode ($10). That's a $310 investment with $30 in monthly fees. I am paying money to Microsoft, my ISP, Gamestop, and THQ. Why do I have to pay for THQ's servers AND Xbox Live? What is Xbox Live even doing for me in this situation?

Dicking you out of 10 bucks a month from the sound of it...

 

[direkiller]

Oh so I'm not entitled to multiplayer on a game I've bought? Buying it used is a punishable offence, is it?

Well, looks like that's the last I buy from them. But I could have told you they were doing this with some games last year.

Gamers today are self entitled.

Yeah, how dare gamers want the right to a second-hand market? It's not like it has a right to exist....

OH WAIT, IT TOTALLY DOES.

Maybe you should look up "entitled," because the way you're using it, it applies more to the companies who are arguing they should get bonus money for used titles. They're not entitled to that. Sorry.

I don't agree that charging extra for coop on second hand copies is the best idea, but I also don't agree that devs should get no money for their games.

they already have money from when the game was bought new

if i buy the game new and keep it forever
but my buddy buys new sells it back and the next guy keeps it forever the dev still makes the same amount of money

Second hand market is beneficial to them weather they see it or not. You can look to the PC for a place that's devoid of a 2nd hand market but somehow still manages to sell less copys then the consoles that do have a second hand market(even if you take into account pirated copys as a sale its still lower).

Steam remedied that issue. The only reason PC sells less is because of retail. PC games have switched to digital long ago, and now PC is much healthier than console gaming right now.

The second hand market is a symptom of bad business practices, a monopoly, a symptom that causes a cascade effect that will lead to the collapse of the entire market. The only reason used game sales exist is because console gaming is outpacing its market. Its a growing money pit, one that is making even the biggest of the big sweat. Eventually the greed will overtake the companies, leading to a collapse as it falls under its own weight.

Steam doesn't sell anywhere near the copies retail stores do(curtly Digital Distubition makes up about 20-23% of sales steam is roughly 70% of the DD market share)
and the PC for AAA titles dose not sell anywhere near the copies that consoles have(there's a reason you see them designing games for consoles and porting it over to the PC).

I'm not saying PC gaming is going the way of the dodo I'm just saying it was hurt by actively crushing a second hand market. It makes consumers less likely to buy a game as they have no way of getting even part of the money back. also when you sell something to a store you tend to buy another game(possibly new).

 

[InsanityRequiem]

Online passes screw over the people that rent games. I gotta rent, since I do not have the financial means to CONTINUOUSLY BUY GAMES at $60 a pop. If a section of a game is cut off and I must waste money to get access to a rental, then I'll just send the game back. Which means that THQ, with their online pass, has just cost them a sale.

 

[Yopaz]

Oh no, I have to pay the developers money to get access to all their product.

Whatever shall I do.

Woe is me.

*insert more sarcasm here*

Hey, if you want to promote anti-consumer policies, go for it.

How is it anti-consumer exactly?

I will buy the game new. Therefore I get the code, and the devs get my money.

Gamers today are self entitled.

Oh so I'm not entitled to multiplayer on a game I've bought? Buying it used is a punishable offence, is it?

If you pay the full price you get the full game. It's not that complicated.

If you legally purchase the game, no matter what the price agreed upon, you get the full game. It's not that complicated.

And it's legal for the publisher to make online passes. Do you got a point there?

Yes, that people with large amounts of money can pay lawyers to either find or create a loophole that circumvents consumer rights. We should be outraged that they did this and trying to get a law passed that patches the hole, not going "thank you, sir, may I have another?"

Spoiler: this videoclip shows the reaction of the average gamer to the excesses of the industry

Only problem is, very, very few of them are even trying to get into the "fraternity," which in this metaphor is the industry, so sitting there and asking for more does absolutely nothing positive.

Edit: By the way, in case anyone has a lacking movie education and doesn't know what the clip is from, it's from National Lampoon's Animal House, not some creepy porno.

It's not a loophole at all. Please if you want to use the law to support your whining over the fact that they want money to cover server costs please for the love of god learn the law first.

Call it what you want; it goes completely against the spirit of the law, but follows the letter of the law. To me, that is the definition of a loophole. The biggest mistake consumers ever made was accepting the first EULA, because our rights have been on a downward slope ever since. They aren't licensing the games to us, but because they have a piece of paper that claims they are, they can get away with it. Thing is, those don't even fly in the courts of most countries; in the EU, they're explicitly invalid, and even in the US, their legal status is undecided. It's going to take a ruling by the Supreme Court to decide it, and it will probably be a 5-4 decision, but there's a good chance any EULA which actually made it that far would be struck down.

So World of Warcraft is the biggest lawbreaker of all the game industry by this logic? Not only do we have to pay for the game once. We have to register an account, then we have to pay to maintain their</b servers? It costs money to run servers, thus it's not unfair if we have to pay for it.

No, World of Warcraft is and always has been a service, not a product. The purchase price doesn't pay for the disc so much as the initial 15 days or whatever it is of service. After that, you pay $15 a month. Heck, most of the game isn't even on the disc; it's server side, not client side. With these other games, the online part is hosted by the user, using code that is on the disc -- and therefore part of the sale. Comparing WoW's business model to what's going on here is like comparing the fees on Cable or Satellite Radio to a physical movie or CD.

Edit: And yes, you read that right. The "server costs" are entirely footed by the players; the game company has jack squat to do with it. WoW uses a different system, where the servers are entirely hosted by Blizzard, and therefore have to be paid for on an ongoing basis. Even then, they way overcharge for it; each user incurs a cost on the order of pennies every month, but they each pay out $15. No wonder Blizzard is such a successful corporation...

Yeah, the difference is that you pay to use the servers one time, rather than once a month. Just because there's no content on the servers they cost money to maintain. We pay once, they pay until they decide the servers are dead and not worth keeping up anymore. So they are selling both a game and a service. The game can be played without the service so what are you complaining about?

Edit: even when you're hosting a server you connect through a network that connects you to those you are playing with. It might not be a massive cost for each player, but there is a cost involved. Let me add that you should learn how technology work while you're digging into the laws.

Read my post above this one, bro. You're the one who is showing ignorance here, not me. I've been gaming online since 2002, and have been an active member of multiple server communities. I know how this crap works.

Edit: also, if you're not getting it, the "network" you connect to when the servers are user hosted (and almost all of them are; the few that aren't are just kind of seed servers that are only left up until the community takes off on its own, and matchmaking games don't even go that far) is called "the internet," and you pay your ISP for access to it, not the game company, who has absolutely nothing to do with it. The only cost they have is the stats server, which is such a negligible cost that they may as well be complaining that each new player isn't directly contributing to the cost of heating their offices (in fact, more so, because the server costs way, way less), and tacking a fee on for the purpose.

Wow, you've been playing online since 2002? Then you must clearly know everything about everything. Now if you didn't get it, I was now using sarcasm.

Back in high school we used to play CS over LAN, but we had to dodge Steam because the school network blocked it. What we did was that we cracked the game so it could start without Steam and then we could play LAN. However when I got home and wanted to play online I could not connect to any servers without Steam, and no-one not on the same network could connect to my servers. Why is that? Because internet connection alone is not enough. You can't google your way into a server. Matchmaking works in a way to track down fitting servers based on your demands for you. You connect through a network and while the cost might be minimal, there is a small cost. It's like saying you should not be punished for shoplifting something cheap. The store is losing almost nothing on you doing it.

The internet alone /is/ enough when dedicated servers are involved. The client connects to the server through the internet. Your cracked version of counterstrike was set up to only go through a local network (LAN: Local Area Network), and therefore couldn't connect to any internet based servers. Incidentally, Steam is only involved in Counterstrike as far as launching the game; some of the servers are connected to VAC, valve's anti-cheat service, but that connection is from the game server to the VAC server; the costs involved there, which are even lower than those involved with a game server, aren't directly related to anything done by the users -- and besides, Valve is the only game company that uses their own anti-cheat service. The rest of them either pay to use Punkbuster or pay valve to use VAC in their games -- which is how Valve pays for it. The bill is not footed by the users. Anyway, there are two checks you would have to get through to play a cracked copy of Counterstrike online. The first is getting around the connection to Steam, which you did. The second is connecting to a server which is not VAC secured, which do, in fact, exist. It's not the network's fault if you didn't know enough to do the second part. If you couldn't see the servers at all, it's because whoever cracked it didn't do a very good job, and they somehow disabled internet connections -- which would be silly, because Counterstrike has built in LAN support, so it's not like they would have needed to hack it in and replace the internet functionality with it.

As for matchmaking: it's a peer to peer network. It basically works like bit torrent. This is less like arguing that shoplifting costs Gamestop very little per person, and more like refusing to do business with a store that charges you a fee for enjoying the air conditioning on top of whatever it is you actually buy -- and that's assuming there's any costs involved for the company. The reality is that it's more like a store charging you for the air conditioning you have in your own house, or in the cases of dedicated servers that you play on but don't personally own, it's like going on a beer run for a party at a friend's place, and having them tack on a fee for using your friend's refrigerator to store the beer, even though they have nothing to do with that particular fridge.

And yeah, I've been playing online since 2002. That in itself isn't enough to show that I know what I'm doing, but the fact stated in the same sentence which claims says I've been an active member of multiple server communities (read: the people who use and, for a small percentage of them, pay for the servers) should show that I have some inkling of where the costs go. The fact that you apparently didn't understand what I meant by that shows that it's not me who is lacking information here.

Now if we remove all of this post's bragging about your obviously superior skills to anyone else in the whole wide world I can see you mentioned small costs. Not because of the users. Costs that would be there whatever you do to avoid cheating. On what grounds do you state that there are nothing like that with Saints Row The Third? However, you know what. Don't answer that. Boycott the game and hate THQ all you want for wanting to earn money. In the meantime I will be happy playing Saints Row The Third both offline and online and not caring about you or anyone else who hates it for using online passes.

 

[razor343]

Doesn't affect me in the slighest. I'm perfectly happy to give Volition my money and have pre-ordered my copy of the game yesterday. Not gonna get involved with the Used Game Debate.

 

[Mikeyfell]

snip

I was doing so for laughs. Nothing more. The thing is, I've done the same sorta thing. I fully apologize if you were in any way take aback.

Secondly, I was referring to your part about game developers deserving a cut of second hand sales. Taken on it's own, that goes against the FSD. But if you were referring to them getting money though second hand sales through Online passes, yes. That's in accordance with the FSD. So perhaps we had a miss-communication. In which case, I apologize again.[/quote]

Unless you mean that ALL DLC violates the FSD
Like making a toy that only worked with a specific type of battery
Or that DLC isn't covered under the FSD because DRM doesn't allow you to lend, sell, or give it away
I still don't think it applies though.

Online pass is just a free thing included in the new copy. And it's left up to the owner weather they want to sell it or keep it.'
They could have just as easily not included it in the box and charged everybody full price for it. That's perfectly alright under copyright law.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

STEP 4: STRAP IT ON!
Really? Someone who has massive novelwriting ambitions, but no talent got stuck with writing up the online pass card and decided to get sassy?

 

[Dogstile]

The overwhelming majority of gamers apparently don't agree with you, because online passes have so far been very successful, which is why more and more games keep getting them.

Actually, there was a news story on this very site saying EA wasn't making much off the online pass. Only thing is, its actually cheap as hell to implement, so they'll keep doing it.

I still don't understand it. I like to comparing it to buying a parking ticket. You've paid for that spot (on the server, for game terms) for however long (in this case, forever, if you want to play it for that long). Now what exactly is the difference if you give it to someone else and leave? The spot's been paid for after all.

At least if they're gonna do it, people can admit that its a dick move. Because it really is.

OT: Not gonna affect my preorder, but I may be tempted to email them expressing my dismay at this. Dick move.

 

[Da Orky Man]

Oh no, I have to pay the developers money to get access to all their product.

Whatever shall I do.

Woe is me.

*insert more sarcasm here*

Hey, if you want to promote anti-consumer policies, go for it.

How is it anti-consumer exactly?

I will buy the game new. Therefore I get the code, and the devs get my money.

Gamers today are self entitled.

How about gamers who haven't got their consoles online? They can't access co-op AT ALL. Seems pretty unfair to me.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Oh no, I have to pay the developers money to get access to all their product.

Whatever shall I do.

Woe is me.

*insert more sarcasm here*

Hey, if you want to promote anti-consumer policies, go for it.

How is it anti-consumer exactly?

I will buy the game new. Therefore I get the code, and the devs get my money.

Gamers today are self entitled.

How about gamers who haven't got their consoles online? They can't access co-op AT ALL. Seems pretty unfair to me.

I think the biggest issue is how are they going to access online coop in the first place.

The voucher is for online, not local.

 

[Mikeyfell]

I was just going to go on lurking but this made me facepalm.

1. Used games don't magically appear unless Mickey Mouse is nearby, so why should game developers be "entitled" to both sales. A game must be sold, if it is to be resold as "used"

2. Your talking more Operation 10$ not online passes. In this case they are not giving away any "free" content. The content is being LOCKED from users and this acts as a simple UNLOCK key, nothing more. Now if there truly were free content involved I would be on the side of the Developer's, but as it stands I honestly don't care.

I don't get why that makes you facepalm.

If the developer made a game worth playing, didn't they also make a game worth paying for?
Would you be happier if you had to burn a $10 bill in front of the kinnect in order to unlock the content?

Also they're not getting a share of the used sale, they're giving away something for free in the new copy. The alternative isn't to give the content away for free to everyone the alternative is to wait a while then charge everyone the same for it

(In a perfect world they would give the content away for free, but not everyone's Valve)

I always thought EA called it Operation $10 and Activision called it Online Pass. I don't actually know the difference.

Either way this is just a "Glass half full, glass half empty" debate.
Are they charging used players extra, or are they giving new players free stuff.
They're exactly the same in context.

 

[Firebert]

So I need to directly support the publishers to gain online access? I'm okay with this.

 

[go-10]

who the fuck cares you won't find the game used day 1 anyways
besides its not like the brand new games costs more, they cost the same and have the code inside for FREE, I'm just glad this is putting a stop on pirates

 

[meowchef]

Pretty sure THQ has been doing this for a while now...

 

[MrGalactus]

Oh no, I have to pay the developers money to get access to all their product.

Whatever shall I do.

Woe is me.

*insert more sarcasm here*

Hey, if you want to promote anti-consumer policies, go for it.

How is it anti-consumer exactly?

I will buy the game new. Therefore I get the code, and the devs get my money.

Gamers today are self entitled.

Oh so I'm not entitled to multiplayer on a game I've bought? Buying it used is a punishable offence, is it?

If you pay the full price you get the full game. It's not that complicated.

So it's ok for a book publisher to say "You bought it used, therefore not paying full price as it was on the day of release? well then I guess you don't get chapters 5-9 then. Enjoy our book you bought with your money."

Of course not. You see there's a difference here. When you buy Saints Row The Third used you get a complete experience of the game's offline part. If you want something extra you can choose to get the co-op part. If you don't have it you will still get the full story.
However if the publisher of the book had to pay to keep chapters 5-9 in the book like it costs THQ money to maintain online servers then they should be allowed to remove those chapters. If you compare this to a MMO you should be thrilled this isn't a monthly subscription.

MMO's are persistent worlds that require massive amounts of maintenance so people can jump in and out and of the same world while keeping their progress, SR3 is a single player world with a co-op capability. That required much less maintenance. Remember this only affects consoles, so the online servers are taken care of through Sony and Microsoft.

I don't understand your point. all of the game costs money to make. Every new feature is another few dollars at least. SR3 has 7 voice actor options for the main character, all of whom had to be paid, should THQ say we only get 1 choice because they had to pay "extra" for the others. If they didn't want to pay to put it in and then charge normal price for a game, then they shouldn't have put it in.

Oh so I'm not entitled to multiplayer on a game I've bought? Buying it used is a punishable offence, is it?

Seeing as multiplayer servers don't just create and maintain themselves, and when we buy games used the studio gets $0. Asking us to pay for our place on their servers isn't unreasonable at all.

This is a well-put point, actually, but remember that on Xbox LIVE and PSN, it's Microsoft and Sony who control the servers, not the publisher.

 

[Kopikatsu]

The overwhelming majority of gamers apparently don't agree with you, because online passes have so far been very successful, which is why more and more games keep getting them.

Actually, there was a news story on this very site saying EA wasn't making much off the online pass. Only thing is, its actually cheap as hell to implement, so they'll keep doing it.

I still don't understand it. I like to comparing it to buying a parking ticket. You've paid for that spot (on the server, for game terms) for however long (in this case, forever, if you want to play it for that long). Now what exactly is the difference if you give it to someone else and leave? The spot's been paid for after all.

At least if they're gonna do it, people can admit that its a dick move. Because it really is.

OT: Not gonna affect my preorder, but I may be tempted to email them expressing my dismay at this. Dick move.

I linked to the article's source somewhere in this thread. Probably around page 2-3.

EA made 10-15 million in pure profit from the online passes over the course of a year. Seems rather successful to me.

Anywho, I choose to think of it as...(using the names that someone else did earlier) Jim sells his game to Joe, who then goes online. Joe isn't really replacing Jim's place on the server, because Jim sold the game because he didn't want to play it anymore. If he wasn't playing it, then he wasn't using a spot on the server. By selling it to Joe, who will be taking up a place on the server, it's like a new person joined.

 

[Kopikatsu]

who the fuck cares you won't find the game used day 1 anyways
besides its not like the brand new games costs more, they cost the same and have the code inside for FREE, I'm just glad this is putting a stop on pirates

Actually, there are programs that will generate a working code for online passes. It's been done for Uncharted 3 fairly often.

The problem is, since it needs a working code, that means that people who generate codes are technically stealing codes that people who bought the game new have. So they can buy the game new, put the code in, then have it say the code is invalid because it's already been used. Because it was.

tl;dr, pirates are asshats.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Servers don't create and maintain themselves, no. But the publishers don't have to bother with it. In games with dedicated servers, the gamers host their own servers -- they usually pay for them with donations from server regulars. In the case of matchmaking, there's one central server that handles a tiny amount of data (it literally does nothing but keep track of player stats; things like how many times you've prestiged in a CoD game) and the individual players handle the rest through a peer to peer network. Even then, the bandwidth used by a game is tiny; WoW players cost Blizzard less than a dollar a month a piece, and they're ridiculously hard on the servers. For the average FPS, we're talking kilobytes of data in an average play session, maybe upgraded to megabytes if voice chat is being carried too. That costs next to nothing; the only reason the servers are as expensive as they are is because most groups just rent them from a third party. A lot of older games (with lower system requirements for the server) that still have dedicated servers are hosted on an old linux box in some guys garage, using his home internet connection. The whole "servers are expensive" deal is a lie to get consumers on the publisher's side; gamers, having a history of gullibility in this area, fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

Edit: and to emphasisze, the servers for WoW are hosted by Blizzard. The servers for nearly all FPS's (Planetside and Quake Live being the only exceptions I can think of -- and surprise surprise, the former is on a subscription based model just like WoW, while the latter is free to the user, with ads and premium accounts (which get rid of the ads and let you host your own servers) are hosted by the users, who pay for everything.

Player hosted servers are great, but the idea that they can serve as the whole backbone for a modern AAA game is ridiculous. Gamers are a generally a tech savy bunch, but i very much doubt there are enough out there with the resources and know-how to run enough servers to support millions of users; to say nothing of how many of such people who are willing.

I never claimed that hosting game servers was a crippling expense on gaming companies. I realize that its a relatively cheap operation relative to each individual user. Thats irrelevant. They are providing a service, and can reasonably expect to be compensated for their efforts. It's called capitalism.

They actually do just that, though: do some research into how these systems work, some real research, not just listening to marketing buzz about Project $10. You'll wind up shocked and just as heavily against it as I am.

Oh no, I have to pay the developers money to get access to all their product.

Whatever shall I do.

Woe is me.

*insert more sarcasm here*

Hey, if you want to promote anti-consumer policies, go for it.

How is it anti-consumer exactly?

I will buy the game new. Therefore I get the code, and the devs get my money.

Gamers today are self entitled.

Oh so I'm not entitled to multiplayer on a game I've bought? Buying it used is a punishable offence, is it?

If you pay the full price you get the full game. It's not that complicated.

If you legally purchase the game, no matter what the price agreed upon, you get the full game. It's not that complicated.

And it's legal for the publisher to make online passes. Do you got a point there?

Yes, that people with large amounts of money can pay lawyers to either find or create a loophole that circumvents consumer rights. We should be outraged that they did this and trying to get a law passed that patches the hole, not going "thank you, sir, may I have another?"

Spoiler: this videoclip shows the reaction of the average gamer to the excesses of the industry

Only problem is, very, very few of them are even trying to get into the "fraternity," which in this metaphor is the industry, so sitting there and asking for more does absolutely nothing positive.

Edit: By the way, in case anyone has a lacking movie education and doesn't know what the clip is from, it's from National Lampoon's Animal House, not some creepy porno.

It's not a loophole at all. Please if you want to use the law to support your whining over the fact that they want money to cover server costs please for the love of god learn the law first.

Call it what you want; it goes completely against the spirit of the law, but follows the letter of the law. To me, that is the definition of a loophole. The biggest mistake consumers ever made was accepting the first EULA, because our rights have been on a downward slope ever since. They aren't licensing the games to us, but because they have a piece of paper that claims they are, they can get away with it. Thing is, those don't even fly in the courts of most countries; in the EU, they're explicitly invalid, and even in the US, their legal status is undecided. It's going to take a ruling by the Supreme Court to decide it, and it will probably be a 5-4 decision, but there's a good chance any EULA which actually made it that far would be struck down.

So World of Warcraft is the biggest lawbreaker of all the game industry by this logic? Not only do we have to pay for the game once. We have to register an account, then we have to pay to maintain their</b servers? It costs money to run servers, thus it's not unfair if we have to pay for it.

No, World of Warcraft is and always has been a service, not a product. The purchase price doesn't pay for the disc so much as the initial 15 days or whatever it is of service. After that, you pay $15 a month. Heck, most of the game isn't even on the disc; it's server side, not client side. With these other games, the online part is hosted by the user, using code that is on the disc -- and therefore part of the sale. Comparing WoW's business model to what's going on here is like comparing the fees on Cable or Satellite Radio to a physical movie or CD.

Edit: And yes, you read that right. The "server costs" are entirely footed by the players; the game company has jack squat to do with it. WoW uses a different system, where the servers are entirely hosted by Blizzard, and therefore have to be paid for on an ongoing basis. Even then, they way overcharge for it; each user incurs a cost on the order of pennies every month, but they each pay out $15. No wonder Blizzard is such a successful corporation...

Yeah, the difference is that you pay to use the servers one time, rather than once a month. Just because there's no content on the servers they cost money to maintain. We pay once, they pay until they decide the servers are dead and not worth keeping up anymore. So they are selling both a game and a service. The game can be played without the service so what are you complaining about?

Edit: even when you're hosting a server you connect through a network that connects you to those you are playing with. It might not be a massive cost for each player, but there is a cost involved. Let me add that you should learn how technology work while you're digging into the laws.

Read my post above this one, bro. You're the one who is showing ignorance here, not me. I've been gaming online since 2002, and have been an active member of multiple server communities. I know how this crap works.

Edit: also, if you're not getting it, the "network" you connect to when the servers are user hosted (and almost all of them are; the few that aren't are just kind of seed servers that are only left up until the community takes off on its own, and matchmaking games don't even go that far) is called "the internet," and you pay your ISP for access to it, not the game company, who has absolutely nothing to do with it. The only cost they have is the stats server, which is such a negligible cost that they may as well be complaining that each new player isn't directly contributing to the cost of heating their offices (in fact, more so, because the server costs way, way less), and tacking a fee on for the purpose.

Wow, you've been playing online since 2002? Then you must clearly know everything about everything. Now if you didn't get it, I was now using sarcasm.

Back in high school we used to play CS over LAN, but we had to dodge Steam because the school network blocked it. What we did was that we cracked the game so it could start without Steam and then we could play LAN. However when I got home and wanted to play online I could not connect to any servers without Steam, and no-one not on the same network could connect to my servers. Why is that? Because internet connection alone is not enough. You can't google your way into a server. Matchmaking works in a way to track down fitting servers based on your demands for you. You connect through a network and while the cost might be minimal, there is a small cost. It's like saying you should not be punished for shoplifting something cheap. The store is losing almost nothing on you doing it.

The internet alone /is/ enough when dedicated servers are involved. The client connects to the server through the internet. Your cracked version of counterstrike was set up to only go through a local network (LAN: Local Area Network), and therefore couldn't connect to any internet based servers. Incidentally, Steam is only involved in Counterstrike as far as launching the game; some of the servers are connected to VAC, valve's anti-cheat service, but that connection is from the game server to the VAC server; the costs involved there, which are even lower than those involved with a game server, aren't directly related to anything done by the users -- and besides, Valve is the only game company that uses their own anti-cheat service. The rest of them either pay to use Punkbuster or pay valve to use VAC in their games -- which is how Valve pays for it. The bill is not footed by the users. Anyway, there are two checks you would have to get through to play a cracked copy of Counterstrike online. The first is getting around the connection to Steam, which you did. The second is connecting to a server which is not VAC secured, which do, in fact, exist. It's not the network's fault if you didn't know enough to do the second part. If you couldn't see the servers at all, it's because whoever cracked it didn't do a very good job, and they somehow disabled internet connections -- which would be silly, because Counterstrike has built in LAN support, so it's not like they would have needed to hack it in and replace the internet functionality with it.

As for matchmaking: it's a peer to peer network. It basically works like bit torrent. This is less like arguing that shoplifting costs Gamestop very little per person, and more like refusing to do business with a store that charges you a fee for enjoying the air conditioning on top of whatever it is you actually buy -- and that's assuming there's any costs involved for the company. The reality is that it's more like a store charging you for the air conditioning you have in your own house, or in the cases of dedicated servers that you play on but don't personally own, it's like going on a beer run for a party at a friend's place, and having them tack on a fee for using your friend's refrigerator to store the beer, even though they have nothing to do with that particular fridge.

And yeah, I've been playing online since 2002. That in itself isn't enough to show that I know what I'm doing, but the fact stated in the same sentence which claims says I've been an active member of multiple server communities (read: the people who use and, for a small percentage of them, pay for the servers) should show that I have some inkling of where the costs go. The fact that you apparently didn't understand what I meant by that shows that it's not me who is lacking information here.

Now if we remove all of this post's bragging about your obviously superior skills to anyone else in the whole wide world I can see you mentioned small costs. Not because of the users. Costs that would be there whatever you do to avoid cheating. On what grounds do you state that there are nothing like that with Saints Row The Third? However, you know what. Don't answer that. Boycott the game and hate THQ all you want for wanting to earn money. In the meantime I will be happy playing Saints Row The Third both offline and online and not caring about you or anyone else who hates it for using online passes.

Sheesh, man, do you speak English? Yes, I've been constantly mentioning small costs. I've also been explaining that the costs are incurred by the users, and the publishers have absolutely nothing to do with it. I wasn't bragging about superior knowledge, either; I was establishing credentials. The only credentials you've established so far are that you played a cracked version of Counterstrike and didn't understand how the crack worked. Oh, and funny thing about Saints Row the Third: It's a console game. Console games don't have anti-cheat, so there's no licensing fees involved there. Even if there were, it's not like it's a monthly fee; it's licensed the way, say, the Havok Physics engine is. Punkbuster and VAC are maintained by their respective owners in order to keep getting people to use them.