Why I don't like Steam

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ph0b0s123

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boholikeu said:
lapan said:
bahumat42 said:
Valve has said on numerous occasions that if this were ever to happen they would patch in a constant offline mode and disable all drm, they already have the patch waiting just in case.

So you will definitely be able to play your games. Just be sure to download all your games if you hear their going under and boom you have all your games available.
octafish said:
Valve is on record that they will unlock your games in this unlikely event.
I hope that will be true, however, there is no guarantee for that other than their word. Who knows if they still have the same mindset when they go under.
If they are going under anyway, they really have nothing to lose. I don't see why they wouldn't unless they suddenly become very evil.

And given their track record of being fair to the consumer, I don't think that's really likely.

ph0b0s123 said:
Denamic said:
ph0b0s123 said:
Legion said:
That's because "legally speaking" your brother is expected to buy his own copy.
Erm no. If I buy a retail game I can do with it what I want, hence why second hand game sales are not illegal.
Actually, no.
The license you rent when you 'buy' a game is for you and you alone.
To lend out the game to other people, including your brother, is piracy.
Selling it has nothing to do with it.
How has selling got nothing to do with it. If it is legal to sell my retail game why is not legal for me to give it away. So all those second hand game bins in shops are full of pirated games?

As I said I have not brought these games through steam. If I had brought it from steam, then I would agree, due to it being digital distribution, that I could not pass the game around. The same way I would not expect to be able to lend out a movie I got from netflix. But I don't expect to be accused of piracy for lending or giving a friend a DVD I have brought. If I made a copy of the movie or game and gave that to friends that would be piracy, no question.

The media industry have done a good job of brain washing you.
Part of the thing with DRM is it was meant to cut down on used sales. The legality of all that is kind of up in the air right now, but you should just keep in mind that anything with DRM is probably going to be tied to your system. Even some console games are like that now.

So he's not really "brainwashed" he's just stating the way things are. If you don't like that, speak with your wallet and don't buy games with DRM.

Also, as an aside, where do you live? I've always found Steam to be extremely cheap (got the two games you mentioned for 7.50 USD each), but I've heard this isn't the case in some countries.
Up untill now all the DRM I have come across has been to check you are not running the game on more than one PC at the same time which is a check I fully support. It has not stopped me from lending a game as I just deinstall and de-authenticate the game / DRM from my system and whoever I lend the game to can then lock the DRM to their PC.
 

BOBdotEXE

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So is this a steam only thing for lending games?
Because I cant see how lending a PS3/Xbox disk to someone is piracy?
it's like lending a book or movie, but I could see what you mean for Steam;
They own it, they make the rules...
 

marblemadness

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I agree with Steam for doing this. They have taken a huge step toward ending piracy. I remember about 10 years ago when Steam was just gaining popularity, I tried to pirate Half Life 1, but couldn't because of Steam. So I decided to just pay the money for the game. Nowadays, I don't even try to pirate anything, I just buy everything.
 

ph0b0s123

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starfox444 said:
ph0b0s123 said:
But I don't expect to be accused of piracy for lending or giving a friend a DVD I have brought.
You are actually warned at the start of most DVDs (pretty much all I've seen anyway) that unauthorised lending is illegal. No one cares if you do it, but technically you're not actually allowed to.
Again I ask if this is so, how can so many retailers get away with selling second hand DVD's, etc Surely it would be a no brainer to take them to court if it was illegal.

And again I did not by this games from steam. I brought it retail and was then forced to use steam...
 

Mechsoap

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its a lot more practical, to have all your games, on one little spot all organised and working...
 

Jaded Scribe

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ph0b0s123 said:
Denamic said:
ph0b0s123 said:
Legion said:
That's because "legally speaking" your brother is expected to buy his own copy.
Erm no. If I buy a retail game I can do with it what I want, hence why second hand game sales are not illegal.
Actually, no.
The license you rent when you 'buy' a game is for you and you alone.
To lend out the game to other people, including your brother, is piracy.
Selling it has nothing to do with it.
How has selling got nothing to do with it. If it is legal to sell my retail game why is not legal for me to give it away. So all those second hand game bins in shops are full of pirated games?

For the last time as everyone seems to keep missing this. I have not brought these games through steam. I brought them retail and had steam foreced on me. If I brought it for steam then I would agree, due to it being digital distribution, that I could not pass the game around. The same way I would not expect to be able to lend out a movie I got from netflix. But I don't expect to be accused of piracy for lending or giving a friend a DVD I have brought. If I made a copy of the movie or game and gave that to friends that would be piracy, no question.

The media industry have done a good job of brain washing you.

Project_Xii said:
Who buys retail anymore? Steam games often come down to prices well below anything retail could ever get too. If i'd paid full retail price for my 450 steam games, I'd probably be over $10,000 (I'm Australian, so the average new release game is between $89 and $109). Instead, thanks to steam, my 2TB HDD and my 150GB a month download limit, I can get games for less then half the price on release, as well as have access to numerous old classics that I'd never find in retail anyway.

People who hate steam are living in the past, I'm afraid. The PC section of my EB Games store is shrinking by the month. Digital distribution is wear it's at; better get those credit cards ready!
I get my games mail order and steam is always more expensive than having the game in your hand, so there is no contest. But that is just in the UK. Other regions maybe different.
Doesn't sound like you understand what "license" means. Yes, you bought the physical disk, and you can do with it whatever you please. You own that. You do NOT own the content available on it. Used game sellers are primarily selling games that went with another form of buy-new encouragement, like Project Ten Dollar.

I don't know where you mail-order from, but Steam seems to match up with other retailers pretty damn closely, and if you are looking for older or indie games, you actually can get them heavily discounted, and they have some great sales.

They were forced on you by the developer because that was the devs' chosen DRM for the disk.

Maybe try to actually do some research on the games you want to buy before you buy them?
 

Duffy13

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Irridium said:
To all the people saying "bought the licence" and whatnot...

EULAs are not contracts people need to stop pretending they are. Copyright laws are pretty clear in countries and all countries that are a part of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (almost all of them) share copyrights across boards and have the same basic protections.

First Sale Doctrine (using the US example but mostly the same everywhere) means you own a copy of whatever material you bought. Inherent is the rights to sale the copy, and use the copy how you please. Think of a book. This is the traditional way to view copyrighted materials sold on some type of media, and the one I believe they should force companies to abide by.

Software companies try to get around this by saying they are selling you a license to use their product, not a copy of the software. The EULAs are to that effect. However courts have held up in some situations where if the EULA was not fully disclosed to the customer prior to the sell (remember not agreeing means you can't use it, and since you have to start to install it to see it you can no longer return the opened copy of the software) that the EULA is void that First Sale Doctrine applies.

EULAs get a way with it mostly because nobody challenges them. At least in the US they have a track record of losing on many of the more restrictive clauses.

Just because they put it in writing does not mean it's legal.

As for the topic at hand, well it seems that it was taken care of. Although it still seems silly that you'd have to do that. After all, its not like they try to stop console players from lending out their games.
I think your confusing concepts a little bit. In the US, EULA and TOS can be considered contracts so long as they adhere to contract law. If they break any of those rules they are considered void, though depending how they are written it could mean only certain sections are void.

All that is kind of beside the point, anything considered a contract can be challenged and brought before a court. By default you should assume a EULA is as much a contract as the one you signed with your cell phone company or your job. Now if you believe the EULA is unfair or fails one of the contract law requirements, bring it to court or ignore it and hope that if the company ever challenges you on it that your right.
 

boholikeu

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ph0b0s123 said:
boholikeu said:
lapan said:
bahumat42 said:
Valve has said on numerous occasions that if this were ever to happen they would patch in a constant offline mode and disable all drm, they already have the patch waiting just in case.

So you will definitely be able to play your games. Just be sure to download all your games if you hear their going under and boom you have all your games available.
octafish said:
Valve is on record that they will unlock your games in this unlikely event.
I hope that will be true, however, there is no guarantee for that other than their word. Who knows if they still have the same mindset when they go under.
If they are going under anyway, they really have nothing to lose. I don't see why they wouldn't unless they suddenly become very evil.

And given their track record of being fair to the consumer, I don't think that's really likely.

ph0b0s123 said:
Denamic said:
ph0b0s123 said:
Legion said:
That's because "legally speaking" your brother is expected to buy his own copy.
Erm no. If I buy a retail game I can do with it what I want, hence why second hand game sales are not illegal.
Actually, no.
The license you rent when you 'buy' a game is for you and you alone.
To lend out the game to other people, including your brother, is piracy.
Selling it has nothing to do with it.
How has selling got nothing to do with it. If it is legal to sell my retail game why is not legal for me to give it away. So all those second hand game bins in shops are full of pirated games?

As I said I have not brought these games through steam. If I had brought it from steam, then I would agree, due to it being digital distribution, that I could not pass the game around. The same way I would not expect to be able to lend out a movie I got from netflix. But I don't expect to be accused of piracy for lending or giving a friend a DVD I have brought. If I made a copy of the movie or game and gave that to friends that would be piracy, no question.

The media industry have done a good job of brain washing you.
Part of the thing with DRM is it was meant to cut down on used sales. The legality of all that is kind of up in the air right now, but you should just keep in mind that anything with DRM is probably going to be tied to your system. Even some console games are like that now.

So he's not really "brainwashed" he's just stating the way things are. If you don't like that, speak with your wallet and don't buy games with DRM.

Also, as an aside, where do you live? I've always found Steam to be extremely cheap (got the two games you mentioned for 7.50 USD each), but I've heard this isn't the case in some countries.
Up untill now all the DRM I have come across has been to check you are not running the game on more than one PC at the same time which is a check I fully support. It has not stopped me from lending a game as I just deinstall and de-authenticate the game / DRM from my system and whoever I lend the game to can then lock the DRM to their PC.
Ah, good point. Recently though new DRM seems to be moving more in the direction of Steam. At least you got your problem worked out here though.
 

Arehexes

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Klepa said:
ph0b0s123 said:
This seems to be the PC markets way of clamping down on second hand gaming on the PC and no-one seems that bothered.
The second hand PC market has been dead for the last 10 years, so nobody really is that bothered. The second hand market is basicly piracy + profit, so I don't think anyone cares about the lack of second hand market to begin with.
I do because like the second hand market because you can't find old games. If it wasn't for second hand I wouldn't be able to buy a copy of Izuna 1 and 2 on the DS and I would have to pirate it just to play the freaking thing (it's one of those Atlus games where once the first or second shipment is sold out no more is made and shipment size is like 7 per store). Personally unless the company is willing to re-release or re print a old game they shouldn't complain if it's out of print and being sold (some companies seem to mind and some don't it seems).
 

SenseOfTumour

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It's strange how that never occured to me, there's always this argument that you can't play on 2 PCs at once despite owning the game, yet if you buy a console game, you still can't play it on two machines at once, only one disc. Why would a digital version be different? At least with Steam you can isntall stuff on a hundred PCs and it's there when you log in.

As for your Just Cause 2 problem, it's ... ON STEAM SALE TODAY - BUY IT NOW! *cough* £5, bargain :D

Was Batman yesterday, even cheaper, and I predict Tomb Raider, Battlestations and maybe Front Mission to be on sale for the next three days :)

Get in fast tho, only 2 hours left I think!
 

Jaded Scribe

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Arehexes said:
Klepa said:
ph0b0s123 said:
This seems to be the PC markets way of clamping down on second hand gaming on the PC and no-one seems that bothered.
The second hand PC market has been dead for the last 10 years, so nobody really is that bothered. The second hand market is basicly piracy + profit, so I don't think anyone cares about the lack of second hand market to begin with.
I do because like the second hand market because you can't find old games. If it wasn't for second hand I wouldn't be able to buy a copy of Izuna 1 and 2 on the DS and I would have to pirate it just to play the freaking thing (it's one of those Atlus games where once the first or second shipment is sold out no more is made and shipment size is like 7 per store). Personally unless the company is willing to re-release or re print a old game they shouldn't complain if it's out of print and being sold (some companies seem to mind and some don't it seems).
Old games are different. Go watch the Extra Credits episode on piracy, it sums it up really well.

Basically, they give two situations where piracy is ok:

(1) You live in a country/region where you cannot obtain a legal copy of the game. At that point, the developer is just happy about getting exposure to a possible new market.

(2) It is an old game that the game developers have long since stopped producing new.
 

Jaime_Wolf

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I think you're certainly right that it's no accident that you need separate copies of the game. I don't think too many people have people they regularly want to share games with, so I imagine that's why it's not treated as such a big deal. For me, I lend games occaisionally, but I think losing that ability is a small price to pay for the convenience of Steam (everything in a central, organised place, patching kept up to date for the most part, digital distribution, the built-in community and friends list, the chat overlay, all with a clean interface and a fairly lightweight program).

I do think it's a bit ridiculous when you buy a game at retail and they force you to use Steam. What I'd like to see is a cheap service (maybe 10% the cost of the game?) that allows you to transfer your license to another gamer. Crucially, it would have to involve you no longer having the license, so only one person can ever own each "copy" of the game. There's no way to be sure, but I'd actually be willing to bet that Steam would make more money than it'd lose with a feature like that. I imagine the desire to have a game in case you want to replay it would reduce the number of people using the feature. The number of people who would never have bought the game, but had it sent to them by a friend would probably make up for the people who used it to pass a game between them and only buy one copy.
 

Abedeus

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Isn't there some kind of thing in the Steam usage rules that one person = one account? Or one account for one person at a time?

Not really THAT surprising.
 

Croaker42

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Ilikemilkshake said:
The thing with steam is, it brings back some confidence to the PC market. It makes a buttload of money, and without steam there would be quite a few smaller developers who would be out of business. Because of this confidence, more games are using steam and steamworks in their games as a method of DRM, as its infinately harder to pirate a steam game than a non steam game.
I think given that, and the frequency of amazing sales and good treatment to customers, i think its a small trade off to not be able to lend games to people.
This and exactly this.

At an extremely low personal cost we are given a dedicated Gaming social network that keeps, organizes and connects my gaming life.

Hate it for whatever silly reason you want. That would be your choice and none of my business.
Steam has done and will continue to do great things for PC gaming.
 

Arehexes

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Jaded Scribe said:
Arehexes said:
Klepa said:
ph0b0s123 said:
This seems to be the PC markets way of clamping down on second hand gaming on the PC and no-one seems that bothered.
The second hand PC market has been dead for the last 10 years, so nobody really is that bothered. The second hand market is basicly piracy + profit, so I don't think anyone cares about the lack of second hand market to begin with.
I do because like the second hand market because you can't find old games. If it wasn't for second hand I wouldn't be able to buy a copy of Izuna 1 and 2 on the DS and I would have to pirate it just to play the freaking thing (it's one of those Atlus games where once the first or second shipment is sold out no more is made and shipment size is like 7 per store). Personally unless the company is willing to re-release or re print a old game they shouldn't complain if it's out of print and being sold (some companies seem to mind and some don't it seems).
Old games are different. Go watch the Extra Credits episode on piracy, it sums it up really well.

Basically, they give two situations where piracy is ok:

(1) You live in a country/region where you cannot obtain a legal copy of the game. At that point, the developer is just happy about getting exposure to a possible new market.

(2) It is an old game that the game developers have long since stopped producing new.
I forgot about the Extra Credit episode on that >_> yeah they did make a good point. I just like owning old games like that T_T but the price oh god they can get bad sometimes.
 

ph0b0s123

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starfox444 said:
By selling the copy you relinquish all rights. Lending is different because you try to retain your rights while infringing upon what you have agreed to.
So f I give the game to my brother so he owns it, that is OK?! Well that's as clear as mud....