With Microsoft backing out, do you think Steam's potential game sharing is off the table?

[Bashfluff]

This had to be in the works before Microsoft did anything, and Valve has never been one to listen to the directions of the industry. Valve seems to be looking at the mess, really thinking hard, and then coming up with a couple of smart, simple business decisions based on what the consumer would want to buy or use. It seems like that here.

If it did have an effect, Microsoft packing up its toys and going home, being mopey that it lost the DRM fight...that just might make them get it out sooner to take the fight to them. Steam does have to be competitive, and stealing a feature from them might just be icing on the cake.

 

[Zenn3k]

No.

Valve can do what they want, they don't answer to anybody (shareholders).

They probably got the library sharing idea from Microsoft (at least in part), but there is no reason they can't go ahead with it in the future.

 

[Griffolion]

Well, for Steam, only ONE person can play that game at a time. If the sharer tries to launch the game, it kicks the other person out of the game. So I don't think Valve will stop doing that. It is their way of making it more appealing without having to allow used digital license sales.

Yeah, I agree with you.

As it's looking currently, the Steam sharing feature doesn't look all that great. The only way it will work properly is if you lend a game to a friend that you're not bothered about not playing for a day or two. And if that's a fairly recent game that your friend is interested in "try-before-buying", then you're not going to want to lend it, unless you're ultra-nice.

This feature won't make the publishers have as much of a heart-attack, not will it warrant their desire to step in and have some control, as the family sharing and other things MS talked about.

 

[Petromir]

And by calling it licensing, not purchasing a game.

UM that's what we've always done. The physical copy has given a sense of ownership that was misplaced. What we've always been buying is a license, not the game itself. The law has always reflected this at least in theory, the problem is that it's an old hodgepodge based around music and other IP laws, and the only reason it worked at all before was the physical copy that meant everybody treated it like, even though that wasn't the piece that had the value.

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

And if that's a fairly recent game that your friend is interested in "try-before-buying", then you're not going to want to lend it, unless you're ultra-nice.

I guess that's a problem for people who use the friend feature to friend some complete stranger, as I'd have no problems lending any game to anyone on my friend list.
The way I see it is it would be a temporary thing anyway, with a few hours of play time before you need to give the game back: enough to judge for yourself if you're really interested in the game, but not enough to finish it and then not having to buy it. I really can't see any other way for it to work, but then again, my vision in this area is pretty limited.

 

[WickedFire]

Well, for Steam, only ONE person can play that game at a time. If the sharer tries to launch the game, it kicks the other person out of the game. So I don't think Valve will stop doing that. It is their way of making it more appealing without having to allow used digital license sales.

Yeah, I agree with you.

As it's looking currently, the Steam sharing feature doesn't look all that great. The only way it will work properly is if you lend a game to a friend that you're not bothered about not playing for a day or two. And if that's a fairly recent game that your friend is interested in "try-before-buying", then you're not going to want to lend it, unless you're ultra-nice.

This feature won't make the publishers have as much of a heart-attack, not will it warrant their desire to step in and have some control, as the family sharing and other things MS talked about.

I can see it being very useful for indie devs though. So many indie games become successful through word of mouth, and if you can let a friend play it for an hour or two it will potentially multiply that effect.

 

[Dryk]

Valve employees love to tinker. They would implement this just to see what happens, and also I guess to see how many publishers would actually touch such a system. It may well end up with only a handful of games supporting it.

I feel like Microsoft's approach was misguided in that it gave you 10 passes to give out across the lifetime of the system. I'd much rather see a 2-4 passes I can revoke and give out again once every few months or something along those lines. Because at its core this is the problem with digital game sharing, it's too fast and efficient to control itself so you need some kind of artificial restriction on it. Figuring out the best ones are certainly a challenge.

 

[Griffolion]

-snip-

Indeed, and I think that's the group of developers Valve is primarily targeting with this. The ones who know the power of sharing and what that can do for the bottom line of a smaller company who counts every single sale, not every 10,000.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Valve's not competing with consoles. They are competing with other PC digital retailers. So I doubt that they'll back out of whatever they're trying to do because of Xbone or PS4.

 

[RoBi3.0]

If they game sharing idea is so far along in development that it is showing up in Beta files, I doubt they were developing it in response to Xbox One.


No need to back out if their decision was not base on what Microsoft was doing.

 

[Madman123456]

Yes, this is pretty much back in the drawer.

 

[tilmoph]

I can't see any reason for Valve to back down on it's sharing idea (assuming they actually have one in the works and it's not all an empty rumor). Microsoft didn't have to cancel their game sharing idea, they just threw a great big sulk because very few people bought the idea that a no offline mode console that could brick itself at any point was ok cuz cloud sharing.

Also, keep in mind that Steam isn't competing with consoles history of physical sharing. That's a point consoles have had over PCs for a good bit now. So any move that reintroduces game sharing to PC is a step forward, and if it only comes with logical restrictions (like one or two non-owners can play at a time, or making it like a demo of the game that you can only play for so long before it asks you if you want to buy it, something like that) it is going to rightly hailed as a step forward for the platform.

Now that I think about it a bit more, Valve doing game sharing right, without MS-style controls and restrictions would be an absolutely enormous PR win for Steam and yet another blow for XBox. "If they could do digital sharing without 24-hour checks, why'd you kill your plans?" Which would leave Microsoft with very few good responses "a.) We're a software juggernaut that couldn't come up with this basic of an idea" or "We wanted to punish people for not just swallowing our bullshit, so that when we lose the sales we were going to get, we can blame internet people and not ourselves" or "We are COLOSSAL morons, as you can see from our marketing department".

In any event, not only would XB1's policy changes not drive Valve away from this idea, the temptation to really hammer home their superiority as a gaming company (especially before they launch Steam Box) by showing both technical knowledge and a willingness to innovate without trying to big brother everyone to death would just be far to great.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

It certainly fits in with their customer service policies. And I doubt they even considered it just because Microsoft was gonna do it. They've had some legal trouble with the UN for a little while now and I think it was more to do with getting the UN off their back.

In short, I think they'll go ahead with it. Maybe not in the sense that they'll let people download and play the same copy, but transfer licenses across accounts for a small fee (or maybe for no fee, who knows?).

 

[BeerTent]

This isn't fucking "code"! Jesus, get your goddamn terminology right.

Regardless, someone has already said it, EU laws is likely to sway wither or not this sees anymore light. Not only does it seem like a licencing nightmare to handle, but Valve isn't going to do something because MS or Sony did something else. Those guys are off in their own corner and Valve has built up Steam to the point where they can keep doin' what they want.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

What we need is a console to go fall DD like Steam. Maybe thats something for the next gen.....next next gen. Xbtwo and PS5. But if the price is right then it will be popular. But i doubt PS4/Xbone will sell titles online for £7.

 

[Mike000]

1) Some of the indie titles for the PS4 are supposed to be as low as $0.99. At least according to an interview Sony gave to MSNBC a while back. And I've seen Sony put 75% off certain games for PS+ members on occasion. (Which you keep, even if your PS+ lapses, unlike the free ones.)

2) While we've always purchased "licenses" rather than games, they were treated as "transferable licenses" which is a lot closer to what people believe "game ownership" is.

 

[DrOswald]

In reference to this article. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/125168-Rumor-Game-Sharing-Coming-To-Steam] Do you think that with Microsoft backing out, Steam won't be moving forward with their shared library? Personally, I think it would be absolutely amazing if Steam actually went forward with it anyways, simply because they started. It would be a stellar feature to release in time for the Steam Box, and it could actually pull some more people towards its digital distribution service.

Quite frankly though, I don't think that Valve's hand is being pushed anymore without Microsoft forcing it. Then again, Valve does have a certain reputation to uphold, and there's a chance that we'll see it, just because Valve can.

Thoughts?

[small]Totally changed the thread name because I realized that I ended the sentence in a preposition and it bugged the hell out of me.[/small]

I think valve was probably working on this before the Xbox One game sharing reveal. Steam has always been successful by offering the best digital service available. Others are catching up to them now. Pretty soon consoles will basically have a steam like distribution service. By implementing game sharing first Steam gets to remain the best service for another couple years until everyone catches up again.

Besides, Valve is a master of the paper trail. I guarantee that these things would never have seen the light of day if Valve was not prepared to move on this. Some small, planned leak to generate hype is always how Valve start with the announcing a big new feature. Remember the Portal 2 release arg?

 

[Robetid]

You are aware that steam is from Valve and is in essence DRM?

XBone no longer has limitations on game sharing and internet connection while Steam still has these things.

Probably the only thing that will make valve implement used game sale / sharing is the lawsuit that is pending somewhere in europe.

Steam has an offline mode, once you run a game once while connected to the internet you can go offline and never have to connect again when playing single player games. I'm not sure if there is eventually a check in required, but i used to be assigned to a ship in the military and i brought my laptop to game on and had no issues for at least two months before i reconnected to the internet.

OT: I do agree with you though, I don't think M$ had anything to do with the fact that steam is going to eventually impliment game sharing, but I do believe they had something to do with the timing of steams decision to bring it up. How they will do it is a mytery to me, but I wouldn't be upset if you just picked a few friends and put them on a "loan list", they could go through your library, they send a request to "borrow" a game, you say ok/not ok, and they can download it and run it until you pull the plug.

 

[spoonybard.hahs]

You are aware that steam is from Valve and is in essence DRM?

XBone no longer has limitations on game sharing and internet connection while Steam still has these things.

Probably the only thing that will make valve implement used game sale / sharing is the lawsuit that is pending somewhere in europe.

Steam has an offline mode, once you run a game once while connected to the internet you can go offline and never have to connect again when playing single player games. I'm not sure if there is eventually a check in required, but i used to be assigned to a ship in the military and i brought my laptop to game on and had no issues for at least two months before i reconnected to the internet.

OT: I do agree with you though, I don't think M$ had anything to do with the fact that steam is going to eventually impliment game sharing, but I do believe they had something to do with the timing of steams decision to bring it up. How they will do it is a mytery to me, but I wouldn't be upset if you just picked a few friends and put them on a "loan list", they could go through your library, they send a request to "borrow" a game, you say ok/not ok, and they can download it and run it until you pull the plug.

I don't believe there is a required check in for Steam when you are playing offline. As far as I know after you've installed a game, you can stay offline indefinitely. The only caveat being that it would depend on the publisher/developer if you can play/stay offline. I know you don't need your machine to start up connected to the internet to even run the Steam client; I've played on my laptop at work without an internet connection.

That said, it makes me scratch my head at why Microsoft would need to sacrifice the things people actually wanted for the sake of removing DRM. It seriously reeks of, "Fuck, you ungrateful fucks!"

 

[The Enquirer]

I don't think Valve will pull some crap like mirosoft with DRM's. I think they will actually say "ok, if you want to share some games go ahead". I think there will without a doubt be limitations on this because it really doesn't make sense to let tons of people play a game from one purchase. As cool as that is it would bankrupt the company and we really don't want Ea becoming the primary digital distributor. Realistically I just trust Valve on this when it comes to doing something cool and the right thing. I doubt they will be backing out unless they can't get it to work properly, which in itself is very unlikely.

You are aware that steam is from Valve and is in essence DRM?

XBone no longer has limitations on game sharing and internet connection while Steam still has these things.

Probably the only thing that will make valve implement used game sale / sharing is the lawsuit that is pending somewhere in europe.

Yes, of course I am aware of that. The thing is that Valve doesn't require me to log online once every 24 hours to play my games. In essence I only need internet to download the game. Yes, I'll admit that is a detractor but like I said, I only need internet for that one thing and nothing else.

And yes, but (and correct me if I'm wrong, lately with summer classes I haven't been keeping up on this as much) game sharing through digital means was removed from the Xbone. Also that probably never would have happened honestly and was hype. I believe you would have been able to share the game with up to 10 people or something like that. It really just doesn't make sense that 10 people would be able to own the game for one purchase.

And that has yet to be seen. Take into account that it is already in the beta for the next update. Whether or not that will be removed or not no one can be certain of, but at least we have confirmation that it does exist. And I don't think they will allow for used game sales through Steam. You can already get games on sale through Steam for cheaper than used games at Gamestop most of the time. Maybe they might do something where you can sell games back at a percentage of what you bought them for though. Like a game you bought on sale at 50% off for $20 say could give you like 4 or 5 dollars. That is the only way I could see it happening but technically you don't have direct ownership of the games license so there would be no reason for Valve to do that since it would only result in them losing money.