Steam - Technology for the future or infrastructure from the past?

Recently I complained about Canal Plus’ C Sports awfully high prices. Paying close to €20 for streaming a Premiere League game, is in my eyes way too expensive. While I am a very big fan of digital distribution I wonder why so many digitally distributed products have to be so expensive. Digitally distributed products are often sold at the same or even higher price as their retail counterparts. The most recent example is Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. MW2 was recently made available through Steam for close to €60. Elkjøp, a Norwegian retail store, is currently selling the same game in a weekend deal for 350 NOK (about €40).

A €20 price difference is quite astonishing. Retail products come on a disk which is put into a case together with a manual. The cases are transported all over the world and sold in stores which need to pay rent and their employees. These are all costs which can be cut if the product is distributed digitally.

Setting up and maintaining a server park for digital stores is obviously not free either. However, it would surprise me if these costs are higher than the costs related to printing, distributing, and selling retail products. Moreover, digital distribution should give the developers and publishers added advantages. First, it is so far not possible to resell digitally distributed product. Hence, everyone who wants to get their hands on a product needs to buy it from the publisher rather than through second hand stores or on the private market. Second, by requiring activation of the games through the digital store, the stores may contribute to reducing piracy. Third, digital stores would make it far easier to sell add-ons, extensions, and other products using micro transactions. All in all, digital distribution seems to be a big advantage for the developers and publishers.

However, this is not the first time Steam charges the price of a kidney for their games. I guess we as consumers should look elsewhere to increase the competition in the market. I hope that stores like Impulse and Direct2Drive will increase their catalogs and contribute to forcing Steam into reducing their  prices.

Premiere League action

The Good: C Sports is the services I have been waiting for. I would like to enjoy Premier League football from time to time, but I don’t really have time to watch that many games. Hence, I don’t really bother to pay about 3000 NOK (€370) per year for the whole Canal+ package. Having Premier League games available through pay-per-view is perfect.

The Bad: Like most other paid or rental services, C Sports does not support other browsers than Internet Explorer and Safari on Windows and Mac. Linux is not supported.

The Ugly: The really ugly thing about the C Sports service is not the fact that I have to run it on Windows using IE. It is rather the awful price you have to pay per game. 159 NOK (close to €20) per game is way, way too expensive. Personally, I think maybe about 50 NOK (€6) would be a good price. However, I understand that the Premier League rights are expensive and I could have paid 100 NOK. 159 is just too expensive. I might try the serivce but I am not becoming a regular viewer.

I have previously been impressed by how easy it is to buy and download digital content through either your Xbox or xbox.com. If the movie rental it is as simple as buying games/game add-ons I am sure it will be a hit. Well, as long as Microsoft is able to get a decent selection of material and as long as the the pricing is right it is going to be a hit.

Microsoft’s movie on demand and other services like Hulu have not been available here in Norway so far. I have until now used Cdon’s bredbåndsfilm a bit but the selection of movies is not yet good enough. The biggest problem with Cdon’s offering though is ironically enough their dependency towards Microsoft. Cdon and other services like SF Anytime do unfortunately require Windows and Internet Explorer.

Another interesting news is Microsofts Games on Demand (browse down a bit). They do not say anything about Norway but it would be really cool to be able to buy Xbox games and download them over the Internet. However, the Xbox’s 20GB disk may be a bit of a problem…

I knew they didn’t care but I was really surprised when I read this. Even Sanvold Roland complained in his blog that he could not by the pre-order the new Dave Matthews Band record through iTunes. The response he got from Warner Music‘s Terje Pedersen (on myspace) through Twitter was rather incredible: “I think you should steal it and brag about the process on your brat blog afterwards. Don’t want you to be angry.” (translated from Norwegian)

First, he incouraged him to steal the music and second he insulted him. What kind of customer relation is that? Even though Terje Pedersen apologized a bit later it illustrates how much (some) people in the music/movie industry actually care about what we, their customers want. The music/movie industry has climed up too high and totally lost touch with its customers the last ten years (Napster anyone?), now they are taking the fall for not opening their eyes.

Edit: I found another English article on the topic. You should digg it to spreat the word.

Steam wants you to bend over

Valve announced that they are going to start offering games through Steam in “local” currency. The local currency in Norway is according to Valve Euro. Last time I checked, Norway was not part of the European Union and our local currency is still “kroner” (Norwegian crowns). Offering games in Euro could have been fair enough unless they decided to keep the prices at the same amount as the prices in dollars. In other words 1$=1€. For a Norwegian that is today a price increase of 42%. Ridiculous!

I have earlier written about how satisfied I have been with Steam but I am not bending over and paying for instance about 480 NOK for Far Cry 2 through Steam when I can get it for 190 NOK from play.com.

Edit: Please leave a comment in this thread in Steams forum to show your unhappyness.

Personally I really do not understand why EA and others are using SecuRom and similar products to “protect” their games. I assume the intention is to either (1) stop piracy or (2) stop people from selling used games. For me, the only thing they achieve is stopping me from buying their games.

Piracy is clearly a problem on the PC platform. It is a shame that people does not pay for the games they play and it is understandable that the industry tries to stop this. However, there does not exist any effective copy protection (yet) and I do not think DRM is the right way to stop piracy. DRM is only making it harder for the customers.

I have a stronger beliefe in digital distribution of quality games which are updated after their initial release to a reasonable price. Much like what the guys at Stardock intends to do with their “Gamers Bill of Rights”. This is of course a PR trick but I agree with them in most of what they say.

Back to DRM, copy protections like SecuRom are just creating problems for the people who pay for the products, not stopping piracy. Pirated versions of Spore and NoCD-cracks sirculated, probably even before Spore was released. I want to play the games I buy anywhere, at any time and I want to be able to install them as many times as I like. I payed for the bloody game didn’t I? I wouldn’t buy a bike which I could only use four times, within the city limits on Sundays!

Spore is unfortunately not the first game which incorporates such DRM solutions. Both Bioshock and Mass Effect have received massive amounts of flack for their DRM solutions which created a lot of problems for a large number of users.

So why? Dear gaming, record and movie industry. Why do you use DRM when it creates problems for the paying users, does not effectively stop piracy, increases the price of your products and give you a lot of negative media coverage? Some of the vendors have got it and they are pulling the plug on DRM as we speak. But Walmart, what about the customers who were unfortunate enough to by DRM (infested) music who are not able to play their music any longer?

The day before yesterday, Metallica released their new album Death Magnetic and I had to get my hands on it. I could have bought just a digital copy but as a long time fan of Metallica I opted for the CD. The CD was delivered actually the day before the release date but I was rather disappointed when this was what I found in a thin envelope in our mailbox. The cover was broken, beat and well perhaps not scarred.

When that is said, I think Metallica has succeed here on two fronts with their new album. They have made very good record but they have also created a successful distribution model. Through Mission Metallica I have been able to see a couple of hours of video from the recording of the record, and download about 10 live concerts and four singles. All this before the record was released. I think this is the way to go to stop or at least to reduce piracy. Provide something extra to the ones who pay. When providing something extra, they also make more money. The record was a bit more expensive than a normal CD (30 Euros as compared to a normal price of 18-25 for a new record) and by releasing material over the Internet, Metallica has managed to create a buzz around the album. However the extra 10 Euros were well worth it. In particular the live material is priceless.

For the future I think I will go for digitally distributed movies, games and music. If the provider offers backup I do not have to fear broken CDs and covers, and I do not have to reserve several meters of dusty shelf space to the covers.

I have been a long time user and fan of Steam, Valves digital distribution platform for computer games. Steam makes buying reasonably priced games from a decent sized catalog of games, easy. Steam gives me lifetime backup of my games and I can download them whenever I want and play them from any computer with an internet connection.

There are a couple of other digital distribution services as well: Stardock and their Impulse platform and Direct2Drive to mention a few. I tested Stardock the other day and I was impressed or almost scared of how easy it is to buy and download a new game.

First, select the game you want to buy.

Then, pay for it using Paypal (at Wikipedia) or any credit/debit card. Paypal is an electronic escrow service which I recommend for safe and easy payment on the Internet, especially if buying from ebay.

Finally, you download the game using Stardock’s Impulse platform. The download speed was very satisfying and I maxed out my internet connection the whole time.

This is how it should be done. Fast and easy sales and distribution. The price is relatively low, the time it takes to buy and download the game is minimal, the game will be automatically updated, I can uninstall it and download it later and I do not have to have a lot of DVDs floating around, fearing that they may get broken.