*sigh* there's really little I want less than a new pro/anti steam debate, but this is just such a baffling position. You have a DH AAR in your sig there, are you much of a WWI history fan? Do you ever read about, for example, the German decision not to develop tanks and think "How on earth can they not see the benefits? Why can't they see this is obviously the way forward?". That's the constant feeling I have in these threads
*sigh* No, i do not. Arms, Armistice and Revolutions is a Mod covering the Interwar years. Besides that, indeed I'm interested in that period, indeed.
You are right, rejecting mass production and tanks was a major mistake of the German general staff during WW1. To put this bluntly: You have missed the topic. This isn't about digital distribution(DD) at all. The advantages of DD over box-sales are obvious, they are just a more effective form of sales. Ignoring the Internet as way of distribution would simply be silly. As we both know, digital distribution is of great advantage and helps support the game industry. Thus, the issue is not about DD, which is what you usually put forward as first line of defense of a restricting, borderline fraudulent business model on the past pages.
Yes, i know, i can buy steam-only games via gamersgate (does not apply to CK2, which can be obtained without buying prevention there), but what's the benefit? We still would have to install steam to play them. There is a huge number of DD platforms out there which are DRM free. It's OK to use a client to install a game, but i refuse to run some useless background program, just to be allowed to play or update the games i bought. Other distribution platforms such as gamersgate, which has been widely used by Paradox in the past, do not rely on DRM. There are a lot of alternatives. Oh, and please don't name Origin: EA's terms of service are actually ILLEGAL in Germany and Austria, so much for that.
So, what's the issue with Steam, Origin and the lot? Their clients that are required to run in background so you can actually play a game. The issue with them is not their mere presence. Steam lives off personal information, they constantly monitor every activity on the target-computer. What you do, what you play, how long, with who. What applications you have installed, what programs you launch, when you pay, how you pay, what you pay for... that's just a small part of what's collected. If it was just for metrics, we would not dislike that so much. You don't earn money by collecting metrics (at least not unless you are doing this on a global scale with hundreds of millions of hits per day). What Facebook and Steam earn their money from are personal profiles, which are then processed for further marketing. That's also the cause why eg. on Facebook, games/applications are usually free. They are not financed by advertisement directly, but mainly used to gain access to that profile data. The data collected is used and sold for marketing purposes, stored indefinitely. You don't really expect Steam to earn all that money by getting a few Euros/Dollars/Cents from each gamesale, do you?
Well, do you have nothing to hide? OK, so tell me, do you have HIV? Are you engaged? Divorced? How old are you? Are you colored, asian, white? Have you been unemployed over the past years (before you joined up with Johan and the guys)? Have you ever been late with paying dept or invoices? If yes, with what company? What did you buy there and why?
Let me guess, you don't like that information to be available to a third party. But you do seem to have no problem giving just that information to some company which will do whatever they like with that information. See the issue? Think about what you are doing online. People have lost their jobs because of less. People in central Europe have actually been shot or imprisoned because of being too open with their personal information about 25 years back... as you have already referenced to history.
Sure, you can put steam into offline mode, but what's the point? You still need to have steam installed and running... and you have to activate games with steam. To get updates or install games, you again HAVE to switch to online mode. So, what's the point? Data does not go bad by being stored for a few hours or days.
If you like, I can tell you a bit more on this, I know quite a number of great papers on that topic you might be interested in reading, if you really care about data usage in origin, steam and social networks. Again, digital distribution is not an issue, DRM and the spyware associated with steam/origin is. Using a client to install a program, like on gamersgate, is not an issue, as long as it only prompts for my credentials and does nothing beyond that.
So, you have voiced that you lack understanding for why so many people are so vocal about steam: Because we are interested in being able to play games in the future! If nobody says anything, what is going to happen? Then we will in the future see just steam-only games from paradox. But it would be very sad if i was forced to no longer buy those games. You and I have been part of paradox game testing for a long time, if i recall correctly. I like many of the games published by paradox, I've helped in developing them, am taking part in software development elsewhere.
To conclude, I'm pretty sure there is a BIT of a difference between a war and a luxury product you are buying, don't you agree? Point is, for online services you can deactivate Javascript, use ad-blocking tools, not use certain services, but when trying to buy steam-only games, you are not given a choice. As long as I've got a choice, I'm fine. Maybe you don't care, I do.
