Quote:
Originally Posted by AstralWanderer
I purchased this about a year ago, found out it required online activation (*without* making it clear on the packaging) and sent it back. It's bad enough having to deal with CD checks or cardboard codewheels, but online activation means the program dies when the servers shut down (see Shamus Young's Authorization Servers article for more on this).
Steam has its own problems though - as well as its own online activation system, you have all your purchases tied to one Steam account, meaning that it becomes very possible (and very profitable) for Valve to slap on an annual (or even a monthly) fee to keep accounts open. Who'd refuse to pay a $10 monthly fee if it mean losing access to several hundred dollars of previously purchased software? |
It will *never* be profitable to charge a repeating fee of any kind to digitally access one-time purchase software[1]. The reason for this is a thing called elasticity of demand. People want new games, and if Steam won't give it to them for free, someone else will.
Steam charging the users to use the service would be like credit card companies charging users to use their cards; everyone would stop using them, and the company wouldn't make any money.
[1] - for that matter, Steam has not even found it profitable to force users to use their servers, and charge a fee, for a game like Team Fortress 2, which is necessarily an online multiplayer game.