Re: SEIV via Steam
I am just trying to be honest here and not take a one sided look at steam,
I know that if you live in a area where there is no broadband or fast internet then you will not benefit, and should be able to get a cd, or just so you can play solo.
That being said, I think steam will be the holy grail for indies, It allows publishing at a much better rate, and the developer has a lot more control, hence valve distributing games themselves now.
I just hope as I said, it will not be the only choice, As I said, I would personally like to have the option to use steam as a distribution platform, and only that. I own a cd, I can then choose to activate a product on steam, then I can install either by cd, or steam... I am sorry if it is annoying to keep refearing it, but that vid of me showing loading HL on a new machine really does show how good it is.
Frankly, with the DRM overheads, that is not to much of a problem, as much as I am not a big fan, it is much better than any other soloution on the market, I know it will be supported for years to come, and frankly the sort of games being released like SEV, HL2 and more require a beefy pc to run good, so if you have the hardware needed, you will not see the overheads.
I have got here a game called incoming, I installed it, I got a CTD error during loading, as a programmer I instantly recognised the error being a unsupported call that had been taken out the xp kernel to do with the cd drive, I downloaded a no-cd program, and the game worked fine.
I wish I lived in a world where developers did not need to use such methods, but they do, and steam is good as drm because it will always be updated, and game son it, I will be sure can work with my pc in 5-10 years from now. Yes it is a chance valve could go out of business, but that is really not likly.
but on a sad note, I think that pc gaming will become less popular ovre the next 5 years due to copy protection, and things like steam will accelerate it. I remember now about 3-5 years ago, I have always had more than one pc here, I could have a few friends around and install HL, or C and C, or any other game to multiple machines (c and c allowed this with multi playable disks), and have a damn good time together playing games, now places do not allow the same serial key to be used across a lan. I can buy halo and play 4 people on the same console, but I have to buy 4 copys of halo PC edition to do the same thing on the computer... It is not fair! as DRM comes better, I think that pc gaming will die out... well at least for RTS, FPS games. Games like SE will be safe as long as they listen to the fans. I will be happy to play for years to come as long as I am allowed to have a copy on my pc and laptop, and can transfer saves easily! I know SEV may have better protection, from seeing the info that beta testers had to give, but I just hope that I will be easily able to copy folders and the game just works without doing anything. I like copying the folder to a new pc and it just works!
anyway, ending rant, I could go on forever!
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