Do you see what I did with the title? Do you see it!? I think I have become a god.
I found this story via Destructoid: a couple of UK game shops are threatening to stop selling PC games that support Steam because it's counterintuitive to their own forthcoming download services. Because this isn't a news blog, I'll leave the synopsis at that and get straight to admiring my own words.
I'm actually not a fan of Steam, or even Valve for that matter. Digital Rights Management is just a fancy way of saying “Good luck playing your games in ten years when support for the authentication service is discontinued”; and Valve has been so goddamn keen on itself ever since the success of the original Half-Life, I'm sure that Gabe Newell genuinely believes himself to be some sort of prophet. He's here to spread word of the third coming of the messiah, Gordon Freeman—which, if Christianity is anything to go by, is never going to happen.
But “brick and mortar” retailers have good reason to feel threatened. Assuming people continue to ignore the looming issues of net neutrality and bandwidth caps, digital distribution is going to completely replace physical media within the next couple of videogame generations. It doesn't matter if you want it to or not: it's cheaper and gives publishers unprecedented control over their media and its profits.
So, if retail companies like GameStop want to stay relevant, they need to get in on the racket Valve has going with Steam. But with Steam already offering a highly desirable means of digital distribution, these companies may have to actually *gasp* innovate *shock* if they want to compete, rather than phone it in and complain when things don't go their way, which is the way they have traditionally handled things.
Clearly I'm torn. I dislike Valve and Steam, but I also can't stand companies that refuse to think creatively in order to stay in business. The RIAA is the perfect example: when music became digital they had no idea how to market it anymore. Instead of evaluating their own business models to figure out what needed to change, they automatically blamed consumers and began tossing around lawsuits. Meanwhile, iTunes quietly snuck in and began commanding the new market.
The same thing is happening here. Video game publishers and retailers have been complaining about piracy for decades, and Valve has recently created a clever solution that publishers have been quick to adopt. But traditional retailers are acting like unathletic kids in gym class who are always picked last because they're bad at dodgeball. Rather than take the initiative to practice and get in shape, they've chosen to complain to their moms and threaten to not invite the publishers to any more birthday parties. Is that a good analogy? I think it's a good analogy.
I begrudgingly have to side with Valve on this one, but it doesn't matter to me anyway because I haven't bought a new PC game since Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. I can wait ten years to play Modern Warfare 2, when it'll be available on GOG for $9.99.
>- Via MCV
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