Game denies Steam threat claims Retailer Game has unequivocally rejected allegations that it demanded publishers delay the release of PC games on the UK version of the Steam download service - or face having their titles taken off its High Street stores' shelves. Earlier this week, Facepunch forum poster Teddi Orange named Game as the retailer responsible …
i rarely buy anything from steam. they are usually full RRP in the UK and i can get pre-order PC games for around £20-25 from play.com etc. the same games on steam are always over £30.
a few months ago i tried to play a steam game i had bought, only to find that i now had to log in with a password as they had enabled some sort of system to track your titles to your pc. they had sent me an email to the company i had previously worked for (which ceased trading) and i couldnt get access to any of my games for a week while they sorted that out. ive never had this issue with a dvd/cd!
steam is ok for syncing all the files such as configs etc but i would far sooner have a new game waiting for me when i get home than having to hope steam has enough bandwidth to let me download (it can often take ages to download due to network traffic, and its not my ISP as i can go and download an windows SP at full speed at the same time)
@ So Game are ditching PC titles? 13:00 gmt - i can beat that. i saw '3d farming simulator' for sale in morrisons last week! man, that looked like a riot with its terrible 3d tractors on the back! :)
"a few months ago i tried to play a steam game i had bought, only to find that i now had to log in with a password as they had enabled some sort of system to track your titles to your pc. they had sent me an email to the company i had previously worked for (which ceased trading) and i couldnt get access to any of my games for a week while they sorted that out. ive never had this issue with a dvd/cd!"
So in short, you bought a game on Steam, then lost your Steam password (which is always required to log into the Steam service!), and you also didn't bother to update the now invalid email address you gave them in the first place (who in his right mind would give them a work email address anyways?).
So well, yes, if you can't take care of a few simple things then I guess CD/DVD media may be better for you.
It's a shame it took a week, but that's not exactly unsurprising if you'd accidentally made the 'automated' methods of recovering your account unavailable.
You're responsible for keeping track of your username/password, in the same way that you're responsible for keeping track of the CD/DVD for a 'normal' game.
I've avoided Game ever since the manager of the local store treated me like some kind of moron because I wouldn't buy his stupid extended warranty. Even if he was right and the extended warranty wasn't a rip off, treating your customers like crap is a great way to make sure they don't come back.
I tried to buy Deus Ex, the latest one and got to agree to this.
You are entitled to use the Software for your own use, but you are not entitled to: (i) sell, grant a security interest in or transfer reproductions of the Software to other parties in any way, nor to rent, lease or license the Software to others without the prior written consent of Valve;
So I cannot sell my game to someone else afer it gets boring, it's a one time deal?
And it's the way the whole industry is going, including consoles. For now it's just codes to access MP, which I agree with. The next gen of consoles will increase the PSN / Live marketplaces. At that point we'll see single DL user licenses, so you cannot sell on your £35 purchase, effectively killing the 2nd hand market. Publishers and storefronts (including Steam) love it because they get revenue from every single sale. Customers hate it because you are now only leasing the right to play the game and don't actually own a product. Sales of full price games take a dive because no one can trade in the games they've completed to subsidise the cost of the new release.
• UK the only country where people cannot pre-order Skyrim on Steam
• Brink was month late to Steam in UK behind the rest of the world
• Space Marine and Saints Row The Third currently unavailable to purchase on Steam in the UK
Clearly something is going on with Steam in the UK, if it's not GAME threatening the publishers then what is it?
Could be lots of things, not least publishers wanting to be competitive in the UK market while Valve want parity with the Euro, meaning publishers lose margin if they don't agree? When it comes to pricing, Valve are no better than bricks and mortar. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Demanding I create an account with yet another forgettable password, in order to prove that I'm not a pirate?
I'd rather pay the extra couple of quid for a real copy, thanks. Haven't bought a single game that requires a Steam account yet. Nor any kind of game made by Ubisoft or EA with similar malware included. I couldn't care less for dick-waving achievements, nor for downloading gigabytes of game over a connection with a monthly traffic limit.
If Game really has been leaning on publishers like this, then it's a shitty thing to do. However, this doesn't stop Steam itself from being a whole heap of DO NOT WANT.
Bank holiday weekend, should be a peak business weekend with all those kiddies just before they go back to school, and the local branch is closed all three days of the weekend for a stocktake..... With that level of stupidity on offer, I can now believe that Game would try strong-arming publishers.
Having put off buying a PS3, I could resist no longer once gran turismo 5 came out. It was a few weeks before xmas and I went onto their website to be told it was available for pre-order. That's strange I thought I'm sure it's out and sure enough everybody else on the internet had it and I bought from amazon.
So way to go, build up that brand recognition so you were the first place I went to, and then fail to have an up to date website in the busiest period of the year for games
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