Steamed!!!!!!

[Brizey]

Been a while since I posted...

My two cents:

Cent 1: Steam is a pretty big operation. That makes money without having to be evil. I'll roll my dice.

Cent 2: The game costs about $50, not $50,000. I'll still be able to retire if I have to buy another game in 15 years if Steam goes under.

Cent 2-1/2: Do we really need to have the "you buy a license to use the software, not the software itself" discussion in 2010 in a forum for a game targeted towards us nerds?

Cent 2-3/4: Jeebus this thing requires some horsepower for a strategy game.

[Indiansmoke]

I quite like the Steam concept, have not tried it yet to see if it runs smoothly or not, but I like the idea of having a nice client where I download my games from and that does all these nice things for me.

Intrusion is irrelevant IMO as I am getting intruted by countless ways and from countless sources so worrying anout intrusion from Steam is a bit weird. In fact there is so much intrusion going on globally that the intruders are propably having logistical problems handling all the info they get!

What I did not like though is the price. I bought it from Amazon UK and got it for 40 euro including delivery instead of 50 euro that I would pay on steam (I also got a bonus map ).

10 euro is 10 euro and I don't see any reason to pay it.

[wodan11]

Cent 2-3/4: Jeebus this thing requires some horsepower for a strategy game.

I think they were thinking back to the backlash from Civ4 with people who met the printed game specs and had trouble playing big maps etc. So this time they probably went the other direction, and make the specs conservative.

[ColdPhoenix]

I think they were thinking back to the backlash from Civ4 with people who met the printed game specs and had trouble playing big maps etc. So this time they probably went the other direction, and make the specs conservative.

I would love it if that's the case but I doubt it. They will lose more money by releasing too high specs than by too low specs.

[ScrotusMaximus]

I think they were thinking back to the backlash from Civ4 with people who met the printed game specs and had trouble playing big maps etc. So this time they probably went the other direction, and make the specs conservative.

Huh? Oh. A joke.

I would love it if that's the case but I doubt it. They will lose more money by releasing too high specs than by too low specs.

Huh?

[dregor]

The dollar : euro thing is a valid concern with Steam, and pretty much the only one I've come across in this thread. For European residents I'd suggest buying a physical copy, or some other digital delivery service that does the pricing right. But otherwise, no reason you can't still enjoy the game through Steam.

[Ukerric]

Most of the € = $ problem comes from VAT, which is significantly higher than whatever sales tax you end up paying in the US. Having to add about 20% to your price in europe does wonder to the exchange rates

[Sir Og]

You are right about VAT but in civ5's case here in Bulgaria a physical copy is 25% cheaper than the steam version. Which is very strange. I can't think of any logical reason for this being the case.

[Proteus_MST]

You are right about VAT but in civ5's case here in Bulgaria a physical copy is 25% cheaper than the steam version. Which is very strange. I can't think of any logical reason for this being the case.

Similar to germany...
Amazon.de sells Civ V for 42 € at the moment which is much cheaper than the 49.99 € that Steam wants to have...
and Amazon has free Postage and Packing,
something which, no doubt, is much more expensive than the costs that Steam would have to pay if I would download Civ V from one of their servers.
As I doubt that Amazon is altruistic enough to sell the game without getting any profit from it (and under the assumption that transfer and handling of real physical media is more expensive than handling data packets on a server and that they have to pay the same sales taxes as Steam)
there can be no other explanation for the 1 $ = 1 € policy, than pure greediness
(and maybe the fact, that there are enough people who are lazy or uninformed enough to buy these games despite the inflated prices from steam instead of buying them from cheaper sources)

[Sava]

Another perk of Steam: I just migrated data from my dying 1.5TB HDD to a new 2TB HDD. All I did was copy the Steam directory from one to the other. Games work. No install bull****.

It's not just Steam. I've done this with newer and older games. Windows 7 seems to handle this quite well. I had an Alienware m15x die on me. I took the mini SATA out, plugged it in to my desktop, and was able to run the installed games and apps with no issues.

But I agree, Steam is great like you describe. It saves a ton of time especially if you build a new machine or, in your case, have a dying hard drive.

[Asher]

Properly developed Win7 apps/games are supposed to all be portable. No registry ****, no shared directories...everything is designed to be self-contained. Still, most apps are stupid and don't follow the model.

[Proteus_MST]

Properly developed Win7 apps/games are supposed to all be portable. No registry ****, no shared directories...everything is designed to be self-contained. Still, most apps are stupid and don't follow the model.

Sometimes the same goes even for games developed for XP...
my game CD for X³ Reunion had some problems with a corrupt folder,
preventing me from installing X³ on my new main Win 7 computer
(installation would always stop at this corrupt folder).

But I had X³ installed on my old Win XP main computer,
therefore I just tried to transfer the game folder via my local LAN
from my older computer to the new one.

Well, it was a full success...
everything works fine on the new computer
and I was even able to successfully transfer my old saves to the new computer

[Snotty]

Sorry steam but you lost a sale. The physical copy was £5 cheaper.

[Sava]

Sorry steam but you lost a sale. The physical copy was £5 cheaper.

Ah, but does it come with the Babylonians?

[Proteus_MST]

Ah, but does it come with the Babylonians?

If he ordered it via Amazon.uk,
then it comes without the Babylonians,
but with a map of Indus River valley included
(Cradle of Civilizations: Asia)

btw. a different map pack than those people receive, who preordered via Amazon germany...
they get the Mediterranean map pack

Seems like Firaxis wants to put a certain uniqueness into the preorder releases for the different countries