Steam Called a "Trojan Horse" by IGN, Owners of Direct2Drive

[Shawn Zipay]

A sharp jab was made recently by way of a statement released by IGN as to why their digital distribution service, Direct2Drive, would not be carrying Modern Warfare 2. They feel as though their customers should not "force the user to install a Trojan Horse," and yes, they were referring to Steam.

The company says its beef is not with publisher Activision -- in fact, Direct2Drive will offer a $5 coupon off of some of the Activision titles it sells as a compensation to its users.

Direct2Drive instead opposes MW2's Steamworks integration -- as an online storefront for digital download games, it competes directly with Valve's Steam service in some areas. In the highest-profile endorsement of Valve's digital tools to date, Infinity Ward will use the Steam client to update, support and authenticate the game.

The company says it told publisher partners earlier in the year that it would not sell titles that use Steam as a workaround for DRM, as it opposes the bundling of a storefront with a functionally free technology.

Other digital distributors are joining in on the "boycott" including Stardock's Impulse and GamersGate. Though, if you think about it, this just means that more sales will flow into Valve through Steam if other competitors are refusing to sell the product. Is this really an effective form of boycott here?

[Namakan]

Re: Steam Called a "Trojan Horse" by IGN, Owners of Direct2Drive

Well, I think D2D steals credit card information!

[jake_]

Re: Steam Called a "Trojan Horse" by IGN, Owners of Direct2Drive

F*ck them. They just don't like Steam because it does so well economically.

I <3 Valve.

[Wizrdwarts]

Re: Steam Called a &quot;Trojan Horse&quot; by IGN, Owners of Direct2Drive

CoD4 had a trojan horse--it made me install DirectX! (ohno)

[Chris_Redfield]

Re: Steam Called a &quot;Trojan Horse&quot; by IGN, Owners of Direct2Drive

I hate Steam, even though its benefits are huge. Both for the player and for the developer.

[Caliostro]

Re: Steam Called a &quot;Trojan Horse&quot; by IGN, Owners of Direct2Drive

Ah yes, let us boycott a platform for digital distribution that's easy, cheap, efficient and convenient for the user and developer alike! That'll work!

When questioned about the efficiency of this approach members of IGN were only quoted as saying "it seemed like a good idea at the time, like the crystal meth we did an hour earlier!".

[Minmaster]

Re: Steam Called a &quot;Trojan Horse&quot; by IGN, Owners of Direct2Drive

i'm okay with steam, but i would be 100% happy if steam allowed transfer of ownership of games. if they allowed this, there would be 0 complaints from most people i know.

[jake_]

Re: Steam Called a &quot;Trojan Horse&quot; by IGN, Owners of Direct2Drive

Ah yes, let us boycott a platform for digital distribution that's easy, cheap, efficient and convenient for the user and developer alike! That'll work!

When questioned about the efficiency of this approach members of IGN were only quoted as saying "it seemed like a good idea at the time, like the crystal meth we did an hour earlier!".

I like this fellow. He's funny.

[TGL|FalseLion]

Re: Steam Called a &quot;Trojan Horse&quot; by IGN, Owners of Direct2Drive

At least they're admitting to being capitalists...kinda funny they're boycotting something free that works just as well if not better than most of IGN's services that they charge for. What a bunch of money grubbing bastards. I always hated gamespy cause it never worked like it should and well fileplanet upsets me because they try and grab 5 bucks out of your pocket a month just to download from them when you can find the same files at filefront or some other site.

what i don't understand is how is mw2 any different from dawn of war 2? I'm pretty certain both the demo and the actual version of dawn of war 2 required steam....I don't know with 100% certainty because I bought it off steam.....yet direct 2 drive still sells it.

[CaptainKirk]

Re: Steam Called a &quot;Trojan Horse&quot; by IGN, Owners of Direct2Drive

I think it is technical limitations more than anything. How would D2D go about selling MW2? Download a self extracting zip of Steam? That would be fun.

[TGL|FalseLion]

Re: Steam Called a &quot;Trojan Horse&quot; by IGN, Owners of Direct2Drive

well if i remember right the dawn of war 2 demo had a steam installer built into it. It was kinda a pain cause you'd download a 2 gig file only to get a question asking if you needed to install steam or if it could launch steam, you'd click the appropriate answer and then steam would download another gig worth of updates. I don't know if it was the same with dawn of war but like I said I'm almost 100% certain that's how the actual release worked as well. Maybe direct 2 drive and the other online distributors have had issues with that game cause as I recall its the only non-valve game to this point that has been distributed that way. I personally prefer steam over the DRM software direct 2 drive uses which I have had issues with before.

Oh well....I have to agree with Zips that this is only going to help steam's cause out and will hurt direct 2 drive $5 off coupon or not.

[jake_]

Re: Steam Called a &quot;Trojan Horse&quot; by IGN, Owners of Direct2Drive

Oh well....I have to agree with Zips that this is only going to help steam's cause out and will hurt direct 2 drive $5 off coupon or not.

mhm. We live in a capitalist society and that is a good thing. Valve has successfully competed to be the best provider of games in a downloadable format and as a result is doing very well as a business.

If other similar enterprises want to get a share of the market, they have to up the ante and compete rather than complaining and refusing to not sell popular games.


Now... if we lived in much more socialist society (or communist even...). The government could make life difficult for Valve because it's unfair that they're better off in sales. That way everything could cost more and be less beneficial to consumers! Woo!

[PPSKevin]

Re: Steam Called a &quot;Trojan Horse&quot; by IGN, Owners of Direct2Drive

bunch of haters

[TGL|FalseLion]

Re: Steam Called a &quot;Trojan Horse&quot; by IGN, Owners of Direct2Drive

mhm. We live in a capitalist society and that is a good thing. Valve has successfully competed to be the best provider of games in a downloadable format and as a result is doing very well as a business.

Its good as long as the bottom doesn't fall out of the economy like they started predicting this time last year. I know I haven't dropped full price on but maybe two games this year, which is largely in part thanks to steam. I have bought a few discount titles through Direct 2 Drive, Fallout 3 being the only one that comes to mind. IGN is basically your gamer's Walmart, there isn't much that they don't offer, and there services are fairly cheap, and they don't like being undercut. They don't however offer much in the way of Anti-cheat which I think has alot to do with the MW2 steam exclusivity, and VAC probably has alot more to do with why most of the PC version of the game is being ran through steam. Not really sure why IGN doesn't see that but oh well....I'm not planning on buying MW2 anyway.

[Boreas]

Re: Steam Called a &quot;Trojan Horse&quot; by IGN, Owners of Direct2Drive

Wow, this is really bogus. Hey, they are making double or triple the money that we are making, so lets release an article about how they are bad and we are good! Yeah!