Prey Coming To Steam

[CSN NewsBot]

Yep, you read correctly. The 3D Realms and Human Head title, Prey, will soon be available via Steam. How soon? How does tomorrow sound to you? A small box on the Steampowered page lays down the details.

Prey will be available Thursday, November 30 on Steam for $49.95. Previous purchasers of the retail or downloaded editions of Prey can activate a copy on Steam at no cost by using their existing product key.

Who called it? Just glad to see I can register my boxed copy of the game to Steam if I ever wanted to in the future.

[baconman]

steam is going to have every game ever created in the world ever

its a fact

[Disk2]

Maybe not every game. Steam is a great distribution platform, but there are plenty of game companies who don't want their sales figures and distribution channel monitored by another game company. I can't blame them.

[Incursion]

Well, registering your games on Steam is a good idea, cause it's DRA, so you can't ever lose your games, unless you forget your password.

[FAF]

Digital distribution is great. It means that by NOT using it, I'm sticking two fingers up at the major league publishers by buying their games cheaper from places like Play.com.



For example: CoD2 on Steam $40, in Game (boxed version) about $15

BF2142 on EA Downloader $40, from Play.com about $35.



Why should companies be able to save on packaging, save on retailers, save on distribution, save on logistics and STILL not pass on ANY of these savings to the customer? I will always refuse to pay more for a game downloaded than bought from a retailer. I'm still stunned that publishers think they can get away with it and hope no-one notices...



PS. yes I know Valve doesn't set the prices on Steam, it's a rant at other publishers, not them :)

[FLeK0]

prey is $19.90 at amazon.com.

[Agent 00Shoe]

FAF wrote..

Why should companies be able to save on packaging, save on retailers, save on distribution, save on logistics and STILL not pass on ANY of these savings to the customer?

Because game development is hard work with long LONG hours and the developers get underpaid to do it. On top of that they have to listen to the whiney demands of thankless children like you.

[[GH]-Paladin]

Agent 00Shoe wrote..

Because game development is hard work with long LONG hours and the developers get underpaid to do it. On top of that they have to listen to the whiney demands of thankless children like you.

Obviously you totally missed the point of the post..



He's wondering why we are paying the same amount or more to download the game than it is to buy it from the store.



Bandwidth costs a lot less than Packaging and Distributing and Retail cost. You don't get the box, you don't get the actual software, no manual etc etc. Those things add into the cost of a retail game which is why you pay 49.99-60 dollars for a game.



We want the bang for the buck before this new system of selling games even becomes remotely worth it to the average user.

[Agent 00Shoe]

[GH]-Paladin wrote..

Obviously you totally missed the point of the post..



He's wondering why we are paying the same amount or more to download the game than it is to buy it from the store.



Bandwidth costs a lot less than Packaging and Distributing and Retail cost. You don't get the box, you don't get the actual software, no manual etc etc. Those things add into the cost of a retail game which is why you pay 49.99-60 dollars for a game.



We want the bang for the buck before this new system of selling games even becomes remotely worth it to the average user.

And I'm telling you kids that the money goes back to the developers who deserve it.

[[GH]-Paladin]

Agent 00Shoe wrote..

And I'm telling you kids that the money goes back to the developers who deserve it.

Proof?



How do you know this, do you see the financial summaries? I'm sure their salary will stay shitty whether their software it's distributed electronically or not.

[Diamond Dust]

I wonder what kind of cut valve gets for the online distribution compared to a publisher that ships retail. I would love a price drop but as long as there is more money going back to the developers I don't mind. That should give developers the chance to have more resources available to them to release a better game, this would give smaller developers a better chance of growing in a short period of time without having to get bought out by a big developer (who then tell them what to do) to sell games.

[Agent 00Shoe]

[GH]-Paladin wrote..

How do you know this, do you see the financial summaries?

Because I possess the unholy power of both common sense and the ability to reason. Why do you think developers are moving towards digital distribution? Just to save a few people the hassle of having to leave their houses for 30 minutes?



Valve is living the dream of every developer out there, they don't have to answer to any publisher. They own their own intellectual property and they can make any game they want when they want without having to justifiy the decision to some arbitrary suit whose primary concern is what would best benefit the publisher. And why do developers have to answer to the publishers? Because they handle all the marketing and distribution, and they don't do it for free. It's big money and big risk, and publishers demand a good chunk of the profits because of it.



With Steam, Valve bypasses all of that. True, digital distrubition is cheaper for valve than paying a publisher, cheaper but not cheap. Bandwidth, servers and maintenance. And don't fool yourself into thinking that the CS level desing team are working on maintaining those servers when they're not adjusting old maps to support HDR. Valve almost certainly had to hire new staff to take on those responsibilities. The left over cash goes right back to where it belongs, the company.



And this is why other developers are jumping on to Steam. Give EA 10% of your sale profits and your soul so they can put your game in a box and ship to Best Buy where they'll just stick it in the back of the store next to Quicken and MS Word, because console games are getting all the primo shelf space in the front of the store, OR give a fraction of that cost to Valve so they distribute your game online. TV ads? Magazine ads? Who needs them! Once you're on Steam you're exposed to all the other hundreds of thousands of gamers who own a Valve product. HL2/CS's own popularity becomes a marketing tool for other developers. Every time someone opens Steam their game is right there in front of their face, and they get to pocket the extra change to properly pay their over-worked staff so they can put out better product.



And that is why you're still paying $50 for a $50 game. Boo hoo.

[[GH]-Paladin]

Agent 00Shoe wrote..

And that is why you're still paying $50 for a $50 game. Boo hoo.

but we're not. We're paying 50 for a 19.99 game.

[ALT+F4]

[DaRk-AnGeL]

[GH]-Paladin wrote..

but we're not. We're paying 50 for a 19.99 game.

Quoted for truth lol.....



http://us.gamestracker.com/pc/13089/prices.htm



:)