Fragland.net V4 :: Steam is ripping off "the little guys"

U-Games

18 members own Half-Life 2: Episode 1.

You can manage your own collection by registering or logging in.

Game Details

Description

Half-Life 2: Episode 1 is an all-new episode created by Valve that extends the Half-Life 2 single player adventure. The player reprises the role of Dr. Gordon Freeman, who must immediately face the repercussions of his actions in City 17 and the ...

Articles

07-07-06 Review for Pc

Latest news

10-08-09 Steam is ripping off "the little guys"1

09-30-07 Gabe Newell laughs at Mac6

10-04-06 Special: The Revolution called Steam?4

07-08-06 Half-Life ²: Episode 1 update available

07-07-06 PC Review: Half-Life 2: Episode 1

06-24-06 Half-Life²: Episode 1 stats4

06-10-06 Tiny Steam update

06-07-06 HL2: Ep. One = Half-Life 32

05-26-06 HL2: Episode 1 Teaser Trailer

05-25-06 HL2: Episode 1 available June 1st

View all game details »

Related Tags

Most active topics

Volition dev: used game sales will make our industry fall apart

UK Charts: first reshuffle of the year!

Kingdoms of Amalur dev states piracy prevents PC exclusives

SOCOM: Combined Assault

Latest comments

This one of my favorite games. SOCOM4 RULES!!!!!!!!

If piracy is stealing, and used game sales give game devs (and publish...

lol, a console that doesn't play games! They actually think that peopl...

Piracy on consoles is HUGE. Not to mention the problem of used-console...

I was so disappointed with FF XIII I stayed clear of the second outing...

how do you get one of those massive space battles

And it's 2012 that they need to show a profit, with so few titles bein...

while it looks good and the specs are ace, it's just way far too expen...

Yay! :D

Yeah, the flooding in Thailand caused the HDD prices to go through the...

I meant on DS/3DS/DSi as opposed to PSP/Vita. Piracy on DS is huge....

Get released on handheld exclusively as opposed to what?

One of my hard drives is on it's way out, one day I was looking at rep...

They're soon not going to have any staff left to make any games, let a...

This is another reason why single player games should not require a pe...

Latest forum comments

Klopt. Maja, bij de vorige job was mobiliteit inherent aan mijn funct...

gij bent van job veranderd en geen firmawagen meer?

Mjaaa, bij 't vorige bedrijf ne Vectra. In 't huidige bedrijf krijg ik...

Nieuwe adventure van Double Fine gefinancierd via kickstarter.com Heb ...

Het contract van mijn A4 is met een jaar verlengd. Anders was kans gro...

euh veel, maar heb geprobeerd er niet aan te denken en weet het dus oo...

En wat kost hij per maand?

Allez, omdat er hier dan toch nog 's iets zou worden gepost.. Nieuwe a...

Visit the forums »

RSS Feeds

Feeds are per category

All News

Comments

News

Steam is ripping off "the little guys"

Posted on Thursday, 8 October 2009 by Speed, source: MaximumPC

Steam: Gimme the money!

In an interview, Gearbox' Randy Pitchford stated that Valve Software should spin off Steam as a seperate company to avoid conflict of interest.

RP: They should! It would be much better if Steam was its own business. There’s so much conflict of interest there that it’s horrid. It’s actually really, really dangerous for the rest of the industry to allow Valve to win.

I love Valve games, and I do business with the company. But, I’m just saying, Steam isn’t the answer

To make things more clear, Pitchford also opened a bit the book on how Valve Software deals with smaller devs that want to get their stuff on Steam:

Steam helps us as customers, but it’s also a money grab, and Valve is exploiting a lot of people in a way that’s not totally fair. Valve is taking a larger share than it should for the service its providing. It’s exploiting a lot of small guys. For us big guys, we’re going to sell the units and it will be fine.

Those that want to see Microsoft take over digital distribution (through f.i. Windows LIVE) shouldn't be too worried though:

Microsoft is focused on the console platform. For the time being, that’s nice, because some of us aren’t sure we want Microsoft to control [distribution]. Frankly, at this point, I’d rather trust Best Buy and Wal-Mart.

Clearly a trustworthy business, the gaming industry!

In other news:

Left 4 Dead has Realism

Epic Mickey no longer exclusive for Wii

1 Comment(s)

Rian

Meh, not sure what to think of this. Personally, I think it was a bold move by Valve - i remember the fuss about the fact that you had to register HL² online using Steam - but it turned out alright in the end. And as long as you are free to re-download any game you own (unlike other similar services), I don't have a problem with it. And, as far as I know, it's a great way for indie developers to instantly reach a huge possible customerbase, instead of releasing it on their own.

Yes it's 'risky', and yes, there might be some conflict of interest, but if it keeps growing like this, I belive the company has no chance but to form it into a separate company. My opinion, they're just jealous they didn't think of it sooner. ;)

Meh, not sure what to think of this. Personally, I think it was a bold move by Valve - i remember the fuss about the fact that you had to register HL² online using Steam - but it turned out alright in the end. And as long as you are free to re-download any game you own (unlike other similar services), I don't have a problem with it. And, as far as I know, it's a great way for indie developers to instantly reach a huge possible customerbase, instead of releasing it on their own. Yes it's 'risky', and yes, there might be some conflict of interest, but if it keeps growing like this, I belive the company has no chance but to form it into a separate company. My opinion, they're just jealous they didn't think of it sooner. ;)

Quote

Posted on 11:10, October 09th 2009