Saturday, November 13, 2010

Steam is "causing the death of PC gaming"

There are articles as of late false propaganda being spread as of late by retailers that steam is causing the death of PC gaming. Here, here, and here to cite a few. The claim is that steam has a monopoly on PC gaming and it will usher in the collapse of the market.


Do you remember a time when pc games at brick and mortar stores were more than one shelf stuffed in the back?

Do you remember when they tried to stock the latest and best pc games always?

Do you remember when they bothered to price their pc games fairly according to age and popularity?

I can only answer yes to the first one myself and even then that time was so far back its really reaching into my memory for it. Truth of the matter is this, the gaming industry wanted pc gaming to die along time ago, they seriously tried to kill it.


"But why would they do such a thing?" you ask. Simple. PC gaming, unlike consoles, has freedom.

  • There are communities, large ones, that can mod the game freely, adding days/weeks/months of playtime onto a game. Companies didn't like this one bit, if you are still playing X game even months later how are they going to make you shell out $60-100 every 3 months for their games?
  • Full blown piracy exists on the pc. If something is unfair or overpriced, people just steal it. A guy who charges $50 a bottle of water in the desert will get robbed. The open piracy forces companies to be competitive and honest, and they don't like that one bit.
  • PC gamers, not trying to start a flame war or insult people, but seriously are generally more educated. they can sort deals from scams, and can patiently wait a market out. Well how is a company supposed to scam earn record profits when dealing with people like that?
back in the late 90's to early 00's anyone that was a PC gamer saw the rapid decline of their medium being sold in stores, they were pissed but they couldn't do much about it. It was at this time consoles got a lot of strength in the market. But anyone smart knows consoles are very restrictive and controlled (especially current gen). Want that cool fan mod you see for the PC version on your console? Forget it. Want to use trainers to get through the game fast cause you just don't have the time but yet want to see the story? good luck.

If anything steam was what saved the PC industry from dying and companies do not like that one bit. So do not believe the lies retailers are spewing about steam killing the PC industry. If you want a more accurate headline here's one.

Steam hurts our console game sales so we can only afford one Ferrari this year instead of two, BAWWWWWWW.

3 comments:

  1. I love Steam, but it restricts some of the freedom with it's DRM. I've recently bought KOTOR on Steam and the game doesn't support widescreen resolutions. This being a PC game, there had to be a solution. And there was, but it required modifying the executable file, and as we ll know Steam game executables are encrypted. So no luck.

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  2. Steam is amazing.

    Dude your blog is just too amazing. I read and will continue to read every one of your articles.

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  3. DRM is not simply Steams fault, evry Developer can configure it as they wish! Take Witcher2 where they completly removed DRM, or Fallout3/NV for which you may install a zillion Mods and even Tools that modify the EXE on runtime.

    Face it, your specific game simply fkked up.

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