Activision, Double Fine Join With Steam

Gamespot reports on the expected arrival of Double Fine's Psychonauts on Steam, and the unexpected announcement that Activision is now offering games on the service. Titles from the company include Call of Duty, Call of Duty 2, and Gun, which was developed by Neversoft. From that article: "Whenever Valve does open the digital spigot on the four Activision games, they will join an increasing number of third-party titles available on Steam. This week, Majesco's critical hit Psychonauts was made available on the service, and Ubisoft's Dark Messiah of Might & Magic will launch on the service later this month."

Valve is becoming a publisher

[yincrash]

Valve is on it's way to becoming a bigger publisher of other people's games. It's a new avenue of offering games that is definitely in use.

Just wonderful

[Anonymous Coward]

Steam is THE reason that I pirate these games. Honestly, I love the HL series enough to buy HL, HL2, and even EP1, but having to run Steam to even play the games, I'd rather get the games from another source.

It insists on running upon startup. You have to start it to play any game, at which time it calls home and checks for unnecessary updates and (of course) let's the publisher know that you're still playing their games.

What happened to the days when product sales actually let the industry know how many people were playing/enjoying their games?

The most interesting thing about this is that

[Anonymous Coward]

Steam has gone from being "stuff Valve thinks is good" to "any old shite"... I'm looking at Gun here.
This is pretty bad for the indie stuff on Steam (Defcon, The Ship). Before this it was like Valve was recommending it which is a pretty big deal for games without a marketing budget, now it's clear that it's just about cash.

P.S. The Steam-alike Triton service closed and they had to give out boxed copies of everything. Digital distribution isn't a rosy a future as many think.

Some can't get broadband, you insensitive clod

[tepples]

And at the end of the day, giving them a feature list:

• In order to buy even single-player games through Valve, players need to sign up for residential high-speed Internet access. Many geographic areas can't get this at all; others charge $480 for the first year of service.
• In order to buy games suitable for everyone or for teens through Valve, players need to be 18 or older.

Automatic patching so you can keep the games notbreaking for the paying public!

Widespread humiliation in the gaming press when differences between the publisher's idea of "notbreaking" and the players' idea of "notbreaking" result in dramatic changes in the game balance.

Re:Just wonderful

[Keith Russell]

It insists on running upon startup.

It defaults to running on startup. You can turn that off in the Options dialog.

checks for unnecessary updates

Back home, we call those "bug fixes".

let's the publisher know that you're still playing their games

Well, I haven't gotten a nastygram from Valve for not playing enough Day of Defeat:Source, so no harm, no foul.

What happened to the days when product sales actually let the industry know how many people were playing/enjoying their games?

What happened for me? Deux Ex: Invisible War. Bought it, played about two hours of it, and got sick of the console-based dumbing down, tiny zones, and constant barrage of lecturing from NPCs on the radio. Put it back on the shelf. All Eidos knew was that a particular shipment to the Best Buy on McKnight Road sold out after n days on the shelf. There's a big difference between "Sales are OK, but tapering off, and the critics aren't too happy" and "According to our aggregate numbers, everybody's giving up before the plot moves out of Seattle."