Gabe Newell on customer-based pricing

[sgc_meltdown]

The real crime here is that dominions 3 still wants me to pay more than fifty bucks american for it

I know a professor made it and all but come on

 

[Captain Shrek]

How is a digital copy of a game without DRM any different from a diskette?

 

[ChristofferC]

He must have been on drugs orsmething.

 

[pocahaunted]

That's a bit biased, he actually became rich because the world is full of actual, borderline braindead, retards. It just speaks volumes about how dumb people in general are - in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king indeed.

Remember. The world includes you. So... are you a millionaire?

Fallacious argument, I'm not implying that retards are poor, but rather that they enrich those who cater to them with. Seeing as I don't, nor intend to, it's moot.

 

[J1M]

As much as I like Gabe, this is a childish idea.

How can one even like this fat ass retard?

Well.. He is a fat ass, granted. He's hardly a retard. When you make millions of dollars next Wednesday just don't forget to buy me the Deus Ex Augmented edition.

The American mentality in action - he's not a retard because he is a accomplished software engineer, no, it's because he became rich.

Fine. He's not a retard because he's smart and he used that smartness to make millions of dollars. Satisfied?

Did he? It was more luck to make first service where you buy games online, and you download them from the server rather then wait for box to arrive. Valve was one of the few developers with popular enough title to make it work.

No, he made his first money by being one of the first employees at microsoft.

 

[Exmit]

 

[Exmit]

KC ?

 

[commie]

The real crime here is that dominions 3 still wants me to pay more than fifty bucks american for it

I know a professor made it and all but come on

Torrent is your friend. Torrent with workable keys that allow you to update is an even bigger friend.



Coming from Australia though, where games were $89.95 average throughout the 90's(in 1992 $90 was a fucking huge amount, I paid $120 for WC3 in 1995!), $50 is not much really, though for a digital game I think it is excessive still.

Funny to see whining here about $20-$30 games being too expensive though. That really takes the piss. No wonder companies need to appeal to the masses to sell enough at such prices(which are still considered too high) to make money.

 

[Kraszu]

No, he made his first money by being one of the first employees at microsoft.

Sounds like more luck, or do you assume that first employers at Microsoft were smarter then programmers hired today by MS? It is the opposite there is more selection now. The point is that him being a successful programmer indicate his intelligence, not that he got lucky with Steam like Kwa believes.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Funny to see whining here about $20-$30 games being too expensive though. That really takes the piss. No wonder companies need to appeal to the masses to sell enough at such prices(which are still considered too high) to make money.

I blame Steam and their sales for warping people's sense of value.
Personally, I wouldn't complain about paying 20-30PLN for games.

 

[DakaSha]

Good thing I'm not stupid enough to give money to Steam like the majority of the Codex and cause Valve to invent more and more ways to rip off the cattle.

Retards who buy from Steam fully deserve anything that's coming to them.

I have never ever used this expression once in my life but "you sound like a broken record (about the 4 things you actually talk about)" is just to fitting with you

 

[sgc_meltdown]

Coming from Australia though, where games were $89.95 average throughout the 90's.

I think I paid up to 80 bucks for genesis game cartridges

consider yourself as having paid for deep and intricate keyboard gameplay

unless you bought the rise of the robots pc version or something

 

[20 Eyes]

An example is – and this is something as an industry we should be doing better – is charging customers based on how much fun they are to play with. Some people, when they join a server, a ton of people will run with them. Other people, when they join a server, will cause others to leave. We should have a way of capturing that. We should have a way of rewarding the people who are good for our community.

Fucking Gaben. So girls play for free? Nerds on Steam aren't already pathetic enough without masses of landwhale, atttention-whore 'gurl gamerz' trying to coax them into hanging around so they can get free games?

Shame on you, Gaben.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

Play with me and I'll show you my boobs? Dear God we're on the verge of something wonderful here.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

So, in practice, a really likable person in our community should get Dota 2 for free, because of past behaviour in Team Fortress 2. Now, a real jerk that annoys everyone, they can still play, but a game is full price and they have to pay an extra hundred dollars if they want voice.

So in other words, they want to create a sort of dystopian online community where everyone must smile and be nice or big brother will crucify them and then charge them extra dollars.
Seriously, if someone is gonna act like a faggot, I'll call them a faggot.

To most players, killing them is grounds for being called a faggot.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Hmm. As I was gazing lovingly at the golden potato on my profile, I remembered this thread and that bit of news. I suppose the golden potato slightly ties into this, and since it's still on my profile I wonder if I'll be getting all Valve games for free for life?

"So, in practice, a really likable person in our community should get Dota 2 for free, because of past behaviour in Team Fortress 2."

That line in particular makes me wonder. It was already ridiculously brofist of Valve to give golden potato collectors all Valve games up to that point, but I wonder if they'll continue being ridiculous or if the golden potato is being left there as a badge/achievement only.
Ungh Valve.

 

[Ludo]

Sounds dangerously similar to all that tiered internet hype.

 

[Luzur]

http://youtu.be/Im6yRpQrsaY

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Good thing I'm not stupid enough to give money to Steam like the majority of the Codex and cause Valve to invent more and more ways to rip off the cattle.

Retards who buy from Steam fully deserve anything that's coming to them.

No, you just buy busted, jank, larp simulators and the dogshit DLC that goes along with it.

 

[MetalCraze]

Come on, fizzy. You are a cattle, don't blame the messenger who points it out.

 

[MikeJahn]

Sounds like one of the worst ideas ever. For one - punishing someone for being a supposed asshole (even if their complaints are valid) is shit. For another there's going to be a lot of griefing going on - people getting into gangs and derepping people for the lulz and making them shell out an extra 20 for whatever.

 

[sea]

Gabe is a very smart man who understands his customers and understands what they respond to. That doesn't mean he's also not capable of silly or radical ideas. Rethinking the pricing model for games is something that a lot of people have grappled with in the past, because gaming can provide potentially thousands of hours of unique experiences, when other forms of media typically provide a fixed amount of enjoyment; reconciling that value equation is difficult, and why we've seen so much of a push towards DLC lately. Personally, I don't think this idea is worthwhile or helpful to gaming as a whole, but at the same time, it's interesting and it could lead to some cool ideas - think some sort of Steam rewards program that gives discounts based on (active, not idle) play-time and how many titles one already has, i.e. "buy 10, get 1 free".

I will say, however, that reimbursing modders and providing them a chance to make money is an awesome idea, though it comes at the risk of diminishing the democracy that surrounds mods in favour of a tiered structure where only paying customers can get in on the cool new thing. Valve knows in the end that mods are good for business, and it's very economical for them to let talented people do what they already would do to begin with, put it in the game as supplementary/paid content, and then give a cut to the creators. In this respect I can't fault them so long as they don't require modders to charge money if they don't want to.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Good thing I'm not stupid enough to give money to Steam like the majority of the Codex and cause Valve to invent more and more ways to rip off the cattle.

Retards who buy from Steam fully deserve anything that's coming to them.

No, you just buy busted, jank, larp simulators and the dogshit DLC that goes along with it.

My ignore list was fed again.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Come on, fizzy. You are a cattle, don't blame the messenger who points it out.

I don't buy from steam, retail is cheaper here.

 

[Lumpy]

Wait, so this Gabe guy (why the fuck do people even care about this guy?) is a retard because he invented a great business model that brings in millions?

 

[Lunac]

retail is cheaper here.

Thanks to eBay powersellers of PC games and Amazon marketplace you can pretty much find any Steam game for cheaper in retail/boxed/physical format. Sometimes even with shipping costs added on it comes out cheaper. Sometimes you have to wait a day or two, or week for an item to pop up, especially if we are talking a rare DOS era title, but this is rare. If you happen to have Amazon Prime membership you can get most items the NEXT DAY, via various localized courier services that have partnered up with Amazon. Hell, for those with slower broadband connections, this is not only cheaper but actually faster. I've had items delivered to me in less than 12 hours from order time via Amazon Prime!

Also, I hope that fat cunt has a heart attack and as his bulbous fatness hurtles downwards he slams his fat-fuken-head on the keyboard and deletes every single Steam account and backup-of out there. Ah, one day, hopefully soon, that fat-fuk will oblige, at least when it comes to droping dead of a cheeseburger overdose.


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[gp1628]

The real crime here is that dominions 3 still wants me to pay more than fifty bucks american for it

I know a professor made it and all but come on

Crime? Why a crime? You consider that a ripoff?

The CD comes with a Windows version and a Mac version and a Linux version. You are allowed to load all 3 if you want to as many computers as you want. It comes with a 300 page spiral bound manual. The patched version is up to 73 nations all fairly unique, with slots up to 99 for adding modded ones.

Ive had Dom3 for something like 6 years. I still play it almost daily. Even in Solo mode. There arent many games I can say that about.

It also STILL gets patched and updated, which are free. Also rare.

It plays on free servers of which there are many. And the copy you get allows you to be a server. Both rare these days.

There are many games that I have paid that much money for that lasted about a month on my machines. Especially war-strategy games. Usually someone posts some sort of always-wins-walkthru to the forums which ruins it for me. After years of attention from dedicated players all you see on the Dom3 forums is arguments on things like that. They are STILL arguing about what nation is weak, which is strong, what is a tactic vs an exploit. And there dont seem to be any actually agreed on "cheats" or auto-win strategies.

Im not saying that any of these things are unique to Dom3 so people dont need to point out other games that do one or two of these (altho I wouldnt mind knowing some more that I can host on my linux server and play from my windows desktop). Im just wondering what the criteria is for "crime". The price maybe be high but I cant consider it a crime. Its one of the only good values Ive ever gotten in a game.