G reminded me of something: I haven’t done one of these in a while. Here goes. Steam. What’s wrong with Steam? Let me tell you about a little site I used to frequent. It was called Home of the Underdogs. Sound familiar? If not, don’t worry about it. If you knew about it, great and you probably know what I’m getting at. If you didn’t know about it, read on.

Home of the Underdogs (or HOTU as it was lovingly referred to in the community), archived a bunch of abandonware titles. Abandonware is explicitly defined as software that is no longer sold and supported or whose copyright ownership may be unclear for various reasons. The point? HOTU was THE place to go when there was uncertainty about Napster and other file sharing programs before torrents really took off.

Behold! The Holy Grail!

That’s not to say abandonware is illegal, rather it’s a gray area. For the most part, HOTU tried its best to keep a lid on what was and wasn’t illegal and offered links to stuff that could be bought and was still supported. Unfortunately, even though they’re supposedly back on their feet (after what, the fiftieth time it’s gone down), both Steam and torrenting have more or less made this site obsolete unless you’re just trying to get info about older titles and recommendations.

So why am I not pissed with torrenting? Because it’s free. Oh, but it’s illegal, right? Yeah, and Steam’s any better? Look, the only good thing about Steam is the ability to use the servers and feel better about yourself for legitimately buying something rather than illegally downloading it. And you might be thinking that at least you’re staying on the legal side, but here’s the problem.

Yeah…it’s kinda like that.

For the longest time games like Uplink, The Dig, Loom, and various other excellent, but older titles were available 100% for free on HOTU. “Le gasp! But that’s illegal!” Shut up and pay attention. I can attest that easily 90% of the stuff on HOTU was abandonware, meaning it would have been illegal to charge for it. Steam charges you. They get away with it by legally acquiring the licenses for the games.

Problem is they should have just been kept free. But no, instead Steam grabs up a bunch of titles and resells them for money. I’m not saying what they’re doing is illegal, but it’s not quite right, now is it? “Well, what about indie developers? This way they have virtually no overhead and can get their product out that much quicker.” Yes, but at what cost? Machinarium, though a beautiful game, was priced at $20 and wasn’t very long…how much of that went to the actual developers?

So broke he had to sell his emoticons.

In the case of Uplink, a $10 title, how much of that went to the developers? Or was it that Steam acquired the intellectual properties, meaning it’s old enough that NOTHING went to them? See, with XBLA, I can justify it because for the most part these games were specifically made or converted for XBLA. For PC games, it’s a little harder to justify it.

Nevermind that…recently I overheard some of my coworkers talking about Team Fortress 2. I chimed in stating I played it on XBL. Problem is…they play it on Steam. Even though I own The Orange Box, a collection of titles from Valve that has TF2 within it, since I own it for the 360 and not the PC, I was SOL unless I was willing to cough up MORE money to buy something I already own.

Steam’s corporate structure.

At least I was able to get a good deal on Amazon, but that brings up another good point. Shouldn’t Steam, a digital distributor, be trying to price match physical products? Meaning, if I can get the same product in physical format with already printed out manual, box, etc., shouldn’t that technically cost more than the digital version? And I only say this because ANYTHING can happen to data ANYWHERE at ANYTIME.

Conclusion

If Steam wants to compete with the big dogs there are a couple of things they need to do…

- Get better descriptions, customer reviews, and much more for products.
- Have discounted upgrades, backup options, and so on.
- Start actually price matching.
- Have more free stuff on there. Not just demos either.

Steam’s pretty ambitious in what they’re doing. For a meager price, I can download something and say I own it in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. But I don’t have the physical equivalent. Steam is clearly the way of the future, but without that backup, a lot of people are going to become skeptical, especially when they don’t price match. Furthermore, if the prices just aren’t as good, especially for single player games, there’s really nothing stopping people from torrenting instead.

Category: Rants, Who Can Go Suck It | Tags: 19, abandon, can, download, free, go, home, hotu, it, of, old, share, soft, steam, suck, the, underdogs, ware, who // 3 Comments »