The cost of digital distribution

I found a good use for my old disks.... keep them neatly stacked near my computer as always and continue the illusion they are valuable.

My 2 year old child won't walk past the disks (she has to grab them and play with them) and therefore my computer is kept safe!

Well maybe not valuable, but definitely useful. 

No, they have to be valuable.......

My 2 year old child is very smart, she somehow instinctively knows what is 'valuable' and those things she want's the most! We cannot even pretend something is valuable, such as an old tv remote, she knows and won't touch it,,,, well she will 'pretend' to play with it until our back is turned, then drop it and go for the 'real' tv remote!

But the disk collection, i am naturally protective of it, a habit ingrained in me over the years, now even though i know the disks are worthless, i can still capitalize on my natural protective instinct and easily make my child think they are valuable.

I'd like to think that digital distribution and the competition it brings is the reason games haven't gone up in price the last 15 years. I remember looking at AAA+ games back when I was a kid, and they cost 50-60 USD back then. Add some inflation on that, and it's actually kind of amazing that AAA+ games still cost 50-60 USD today. Plus now you get the seasonal sales from Amazon / Origin / Steam / GOG / Gamefly / Gamersgate / everything else.

Some say digital distribution killed retail (true, to some extent - as long as we have some "platform" to have entertainment on, it is only wise to put something to be entertained with on abovementioned platform). But there is no difference in price between retail copy of game and digital - same "spherical in vacuum" $60 per copy, even if you don't have any overhead expenses, storage fees, logistics costs, printing price, or middlemen salaries (add instant delivery factor too). Therefore either retail buyers paying less, or people buying digital paying more, for things they physically don't have. However, seeing how some not so big and not so hard company is adding microtransactions into their full-price games, trying to present this as a "virtue", due increased development cost, I believe that "turtle is lying". Even if few companies were willing to share their income number, hence we can only guess how really big their revenues are, I find it hard to believe they are starving. Probably they should cut their marketing/PR departments, remove all needless middlemen, and concentrate on making good game, instead of releasing same crysis call of battlefield every year.

Guys, there is no doubt that digital distribution is a win-win situtuation for everyone.

I was just going through my old stuff and thinking how much I liked the manuals and the large fold-out charts and such.

Come on, I like old "physical" copies and treasure them too (nobody touches my wiener Fallout 1 box!), but my main problem with retail in necessity to wait for weeks if not months and worry about receiving meatball of ground wet cardboard, broken plastic, shattered disks and goodies and bent metal instead of "collectors edition". Or getting it in the first place.

I am now and ever shall be a "COLLECTOR".   

I don't know what it means to be a collector in this new era.  Maybe companies can segue to a displayable,  dare I say it, collectible, art piece with a beautiful frame and letter of authenticity.  The art piece could be a lithograph in limited edition signed by the programmers.  Maybe a book will come with it.  The book would let us in on the behind the scenes/human side of the development.  The art itself could show us what the box "would" have looked like.  

Maybe it's hard to let go of the things you love for a reason.  I still have my vinyl.  I hold them and remember moments in my life.  I have similar associations with books, movies and games.  I remember the first time I traveled a phase lane in Sins.  More recently I was chilled to hear, "We are the Borg" (thanks SOA2 Team ).  

There are moments that warm your soul. That's why we choose the media and mediums of expression we choose.  As for the physical copies it's just nice to hold a symbolic piece of your personal history in your hands.

backs out of the room slowly...  

P.S. On my 100th birthday I will navigate to the star I named in Gal Civ III, after my little girl, Buachompoo (that's Pink Lotus in Thai).  I'll look at it and remember the day I sat her on my lap and showed her "her star". 

I was recently cleaning out the basement and decided to open up my box of game boxes, that had been relegated down there since my wife decided they weren't attractive enough for the bedroom

I was mortified to find that a case of soda that was stacked on top (untouched in years, probably similar vintage to most of the game boxes) had sprung a leak and ruined them all.  Worst part is that I totally could not explain to my wife why it was so depressing - to her it was already junk that should have been tossed ages ago

Guess I better not open up that box with all the old floppy drives and obsolete hard drives...as long as it's intact, they're all still fully functional and capable of bringing to life a complete vintage machine, just like Schrodinger's cat  

Tell her her bags/suits/dresses/shoes are ruined somehow, if you have typical wife.

Um have any of you guys had a desktop, and  no laptops. With no internet. Tjats when you are glad that your games are on Cd's and Dvd;s. This has happened to me. You know that having a book around when you are playing a game and need to look  Not everyone always have the internet or a laptop. That's when hard media come in handy. I miss having a user guide to look things up where instead I have to jump through a bunch of hoops in the middle of the game. On the other hand it is nice to jave a game you never lose as long as you can remember your user name which will probably be encrypted; because you can't usually use your own name now days. This isn't just Stardock, but all software now days. I wouldn't have ever found this game if it weren't sold at Walmart years ago.

P.s I didn't have the internet back then.

What i noticed here in Australia, retail distribution of PC games was killed by cancer.... A growth that began invading all the shelf space until there was almost no room left at all for PC games, forcing everyone (myself included) to turn to digital downloads! That cancer i refer to which took over has a name, and that name is --- 'consoles'!!!!

As for the cost of games on the shelf verses digital downloads, here in Australia, if i want a cheap game, i have to buy it in the shop! A classic example is Civ5 - it was $60 dollars on steam, seemingly forever, any sale, "not available in my region". Walk into the shop and bought a hard copy off the shelf for $30 dollars. So you see, all those logistics and storage and shipping costs, actually make games cheaper (extreme sarcasm alert)!

What's up with that anyway? I always hear about Australia prices being 50% higher, but I've not seen a good explanation as to why.

I think Australia is busy running a large scale experiment on the benefits to the rich of anti competition behavior.

In Australia, you can kill bank chairman's by sneaking up behind them and saying the word "competition", the shock will kill them.

In Australia when politicians are asked about competition, they reach for their dictionary in order to look up the meaning of this strange new word!

Oh, damn!  That must have been horrible to live through.  Please forgive your wife, she just doesn't understand their real value.  

backs out of the room slowly...  

I have switched almost entirely to digital distribution now and I wish I could hand over the rest of my CDs to get digital DLs of those games.

I am the person that buys an old game off ebay and then when it arrives the CD is cracked and I wasted all my money.  Digital DLs can just be re-DLd if the DL messes up.  I can't ever get those CDs fixed.  No way no how.

Most of my library is on Steam, so unless Valve goes under those games are going to be available far far into the future.  No way to tell if my CDs will even hold up to the next advancement in storage technology, but the digital DL will never be obsoleted.

The digital platforms have a vested interest in making sure the older games are still playable (they can keep selling them) and you don't have any kind of service like that with regular CDs.

Just seems like everything points to digital distribution for me.

Unless your CD/DVD is damaged, store refuses to change it, or, because stores offer only games like "happy airport farm 47: fairy tooth lawnmover strikes back", you had to order it via Internet, yet delivery time was so long, so all return terms already expired and you can't do anything.

Had that with Gothic 3 (twice, upon first release, and upon "universe" release), or GTA IV.

Hm, the only games I remember having this, were some Blizzard games from Battlechest. I think Diablo 2, not sure about Starcraft or Warcraft 3.

Oh, my love and passion towards consoles can be expressed only with good flamethrower. I don't only mean their spread and invasive species' behavior (and NOT delicious ones!), but their "technological advance", forcing us into stagnation to multiplatform disease...

Gah, don't even go there with those region restrictions in Steam. My love and passion towards publishers enforcing those cannot be expressed even with flamethrower, I need something with better yield... Like big flamethrower. I bought many games from Amazon, on sale, only to activate their keys on my Steam account, to "bypass" region locks. What kind of idiocy is that? That the Emperor we have GoG. Too bad they don't have big enough flamethrower to reach some of publishers and remind them of people wishing for their games.

Yes indeed, i registered my $30 dollar off the shelf version on Steam.

But i do not see that Steam will continue to allow this indefinitely, it is not in their best interest to scare customers off to buy cheaper games elsewhere then allow them to bring back these cheaper games and register them on Steam! On the other hand, it puts pressure on Steam to reject 'regional' bulshit pricing.

Hard to say. Steam generates keys for bundles, like Humble Bundle, and prices there are even more hilarious than those on Amazon or in Retail store. I'm not marketing guy and I don't know whether Steam got his 30% share from retail or not. They could, since game has "mandatory Steam" in it. In this case it could make sense - they still have their revenue and they consider retail/bundle copies as... Well, remember how taxes are gathered in GalCiv? If taxes are low, more people pay them, if taxes are high, less people are doing so.

IIRC at least one devepoper told that during Steam sales their revenue (not just copies sold) increased greatly, hence Steam's revenue, even if sum of money brought from one copy was much smaller.

Think the other way - people live differently, have different incomes, so buying expensive copies is "rather unlikely" in countries with low income. So if you want something sold there, you have to reduce prices, otherwise people aren't going to buy anything.

What does irritates me are regional, or even worse - content/language locks, especially for games bought at full, non-regional prices (or prices that aren't that lower). That, combined with situation when prices are set for same numbers only in different currency, say $60=€60, makes you wishing for something bigger than large flamethrower to express your love and passion. It makes you wishing for carpet napalm bombing. Especially when you got regionally locked "back in USSR" version (yeah, borderlands 2 le scandalle) for European price.

I really don't understand why not to keep two stock units of same game (since storage cost is about zero anyway) - one is GoG's approach of "one world - one price", another are regionally priced games with regional locks. You want WW version for free multiplayer or content - buy it for WW price, because you can do that witn abroad retail, friends' gifting or buying it from Amazon. Should you want cheaper version, with possible limitations - then buy your regional one. Let people upgrade from regional to WW for adequate sum, in case they moved or simply changed their mind.

Currently it is better (and sometimes even much cheaper, alas longer) to buy from sites like Amazon, or abroad retail, or ask your friend abroad to gift you something, than to buy "castrated' version in your Steam store.

To express my love and passion towards porrigin, I need something bigger than carpet napalm bombing, probably whole Sun (sorry, Sun, but that's ablsolutely necessary) - they sale not just regionally locked, but language locked versions... in language locked stores. I can't understand a darn thing, what I'm supposed to do there?!

And their prices are exorbitant, for regional and language locked stuff. And some people warn me about ME3, yeah, right, sure.

Yes, But i was refering to the price on steam being much higher than in the shop in the same country. If i buy it in the shop, Steam gets less or no share of the profit - therefore this puts pressure on Steam to reject the high regional pricing they are stuck with. Of course this relies on being able to find a game cheaper in the shop or other digital distribution (that Steam don't control if that were possible).

Crazy stuff

 Brilliant idea!

Even more crazy! It is quite hard to see the benefit to the game company doing these things??

Think it the other way - retail needs to survive, the only way they can, is to reduce prices. You can't beat Steam in Steam-bound games otherwise. AFAIR Steam only suggests price levels, they never set them themselves. Well, they do that, and sometimes they make errors, leading to crazy pricing (like 10 times increase, lol :D), but that's only error.

Alas, that's reality.

I own two copies of Fallout New Vegas on Steam. Why? Well, first I bought in Steam became regionally locked and I couldn't buy DLCs for it. When I asked my friend, residing in US to gift me DLCs, I've found I can't use them - they were incompatible with my game. So I had to ask him to buy me game itself.

And since I own and complete both, I can tell there is NO difference in content whatsoever. Somewhat different loot drop and traders' stocks, but they always been random. So I paid twice for that game. Any explanations why I want to send bethesda's personnel to Alaska, to clean up snow (all of it)?

As for borderlands 2, that's even more funny - people from former Soviet Republics in Baltic region (Latvia, Estonia, Luthiania) paid full Europian price for the game and guess what they got? Russian version - because all those territories have same distributor. Not just Russian reservation for multiplayer - Russian language. Hello, 2K from what planet are you? USSR collapsed 2 decades ago, many people who were born afterwards don't even know Russian language. Duckwheels.

And those games aren't the only ones suffered from hidden locks.

Funny, when "cornered cat" idea seems brilliant... How desperate we are, actually?

Well, they haven't earned two golden poops in row for nothing. I'm planning to help them to win third and welcome you to participate.

When I had quite feisty "discussion" with their "support", about my copy of BF3 Deluxe (just $80 only on porrigin) that stopped working, and it took them eleven months to admit they can't do shit, I asked one of their rep, namely "Kenneth" (you such a dog) about language issue, after some time he told me it's their policy to 1) "became friendly for locals", 2) to prevent reexport of cheaper copies. Mainly second, first is just cover - nobody thought of visitors who don't speak local language.

To prevent reexport of cheaper copies all they (and Steam) need to do is to allow to gift cheap copies only within same price region. That's all. No need to block gifting entirely, no need to create region, laguange, content locks. Only left option to buy WW version for friends living abroad.

Upd. Completely forgot: all that re-export stuff reminds of chase hoplophobes in US gave to Second Amendment - you can find forums where people tell you how to "delocalize" version and turn it into normal one. So why all the obstacles?

Disks would hold up a lot better if more developers were like Blizzard and made it so the disk was only required for installation. I almost regret getting the things I have gotten via digital, because my parents' computer is the only one with internet and I am still mad about Supreme Commander Gold getting switched to Steam just to continue multiplayer support.

Ah, yea, that would be ideal - but for disk version to be more secure long term than digital download, you need to be able to make copies of the disk, otherwise, one scratch and its gone forever!

I have rather scratched disk that worked. Alas, I also have multiple disks with single scratch or lack any scratching that doesn't.

As for Blizzard - aren't their Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 are "online mandatory"?

It makes little sense that random chance would 'waste' setting up all the arrangements for a very rare scratch event for it then to not destroy the disk??... Well, not 'destroy' the disk - you have to leave some possibility of it still working so it will continue to create opportunities for frustration going forward into the future.

(for those of us whom have observed in our lives that random chance is a malicious prankster at every opportunity)