Derek Smart on Digital Distributors refusing to sell Steamworks games

I just saw this on Gamasutra. It's long, but it provides some insight into the inner workings of digital distribution.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Derek...

Sorry, I'm confused, isn't this about DD outlets boycotting MW2 because its on steam, not a boycott on steam itself?

Point taken. Title edited.

Lots of fun back and forth in the comments for that article between Derek Smart and Brad Wardell. The article is linked with the MW2 thing, but on a more general level, how from his perspective steam is head and shoulders above competing DD stores.

Scratched wrote:

Lots of fun back and forth in the comments for that article between Derek Smart and Brad Wardell. The article is linked with the MW2 thing, but on a more general level, how from his perspective steam is head and shoulders above competing DD stores.

This is the real gem here. I only skimmed it, but it seemed pretty interesting.

The real fun starts when Brad Wardell (of Impulse) jumps into the comments.

e,f;b. Scrrraaaaatched!

This is why I love Gamasutra. Derek is ripping on Brad Wardell. Oh the drama, but good points being made.

I get the biggest kick out of that guy (Smart).

Interesting stuff. And some humor from Brad being Brad, and Derek being Derek, gotta love em both. Good read, thanks for posting the link, I'd have missed it otherwise.

Let's get Derek Smart on the Conference Call to discuss the subject!

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Let's get Derek Smart on the Conference Call to discuss the subject! :D

Then they could ban him from future conference calls too!

That is an excellent read, including the silly argument in the comments from the Impulse guy. (I'm a fan of Stardock games, but Derek was in the right when he pointed out the blog post had little to nothing to do with Stardock or Impulse.) Really, I think Brad's biggest beef with Steam is that they aren't evil enough. Stardock and Impulse are a great alternative to Direct2Drive and other cold, corporate storefronts. If Steam didn't exist, Stardock would be making a lot more money. (They'd get a TON of my business, instead of the trickle they get now.) However, trying to paint Steam as the bad guy for creating a value added service and giving it away is a fairly weak argument.

Derek Smart? The same guy from Usenet all those years ago?

Huh, some of the responses say Steam is a slow program. It's not slow for me......If it performed poorly I'd never have gone with it as my primary means of purchasing games. I have Steam running all the time and I don't ever notice it causing slowdown or the program responding slowly.

It can be annoying when it decides to update a game AFTER I double click on it and not in the background automatically, but that sure beats finding and installing the patch myself.

It's all very interesting, and the "He said/She said" angle is entertaining drama, everyone showing their commercial bias, but I find it hard to see what is gained by anyone if some DD store boycott steamworks releases, or if valve split up what they do. The only way to improve the whole DD could possibly be to allow a bit of communication between clients and games, allow one to look at the others data

larrymadill wrote:

Derek Smart? The same guy from Usenet all those years ago?

Yep, the guy who threatens to sue .... everyone. The megalomaniac (just ordered myself a lawsuit), the narcissistic coder from hell.

It's sad, because I thought he went away.

Staats wrote:
Scratched wrote:

Lots of fun back and forth in the comments for that article between Derek Smart and Brad Wardell. The article is linked with the MW2 thing, but on a more general level, how from his perspective steam is head and shoulders above competing DD stores.

This is the real gem here. I only skimmed it, but it seemed pretty interesting.

Honestly, it sounds like the two are just arguing the same point with each other, with Brad Wardell trying to frame it as an "Impulse vs. Steam" argument, with Derek Smart responding, basically "No, it isn't, and it makes sense that you guys aren't selling it". As much as it bothers me to say it, Smart is right(and saying exactly what Brad Wardell and Stardock have said earlier) when he writes:

Derek Smart wrote:

And yes, both Steam and Impulse are different - as much as every other similar style network is different.

But NONE of the above has ANYTHING to do with "IGN NOT SELLING MW2 BECAUSE IT IS STEAM WRAPPED".

Impulse does not sell Steam enabled titles. Never did. Never will.

Steam does not sell Impulse titles. Never did. Never will.

...and so on and so forth.

But there is nothing that says a Steam or Impulse wrapped title can't be sold at IGN, Best Best buy or at the flea market.

The problem is that like any good internet troll, Smart isn't admitting any wrong, even though he's basically saying what Wardell is saying-that it doesn't make any sense for Stardock to sell a product that uses their competitor's stuff.

Yup, Derek's still a egotistic asshat. Nothing new there.

Very entertaining debate. I have to say, I'm less and less of a fan of Brad Wardell by the day - I really sense a huge inferiority complex out of him. Not to say that Smart is any better in terms of his style and personality - I just think he happens to be right in this case. One example is this mean and unnecessary, but also unfortunately accurate, swipe at Impulse:

And as I type this, your forums are littered with people unable to play games purchased on IR. e.g. here is one (of many) thread on Dragon Age: Origins. Yes, I checked the Steam forums for the same game. HUGE contrast there.

A friend of mine got DAO on Impulse at my suggestion. He's had nothing but problems downloading and running it, and I basically jury-rigged a solution to get it working for him. Impulse support was less than helpful. Given that he's had no problems with dozens of steam games, he's sworn off Impulse, and I can't say I blame him.

Jeff-66 wrote:
larrymadill wrote:

Derek Smart? The same guy from Usenet all those years ago?

Yep, the guy who threatens to sue .... everyone. The megalomaniac (just ordered myself a lawsuit), the narcissistic coder from hell.

It's sad, because I thought he went away.

I thought he had too. Or at least people stopped listening to him

EDIT: He makes some interesting points but, man, his writing is like a Ego Tornado rain-wrapped in Douche

Edit: Reading the comment Bad Wardell also comes off like a huge douche. What he have here folks is an Old Fashioned West Virginia DOUCHE OFF!

I'm glad Derek Smart told us the right thing to think about this.

This is the most sensible i've seen Derek..... well, ever!

Yeah, it is kind of sad that the one who came off as rather desperate and defensive here was Brad Wardell.

Duoae wrote:

This is the most sensible i've seen Derek..... well, ever!

I think that this is the clearest sign that NASA is wrong, and that the world will be ending in 2012.

I have said in another thread somewhere that Steam is the new console. The sooner it becomes the default standard the better. Xbox has had success over the PS3 for the same reason that Steam is dominating in its market...the user experience. Having a unified online community system that integrates with the games you play online is great for the user. Steam even has one thing that Xbox Live doesn't; clan/group support. The more games that use Steamworks the better. It makes things a lot easier for a community to maintain an easy to access online presence over multiple games.

The other DDs need to take note and compete with that. Trying to desperately hold on to some old school cred. just looks childish.

Trust me, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Impulse is Steam's biggest fan. They just got a much, much later start on things than Valve did. They're catching up, but Steam is easily still 18 months ahead.

Derek is probably wrong that selling Steamworks games would have no negative effect on other digital distributors but boycotting probably hurts more than it helps. Certainly not a consumer friendly decision.

Also I think people are vastly overrating Steamworks. Sure it's currently the best network for PC games right now, certainly better than Gamespy and GFWL, but it's still rather lackluster in a lot of areas and right now it's only really effective with Valve titles. (Although I haven't played MW2 so I don't know what's the level of integration between it and IWnet) If someone put the resources in making a real alternative and gets developers to back it then they could probably overtake Steamworks. Although considering Microsoft has pretty much failed at it already it's kind of hard to imagine who could possible do it. Activision Blizzard is big enough and has the PC presence but it doesn't look like they're interested in expanding Battle.net beyond Blizzard franchise titles. Google's user base is huge enough to do this as well and would probably have the technical expertise and vision to succeed even without a built-in store, but they're probably not even considering it. I don't really see any of the current players doing it. Even Valve doesn't seem to have made a significant change to Steam in the two years or so that I've been using it. Stardock might still be able to pull a rabbit out of their hat with Impulse and ReadyToPlay, but I'm not holding my breath.

Latrine wrote:

Google's user base is huge enough to do this as well and would probably have the technical expertise and vision to succeed even without a built-in store, but they're probably not even considering it.

Although, if they *did* try something like this, it would likely be OS agnostic or run on Chrome OS. That would be something to see.

You know, I'm surprised XFire didn't come up in this conversation. It probably stands as one if the most integrated services that offers (and could potentially offer) much of what Steamworks does. And it also has nearly 15 million subscribers. They have kicked off their own digital distribution store (powered by Metaboli, and are selling Modern Warfare 2), so I wonder if it won't be long before they become a competitor in this area.

I am old. MW2 means MechWarrior 2 to me.

For me this makes a degree of sense. Any steamworks game, so far, has to be activated on Steam. Anyone buying the game from you is immediately sent to Steam, a competing store. I am interested in why D2D had the change of heart. I bought Dawn of War 2 from them, a steamworks game. I can understand Gamersgate and Impulse, as they are run by "competing publishers." But D2D is owned by Fox and would do best as a dumb distributor.

On the flip side, many other companies and stores carry competetor's products. Amazon still sells Ipods, even though they send you right to iTunes, for example.

I think the issue is established giant vs upstart new comers with respect to Amazon.

This seems like a Tempest in a Teapot. But I am wondering how these companies expect to leverage growth when they are refusing to carry big name products.

Further, this is a trend that many of us are fearing, where publisher by publisher, developer by developer, they are walling off their stores to the competition.

Darth Nader wrote:

You know, I'm surprised XFire didn't come up in this conversation. It probably stands as one if the most integrated services that offers (and could potentially offer) much of what Steamworks does. And it also has nearly 15 million subscribers. They have kicked off their own digital distribution store (powered by Metaboli, and are selling Modern Warfare 2), so I wonder if it won't be long before they become a competitor in this area.

Proof of what I said earlier, XFire ran slow and would error out sometimes so I finally just removed it and did what I could with Steam. That was a while ago, I may have to check them out again.