What if Steam became a Monthly Subscription service?

Potatoeman

A friend of mine lost his internet a while back and all his games stopped working. I didnt realise you have to log in every x weeks to verify games. This is a bug that they know about.
This really turned me off steam but I dont get the chance to get into the highstreet shops very often.

Edit: its just a service as you get no physical product.

Robert ninja

Monotype wrote: »

That is a feature. It's been there for a very long time. I'm not going to look for which menu it's under, but it's there. Shows who you played with, how long ago and which game.

SeantheMan wrote: »

There is a system for friends recently played with.
Go to your profile on STEAM,..top Right....your username,
On the dropdown - 3rd one down is 'Friends' - click this
Now you should see 3 tabs. All friends - Blocked Users - Users recently played with

You can also ALT-TAB during a game of ...let's say L4D2. And the people in your game will show up as current users. You can then check their profiles, add them as friends, block them etc.

Thanks lads, never knew about that.

landsleaving wrote: »

Does anywhere charge for patches? That seems absurd. I wouldn't be congratulating anyone for fixing their games.

As far as I know, SONY and MC charge the developers/publishers for releasing patches because the delivery system is done through their own service (PSN and XBL) which costs a lot of bandwidth and therefore money. I'm not sure on the specifics but I'm pretty sure there's a few free patches each publisher is able to release before MC start charging, no idea how SONY handle it. This is why sometimes games just stopped being patched or are slower to be patched on consoles, the publisher's finance department doesn't see it as worth it. It can also just slow down the patches and updates because the publishers want to release as many fixes and updates as possible in one go, so they will wait until a lot is fixed before going ahead where as on PC they can release patches as they're made either through their own servers or through Steam.

SmurfX

Fairly sure the strength of offerings on PS Plus in the past year has been a loss leader to attract people to their subscription service. It wouldn't shock anyone if the strength of those offerings decreased in the coming years as the attraction to multiplayer becomes reason enough to continue subbing. There's reason for Steam to do it unless they're trying to attract people to a service that's either immediately or will eventually lead to content available only behind a paywall.

For steam/origin etc the landscape is different and for many people the low entry cost to have a large library of games is what pulls them from the attraction of piracy. If steam or anyone else ever gets greedy, folks will return to piracy. There's always that threat to keep them honest that doesn't exist on consoles.

Turtwig

The only way Steam as a subscription service would work is if you allowed to play any game in their Catalogue. Essentially a subscription meant you 'owned' all games. Other than that if they change to something like the OP I won't be using them. In fact, I'd say if they did some other alternative could probably make a move to fill the void.

Shiminay

That Patches thing was a major hurdle for indies too, I think the figure mentioned was $10,000 (based on something I may have misheard in that Indie Game: The Movie)

Sierra Oscar

There would have to be a choice whereby you could buy a game and still own it, or chose to subscribe to the service instead.

Valve have already moved last year to facilitate subscription based games on Steam, but I suspect that will be the end of that for now.

Steam Introduces Game Subscription Plans

Syferus

Metrics are very different between PC and console with regarding subscription services. Steam isn't hosting servers or online infrastructure outside their own games and a few forums for other games so the idea they could charge for online gaming is ridiculous in the extreme. Providing the ability to re-download games is a minimal expense compared to more heavy duty activities - they just sit on a server somewhere for no extra cost until they're called by a user. At the scale Steam works on they're not looking at that as a valid reason to charge a fee for.

A service like PS Plus (before the PS4 era) has some potential but give how deep discounts are on Steam games as is the level of the charge would need to be well-thought out.

ScumLord

I'd have no use for such a service. I don't play that many games so I would never make use of such a service and couldn't justify a monthly spend on something I use a handful of times.

I like the service, I like having my games in one place and automatically kept up to date but the whole buying side of it has problems. Its not a place I'd go looking for deals, when new game comes out steam is going to be one of the most expensive places to buy. But now that I like the service I don't want to buy the game unless I can link it to my steam account. This means using the likes of g2play or simply waiting a few months until it does pop up in a steam sale. I often end up waiting as I'm just not that pushed about any games that come out.

The new assassins creed would be an example, I can get the uplay key cheaply enough but I'm waiting for a steam sale so I can buy it there.

Problem123456

Shiminay wrote: »

But they do charge you a sub to use their Prime service, so I'd see it as being akin to that.

Two different things with prime you get free delivery's..