Valve's new business model. Makes jerks pay
 

So Valve have announced their new business model in which nice people get free rides, while jerks have to pay for their games.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/4...-play#after_ad

My response... WTF? This is going to get exploited so easily! I love the idea of me getting more freebies, but really? Valve better have some genius plan up their sleeves for this business model.

What are your thoughts on this?

Troll votes everyone down. Jerk with lots of friends get voted real high. THIS IS MADNESS.

Valve can probably rat out the trolls though.

They're good at that kind of thing.

I was okay reading this until I got to the $100 for voice part. What.

Seriously I would pay that much to rid the world of some of these annoying micspammers.

Sounds like an April Fools except, yeah...
If this is for real I can't imagine it going on very long before terrible downsides emerge.

Don't see a single negative.

They can't train their customers like that - and it fucking isn't their assignment anyway. Some people are just great, but are somehow perceived very differently on the internet. Cliques of jerks have formed and support each other. Casual players, hardly finding the time to play, are at a massive disadvantage.

Seriously, let them try it. Valve has too much of a monopoly anyway. Time to lose some customers. But I guess only one half of that plan will be put into effect (by rewarding some 100 "good" community members with the free game) and the heretic rest of this "idea" will justly vanish off the plate.

We will see how this works out or if it ever will be realised.
Not interested in their multiplayer titles anyways. Also: this will not stop a lot of people. There are players that bought CS 20 times just to cheat again and again.

Also Valve has no monopoly. Not for a very long time now. Just think of Origin, GamersGate, GoG, Battle.net, OnLive...

ORIGIN IS STILLBORN. Just so we're clear on this. http://www.adventure-treff.de/forum/.../icon_evil.gif

And it's pretty clear that Steam, at the time, has no real competitors.

And that from you. A faithful GoG customer. :D

Submit to your Digital Distribution Overlords.

http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...-overlords.jpg

But you still know that this is a bad thing for the customers, right? ;)

Of course.
Problem is if the competition is actually worse than Steam that's just unhealthy.
Origin has too high prices, GoG had this horrible marketing gag that made them untrustable for me. Gamersgate & Greenman are making most of their money selling Steam keys so what's the point of those services? Desura seems okay. But they only have indie-titles.

Also there are only few competitors that aren't also selling Steam keys.
(Origin, GoG, TellTale to some extent...)

What was that?

Please don't ask.

in short:

I'm not sure what the disgruntlement is about.

I second this motion for more answers!

Just because their competion is poor by comparison does not make them a monopoly. You can actually buy games from sources outside Steam and redeem the codes on the service, I don't know how to describe this behaviour, but I certainly wouldn't call it monopolisitic or anti-competitive. Valve pay for bandwidth and see no sales money.

Anyway, we all know that Steam isn't designed to some day take all your games away from you and run away laughing. The benefits it gives smaller developers to be seen and get out there obviously goes without saying.

In short, you are old and stubborn. :p Be trendy and get with the program. ;)

Man. I haven't posted in ages, like anybody noticed.