BladeRnR
09-09-2003, 04:17 PM
IMHO they have just made this way too confusing for the average gamer. The choice for the informed gamer is obvious - buy it once so you can play Single & Multiplayer aspects of the game. If I had to pay for TFC2 then that's fine by me because that's what I'm really waiting for - but not all gamers will think like that.
Here's some interesting information I found on VERC and confirmed by Gabe Newell:
A fan by the name of Kamakiri mailed Valve's Gabe Newell about those "pay to play" rumors, and received the following response (which has been confirmed as being legit):
As I'm sure you are aware the HL2 community is going crazy with the rumour that HL2 is going to be like a MMORPG and you will have to pay a fee each month via Steam to play HL2 multiplayer.
Gabe Newell: Here's my current thinking: Some people want to buy Half-Life 2 in a store. Right now we have three SKUs planned at three price points. One will have single-player only and not play MODs and we think of that as the mass market SKU (sold mainly at the Costcos and Walmarts of the world). The second is our traditional single-player plus multiplayer SKU that runs MODs and is sold at places like EBX. The third is the collector's edition SKU with lots of cool bonus stuff for people who like cool bonus stuff.
In the Steam world, some people will want to buy it once, like the middle SKU above. Other people will want to buy the game on subscription (e.g. $9.95/month). The good news for the "buy it once" crowd is, well, they only have to pay once. The bad news is that when we come out with new content (expansion products, TF 2, and presumably other games) then they have to pay separately for those. We're pretty sure that the $9.95 guys are going to get the better value, as we've been pretty good over the years at generating a lot of content.
Now nobody has done this before, so we're scratching our heads and massaging the plans to make sure we've got the best set of options. We've had some feedback that we should sell the top SKU (single-player only no MODs) on Steam, and my reaction has been "yeah, right, for the three people in the world who have a broadband connection, are sophisticated enough to purchase software over the Internet, but DON'T want to play MODs and multiplayer". Some people have said "I want a subscription, but I think the box and the manual are cool, so what about sending me those" and I think that's pretty interesting and we're trying to figure out what to do for them (needless to say Sierra isn't exactly jumping for joy at the idea of selling us boxes so people don't buy Half-Life 2 in stores).
The good news is that there is no suggestion that people pay in the store and then pay a monthly fee on top of that á la MMORPG (thank God).
Gabe (we're on first name terms now) made a follow up statement in this forum thread :
The various SKUs will be available at the other stores. It's just how we think of them (we think of the lowest price one as the "Walmart" SKU even though Walmart will probably be the biggest single seller of all three SKUs given their volume).
TF2 isn't a MOD, correct. However the subscription will be for anything we make. So when TF2 ships, the subscribers get it as part of their subscription.
We've been talking with retailers about the retail SKUs for a long time. Steam pricing was what I was trying to explain. Steam options seemed to require an explanation of the retail SKUs.
So - the situation is cleared up, the first mention of a Collectors Bonus Edition AND a rhyming news header, and you guys say you don't get treated well.
Friendly SKU breakdown (as seen on the Shack):
SKU 1 (retail) singleplayer only, 1 time fee
SKU 2 (retail) singleplayer + multi, 1 time fee
SKU 3 (retail) both, collector's edition, 1 time fee
SKU 4 (steam) singleplayer + multi, 1 time fee
SKU 5 (steam) singleplaye + multi*, monthly fee
* includes all current and future valve content
Patches (bugfixes, maintenance releases, etc) will be free no matter which of the options you decide to go for.
Community-based mods will be free unless the authors want to charge for them.
Thoughts?
Cheers
Blade
Here's some interesting information I found on VERC and confirmed by Gabe Newell:
A fan by the name of Kamakiri mailed Valve's Gabe Newell about those "pay to play" rumors, and received the following response (which has been confirmed as being legit):
As I'm sure you are aware the HL2 community is going crazy with the rumour that HL2 is going to be like a MMORPG and you will have to pay a fee each month via Steam to play HL2 multiplayer.
Gabe Newell: Here's my current thinking: Some people want to buy Half-Life 2 in a store. Right now we have three SKUs planned at three price points. One will have single-player only and not play MODs and we think of that as the mass market SKU (sold mainly at the Costcos and Walmarts of the world). The second is our traditional single-player plus multiplayer SKU that runs MODs and is sold at places like EBX. The third is the collector's edition SKU with lots of cool bonus stuff for people who like cool bonus stuff.
In the Steam world, some people will want to buy it once, like the middle SKU above. Other people will want to buy the game on subscription (e.g. $9.95/month). The good news for the "buy it once" crowd is, well, they only have to pay once. The bad news is that when we come out with new content (expansion products, TF 2, and presumably other games) then they have to pay separately for those. We're pretty sure that the $9.95 guys are going to get the better value, as we've been pretty good over the years at generating a lot of content.
Now nobody has done this before, so we're scratching our heads and massaging the plans to make sure we've got the best set of options. We've had some feedback that we should sell the top SKU (single-player only no MODs) on Steam, and my reaction has been "yeah, right, for the three people in the world who have a broadband connection, are sophisticated enough to purchase software over the Internet, but DON'T want to play MODs and multiplayer". Some people have said "I want a subscription, but I think the box and the manual are cool, so what about sending me those" and I think that's pretty interesting and we're trying to figure out what to do for them (needless to say Sierra isn't exactly jumping for joy at the idea of selling us boxes so people don't buy Half-Life 2 in stores).
The good news is that there is no suggestion that people pay in the store and then pay a monthly fee on top of that á la MMORPG (thank God).
Gabe (we're on first name terms now) made a follow up statement in this forum thread :
The various SKUs will be available at the other stores. It's just how we think of them (we think of the lowest price one as the "Walmart" SKU even though Walmart will probably be the biggest single seller of all three SKUs given their volume).
TF2 isn't a MOD, correct. However the subscription will be for anything we make. So when TF2 ships, the subscribers get it as part of their subscription.
We've been talking with retailers about the retail SKUs for a long time. Steam pricing was what I was trying to explain. Steam options seemed to require an explanation of the retail SKUs.
So - the situation is cleared up, the first mention of a Collectors Bonus Edition AND a rhyming news header, and you guys say you don't get treated well.
Friendly SKU breakdown (as seen on the Shack):
SKU 1 (retail) singleplayer only, 1 time fee
SKU 2 (retail) singleplayer + multi, 1 time fee
SKU 3 (retail) both, collector's edition, 1 time fee
SKU 4 (steam) singleplayer + multi, 1 time fee
SKU 5 (steam) singleplaye + multi*, monthly fee
* includes all current and future valve content
Patches (bugfixes, maintenance releases, etc) will be free no matter which of the options you decide to go for.
Community-based mods will be free unless the authors want to charge for them.
Thoughts?
Cheers
Blade