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Yep.

37 (69.8%)

Nope.

16 (30.2%)

Total Members Voted: 51

[alexandertnt]

I dont think that comparison is valid. Something like food is a requirement for survival. Without it you die. So in my opinion, people are entitled to food, as people are entitled to live. Although this is generally provided by the state and/or NGO's.

But a video game isnt required to live, and you are not entitled to it. If you cant afford it, then just dont buy it and perhaps complain about the price.

If you're going to pick one word of what I said just to disagree, go ahead and change my example to TV's or books or whatever luxury good you like.

I apologize for my knee-jerk response. Its just similar talk about people not deserving stuff like food comes up in political discussions, but I see thats not what you meant now.

[Wardo]

OP, what if the hiccup is at your bank? Does it update your balance in real time?

What witchcraft is this, I have to wait many hours or days to get updates on my credit cards/bank statements.

[Shadowlord]

Gabe doesn't run Valve. It's an employee-run company. Gabe's just the public face of it. See Valve's employee handbook, which is available in PDF form all over the Internet and from http://www.valvesoftware.com/jobs/index.html .

[Urist McScoopbeard]

What if they find this thread?

[WealthyRadish]

Using Gaben to mean Valve is a joke, I'm not seriously saying that Valve consists of one guy and that all their profits go to his cupcakes.

Why should the middleman not be respected when the middle man is an important part of it? You didn't buy it straight from the developer, and thus the middleman has the right to get paid for his work. Valve isn't just gabe sitting on a huge pile of money - while no doubt he's rich enough to do so, he also runs a company of many employees. Valave does incur costs in letting you use that game; the costs of storing, amending, and backing up your account; transferring the data to your computer whenever you download said game. All those have costs.

The game isn't available outside of Steam (as is the case with many other games in recent years), so the only way to get and play it is to use Steam (or piracy). This is one of the major reasons why dependencies on distributors is bad, and Valve is getting a larger and larger share of the market just by attaining a large enough size that developers must put their games on it to succeed. If I don't like Steam and would rather the developers get the money, what is so strange about not wanting to buy it through them, or not caring if they take a loss? You're trying to find honor in an honorless system, like it's the duty of the consumer to respect middleman as anything more than necessary. There are a dozen other sharks that'd pick up Valve's slack if they went under, and happily take up their share of the market. The ideal is always to get it directly, and on the internet the only thing in the way of that is bandwidth and accessibility, unlike for physical goods.

I disagree with you; he has a moral obligation to file the ticket, and so not filing the ticket is not acceptable morally, whether or not he had a legal obligation to do so.

Personally, I'd say morality in consumerism is irrelevant. But I think strong arguments can be made either way, and since the ticket is likely irrelevant, either action is fine. I'd rather not continue this argument, as nobody is going to be persuaded of anything.

[Ozyton]

You can buy ARMA III through BI's store

(Although, you still need steam to download and play it...)

[Leyic]

The game isn't available outside of Steam (as is the case with many other games in recent years), so the only way to get and play it is to use Steam (or piracy). This is one of the major reasons why dependencies on distributors is bad, and Valve is getting a larger and larger share of the market just by attaining a large enough size that developers must put their games on it to succeed. If I don't like Steam and would rather the developers get the money, what is so strange about not wanting to buy it through them, or not caring if they take a loss? You're trying to find honor in an honorless system, like it's the duty of the consumer to respect middleman as anything more than necessary. There are a dozen other sharks that'd pick up Valve's slack if they went under, and happily take up their share of the market. The ideal is always to get it directly, and on the internet the only thing in the way of that is bandwidth and accessibility, unlike for physical goods.

It's the publisher that decides where to release the game, and Valve doesn't demand exclusivity for its catalog. Nothing is preventing any of the games on Steam from also showing up on Desura, Humble, etc., except for the publishers of those games. And if the publisher/developer doesn't want to use Steam DRM or or other Steam services, that's also possible (plenty of titles can be launched directly from the .exe without having Steam open).

The problem is the publishers themselves either don't want their titles available from certain distributors (I recall an indie dev ranting about Desura's business model a while back), or they want to be dependent on one or more Steam services (DRM, multiplayer, mods workshop, achievements, trading cards, etc.). Plus, there is overhead for maintaining Steam and non-Steam versions of games (the reason the GamersGate version of Crusader Kings II was shut down). In short, don't blame Valve for providing a service preferred by publishers and players. Monopolies are bad, yes, but we got here because the competition is significantly lower in quality from multiple perspectives.

[alexandertnt]

Valve also deliver services directly to both the publisher and the customer, such as steamworks, steam workshop etc.