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[Reelya]

It's pretty inevitable. The bottleneck on selling more games isn't really cost, it's player's free time.

For a while, there was a race to the bottom to tap into the expanding digital sales marketplace, hence all the back-catalogue stuff given away almost for free. However, that market has largely matured now, and people have huge backlogs of stuff. There are games you wouldn't even bother getting if someone said they were free: these games, to you, have negative value.

Say you're going to decide whether to offer a 50% off sale, or a 75% off sale. You are relying on their being twice as many sales at 75% off vs 50% off. If that's not the case, then you'd be a fool to do the 75% off sale. Most people willing to get your game "just because" at 75% off either already got it, or already go so many other damn games that they're "meh" about yours being 75% off.

Things that are worth the time will grow in value to encompass the market place. Some things have negative value (players don't see them as worth the time, even for free), but those games won't approach zero cost. They'll rise in price too, since some people will value them and be willing to pay, and you won't get additional sales from lowering the price, since most people won't have an interest in the game, even for nearly free.

[Ametsala]

GOG's got a spring sale until March 28.

[beorn080]

Tacoma is free at humble bundle.

[Folly]

Oxenfree is free from Epic Games through their launcher, until April 4th.

[Teneb]

Morrowind is free today due to the series' 25th anniversary. Will have to deal with Bethesda's launcher though.

[Ulfarr]

Some people on reddit have claimed that they had problems when trying to validate the key they got.

[Persus13]

I'm having problems as well. Not too surprising considering this is probably the first time they've tried something like this.

[Madman198237]

Their website is having some problems right now, apparently.

[Darkmere]

How many more launchers will it take for corporate suits to realize they can't order someone to remake Steam?

[AzyWng]

I can definitely confirm that I've had problems with the website.

If you typed in the correct password and the website says you didn't, don't believe the website. There appears to be no penalty for repeated failed attempts at login, and eventually one will get through.

Then it's a simple matter of typing in the code, trying again until it works, and then checking your games list to see if Morrowind shows up. Simple! You just have to be persistent!

I'm not upset about this!

[Persus13]

I can definitely confirm that I've had problems with the website.

If you typed in the correct password and the website says you didn't, don't believe the website. There appears to be no penalty for repeated failed attempts at login, and eventually one will get through.

Then it's a simple matter of typing in the code, trying again until it works, and then checking your games list to see if Morrowind shows up. Simple! You just have to be persistent!

I'm not upset about this!

Thanks. You got me to try again and it worked this time.

[Niveras]

How many more launchers will it take for corporate suits to realize they can't order someone to remake Steam?

All of them.

It's ironic. Executive bean counters will terminate products and close divisions not because a product isn't profitable, but because it isn't profitable enough. But by god every one of them will try to muscle into a market if they think there is money in it.

But someone can do Steam better:
 - There's no reason for it to act as DRM itself, requiring that you launch steam before you can access any game you've purchased on steam. Let developers decide whether they want DRM in their product (never mind that DRM is a lost battle anyway), even if the default is going to be "launch in steam and use steam as DRM."
 - Steam itself takes a while to load. If the platform must be launched before accessing the library, then reduce the memory and processing footprint. (Throwing it onto an SSD is not the solution.)
 - Steam has many secondary functions that I expect many users just don't use. I have no need for a friends list, streaming, big picture mode, VR, the in-game browser, communities, music player, etc. I mostly don't even need the store. Turning these into opt-in modules might help reduce its processing footprint. (While most of these are not explicitly loaded until the user actually uses them, there will still be pre-loading involved.)

[dragdeler]

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[Rolan7]

Steam actually does support DRM-free titles, at least technically.  I don't know if they offer the option to most developers, but some older games utilizing DosBox (such as X-COM) have no DRM.

Steam is idly using 22MB for me right now- actually it went up to 40MB after I launched X-COM, hm.  I don't see that memory as significant enough to kill it when I'm running low (usually because Firefox is using 6000+ MB again), but situations vary.  I also don't notice the load time, but I let it happen on bootup and it's parallel with me using the computer.  Also subjective and situational, it could be a problem for many people.

[nenjin]

- Steam has many secondary functions that I expect many users just don't use. I have no need for a friends list, streaming, big picture mode, VR, the in-game browser, communities, music player, etc. I mostly don't even need the store.

I wouldn't use your personal preference as a guide for what everyone wants or uses. I know people that use and enjoy each one of those features, and a big criticism of the Epic Games store is that it has none of these things because it rushed in to it.