Oh and just so you know; EA charge in NOK for me, which is converted by market rate, not EUR. So do Ubisoft and Impulse. Play/Game/Amazon all charge in GBP. GOG allows (and RECOMMENDS) you to change region so you can pay in what currency you wish.
The only one I use regularly that charges in EUR is GamersGate
Ah but that's where your mistake is, these "tiers" aren't based on actual financial strength of a country, but rather on erm..nothing. *Here I go again, sigh*
The "top" tier has NL, FR, DK, DE, SE etc. in it, which make sense, because relatively speaking these are all "healthy" and "rich" countries. However, Albania is also in this tier for example, as is Ireland, or Macedonia. Ireland is far from healthy financially speaking
The United fucking Kingdom, however, is a "tier 2" country. As is Norway, for that matter.
Want proof? Add ?cc=<country code> to the URL and you can see the prices for other countries.
Portal 2 prices respectively (to save you the trouble of clicking and converting):
- US: $49.99 ( £30.89, €34.90 )
- UK: £29.99 ( $48.54, €33.88 )
- NO: €37.99 ( $54.42, £33.62 )
- NL: €49.99 ( $71.61, £44.25 )
Disclaimer: I converted from each 'native' currency to the other ones separately each time, using Google like this. Their rates are usually an hour or so behind, but accurate enough for this purpose.
So yes, there is a slight difference between the UK and Norway, but I wouldn't give 2 shits about that if we had those prices. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, any American, Brit or other "Tier 2" inhabitant complaining about game prices can go fuck themselves up the ass with a cactus, because you don't know what bad fucking prices are. Triple fuck the Brits, because it's even cheaper there than it is in the US.
And no, this isn't limited to Steam. EA store pulls the same fucking bullshit on me, which annoyed me crapless with Shift 2. GOG does it as well, but at least you can "legally" change where you're from there. That's not the point though, this whole standard of different prices is just discrimination and should be illegal as far as I'm concerned. We're all equal, but not really huh?
If you are paying the full Euro price, there's something wrong with your account and/or internet connection Sabin. Might be the GeoIP getting it wrong or something, but you shouldn't be paying the full Tier 1 price.
No Amazon.nl, or I would've used that as well. They call it different, but German Limited = UK Augmented, just check the extras. Now, I could order from Amazon UK (as there is no Dutch version of it), but with shipping cost included + it probably taking 3 months to get out of the UK, that's not very interesting either. Instead, I resorted to our residential Squirrel for a Steam Gift.
Last edited by Werelds on Fri, 17th Jun 2011 22:26; edited 1 time in total
Fuck Portal 2. I'm talking about every other game EVER. Go check the prices of, say, Dungeon Siege 3, then tell me I'm not being charged "tier 1" prices.
I'll save you the time.
DS3 on the US store: $49.99
DS3 on MY store (GeoFiltering is fine): €49.99
DS3 on YOUR store: €49.99
And like I said, EA charges me in NOK. As for the desired illegality of it all? I agree 100%. Norway is not part of the European Union, most shopkeepers wouldn't even know what a fucking "Euro" note/coin was - it's not a recognised currency here. So why am I being charged in it? Why am I being charged 30-45% MORE for a currency this country doesn't recognise?
Sorry, I just picked the first title that popped into my head. Fact is though, it's not Valve forcing these prices. Yes, Valve themselves participate in the fucked up regional pricing, but they're not doing it on other publisher's games. You can see that for their own game, it's substantially cheaper in Norway; yet for other games you seem to get fucked just the same. Now which variable changed there? It's still Steam, different publisher, HUZZAH!
There is not a single store that does this GeoIP locking (so basically all of them except GoG) that doesn't fuck me over. You in Norway are in an odd situation, because the country isn't part of the EU and obviously doesn't use the Euro, so perhaps the dumb ass American publishers don't have a clue wtf to do with that. On the flipside, it is one of the "richest" countries in the world so meh.
When charged in NOK on the EA store, do your prices match the UK/US prices? Because that's what it should be according to the most common "tier" separation.
Ok, I guess you're right about Valve. The reason I pick those out specifically is that it's the only store I've actually been stung by, the only one I use on a regular enough basis to have noticed the change in currency (and the fact that they didn't used to go by this fucked up $=€ ratio, this is new) Perhaps Norway is odd, but the fact is; Valve don't see us as any different than Europe - and that's just wrong (IMO!) by pushing the Euro on us.
Yes, EA/Impulse/UbiStore's NOK conversion goes by market rates.
Surprised to see Portal 2 for 50€ in NL... 38€ here, that is quite a difference.
But Valve games are about the only ones that have more reasonable pricing for me. Every other game goes by the top tier pricing. Used to be EA store UK worked for me - prices were its only redeeming quality feature.
Now every store I checked has the same 1$=1€ pricing (Origin, Impulse, GoG, GG). Only GMG seems to display the USD pricing, don't know if it will change once I set up my purchase, but even if it won't, I will most likely get a hefty VAT on top of that price.
The CS mod wasn't a franchise.
The TF mod wasn't a franchise.
Valve made them to be.
Yes, you are right in that the actual sentence does not mean they took credit for creating the idea, but that same sentence could be interpreted in a broader meaning as well - like I did - and in that case you might get the idea that they did claim credit for coming up with the idea.
Werelds wrote:
1. They didn't buy "it" - they hired the two developers. Minh Le has left Valve, Jess Cliffe is still there.
Um sorry.. so they didnt buy the idea, they bought the people who had the idea. Is that not the same? They did not come up with it. They obviously hired the guys, because they had something going that had a great potential for profit in it.
Werelds wrote:
there's a huge difference between buying/stealing an idea, or actually employing the people that came up with it in the first place.
Technically, yes. Effectively, no. In fact, hiring the people who came up with the idea might be cheaper on the long run, than buying the idea from them More benefical too, since they have already proven that they have an excellent creativity, which is always a good skill to have amongst your employees.
Werelds wrote:
CS would not have been the hit it still is without them;
I beg to differ. CS was already way more popular than any other multiplayer mode, if not all of them together BEFORE it was aquired by valve. Sure without their support, it might not have lasted this long.. then again, unless you possess the mystical ability of fortune telling, i suggest we do not go start the 'what would have been' game, as in that area, my guess is just as valid as yours and nobody ever wins.
sabin1981 wrote:
I'm with Werelds on this. I may not like the way Valve screws European customers, or the ridiculous wait between the HL2 episodes, but Valve as a company? As a developer? They really are shit hot.
Never for a moment argued that what valve did was wrong. Not that my jaw would drop from their generousity.. I'm pretty sure valve made tremendous profit on both CS and TF, so supporting these was in their own financial interest as well. Still credit should go where credit is due, and just as valve had nothing to do with the ideas mentioned above, apart from funding and supporting their further development once they became a hit, one must credit them for their brilliant move of hiring those teams.
Um sorry.. so they didnt buy the idea, they bought the people who had the idea. Is that not the same? They did not come up with it. They obviously hired the guys, because they had something going that had a great potential for profit in it.
Buying suggests putting down a one-time fee to acquire all rights and ideas to make them your own so you can do with it what you want - with the original developers getting nothing more out of it; result is often that the game/franchise goes down the shitter. That's quite different from engaging the developers in a long-term relationship, keeping them on their own project, just investing in them to keep doing what they're doing.
Your remark about it being cheaper: Jess Cliffe still works at Valve. Now, I obviously don't know what they pay him, but if I go by 25k EUR/year (which isn't particularly high in this business), that's 275k already. I can guarantee you that back in '99, that sum would never have been paid for a mod
As far as creativity goes: you know that, I know that, obviously Valve knows that - but the rest of the developers don't apparently. Just look at the many IPs that were bought and fucked up completely over the years because the original creator(s) weren't involved anymore.
csebal wrote:
I beg to differ. CS was already way more popular than any other multiplayer mode, if not all of them together BEFORE it was aquired by valve. Sure without their support, it might not have lasted this long.. then again, unless you possess the mystical ability of fortune telling, i suggest we do not go start the 'what would have been' game, as in that area, my guess is just as valid as yours and nobody ever wins.
Yes, CS was already one of the most popular mods at the time (keep in mind that Q3 at this point was skyrocketing). What made CS the success it has become though, was the ability to spectate first and foremost, which was completely driven by Valve.
Teams like SK-Gaming and Fnatic would never have become as profitable as they are without that ability. It's that which got so many people watching other people's matches and opened up such a massive opportunity for advertising. People can say what they want, but it's CS that made "esports" what it is today - a very lucrative business if you do it right. I'm not at liberty to go into actual figures, but the one I mentioned above would be considered a pretty low salary for one of these players (and that's aside from the other bonuses the job comes with). That's how much companies invest nowadays, and it's all because Valve saw the potential of being able to "broadcast" such a popular game to spectators. The game itself was obviously the other part of that equation, with its low learning curve and tactical action.
Your remark about it being cheaper: Jess Cliffe still works at Valve. Now, I obviously don't know what they pay him, but if I go by 25k EUR/year (which isn't particularly high in this business), that's 275k already. I can guarantee you that back in '99, that sum would never have been paid for a mod
You see, it is not just the cost of the mod, but the cost to develop it further. If you have a chance to buy a technology for X amount of money or a chance to 'buy' the talent behind the technology for n times X, then you might very well be better off buying the talent. Why?
Because you would have to employ people to develop the technology anyway, and if you hire new guys to do it, then there is a chance you will not even succeed on the long run, if you hire the original guys however, then you are not only buying the technology, but also the knowhow of how to handle that technology.
Werelds wrote:
As far as creativity goes: you know that, I know that, obviously Valve knows that - but the rest of the developers don't apparently. Just look at the many IPs that were bought and fucked up completely over the years because the original creator(s) weren't involved anymore.
Most of the companies arent led by fat nerds, but well dressed business man in expensive suits. Yes, those suits have a short sighted vision and because they have not even a clue about how creativity works, they usually only manage to ruin things on the long run.
Werelds wrote:
Yes, CS was already one of the most popular mods at the time (keep in mind that Q3 at this point was skyrocketing). What made CS the success it has become though, was the ability to spectate first and foremost, which was completely driven by Valve.
Um.. the ability to spectate? Really? I did not play it because I had the ability to spectate. (in fact the only spectating I did was when we analysed clan matches to refine our tactics, or when i suspected someone for being a cheater ) I played it because it was the only squad based tactical FPS at that time. Yes, quake was a nice game as well, but quake was and still is a reflex based fast paced action FPS, while CS is a slow paced tactical FPS.
Fact: when i played quake DM actively for two months straight, I did suck in CS for like a week while I was slowing down to the CS style of gameplay. Likewise it took me about a week to 'spin up' to quake speed after playing CS.
Werelds wrote:
Teams like SK-Gaming and Fnatic would never have become as profitable as they are without that ability.
You are right in a sense, but I believe your otherwise correct observations have a faulty reasoning. The reason we did not see such prominent e-sport events before the CS era have much more to do with the advances in computer technology, the internet and game graphics, as with the games of that era. The spread of desktop PCs and broadband internet contributed way more to the appearance of e-sports, than any single game.
You're right on some points, but we're derailing this thread a bit, so I'll keep this short
All I can tell you is that having been there when ESL (who are pricks, for the record ) was starting up, having worked with SK and Fnatic and having seen first-hand how important the broadcasting features are, it's that which allowed esports to gain momentum. The internet is factor #1, but the broadcasting is factor #2, above the spread of desktop PC's. The CPL and ESL were built entirely on that - their whole investment strategies were built on it (at least ESL's was, can't vouch for the CPL). Before the CPL got off the ground with broadcasting high-stakes games of Q3 and CS both were popular. After that (which is '99/'00, when the broadcasting features became available, before then it was limited to demos), both skyrocketed because you could get videos and watch the best without having to figure out how to play a demo, which a lot of players simply didn't know how to do. Those games are also the only two games that are STILL played today, with the highest stakes of all games. CoD got close, but failed because of its milk cow attitude. UT got close, but suffered the same faith because of 2k3/2k4 - the BF games could potentially have done even better, had there been a feature to broadcast.
Oh, and shame on you for not being able to switch from Q3 to CS seamlessly, the two complement each other quite well
They're actually going to do new stuff about competitive/professional gaming starting with Dota 2.
Quote:
Backstepper: Jeromy wants to know: ‘What do you think of competitive multiplayer?’
Newell: Ah, I like it. It’s kind of an open-ended question. It’s fun to compete against other people.
Johnson: It sucks to lose. It’s really awesome to win.
Newell: John Marello can be made to have his entire head unscrew and fall off on the floor when we play. Do you have a better understanding of what the question is? Do we think that the competitive multiplayer scene…
Johnson: Yeah, are we talking about professional gaming, maybe?
Backstepper: Not in the question, but I would guess. Maybe it’s that direction.
Newell: The piece of the puzzle that I’m always curious about is that nobody’s done a good job of making watching that entertaining enough. If I could take six months off just to work on that problem, that’d be pretty cool. Because I think there’s a huge amount of opportunity there. Obviously, there’s a bunch of things that professional competitive gamers care about. You know, like, I care about this in terms of latency. I care about this in terms of user interface issues. I care about this in terms of how tournaments are managed. And those things are all pretty tractable, and the nice things about professional gamers is they tend to be sophisticated in their descriptions of what it is that they would like. It’s pretty easy to get a laundry list from them and say, okay, we can do three of these right away. I think the harder problem is how to make what they are doing, which is awesome…every time I see one of the people at the elite levels playing any game whether it’s WoW or DOTA or Counter-Strike it’s just stunning how good it is. But I think what’s also stunning is the terrible job we as an industry have done so far in terms of making it entertaining to watch and appreciate how talented and skilled those people are. So if I had to pick one problem to tackle in that space it would be to make it more fun to be a spectator. Is there anything that you know about what’s going on with the competitive scene…?
Johnson: I think DOTA is going to be the product where we are going to focus on this problem. It presents some advantages over some of our other games in terms of viewing just because of the type of game it is. It has a very well established mature professional scene. We’re going to push on this. I think it’s way undervalued. There’s a lot of room there.
For example the addition of the replay system to TF2, direct-uploading to youtube and linking it to your Steam Community page, was because they wanted to test these things for Dota 2
TWIN PEAKS is "something of a miracle."
"...like nothing else on television."
"a phenomenon."
"A tangled tale of sex, violence, power, junk food..."
"Like Nothing On Earth"
TWIN PEAKS is "something of a miracle."
"...like nothing else on television."
"a phenomenon."
"A tangled tale of sex, violence, power, junk food..."
"Like Nothing On Earth"
Oh, and shame on you for not being able to switch from Q3 to CS seamlessly, the two complement each other quite well
Lol.. to avoid derailing this any further, i rather not start another round of arguing on why you are wrong there. We cleared up the issue of valve and their games I believe and that's what this all started out from.
"Gabe and his team really like what we're doing," said OnLive VP of Engineering Joe Bentley. "I can't go into specifics of any conversations we've had but we have had conversations with everybody in the industry. They really dig OnLive. Gabe is a funny guy because he's really not competitive - very similar to Randy [Pitchford]. He sees us a complementary in a lot of different ways.
"If you get to know Valve as a company, Steam was something that they just had to do because nobody else was handling a decent digital distribution model. Gabe and his team's hearts are really in making games like Portal 2 and so forth. If you see where Portal 2 is, it's on every other platform.
"If Gabe was so intent on Steam's dominance he would make it exclusive on Steam, but that's not what he is. He's about making the best quality games out there.
"He's really fascinated with our features and given us a lot of suggestions, they've got similar features coming out and we've chatted about really innovative ideas. I regard him and the company as friends. Sure we're going to have other people doing similar things, but the industry is big enough. We're only a 200 person start-up, we don't need to own it all, there's something for everybody."
Bentley told us: "For me, Steam can't really take their game to that mobile level... Gabe [Newell] walks around with his iPad so he sees OnLive and maybe thinks about how he can get Portal out to the world to the mobile market without compromises."
Past comments by Newell about OnLive:
Quote:
Newell: So Onlive’s interesting. The thing I sort of struggle with a little bit is, you know, everyone knows bandwidth is becoming free. The problem is the bandwidth is becoming free slower than client bandwidth or client performance. So you end up looking at these two numbers, like a Calculus problem, as everything becomes infinitely fast and free what is the right architecture? So right now, in a lot of ways, what you want to do is figure out how to optimize client performance to reduce your bandwidth and not go the other way. That’s certainly been the direction for the last 25 or 30 years which is networks get fast but clients get faster and have more storage. It sort of goes back to the argument between the designers of IP and the designers of the Public-Switched Telephony network where the switch guys the intelligence is in the switches, the intelligence is in the networks, and the IP guys said ‘no, you’re wrong, you need simple, dumb networks with intelligent clients’. There’s a philosophical argument that’s still sort of relevant to how we architect stuff today. I mean, the thing on the end is getting really fast, and if you’re looking for a Thin Client architecture for a lot of games, Flash is a great solution. It’s both lightweight in terms of delivery footprint but it’s also lightweight in terms of how much demand in puts on the network. For highest quality lowest latency obviously you want to cash everything on the client and that’s what a game looks like today as a distributed application with a lot of client side cashing and it puts input latency as close to the client as possible. I think the Onlive guys are really, really smart and have solved a lot of interesting problems. At the end of the day the features that you build out of this are things like rapid-demo experiences. Obviously it makes [spectating] easier. The thing I really love about Onlive is it makes video essentially a free object in your system. So if I want to take a piece of video and composite it into my game world. If I want to put TV Screens with CNN or ESPN on them inside of my game world or to take some arbitrary video input and use it as the basis for some informational or gameplay mechanic I can. And that’s really pretty powerful and seductive. So I think there’s a lot of interesting opportunities and I think it really helps to have a longer-term perspective on how these things have evolved.
IBM was really pushing in the late 80’s and early 90’s to treat the PC as a terminal, which is sort of the Onlive approach. And that was really the last time they ever tried to sort of impose an architectural decision on the rest of the computing industry because at that time it was exactly the wrong thing to do. That treating the PC as a glorified presentation surface of computational activity going on some place in the network. They couldn’t have picked a worse time to do that because everything that was happening in Silicon was going in the other direction and fairly rapidly you got into this perverse situation where PC clients had higher energy throughput than the mainframes they were being connected to. Whether or not we’re in the situation reversing itself now or if this is just another variation on that time will tell. But we certainly have some smart companies that are taking a stab at figuring it out.
Last July a new competitor emerged in cloud-gaming service, OnLive, which does away with downloads entirely. Instead, OnLive streams games directly to a PC or TV. The company won't release how many customers it has, but it is adding its service to Android tablets, smartphones and TV set-top boxes. Newell says OnLive has done admirably figuring out how to stream games, but thinks that distribution method is inefficient and expensive.
OnLive Chief Executive Steve Perlman counters that his company is profitable and its streaming costs are reasonable and in line with the estimated 3 cents per gigabyte that Netflix pays. Perlman dings Valve for having an audience "limited to people who have a high-performance computer." He says he will be on 10 million TVs by the end of this year.
Newell sees such a technology as an opportunity for rapid-demos (like the one for Red Faction: Armageddon, for those that tried it), streaming video content in the game world, and instant spectating of games (which is relevant to what Werelds was talking about), but he also thinks it's inefficient and expensive for example as a platform for playing full games.
I fully expect the spectating features of OnLive etc, to be added to Steam one day.
TWIN PEAKS is "something of a miracle."
"...like nothing else on television."
"a phenomenon."
"A tangled tale of sex, violence, power, junk food..."
"Like Nothing On Earth"
"Steam do not dictate at all. They are supremely easy to deal with and superbly competent at what they do. Their confidence in their offering, which pays no heed to any rival in store activities, compares very favourably to that of the retail chains who recently sent a command to publishers that if they include Steamworks in their title it will not be stocked. "
(not sure where to put this, but here seems a good place)
Pixieking
----------
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"Wii U seems to be a lot more powerful than the previous generation," he told Joystiq. "It sort of fits better into the scalability in terms of graphics performance and CPU performance, so I think it'll be a lot easier for us to fit it into our scalability model." Valve has yet to release any of its games on a Nintendo console, though Gabe told us, "We've always loved Nintendo." He also pointed out that Valve has been slowly transitioning from the PC to console counterparts, starting with Xbox 360 and more recently moving to the PlayStation 3 in a major way with Steam getting ported to Sony's console.
And it looks like Nintendo may be next, as Newell restated, "Now it's a lot easier to look at Wii U and have it fit within that framework." As for us, we're most excited to see what Valve might do with the WiiPad.
TWIN PEAKS is "something of a miracle."
"...like nothing else on television."
"a phenomenon."
"A tangled tale of sex, violence, power, junk food..."
"Like Nothing On Earth"
"Wii U seems to be a lot more powerful than the previous generation," he told Joystiq. "It sort of fits better into the scalability in terms of graphics performance and CPU performance, so I think it'll be a lot easier for us to fit it into our scalability model." Valve has yet to release any of its games on a Nintendo console, though Gabe told us, "We've always loved Nintendo." He also pointed out that Valve has been slowly transitioning from the PC to console counterparts, starting with Xbox 360 and more recently moving to the PlayStation 3 in a major way with Steam getting ported to Sony's console.
And it looks like Nintendo may be next, as Newell restated, "Now it's a lot easier to look at Wii U and have it fit within that framework." As for us, we're most excited to see what Valve might do with the WiiPad.
What is shocking is that someone is excited about WiiPad.
As a major Zelda fanboy i will buy the Wii U regardless, but if Valve continues like they have and games feel PCish instead of console ports it's fine by me.
Well considering the thing looks to be faster than the other two, with those not looking like they're doing something new, the Wii U should fit into anyone's plans now.
As long as they have Steam, their #1 source of revenue, they won't abandon the PC market, and their games will continue to play great on PCs.
TWIN PEAKS is "something of a miracle."
"...like nothing else on television."
"a phenomenon."
"A tangled tale of sex, violence, power, junk food..."
"Like Nothing On Earth"
Why couldn't they bring this F2P game to US/EU? It looks better than TF2
TWIN PEAKS is "something of a miracle."
"...like nothing else on television."
"a phenomenon."
"A tangled tale of sex, violence, power, junk food..."
"Like Nothing On Earth"
I will say this. I was there some time before ESL was any factor and SK and fnatic was a long time away(scope on m4 and all that snazz but only got real into it around 1.0). The e-sport itself was already pretty widespread(but yes the 'professionalism' of the sport hadnt happened yet) and I think the part of it was it was so accessible for a player to watch other games, it brought the spectating part to the game with HLTV and demos and so on. Was it the only reason? No it also filled a major hole in MP and competitive gaming.
edit: and to that video ^^
8 out of 10 dentists prefer zipfero to competing brands(fraich3 and Mutantius)!
Admit your body wasn't ready for what you watched. None of us were.
TWIN PEAKS is "something of a miracle."
"...like nothing else on television."
"a phenomenon."
"A tangled tale of sex, violence, power, junk food..."
"Like Nothing On Earth"
Signature/Avatar nuking: none (can be changed in your profile)
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More benefical too, since they have already proven that they have an excellent creativity, which is always a good skill to have amongst your employees.
It looks better than TF2 
