Rant: CS 1.6 Steam - A Load of Hot air. R.I.P.

[zhardoum]

This will be an extreemely long post, so to many of you, quoting your own words, "if you dont want to read it" fine, but please dont skim read.

Ok, Steam, Counter Strike 1.6, I believe is a load of hot air, and here is why.

I own a cyber cafe, I own countless games and licences and yet, Steam is the one company that has regressed the boundaries so far, its amazing anyone still plays it all. Yet to fully understand the present we need to understand the past, so here is a quick 1-2-3 of Steam aka 1.6 and how we got here today.

Half Life, the standalone game that created a Genre Released November 1998 by Sierra, and that looking at the clock is 6 and a half years ago!!. Whereby you playing as Gordon Freeman solve the puzzles, kill the baddies-aliens and escape discovering some pretty interesting facts along the way re: alien takeovers, which oddly enough, is more closer to life than we realise.

Anyway, for some people, the release of Half Life, just was not enough, for included in Half Life was a Modification which shaped the online world as we knew it, that modification was "Team Fortress Classic". TFC as it is better known spawned a generation of online fans, and it is probably one of the games that will go down in history as blasting a path for others to follow.

However, to some people, TFC was a shadow of what it could have been, a group of TFC players bandied together, and between them, they created a game which shook the world, more so than the game it was based upon, the creation was :

COUNTER STRIKE.

But like most things, it took a while to settle down, iron out the bugs and what not, so here is a quick dash run through the dates of CS and its various guises.

CS BETA 1.0 _ [19th June 1999] was the first ever version of Counter Strike, a god amongst games was born, followed by its sons...

CS BETA 1.1 _ [6.27.99]
CS BETA 1.2 - [7.20.99]
CS BETA 2.0 - [8.13.99]
CS BETA 2.1 - [8.17.99]
CS BETA 3.0 - [9.14.99]
CS BETA 3.1 - [9.16.99]
CS BETA 4.0 - [11.5.99]

and skipping dates here, lets not forget
beta 4.0, 4.1
beta 5.0, 5,2
beta 6,0, through to 6.8
beta 7.0, 7.1
and finally drum roll CS 1.0 was released to public on the 8th of November 2000, Two and a half years after Half life was created, and some 3 and a half years ago now.

Skipping through the release of 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1,4 we shall stop at CS 1.5 released to the public on the 12th of June 2002.

What made these titles so unique? They were all created by a group of people with one common goal, to make a modification for a game completely free of charge, for the community as a whole, and in return the community as a whole helped shaped Counter Strike into what it had become, A Monster.

Now, Sierra were selling copy after copy of Half Life, yet many people never got past the install cds for Half Life, purely just buying the game to enable them to load up the CS modification, and play online.

CS rocketed into the all time highs, everyone was playing it, people bought pcs because of it, it literally shaped an online revolution.

Funny then, that it became otherthrown in its own power struggle.

Once CS1.5 had become king, it stayed there, it was without doubt THE most played game on the planet, it was a Monster, and it grew up so big, so fast, that like most monsters, it did what it knew best, it turned on its owners and bit them.

Sierra eyeing Counter Strike for what it was, a money maker, bought the rights to the modifcation, which was good and bad, yes it paid a lot of the helpers who had helped create it, and at the same time it drew a line between those in the inner circle who helped build it, and those in the outer world, who had helped tweak it along the way, make no mistake, Counter Strike right from its infancy had been a game for everyone, designed by everyone, but now, CS 1.5 had been sold.

Time passes, valve decide that this is a big money spinner decide to set up steam, and seperate counter strike from half life, changing it into a game in its own right.

And this is where the crunch comes.

originally you bought half life, you inserted your cd key, you played the game, to play CS you downloaded the "free" modification from some online provider, and then played CS using your Cd key from the box of Half life.

But, Steam, the now owners of CS decided to bring out the son of Satan, CS 1.6. Now CS 1.6 is no longer a "free" modification, its being sold as a game in its own right, and as such licences now, are issued by Steam, not Sierra-Half life.

So, you sit reading this, and shrug your shoulders and think, well hey, thats ok, they own the rights, they can do that, I can still play CS 1,6, so whats the big deal?

Well, it has come as a bit of a shock to me to see that Half Life Serials are now being discontinued by the truck load. When you now buy Half Life or Half Life Generations it is no longer possible to use Steam.. well it is and it isn't, let me get specific.

I bought two years ago, 22 copies of Half Life generations, licensed for use in Cyber cafes, and all of those copies worked fine for 1.5, after some time, Cs 1,6 became released, and ALL the licences worked.

Add a year on, I buy 10 more copies, again all licensed for Cyber copies, and all work.

4 weeks ago, I bought 10 more copies and 3 worked. More alarmingly of the original 32 remaining copies, now 6 work out of 32.

So, your now thinking, well hey, thats ok, you bought 1.5 licences not 1,6.. well no, I bought HL licences, valid for use in Cybers, which should allow me to use CS, no matter what version. In a few weeks CS 1.5 is being officially discontinued, it is just a matter of time, and not long at that, Very soon, CS 1,5 as we know it, ends.

I spoke to Mike Dunkle about this, and for those of you who don't know, Mike Dunkle is head of licencing for Steam, he accused me of using CS1.6 illegally, he further accused me of not owning legal copies of Half life and demanded I send him copies of my licences for proof or goto jail etc etc do not collect $200 etc etc. I complied fully with his requests, I sent him all the details I had, licence numbers, invoices, scans of Game cases carrying Ciber stickers etc etc...

The end result? he was satisfied I had legal copies of Half life, for use in a cyber that entitield me to use CS 1.6. he didn't like it because they are trying to sell a cyber cafe licence at $120 per year per pc, but he accepted it.

So then, 4 weeks ago, I buy 10 more copies of HL generations, again licenced for use in a Cyber, but now only 3 licences work, out of 10, and as I already mentioned, my other licences are now dropping like flies.

So, I speak to my supplier, who in this instance is "Vivendi Universal Publishing" and I ask them, why my licences won't work.
The Answer, is far from comforting, they reply that they know the licences wont work, they know that Steam are going through and systematically disabling all cd keys that were issued with Half Life, and they know that a lot of people are disappointed, but they dont know what to do. They admit the game is for use with Half Life and Counter Strike, Vivendi Universal Publishing assure me my copies are legal, and are for use in a Cyber, but they tell me only Steam can issue new licence numbers.

So, I have to talk to Steam direct.

Which I tried, ok, 5 emails to mike dunkle, 2 to contact@steam, 3 to sales, 1 to customer services etc etc.. in a period now of 12 workign days, not a single reply to any of my emails. I also emailed Vivendi Universal Publishing directly to the head of Corporate Cyber sales, and as of yet, other than a thanks for your email reply, have not had a responce in ten working days.

I have also tried phoning Steam in the States repeatedly.. and all I ever get is the same voice mail for the same receptionist no matter when I call. I call in USA times, and I do not get an answer.

My pleas are falling on death ears.

But, as you read this, you think well how does this affect me?
Well, the last 10 copies of Hl Generations I received did NOT have the use only in Cybers printed on them, I asked Vivendi why this is the case, they replied sometimes copies for the general public are issued when they cannot source copies for cibers.

In other words, the 10 copies I bought, have and are today being sold to home users, I bought 10, and 3 work, 70% dont, that means 70% of home users licences wont work either. The error is not that the CD key is in use, the error is that STEAM has Discontinued this licence key. So be warned, if you use CS 1.6 now with a key that came from a HL box, the question is, if you still can, for how much longer will you be allowed to?

If you buy a new copy, will it work.? most probably not.

I have 40 pcs in my shop, 1 year ago on a friday night 30 odd machines would be in use in any one time purely for playing Counter Strike, now on a Saturday night, 4 people are on Counter Strike, FOUR.

So what does this tell you about Counter Strike, well it tells me, its over. Simple as that, its over.

I used to enter the shop in lots of tournaments, now those tounaments that are still ongoing, just do not feature CS at all, Cyber Centres are de-installing it in droves, it does not take a genius to see why, passwords often magically disappear, bandwidth is eaten alive by all thge other games autoupdating, I mean, ok so CS is not a big deal auto updating, but Ricochet? TFC? Dead or alive? TFC? Multiply that by 40 plus machines and ytou can see why I dont like CS 1.6 and how it effects my users pings for games, yes you can turn individual games off for autoupdating, but why is it on by defualt? why must Steam create a seperate folder for each individual user? why must it then cache all the game files seperately for each user? eg, one folder, one person, that person plays cs it creates a sub folder with all the cs files in it, player then switches to DoD and yet another sub folder, repeat that by 60 players a week across 40 pcs and Steam really isnt a cybers best buddy. One of its really annoying things, if a player goes onto a machine, and joins a server with a non standard map, that player then installs that map into his cache, if another person joins the same pc later, and joisn the same server, the player will then redownload the map yet again even though the map is already in the pc. It is sheer madness, and that applies to all the Steam games, not just CS.

contd..

[zhardoum]

So, Steam, offer us an olive branch, buy the ciber licence, and we will give you all the games steam develops included in the price..

Err. well unless any of you haven't been looking the only game included so far is condition zero, enabling the player to play offline with bots.. like wtf use is that to my customers.. oh, yeah, nearly forgot the better graphics.. oh dont make me Laugh!.

but then they say we have Half Life 2. Which is a good job, because no one else does and nor is likely to until 2005 at the earliest, by which time no one will be playing it as it will be too old.

So, the time has come, I am waitig for a reply from Steam and Vivendi on this issue, I have legal licences, I just cant use them.
If I continue to be stonewalled, then CS is coming out of my Cyber, and soon. It will probably be the first job I get High_Tower to do, uninstall Half-Life et al.

Its a sad day for us all, CS 1.5 was absolutely rocking, but the money men jumped in, and royally screwed it for all of us. like I said, enjoy CS 1,5 whilst you can, its being discontinued very soon, before summer even.

R.I.P. Counter Strike,
Loved by many,
abused by a few,
Missed by all.

[Diplo]

Go see a solicitor, and take them to court for loss of earnings.

Seriously i would, to me it seems you have a good case.

Not sure if they have the same in spain but no win no fee type affair on this ?

Worth a try surely

[zhardoum]

good point, but in reality it would take years and require a heap of cash..

..let me be specific about what a cyber licence is, in effect its a game that I rent, you buy a game, you pay for it and thats it (exceptions like Everquest noted) but for a cyber I get charged yearly for all the games I have, during june I will recieve another bill for $2500 for using Half life, this bill comes yearly, thats the difference, and thats what I am paying for, However, no one at Valve-Steam- Vivendi can actually tell me what it is I get for that invoice or than a game I can't use..

[Afty]

I'll post again, simply because I dislike the disproportionate amount of attention Valve get around things.

They are idiots, mugs, simpletons. They cannot PLAN or CODE ****. Everything they have laid their grimy fingers on since the original Half Life has been tainted, cancelled, vaporware, compromised, ****ed up, unpopular, poorly planned, poorly implemented, ill conceived tripe.

I wish people would stop buying and playing their games. I wish people would stop talking about them, posting about them, complaining about them, and generally giving them free publicity.

When something dies and smells bad, most people just walk away, but with Valve and its' slow lingering descent into the pit everyone has to crowd around and watch and talk and shout about it.

So, Im going to post it in big letters now.

Valve got lucky with Half Life. The law of averages demands someone gets lucky, somewhere every once in a while

Now, the good people at Valve have left, those sticking around are doing their best to avoid looking cretinous, and to keep on picking up a pay packet, and thousands of people around the world are wondering *WHY*? *WHY OH WHY LORD* ?

Please, for the sake of the rest of us, uninstall everything tainted by Valve, install yourself some old school games, or some indie games, or modern classics, or go out and buy the latest lacklustre blockbuster and play that. Chat to your friends, setup a community - do tournaments and challenges.

Walk away from the filthy stinking festering zombified corpse of Valve, the only thing it's good for these days is as an extra for Shaun Of The Dead (great film btw, go see it).

[Afty]

Originally posted by zhardoum
However, no one at Valve-Steam- Vivendi can actually tell me what it is I get for that invoice or than a game I can't use.. That's because they don't care, and they're trying to milk everything they can out of strong products before the company ends up tanking in a couple of years.

In the UK, BTW, you'd have been protected against this. You could have returned the goods (the ones that didn't work) to Vivendi under one of two different acts : Sales Of Goods Act, and Distance Selling Regulations.
Probably more, too.
They would have been legally obligated to replace, or refund at your discretion.

[Aardvark]

Valve don't know ****. That is all.

Get everyone playing beta 5.2 again, thats got my vote! :D

[Mingtea]

You also failed to point out that CS went completley downhill from version 1.0 onwards... once Valve got an ore in.

[Cheez]

Couple of historical innacuracies. CS has been available as a standalone game since 1.0.

TFC was nothing new or original. It was just a half life engine version of the popular Quakeworld Teamfortress.

[Zakalwe]

Is it a good time to point out that .BFC. invented the "hunted" gametype for Teamfortress (the original version?).

We even had a credit in the .txt that was released with the distributions for a while, didn't see dollar one when Valve released TFC though, greedy corporate scum...

:)

[Freelance]

Originally posted by afty
Please, for the sake of the rest of us, uninstall everything tainted by Valve, install yourself some old school games, or some indie games, or modern classics, or go out and buy the latest lacklustre blockbuster and play that. Chat to your friends, setup a community - do tournaments and challenges. Seconded. And cancel any pre-orders. And tell your friends. The only thing Valve/Sierra/Vivendi will listen to is their bottom line that says "people won't buy crap". i'll miss sven coop though

[Bowser]

Since the release of steam I have installed it once on my machine, and I won't be installing it again. My passion for CS died with that un-install. I refuse to install it because its a pile of ****e as it has already been pointed out.
From what I can make out is that Half-Life 2 will also be using steam for its updates and internet connection if this is the case Valve will have a big stinking turkey on its door step. As you've already pointed out zhardoum that many cyber cafes are walking away from steam because of the problems it brings, I'm sure a lot of gamers are also doing this I knew a lot of people who used to love playing CS now they would rather play Battlefield or Unreal just because of Steam.

I for one will not even be buying Half Life 2 if it has any association with Steam.

[Zenith]

I won't be buying HL2 for the simple reason it is Sierra Interactive / Vivendi Universal that are marketing and distributing it. After the total hash they made of Tribes 2, they won't be getting my money in a hurry.
I also refuse to install Steam for the simple reason that it hijacks your Internet connection without telling you in plain language what it is exactly doing. It is bad enough getting malware and spyware on your machine by accident. Why put it there willingly?

[Rich]

Please, for the sake of the rest of us, uninstall everything tainted by Valve, install yourself some old school games, or some indie games, or modern classics, or go out and buy the latest lacklustre blockbuster and play that. Chat to your friends, setup a community - do tournaments and challenges.
^ ala crouchjump :)

Well said guys, zhardoum - ul maybe if you can return the licenses and try to get as much money back as you can would be the best idea?

Oooor maybe it would be possible to get everyone on 1.5 again? I mean dosn't multiplay run fake master servers for that at lans, or used to at least? Surely somthing similar to that could be set up to replace WON?


Regards,
Rich

[Bootz]

how much do licenses cost through steam? I've yet to have the displeasure of a discontinued CD-key.

[Freelance]

yes forgot that was the main point of the thread. a LOAD more people will be pissed off when their HL1 keys only let them play HL. it's a silly moneygrab that can only spread more bad feeling, something valve does not need.

having said that, if valve shipped a brilliant HL2 and noone bought it, that would be bad IMO because it would reinforce the trend of generic crud that gets churned out by EA/Eidos. sierra/vivendi still have some good studios under their belt (one less, seeing as they lost relic to THQ).

[Kraken]

zhardoum, I am in the process of setting up an Internet Gaming Cafe, would love the opportunity to chat, have you got MSN?

samisunrider@hotmail.com

I completely agree with your post. I dont know if you are aware but IGamesUK (a collection go 80+ internet cafes) has boycotted CS for a while now refusing to install Steam. Its an appauling program, and on top of it they EXPECT you to pay for a 6 year old game!

Boots (Its sami btw!) it costs £10 per PC per month.

[Chicane]

Originally posted by Kraken

Boots (Its sami btw!) it costs £10 per PC per month.

PER MONTH???

£120 a year.. they can take a run and jump

[Afty]

Originally posted by Chicane
£120 a year.. they can take a run and jump

The Truth of the matter though, is that if that £120 a year results in some kids coming in and playing Counter Strike on your PCs for, say, 2 hours on only 3 nights a week (weekends) you've made nearly a THOUSAND POUNDS for your investment of £120.

I don't think the price of the licenses is entirely unfair, given the level of interest in Counter Strike, and the potential profitability, I think just about everything else concerning the situation is bull**** though ;)

[Bootz]

Hey hey Sami :) how's the networking going?

[high_towe]

no offence to you all. But if half life 2 comes out, and is a hit (which i am guessing) you lot will go out and buy it. Its the simple way that things work. I agree completely that steam is CRAP, complete crap, on so many levels. But its the first way of deleviering patches/games in this way. So give them a little bit of respect, in some form or another, I don't see anyone else trying this.
However, they have also failed in many respects, certainly in not listening to people. If they are goig to sell cyber licences, then why can you not have a special version, all maps are held centrally on a server, or at least only downloaded once. Seems like quite a easy idea to implement. I mean, they have your steam ID's for your cyber cafe, so the next time you connect, you download 2k of code which enables this. Hard? I think not, and certainly worth the £2500 or whatever it is that you pay.
Having been living on 56k on and off (when not at uni), its terrible. You just want a quick game and you load up, oh no you don't. Its a ""small"" 15mb update. Oh yea, hahaha, small. Thats over an hour on 56k (really 39k). You really think people are going to put up with this? I think not. As more and more people give steam up and more on to something new/go back to 1.5 (i liked it, LAN with no internet like it); then hopefully valve will realise and do something about it. Until then, we will just go and play frycry/painkiller/many other games which are just as good. The longer this goes on, the less people play CS, the less people want to go back.
Ah well, rant over. Anything to save myself from doing some AI coursework (any offers for someone to do it for me? lol)

[RocketKnight]

Originally posted by high_towe
no offence to you all. But if half life 2 comes out, and is a hit (which i am guessing) you lot will go out and buy it. Its the simple way that things work.
Excuse me? Hahahaha. Ahahahahahahaha. Haha. Ha.

Originally posted by high_towe But its the first way of deleviering patches/games in this way. So give them a little bit of respect, in some form or another, I don't see anyone else trying this.
It's called Bit Torrent. I seem to get patches this way without a problem. Don't give Valve or Steam any respect. Thanks. :p:

No offence but you sound like you're defending the company a little because you're under the impression things are going to get better? Or perhaps because you're a HalfLife / CS fan? I'm not going to bash Valve now, Afty has done a superb job and I couldn't do it better than he has.

In my opinion, the game will be delayed for so long that we'll start seeing more impressive game engines between now and then, and it probably won't look as impressive as it does now.

I'd just like to add that at the time of posting, I couldn't access the Steam website. In fact, every time I've ever tried it seems to be down.

[Squeeb]

Although coming from a very vague and distant viewpoint (not being a CS "fan" or even a follower) .. The topology of "steam" still confuses me.

It just seems to be a huge purpose-built self-destruct mechanism for CS.

the amount of problems at the last I-series with Steam where ridiculous..

so much so that I was forced to hide in the toilets and hide my yellow shirt to stop the STREAM of CS players DEMANDING that I fix steam! ..
I don't even know what steam does, how it works, why it lives.. aargh .. *cry*

[high_towe]

Originally posted by RocketKnight
It's called Bit Torrent. I seem to get patches this way without a problem. Don't give Valve or Steam any respect. Thanks. :p:



so your telling me that the patch for farcry you downloaded from bit-torrent, great. With steam, my point is, that it automatically updates, you do not have to do anything, run anything, or find anything. This way, every single person that runs steam, is on the current version, otherwise they cannot play. This is not the same for any other game (non-steam), as far as i knew. But correct me if i am wrong of course.


No offence but you sound like you're defending the company a little because you're under the impression things are going to get better? Or perhaps because you're a HalfLife / CS fan? I'm not going to bash Valve now, Afty has done a superb job and I couldn't do it better than he has.


Well thats the way that games go isn't it?. I thought that games always got better, at least in graphics/sound etc. So the fact that steam has started the trend of auto patching etc. Many others will start to follow, but at least I hope that some/all will take comments on board. Eg. why steam is crap at the moment and why so many of us hate it so much.

So all in all, i am not defending the fact that steam is crap, but that hopefully it will improve things for us in the future.

[Afty]

Originally posted by high_towe
This way, every single person that runs steam, is on the current version, otherwise they cannot play. This is not the same for any other game (non-steam), as far as i knew. But correct me if i am wrong of course.
Nah, Allegiance did it 5 years ago, Kohan did it 3 years ago, at least a quarter of the games I've played over the last few years have automatic updating.

[Cheez]

It's the fact that it's enforced with steam, and you can't supposedly even play single player without being connected to the internet so Steam can phone home.

I'd love to see Steam's privacy policy.

[high_towe]

It's the fact that it's enforced with steam

thanks chris thats what i meant. You don't have a choise. Eg. Battlefield, you can play the version you like, before they change things etc. Well with CS/Steam you can't, you have to play what they want you to play.

[Aardvark]

Yes, but with Steam you have to DL the patch. Whether you want to or not. Whether you want to PLAY it or not.

[Cheez]

Indeed, I might not care that half life has been updated. I might just want to run a single player game of half life. But no, steam is going to force me to sit there for 2 hours waiting for it to download.

[RocketKnight]

Originally posted by high_towe
so your telling me that the patch for farcry you downloaded from bit-torrent, great. With steam, my point is, that it automatically updates
OK that's fine but you never actually said that. I was confused by the point you made, that's all. You say we should give them respect for being the first to try a new system. Then you bash the new system for being rubbish?

Anyway, I think the reason they're the first to try it is perhaps that no one else thought it would work? As Chris said, being forced to update in order to play a single player game is nonsense.

At least we found we could copy the Steam directory across the network so that only one person with a broadband connection needed to suffer prior to the LAN party. People I know on dial up attending the LAN party in question were a little worried. :) Though for all I know copying an updated directory instead of downloading the updates is against all their policies and makes the people at Steam cry. :p:

[Tsung]

Well im all for automatic updates, it's a good thing. The problem is steam has it's priorties all wrong, it assumes just because your connected to the net, you wish to download the latest game patch with or without your consent. The problem with this, isn't the fact you might want to play an older version, the problem is simply...
YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT IS BEING PUT ON YOUR MACHINE. It's worse than that, as they are talking of BTTorrent sharing system, which could mean.. YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT IS BEING TAKEN FROM YOUR MACHINE.
If I want to risk running BT or other filesharing apps, I can it's my choice, it doesn't prevent me from playing any games if I choose not to. However it's more complicated, Steam has a habit of deciding by itself when to download stuff, without warning, it starts your connection goes to pot, and you have no idea why. Give that to less savvy users and they might assume there is a problem with their machine or net connection.
Now I don't know what excatly is wrong with a downloadable patch, a simple file to download which you run and it updates the game. The best system is employed by warcraft & generals where if you wish to play it online, it autoupdates when you try.. (warning you first and allowing you to cancel). If you wish to download the patches seperately you can as well...

Question I have for Steam/Valve... If it works, why try to fix it?

[Murray-Mint]

Originally posted by afty
Nah, Allegiance did it 5 years ago, Kohan did it 3 years ago, at least a quarter of the games I've played over the last few years have automatic updating.

Add to the list of updating games:

Savage: Battle for Newerth (http://s2games.com/savage)
Star Wars Galaxies
City of Heroes
Everquest
Most MMORPGs

[Miez]

I think Never Winter Nights did to. But you had the option of a manual update if you wanted it to.

[Freelance]

nice idea, crap implementation, abysmal attitude to existing customers

[zhardoum]

Originally posted by afty
The Truth of the matter though, is that if that £120 a year results in some kids coming in and playing Counter Strike on your PCs for, say, 2 hours on only 3 nights a week (weekends) you've made nearly a THOUSAND POUNDS for your investment of £120.

I don't think the price of the licenses is entirely unfair, given the level of interest in Counter Strike, and the potential profitability, I think just about everything else concerning the situation is bull**** though ;)

I charge €1.50 per hour (about 1 pound 10 pence)

doesnt take a genius to work out that it takes a long time to cover operating costs, wages, lights, security, pc expenditure, paying €160 per machine per year over 40 machines will take months to pay off.

And your calculating on a full shop. Which currently is only friday nights for on an hour, or saturday for two, rest of the week average client numbers is around 14 -18.

[Afty]

Originally posted by zhardoum
I charge €1.50 per hour (about 1 pound 10 pence) ... And your calculating on a full shop

I didn't do any calculations on a full shop, I was talking on a per machine basis...

OK, so it costs you £120 for the license, and you charge £1.10/hour for machine use - so you need the machine in use for 108 hour a year (two hours a week, give or take) at times when it would otherwise be empty, in order for it to be break even. Does each CS license get > 2 hours a week usage?

Originally posted by zhardoum
doesnt take a genius to work out that it takes a long time to cover operating costs, wages, lights, security, pc expenditure, paying €160 per machine per year over 40 machines will take months to pay off.

OK, so say it takes 6 months to pay off, that means you're getting 6 months of that revenue for the shop itself.... you need to be careful not to mix overheads and unit costs here....
You will be paying wages/lighting/hardware/security regardless of whether you license CS - you must evaluate how much a CS license will *increase* usage of the machines, and what portion of that potentially increased usage may occur at peak times when the shop would otherwise be full.
You also need to consider the added value of the business that your shop gets from people who were captured by CS, but also later patronise your business for other services.

[zhardoum]

CS currently is not even getting a look in, between BF, Warcraft III, tibia and UT 2004, counter strike has been in use for a total of 5 hours all told across all machines for a full week.

[Aardvark]

Ah yes but afty, if CS licenses start to sell, suddenly every publisher will want a piece. Add a dozen or so games at 120 quid a pop, and suddenly things aren't looking quite so bearable :)

[Afty]

Originally posted by Aardvark
Ah yes but afty, if CS licenses start to sell, suddenly every publisher will want a piece. Add a dozen or so games at 120 quid a pop, and suddenly things aren't looking quite so bearable :)
You're absolutely right, but that's the free market for you :)

[Elbonio]

Originally posted by *Tsunami*

Question I have for Steam/Valve... If it works, why try to fix it?


This is what we've all been screaming at them for ages now


well i did for about two minutes then i remebered i dont dont play any of their games anymore so stopped caring...

[Freelance]

we know gabe has said there are SP and SP+MP versions of HL2, i damn well hope the SP only version comes without steam. I'm guessing that the SP+MP version will be chained into steam from the start. I hope it's possible to modify it to rip HL2 out of steam and play it unhindered. if someone hacked some manual patches together...

sorry, dreaming there.

[Aerodynamic]

if youre pissed off with 1.6 you can now get 1.3 for steam @ http://www.cs13mod.com
loads of people making new servers 2 days ago when it was released, reckon this will be kinda big

[zhardoum]

without sounding like some dumb ass newb,, the question has to be asked, what is it?

[Aerodynamic]

Well you probably know that Counterstrike is a mod for half life, there have been many updates and patches for it, the version now stands at 1.6.

When 1.6 was released they [Valve] also released a new interface to connect with half life games known as Steam.
There is no other way to connect to games in 1.6 without steam (legal anyways, duno about hax)

So anyways, 1.6 has had alot of changes made by Valve and most are for the worse (as you can see by pissed off people in this thread)
What im saying is you can get version 1.3 to work with steam which is untouched, classic gaming as it was back in the day (no more updates)
you can still use 1.6 btw, 1.3 comes under 3rd party games in steam

Sry if im babbling, ive smoked too much :balloon:

[zhardoum]

next question, can you get 1.5 to work as well?

[T5UNAM1]

I heard that Steam are going to charge a monthly fee to play hl2 online.

Is this right?

[Afty]

No official announcement has been made, therefore it is pure speculation

[Freelance]

Originally posted by T5UNAM1
I heard that Steam are going to charge a monthly fee to play hl2 online.

Is this right? it's one of the ways that you can get HL2. from another post: there are 3 basic versions: SP, SP+MP, and SP+MP+Bonus available at retail, and the first two available as steam subscriptions ( see http://www.halflife2.net/article_valvespeak_7.php ).

check that link. no charge has been mentioned for just playing MP though. MMORPG style, that would hurt valves reputation (dropping as it is) even more

[Flufball]

The only thing that keeps me using anything to do with valve are the mods that haven't been comercialised....

[Aerodynamic]

Originally posted by zhardoum
next question, can you get 1.5 to work as well?

yeah but 1.3 is much better;
get 1.5 here:http://cs.jbdubbs.com/pn/

[Murray-Mint]

Clearly Beta 7.1 to be played.

[Kraken]

For a start it doesnt cost 120 a month. Its £10/per pc/per month.

Thats if you only have 12 PCs, and if you do I dont know how you're calling that an Internet Gaming Centre.

We are having 26, and that would be £260 per month. Now not only is that a lot of money but they are CHARGING us for a 6 year old game!!!

Maybe when HL2 comes out (if its still popular) then we will consider getting a licence, but for now its money down the toilet IMO.

And yes, its a free market, but if we dont ALL say we aren't accepting the subscription then LAN centres will go out of business as more and more publishers say "lets start charging".

Why should you gamers care?
Well what do you think will happen next- A subscription charge for Gamers? :eek:
Its not that suprising, other FPS have it (Planetside - which was NOT worth the money) and considering they have their claws deep in your PCs with Steam already it will be VERY EASY to put in motion.
We've already seen the beginning of it. How many of you hate how they throw Condition Zero in your face when you load up Steam.

[Afty]

Originally posted by Kraken
For a start it doesnt cost 120 a month. Its £10/per pc/per month.
Thats if you only have 12 PCs, and if you do I dont know how you're calling that an Internet Gaming Centre.
Zhar said £120 a year not month, and he has 40 PCs AFAIK.

Originally posted by Kraken
We are having 26, and that would be £260 per month. Now not only is that a lot of money but they are CHARGING us for a 6 year old game!!!
No, they're charging you for the latest patches. It would be illegal for them to revoke licenses purchased under a previous agreement which did not mention a cybercafe clause, but you will find the license is required to run the latest version.
You would be free to allow people into the store to play Half Life or older versions of CS on LAN using older licenses without paying the monthly fee.

Originally posted by Kraken
And yes, its a free market, but if we dont ALL say we aren't accepting the subscription then LAN centres will go out of business as more and more publishers say "lets start charging".
You won't go out of business, thats reactionary OTT rubbish. What will happen is that you will have to pick your games more carefully, and choose to make available only those on which you will project making a profit.
What is likely to happen is that companies whos games do not have enormous marketing budgets or a captive audience will not partake in such a scheme, as they would find themselves not present on gaming cafe machines, which would not only reduce their initial run of sales, but also prevent people from "trying" the game in a cafe before buying at home.

Originally posted by Kraken
Why should you gamers care?
Well what do you think will happen next- A subscription charge for Gamers? :eek:
Fantastic, about time too. I've been singing the praises of subscription based gaming for some time now, and why?

Subscription based gaming means you pay more money to developers who make the games you *really* like, and less money to those who make games you tire of quickly. Which means GOOD game developers get more money to develop more good titles, and poor developers go out of business quicker.
Furthermore, we will see more games with dynamic and evolving content in a bid to keep players in the game.

All of these are good things.


Originally posted by Kraken
Its not that suprising, other FPS have it (Planetside - which was NOT worth the money)
Indeed - and you know what? When someone goes to play Planetside, they get the use of servers included in their monthly fee, administration of abusive accounts, and ongoing progression (RPG style) of their experience.

Oh, and it's nice to hear that *you* decided Planetside wasn't worth the money - so did I - but thousands of people decided it was worth the money, and continue to subscribe and play.

[zhardoum]

I have a slight concern about subscription based games though.

i will use as an example Everquest. largely because its subscription based.

I like Everquest, played it, and then some..

And without doubt the customers would love it, but.. the customers would expect me to pay for the licence for each one of them, which in all honesty is where it gets confusing.

Customers pay to use my shop and becaue of that they expect that whatever I have installed they are able to use because they have paid a fee. What they complain about is if I install a game and they cant play it, that they then expect is covered.

But, as you know, I can't pay for an account for each user, thats unrealistic, I have some 1200 clients on my books, although I dont see many of them for months at a time.

But, if theoretically I could set up say a shop account, the catch then is players deleting each others accounts, acting like idiots and getting the account banned etc etc..

Subscription based games work best for games for the home, but in a cyber games shop they dont work well, combination of too many different clients, passwords etc etc..

just my tuppence worth..

P.S. yup I have 40 pc's..

[Afty]

Yes, account based games do not work well in a public environment unless there is some easy user switching.

Cyber Cafes aren't really suited to account based games for a variety of reasons, but subscription based games and account based games are not always one and the same...

[Blood Sport]

things only get better

this is from the latest copy of PCzone

"

A HEAD OF STEAM

WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT FROM VALVE'S ONLINE SOFTWARE DELIVERY SYSTEM?
For the past two years, Valve has been working on an online system of software delivery called Steam, which also acts as a games server for its multiplayer games. It's been long suggested that you'll be able to buy H12 via Steam, as well as from your local retailer, something that Gabe Newell confirmed on our visit. However, with Steam subscribers promised exclusive new content for HL2 for their $9.99 (£5.50) monthly fee, I asked what you could expect to get for your money?
"We've spent so much time building this engine, meaning we can now easily build more games and new creatures," begins Gabe. "Our hope is that some people will be getting this new content from a subscription basis, while others will be buying a la carte over Steam or in retail stores. Some of the content will be continuations of HL2 - like Alyx's back-story - and new multiplayer games. Of course, we're also creating Team Fortress 2 (see 'Looking Forward' on page 41), and Steam subscribers would automatically get it as part of their subscription."

[Afty]

Originally posted by Blood Sport
Of course, we're also creating Team Fortress 2 (see 'Looking Forward' on page 41), and Steam subscribers would automatically get it as part of their subscription."
Now I understand. All those years of delay in TF2 were down to HL deciding to make Steam instead. Cool.