The last time I called in sick from work to play a video game, it was for BioShock. I guess it’s okay to reveal the truth now, seeing how the company I worked for was so incompetently run, they recently had to let almost everyone go in Denver. I’m sure that will turn fortunes around for the home office in Glorious Nippon. Of course, taking the day off turned out to be a largely pointless venture, because of the greedy goddamn incompetence of everyone involved. I would like to take a vacation day off for the upcoming release of Fallout: New Vegas (a real vacation day, not the faking of an illness, as I respect the management of where I am now and sometimes that makes all the difference) but doing so would be stupid for the exact same reasons it was pointless to do so a few years ago. Who’s to blame for all this?
CULRPIT #1: STEAM
Look, I love Steam. Well, it’s okay. The cockslurping of the Steamworks project is still the lowest point of gaming journalism in the last ten years. It’s – er, Steam is still the most convenient download service there is, they were (pretty much) first, and of the completely incompetent things they DON’T do, they don’t pretend that they’re going out of business, like the fucking retards running the download service Good Old Games do, they don’t do whatever, er, the hell happened over at Impulse with that Elemental game (I will admit I missed all the threads on that one, but my general understanding is that it was a debacle of … something. Sorry, crack reporting here, I know.) and because they were one of the first download services to exist, I’m not driven to rage by having to sign up for something new. But I have no idea why they don’t let us pre-load the game and then flip a bit once the “release time” has passed.
Because that’s all it should be. We should all be able to download ALL THESE DELICIOUS GIGS* and Steam should authorize us at midnight, the Tuesday these things get released. We’re not getting a price break, you understand. The game isn’t any cheaper. We’re ensuring huge profits by ordering it ahead of time. But we’re able to play it AFTER someone getting it via retail. Which brings us t- he- to CUL- hey
CULPRIT #2: FUCKING RETAIL DINOSAURS
There’s a million other posts ranting about this, but Electronics Boutique-turned-Gamestop love pulling the shit where you can’t get a game unless you “pre-ordered” it, which is basically floating them a loan till your faith in fucking game developers, of all people, results in actual product. It’s the dumbest way to spend your money in the world. So this just drives people to Steam. If you’re at all involved in the horrible management of this terrible corporation, fucking grow up, you goddamn greedy, sniveling simpleton.
I guess there was only two culprits, and I’m pretty sure that the halfbreed shitstain publishers are the reason Steam can’t just flip a bit, so consider this a historical document rather than one filled with facts. We USED to be able to skip work and play a game for an entire day, and it was sort of awesome. Not any more. Much like good hockey and football games, the entire experience got fucked up by the game industry, an industry that makes worse and worse games each year, and finds new ways to hilariously ruin its own culture each year.
*Blackjack pizza made a stupid commercial with Denver Nugget Chauncey Billips recently, where – at one point – a bunch of pizzas are swirling around Chauncey’s head. Chauncey says “LOOKIT ALL THESE DELICIOUS PIZZAS.” This is the only reason someone would ever discuss pizzas made in Colorado, which are an abomination. So of course, Blackjack has done everything to eliminate the ad from the Internet. Stupid fucks. We wanted this to go viral. I wish the “stop snitching” campaign that Carmelo so deeply believed in had him offing Youtube snitches instead of, you know, real ones that murder citizens and cops that Carmelo is so fond of.
Rob O'Hara
“Steam should authorize us at midnight, the Tuesday these things get released. We’re not getting a price break, you understand. The game isn’t any cheaper. ”
If Steam is charging the same as retail, they’re not paying the distributor nor the store anything, thus they make more money (I discount the “cost” of bandwidth; they already have to have it to run their anti-piracy scheme and bandwidth is already so cheap it’s basically about as worrisome as the cost of providing water in a restaurant. A real restaurant, not Mickey D’s.)