Mark Rein Interview

Selerox said:

The same as Ford getting a cut of your profits if you if you sell your car.

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Now, as for the Ford analogy, I could still sell you my car (game) straight over, without any problems.

They just want to target the middle man, like EB games and such.
In theory, it wouldn't even affect you at all. Shoot, what if it had been happening all this time and you didn't even know it?

I'd rather Epic get my cash than EB games anyway.
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Weed Bubblers

Starry Might said:

I hope that game developers DON'T do Steam-like stuff, myself.

Also, I hope they DON'T crack down on used/secondhand games, either! (I'm surprised that nobody here has pointed out THAT part of the interview yet! )

If they do that kind of stuff, they'll just hurt themselves BIG TIME.

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As useless, buggy, intrusive and just plain terrible steam may be it doesn't seem to be affecting Valves sales at all or else they would have pulled it.
Personally I don't like these kinds of programs and wished them all to be locked in the bowels of hell where they belong but it seems many companies will be going with them in the future to curb piracy, while it may be effective against piracy I certainly doubt they will bring down the price of games.
I remember M$ making the claim some years ago about windows activation and how it will bring down the price of their software but the average price of their nazi garbage has remained the same or gone up, just like the price of games will be the same or higher, it's always the consumer who gets boned in the end, we must conform to the tyrany or quit altogether, and quitting is an option I have been thinking about for the past few months, sometimes I wonder if fun and games is really worth the crap you put up with in the end.
Many people turn to their computers as an escape from reality but it seems many of us will be looking for something to escape from the escape the way things are looking anymore...

Apathy said:

Many people turn to their computers as an escape from reality but it seems many of us will be looking for something to escape from the escape the way things are looking anymore...

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yeah, and reality is necessary to fund that escape, so the escape has this sort of "tethered" feal to it (just like everything).

I guess it boils down to what you really want to do with your life, and while I have a video game passion, I find it too expensive for the Average Joe (myself) to really keep up on the latest stuff.
I guess this is why I love the unreal series so much, with its almost infinite replayability... I don't need to go buy games all the time with the latest UT game in my PC. (and at the same time)
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ROLL BLUNTS

SealClubber said:

Tsk tsk.... Gameplay > Graphics

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Imho they're equally important.

Apathy said:

As useless, buggy, intrusive and just plain terrible steam may be it doesn't seem to be affecting Valves sales at all or else they would have pulled it.

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Sometimes megalomaniacal companies don't mind putting up with a minor hit in sales when they can corner the market. (Yeah so I'm embellishing... a lot.)

It just seems like everybody's getting more and more obsessed with draconian "copyright protection" and squeezing every penny out of the few consumers who do buy - as opposed to the same amount of profit to be made by opening up to a wider market, even if there is a slight risk of piracy. It's like they can't see past "piracy = bad". Perhaps I just say this because I don't have access to the raw data purportedly reporting (bwaha) the apparently incredible loss in profit due to piracy, and truly the only way for a dev studio to stay in business and its publishers to make any profit whatsoever is to restrict access to their content from every pirate on the planet (though the persistent ones will always find a way) at the loss of a few potential legal consumers.

And the profit gained by the few who buy anyways outweighs any loss.

But when will they go too far? Can they?

... I'm just waxing pseudo-logic here; I have no idea what I'm saying any more.

NOTHING TO SEE MOVE ALONG

I find it strange that no-one reacted to the following:

Next Generation games are going to be 20GB plus, and how we're going to fit them on DVD9's I don't know, they'll probably be a few of them

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20 gigs for one game?! Now, that's a lot of textures. Or maybe a few, but really high res. It looks like's next gen only selling point is going to be graphics. As much as I like them, gameplay is key. As great as Epics tool are, someone stills needs to make million poly models which is quite consuming. I'm afread that some companies will concentrate on graphics alone, resulting in shorter games. Anyway we'll have to see.

Unreal Engine 4? What's that gonna be Mark, fotorealism?

fuegerstef said:

You haven't read the article you comment about, have you?

Advice:
1. Read
2. Understand the Content
3. Comment on it

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I read the interview and I don't see anything wrong with the relevance in Kifa's original post. Mark doesn't say one way or another exactly how UT2007 will be available. I'm looking forward to it, but if it is a Steam-type only availability then I'll be thinking twice before I buy it. I am a firm believer in being able to play offline if you want to for any game. That's one reason I will never buy HL2, I don't really care how great the graphics are.

hal said:

There is an offline mode in HL2 afaik.

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Yep , but it wasn´t working ( for me ) .
I had to go online , activate Steam , go offline , play .Every time .The offline-mode didn´t worked.
That isn´t funny with no flatrate.
My gamedealer gave me the money back (after pulling out my flak ).
And not to forget the 3 hour installationhorror with ISDN .

For me , every game with similar things like Steam got banned from my "to buy"-list .
No problem to register a game online , but not the way Steam works.
The worst thing with Steam was censoring Half Life 2 in Germany some days ago .That´s really bad , you buy a game and they decide to remove bloodeffects or things like that , months after you bought it.Too much control .

Nothing against Half Life 2 , a brilliant game , but with steam , no chance to get me interested again.

Sorry , if this goes a little bit offtopic.

SaD said:

I had to go online , activate Steam , go offline , play .Every time .

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Yep. What SaD said. Technically HL2 has an offline mode, but you have to go online and connect to Steam. And go through the motions of that.

And only then can you play the game by yourself. (I think you can disconnect after getting the required "updates" from Steam and the copy protections and all that junk, but I forget)

That is why people couldn't play the game in any way, shape or form for the first few days: because Vivendi threatened to sue Valve if they put their Steam servers online before Vivendi gave them permission; even though a crapload of copies were already sold in retail stores everywhere.