Half-Life² Pay-For-Play??

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woah. just read this thread.
perhaps a few people should lay off the coffee abit ;)

Anyway, regardless of what you think of the articles author it does raise an interesting topic to discuss.

I'm personally disgusted by the though of "pay to play". I would never do it. Simple as that. Never. I would also come down hard on any developer who expected me to do that.

I was chatting to a good friend of mine who was paying to play some rpg out there at the moment. OR to be more accurate his parents were paying for him to play it. It’s a cruel method of leaching money from people. I'm wondering how these pay to play titles survive. Do many people actually do it??? I guess it forces you to be brand loyal, if you have to fork out 30 odd bucks per month just to play one game. I mean you're already a sucker… so you might as well be proud of being one. But this is easy for me to say, "throwing insults from the safety of the neighbors fence". I'd like to hear something from some one who tried it… and what they thought about it. Did they get their money's worth? And would they do it over an extended period of time?

In the same vein would anyone pay to play a HL2 mod?
This was actually hinted at by Gabe at one time if I'm not mistaken. From my experience mods are really shit for the first 2 or 3 releases, then they start to improve when people actually play them. I don't know of one mod that I personally thought was so good they would get money from me. Perhaps "They Hunger"… but I had to play that first to know that it was good. I wouldn't have trusted it on other peoples raves… And CS. Well I only played it at first because it was free. I mean if someone had said after one month… "okay mate give us some money and we'll let you continue". I would go out and buy a different title off the game stores shelves. I'm actually not all that confident with spending money online anyway.

What would other people do?
 
Aww c'mon, let's unban him. He's loads of fun. His arguements are the funniest thing I've seen all week. Stupid people are a great way to pass the time until HL2 comes out.
 
I'm not morally opposed to play to play, but you have to make me want it, really, really bad. Planetside almost suceeds in this, but not quite yet. A developer has to throw something truly magnificent and inspired on the table for play-to-play to work, and so far thats been difficult.
And in fairness your average MM game only costs $10-$15 to play per month. Thats a good amount, but its not $30.
 
Originally posted by Acidtrip
I second that, we dont need negative idiots like him here, we have enought as it is :dozey:
Click to expand...

::raises hand:::bounce:
 
Originally posted by PLas
woah. just read this thread.
perhaps a few people should lay off the coffee abit ;)

Anyway, regardless of what you think of the articles author it does raise an interesting topic to discuss.

I'm personally disgusted by the though of "pay to play". I would never do it. Simple as that. Never. I would also come down hard on any developer who expected me to do that.

I was chatting to a good friend of mine who was paying to play some rpg out there at the moment. OR to be more accurate his parents were paying for him to play it. It’s a cruel method of leaching money from people. I'm wondering how these pay to play titles survive. Do many people actually do it??? I guess it forces you to be brand loyal, if you have to fork out 30 odd bucks per month just to play one game. I mean you're already a sucker… so you might as well be proud of being one. But this is easy for me to say, "throwing insults from the safety of the neighbors fence". I'd like to hear something from some one who tried it… and what they thought about it. Did they get their money's worth? And would they do it over an extended period of time?

In the same vein would anyone pay to play a HL2 mod?
This was actually hinted at by Gabe at one time if I'm not mistaken. From my experience mods are really shit for the first 2 or 3 releases, then they start to improve when people actually play them. I don't know of one mod that I personally thought was so good they would get money from me. Perhaps "They Hunger"… but I had to play that first to know that it was good. I wouldn't have trusted it on other peoples raves… And CS. Well I only played it at first because it was free. I mean if someone had said after one month… "okay mate give us some money and we'll let you continue". I would go out and buy a different title off the game stores shelves. I'm actually not all that confident with spending money online anyway.

What would other people do?
Click to expand...

I currently Play2Play for one game, and the only benefit I see to it is the community, there are no idiots at all. Everyone is nice and helpful because the assholes (normally warezerz) dont bother to pay for such a thing. Community, thats the advantage.
 
Hmmm, I find this P2P idea to be nothing but crap. Valve has stated all along that they made a fortune off of HL1 from the MODS and that is why they don't have any outside pressure to release HL2. So if they made all this money off of HL1 by the MOD community why would they turn around and charge you to play HL2 multi-player? Come on people, use your brains, it makes no sense! HL2 will be free, the only thing it will cost you is if you run a HL2 or HL2 MOD server. They're not going to charge people to P2P when they made a fortune from the MODS. Now, say someone made a HL2 MOD and they wanted to charge people a fee to BUY it, then that makes sense. It's hard work to make a MOD and people should have a choice to sell it or release it for free. Once you buy the MOD then you can play it as long as you like for free, just like buying another retail game.
 
Every time this subject comes up anywhere I always give the same answer:

Make it less than $5 a month or I'm not even thinking twice about it.

If they have a good number of subscribers, let's say 100 thousand, they rake in tons of money every month... if they charge $10 per person per month that is a million dollars every month.

Those are conservative numbers... let's use an actual MMORPG as an example. "EverQuest currently has more than 430,000 active subscribers with new fans logging on daily." EverQuest requires that you pay $12.95 every month. That means they rake in more than 5.5 million dollars every month. That's a hefty lump of dough.

I say if you are charging more money than it takes to keep the servers running and able to support the number of people playing at any given time you are cheating the customers. Do like everyone else and make a newer, better game if you want more money... don't f**k the customers in the ass just because you feel like sitting on yours.
 
Originally posted by guinny
Valve official - No comment.

Chances are,

A. He's an idiot
B. Your an idiot (The guy asking the questions)
C. He had no idea what he was talking about.
D. Gabe stated already several times you would not have to pay to play online.
E. He's a Brit, what do you expect.
Click to expand...

want to roshambo? i go first...


slaggin of us brits... you know how to start a war dont you :p
 
Why is this still being discussed? :/
 
Took the words out of my mouth
Who thinks Valve is honestly going to make you Pay to Play, this thread is ridiculous
 
I really can't be arsed to look through this thread. Now it might sound big headed, but I think what I'm going to say is pretty much solid. I could be wrong, but judging by a few of the responses on this last page, I don't think I'll be alone.

First of all, the rumor that UKGamer (who?!) has started is 100% unconfirmed, circumstantial bull that should be disregarded about as fast as an EB rep's release date statements. Probably the only statement in this post that anyone should even consider, but for the more pessimistic people amongst you, I'll elaborate a little.

Where did these rumours come from? First of all one of the early platform version of Steam. It's been free and always has but in earlier versions they dealt with the games list via "Subscriptions". Basically it had CS, HL1, OpFor etc. but you had to "subscribe" to them. This was exactly the same concept as "Keep this game automatically updated" that we have at the moment. You didn't have to pay. We still don't. I wasn't around in the community until early July, just after E3 I think so I don't know, but I'm guessing in the early relase versions of Steam, there was people going "Omfgg subscribtions, their gonan maek us pay far teh hl2 and teh cs thru steam. i fcking hate vaelv tehy are teh sck i aint neveh gonneh pay biznotch!!"£!%^. And my guess that is where this whole "pay to play" rumour came from.

The other thing that may have originated it is the simple concept of: If you want to purchase a full retail game through Steam without visting the shop and downloading that full game's content through Steam you'd have to pay for it in the same way you would if you were purchasing it from a shop.

Secondly, look at how mnay players there are playing HL multiplayer STILL to this date. At one point I remember a certain stat that HL MP was still the most played and at any one time it had more players than Quake 3, UT, SOF2 etc etc. and it still is. In a lot of cases I'd guess it's a lot more popular than alot of the online RPG communities. I don't know, but just look at how many people there are, and how long there's been that many and consider if Valve would even contemplate doing such a thing.

Another point I'd like to make is that Steam is going to bring them more money anyway. If it costs $10 to publish each copy of a game with the manual, CDs/DVDs, box and shipping and they charge $50 for it, but it's free to digitally send the game to someone and they charge $25 for it and 30% of buyers will buy it digitally then isn't that a bit more money? Which brings me to my next point that if the content servers are very expensive and they'll make it pay to play to cover the cost of these servers, surely the money coming through from the Steam purchasers would cover the majority of that, the advertising another large portion and most probably the strain on the servers would be eased anyway because they'll implement some of their own optional P2P software into it.

"No comment" - How many times has Valve said they aren't releasing any information about multiplayer?

Unknown journalist: "Are you going to make us pay?"
Valve rep: "No comment" aka: "We aren't releasing ANY info on HL2 MP at this time"

Why can't people have a bit of ****ing faith in Valve. They've been supporting us and entertaining us for 5 years now, and in that time they've not put one step wrong apart from mess up a few release dates. But yet, still, people are saying "They're going to delay it. Bastards. They're gonna make us pay. Bastards. Steam is so shit it'll never be any good. Bastards." and that's not right, that's not what they deserve. Get real.

Night all.
 
i cant be "arsed" to read your post all the way through so its all good
 
I agree alb :) Anyway, PHL seems to think the 'no comment' on that question is quite a big deal. But then again, they post a link to a 'stupid video with a head in front of it' as humor. And they're affiliated with gamespy/fileplanet/CRAP. PHL sucks!!
 
Maybe if you had been in the community earlier then you would know more about it. They seem to be hinting at paying a subscription for steam, but then they say you NEED steam to play hl2 online.

Obvious conclusion: You need to pay to play HL2 online.

Not so obvious conclusion: You only have to pay if you want extra stuff out of steam, instead of the bare bones "i can play online now" stuff.

I hope my post was more helpful than Chris_D's.
 
They could do what IGN did. They charge you to read some stories in advance, forum use, downloads and other stuff but the reason you use them is to read gaming news and thats still free.
 
Actually, the idea behind subscribing to games via Steam was that you could BUY certain MODs and Retail games over the Steam network. As far as I know, Valve still intends for it to be a network to sell commercial and community software.

There was also talk about certain MODs with persistant MMORPG universes being able to use it for subscriptions. They may still intend to.

So, it may turn out that part of this is maybe Valve intends to run a subscription-based Massively Multiplayer game, as well as normal deathmatch/cs/ctf.

Ofcourse, they could also intend for you to play $30 a year subscription fee or something. Covers patches, running of steam, free mods (cs, tfc, etc).

Well, my opinions.
 
Originally posted by Chris_D
I really can't be arsed to look through this thread. Now it might sound big headed, but I think what I'm going to say is pretty much solid. I could be wrong, but judging by a few of the responses on this last page, I don't think I'll be alone.

First of all, the rumor that UKGamer (who?!) has started is 100% unconfirmed, circumstantial bull that should be disregarded about as fast as an EB rep's release date statements. Probably the only statement in this post that anyone should even consider, but for the more pessimistic people amongst you, I'll elaborate a little.

Where did these rumours come from? First of all one of the early platform version of Steam. It's been free and always has but in earlier versions they dealt with the games list via "Subscriptions". Basically it had CS, HL1, OpFor etc. but you had to "subscribe" to them. This was exactly the same concept as "Keep this game automatically updated" that we have at the moment. You didn't have to pay. We still don't. I wasn't around in the community until early July, just after E3 I think so I don't know, but I'm guessing in the early relase versions of Steam, there was people going "Omfgg subscribtions, their gonan maek us pay far teh hl2 and teh cs thru steam. i fcking hate vaelv tehy are teh sck i aint neveh gonneh pay biznotch!!"£!%^. And my guess that is where this whole "pay to play" rumour came from.

The other thing that may have originated it is the simple concept of: If you want to purchase a full retail game through Steam without visting the shop and downloading that full game's content through Steam you'd have to pay for it in the same way you would if you were purchasing it from a shop.

Secondly, look at how mnay players there are playing HL multiplayer STILL to this date. At one point I remember a certain stat that HL MP was still the most played and at any one time it had more players than Quake 3, UT, SOF2 etc etc. and it still is. In a lot of cases I'd guess it's a lot more popular than alot of the online RPG communities. I don't know, but just look at how many people there are, and how long there's been that many and consider if Valve would even contemplate doing such a thing.

Another point I'd like to make is that Steam is going to bring them more money anyway. If it costs $10 to publish each copy of a game with the manual, CDs/DVDs, box and shipping and they charge $50 for it, but it's free to digitally send the game to someone and they charge $25 for it and 30% of buyers will buy it digitally then isn't that a bit more money? Which brings me to my next point that if the content servers are very expensive and they'll make it pay to play to cover the cost of these servers, surely the money coming through from the Steam purchasers would cover the majority of that, the advertising another large portion and most probably the strain on the servers would be eased anyway because they'll implement some of their own optional P2P software into it.

"No comment" - How many times has Valve said they aren't releasing any information about multiplayer?

Unknown journalist: "Are you going to make us pay?"
Valve rep: "No comment" aka: "We aren't releasing ANY info on HL2 MP at this time"

Why can't people have a bit of ****ing faith in Valve. They've been supporting us and entertaining us for 5 years now, and in that time they've not put one step wrong apart from mess up a few release dates. But yet, still, people are saying "They're going to delay it. Bastards. They're gonna make us pay. Bastards. Steam is so shit it'll never be any good. Bastards." and that's not right, that's not what they deserve. Get real.

Night all.
Click to expand...

yeah!
 
why did this thread get this long, how gullible are people really?
 
Originally posted by Bass
why did this thread get this long, how gullible are people really?
Click to expand...

I dunno, some people have the craziest ideas about Hl2.

"HL2 WILL BE 6 CD's AND YOU WILL HAVE TO PAY TO PLAY ONLINE!!!!11111oneoneone"
 
Obviously, it will be pay to play.

You play $50, once, at EB, GameStop, Steam, wherever, and you get to play in perpetuity. Done deal.
 
Originally posted by Chris_D
I really can't be arsed to look through this thread. Now it might sound big headed, but I think what I'm going to say is pretty much solid. I could be wrong, but judging by a few of the responses on this last page, I don't think I'll be alone.

First of all, the rumor that UKGamer (who?!) has started is 100% unconfirmed, circumstantial bull that should be disregarded about as fast as an EB rep's release date statements. Probably the only statement in this post that anyone should even consider, but for the more pessimistic people amongst you, I'll elaborate a little.

Where did these rumours come from? First of all one of the early platform version of Steam. It's been free and always has but in earlier versions they dealt with the games list via "Subscriptions". Basically it had CS, HL1, OpFor etc. but you had to "subscribe" to them. This was exactly the same concept as "Keep this game automatically updated" that we have at the moment. You didn't have to pay. We still don't. I wasn't around in the community until early July, just after E3 I think so I don't know, but I'm guessing in the early relase versions of Steam, there was people going "Omfgg subscribtions, their gonan maek us pay far teh hl2 and teh cs thru steam. i fcking hate vaelv tehy are teh sck i aint neveh gonneh pay biznotch!!"£!%^. And my guess that is where this whole "pay to play" rumour came from.

The other thing that may have originated it is the simple concept of: If you want to purchase a full retail game through Steam without visting the shop and downloading that full game's content through Steam you'd have to pay for it in the same way you would if you were purchasing it from a shop.

Secondly, look at how mnay players there are playing HL multiplayer STILL to this date. At one point I remember a certain stat that HL MP was still the most played and at any one time it had more players than Quake 3, UT, SOF2 etc etc. and it still is. In a lot of cases I'd guess it's a lot more popular than alot of the online RPG communities. I don't know, but just look at how many people there are, and how long there's been that many and consider if Valve would even contemplate doing such a thing.

Another point I'd like to make is that Steam is going to bring them more money anyway. If it costs $10 to publish each copy of a game with the manual, CDs/DVDs, box and shipping and they charge $50 for it, but it's free to digitally send the game to someone and they charge $25 for it and 30% of buyers will buy it digitally then isn't that a bit more money? Which brings me to my next point that if the content servers are very expensive and they'll make it pay to play to cover the cost of these servers, surely the money coming through from the Steam purchasers would cover the majority of that, the advertising another large portion and most probably the strain on the servers would be eased anyway because they'll implement some of their own optional P2P software into it.

"No comment" - How many times has Valve said they aren't releasing any information about multiplayer?

Unknown journalist: "Are you going to make us pay?"
Valve rep: "No comment" aka: "We aren't releasing ANY info on HL2 MP at this time"

Why can't people have a bit of ****ing faith in Valve. They've been supporting us and entertaining us for 5 years now, and in that time they've not put one step wrong apart from mess up a few release dates. But yet, still, people are saying "They're going to delay it. Bastards. They're gonna make us pay. Bastards. Steam is so shit it'll never be any good. Bastards." and that's not right, that's not what they deserve. Get real.

Night all.
Click to expand...

Thats so true.
 
I really hope its not. With school starting, I dont have as much time to work, thus, less money...
 
Originally posted by Ghoti
Obviously, it will be pay to play.

You play $50, once, at EB, GameStop, Steam, wherever, and you get to play in perpetuity. Done deal.
Click to expand...

hehe, you're so right
 
Originally posted by Ghoti
Obviously, it will be pay to play.

You play $50, once, at EB, GameStop, Steam, wherever, and you get to play in perpetuity. Done deal.
Click to expand...

hahaha.
nice to see someones thinking
 
Gabe was saying 'No Comment' about the end of September release date. Everyone thought it was delayed because of the 'no comment'. But guess what? It's not delayed.

This English reporter, knowing most poms, are rude and arrogant to say the least. Maybe the 'no comment' was the 'no comment' of 'that's financial talk mind your own fuking business'.

Also the 'no comment' may of been related to mods that you may have to download and pay a one off fee. You see the Valve represenative may of not wanted to say a straight 'no' because when the time comes to buy mods on Steam this stupid English reporter would of been like 'but but but you said' kind of thing and got the whole thing out of context hence the community aswell.

Get my drift. Very simple really isn't it...
 
Originally posted by Kamakiri
This English reporter, knowing most poms, are rude and arrogant to say the least.
Click to expand...

I beg your pardon?
 
Originally posted by Kamakiri
Gabe was saying 'No Comment' about the end of September release date. Everyone thought it was delayed because of the 'no comment'. But guess what? It's not delayed.

This English reporter, knowing most poms, are rude and arrogant to say the least. Maybe the 'no comment' was the 'no comment' of 'that's financial talk mind your own fuking business'.

Also the 'no comment' may of been related to mods that you may have to download and pay a one off fee. You see the Valve represenative may of not wanted to say a straight 'no' because when the time comes to buy mods on Steam this stupid English reporter would of been like 'but but but you said' kind of thing and got the whole thing out of context hence the community aswell.

Get my drift. Very simple really isn't it...
Click to expand...

Yeah mate I get your drift. you are right it was a bit silly of the reporter to jump to such a conclusion on so little information.

but I don't agree that most English people are stupid.
Every nationality has dumb people.
Everybody has dumb days.
It’s not fair to pick on people based on where they come from.
Not only is it not fair, it makes you yourself look silly if you pick on people based on their nationality.
There is no culture that is superior to another culture.
The sooner that we can leave out these sorts of segregating behavior the sooner can we really begin to communicate with each other. We all have to get over our own particular cultural favoritisms and concentrate on communicating.
 
Sorry peoples I was going to clarify I'm English aswell. Even though I live in Australia I'm English. Both of my parents are English. So first hand I know what us poms can be like.

So what I said wasn't against England herself just some people, like in all countries, can be stupid and I guess I'm just so tired of everyone wanting HL2 to screw up somehow.

Everyone get that feeling with these news sites?
 
Can we just let this discussion die now?
 
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