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/vr/ - Retro Games

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10647993 No.10647993[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

What was PC gaming like before Steam?

>> No.10647994

Like bags of sand

>> No.10647997

>>10647993
was alright

>> No.10648008

>>10647993
You bought boxed games and you didnt contribute to some fat fuck getting rich. Life was good

>> No.10648020 [DELETED] 

Prepare for 50 replies of revisionist history posted by 23 year olds and chinks about how Steam saved gaming and every game pre-Steam took 20 hours to setup or... something. Let me tell you how it actually was.

99% of games worth playing were easy as fuck to play. This includes shit from Blizzard, id, Valve, Westwood and so on. You'd go to the store, buy a game, come home and pop it in, and be greeted by a tasteful, aesthetically pleasing installer window guiding you through the process. Usually, you'd enter a CD key during the setup, and then the game would install, you'd get a new icon on your desktop, and you'd click it to play your game.

Once you had the game running, you'd probably want to fuck with the settings and slide the graphics up as high as you could given your rig, and set the controls to your liking. Then, you were all good to go. Heaven awaited you. Your game, your way, on your clock, with free online and bustling communities with thousands of other people playing alongside you, and all sorts of mods to download and cool forums to frequent.

That was it. That was the experience. Anyone who pretends PC gaming was spme kind of agonizing torture where you had to download all sorts of updates or cracks or hotfixes is a lying, retarded piece of shit. Everything was fine until Gabe the fat jew came along and forced double-layer DRM on everyone.

>> No.10648024

>>10647993
Confusing and headache-inducing thanks to all the weird-as-fuck requirements of certain games, like games that needed Direct X, Glide, OpenGL, 3D Acceleration, dedicated sound cards, and then on top of that all of the different fucking OS's that were popping up every other year.

>DOS
>Windows 3.x
>Windows 95
>Windows 98
>Windows NT 3.1
>Windows ME
>Windows 2000
>Windows XP

Those were ALL operating within around 8 years of each other, and that's not even half of them. STEAM unironically saved PC gaming since consoles at the time were pulling out ahead of them, but STEAM created a standardized means of access and utility for launching all variations of a game on the same service. It was bumpy at first, but within around 3 to 4 years of releasing it, they ironed out all the major problems. It's why STEAM is now the go-to platform for gaming on PC.

>> No.10648026

>>10648020
>>10648024
>seconds apart
kek
gaben dicksuckers do 24/7 free work on the net, jannies would be proud

>> No.10648028 [DELETED] 

>>10648020
>Prepare for 50 replies of revisionist history posted by 23 year olds and chinks about how Steam saved gaming
>>10648024
>STEAM unironically saved PC gaming

kek, prophetic.

>> No.10648035 [DELETED] 

>>10648026
>>10648028
>and again
23 year olds on suicide watch

>> No.10648036

>>10647993
Actually distinct from console gaming

>> No.10648039

>>10648020
You're retarded if you think that things wouldn't have become worse if Steam weren't successful. Something retarded like the Ubisoft store, with way worse DRM or rental-only games would be the mainstream if Steam weren't so big.

>> No.10648045

>>10648039
all these things still happened with steam being so big and GOG, the only store actually doing what pc gamers pretended they wanted to complain about every other store (no drm) gets ignored so everyone can say "steam DRM isnt that bad actually..." and shower the fat fuck with money

>> No.10648047 [DELETED] 

>>10648039
>You're retarded if you think that things wouldn't have become worse if Steam weren't successful.
>DUDE IF GABE DIDN'T FUCK YOUR MOUTH, UBISOFT WOULD HAVE FUCKED YOUR ANUS
What a fucking gay argument, kill yourself

>> No.10648048

>>10648039
This.
PC was going digital-only. It was just a matter of time. At the very least Valve, while not the best corporation, was the one with the best intentions out of the bunch in regards to this whole shitshow has set the precedent.

>> No.10648052

>>10648048
>valve cares about us guys i swear gaben told me so
lmao
imagine living with the fattest, dirtiest cock in your mouth all the time like this. sounds like hell on earth

>> No.10648056

>>10648020
This, mostly, but also he's overly butthurt. There's no DRM in steam unless the developer forces it, most of the games you can just drag out of the steam apps folder. On release steam let you just burn the game install to a disc. Don't know if that's still the case.
And I spent ages tweaking games to run in the 90s. It wasn't bad, it was normal, and it still is. I still have to tweak shit for it to run optimally on near every game.

The only thing about steam I don't like is that physical releases are rare as fuck due to the trend it set. Even boxed HL2 was just a steam installer, so on release we had to wait another day to play because the servers were overloaded.

>> No.10648062

>>10648052
I never said they did. I just said that of all the alternatives, Valve was the least horrible.
Get over yourself, faggot.

>> No.10648065

>>10647993
You bought games in a nice box instead of just downloading them
Or you spent hours online trying to find CD cracks to play your copied disk from a friend and acquired 9000+ computer STDs in the process

>> No.10648067

>>10648036
That's more to do with console hardware being trimmed down PC components than anything. Consolitis was already a joke on the internet well before steam.

>> No.10648071 [DELETED] 

>>10648056
>most of the games you can just drag out of the steam apps folder
What are you smoking? The vast majority of games on Steam have built in DRM unless you're talking about shit that came out before Steam existed.

>> No.10648081
File: 257 KB, 1121x591, 5a7f0549c2d46d4007ba804903a6d76e.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10648081

>>10648020
>let me tell you how it REALLY was
>proceeds to give a sugar-plum-fairy coated ahistorical take

I shiggy.

>> No.10648083

>>10648081
>without steam we would still be using floppies in 2024 and gaming would be hard because of this random blog retard i found
cant believe you faggots are actually even crediting newell for inventing non degradable media now

>> No.10648086

>>10648020
>>10648026
>>10648028
Try to be less obvious with the samefagging.

>> No.10648089 [DELETED] 

>>10648081
I'm sorry man, but I gave that pic an honest read, and that dude is legitimately retarded. Talking about DOS games from 1994 era when "before steam" implies 95, 98, XP and Vista eras is disengenuous anyway.

>> No.10648094 [DELETED] 

>>10648086
>everyone on /vr/ is one person
a cope as old as time

>> No.10648095

>>10648083
He perfected it. He didn't invent it.

>MUH DRM
Yea, which is much better than the rancid dogshit DRM we would be getting from the likes of Games For Windows LIVE, Denuvo, SecuROM, Tages, or StarForce which, after I installed a game with it on Windows Vista, caused my entire fucking OS to crash and required me to wipe my hard drive.

Fuck all that gay shit, I'll take steam thanks.

>> No.10648108

>>10648095
All the shit you're crying about happened after steam, and keep happening. Your fat messias is more than happy to let people shove denuvo and kernel based "anticheats" in games as long as he gets paid. If you were really this passionate against DRM you would be buying all your shit on GOG, but of course you arent, cause youre a hypochrite and buying on GOG doesnt give the fat fuck enough money to build a mansion made of yachts

>> No.10648113

>>10648094
As old as 4chan, actually.

>> No.10648114

>>10648020
>>10648024
kek

>> No.10648118 [DELETED] 

>>10648095
Not him, but you aren't psychic dude. You have absolutely no way of knowing what would have happened. Something like GFWL would not just automatically become dominant if Steam didn't exist. Something better than Steam could have become as easily come along as Steam itself.

>> No.10648120

>>10648071
Sorry, it's probably because I only play indie shit anymore. I'd be curious to see a chart on which steam games use DRM though. Steams in particular. A lot of the ones pre-steam still had CD keys or whatever. At least none had always-online drm.

>> No.10648125

>>10648108
>happened after steam
Eat my sloppy shit-log, faggot, it happened all the time BEFORE Steam. Who the fuck are you kidding? Tages released in 2001.

>> No.10648128

>>10648108
I only buy games on Zoom-Platform™.

>> No.10648134 [DELETED] 

>>10648120
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games_on_Steam
there are roughly 40k games on steam, and roughly 1k are drm-free

>> No.10648136

>>10648020
>it was heaven
>>10648024
>it was shit

Duality of man.

>> No.10648137 [DELETED] 

>>10648136
singularity of reddit

>> No.10648150
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10648150

>>10648081
>DOS fuckery is the exact same as windows guys!!!!!

>> No.10648152

>>10648020
>Once you had the game running, you'd probably want to fuck with the settings and slide the graphics up as high as you could given your rig, and set the controls to your liking. Then, you were all good to go. Heaven awaited you. Your game, your way, on your clock, with free online and bustling communities with thousands of other people playing alongside you, and all sorts of mods to download and cool forums to frequent.

You're a liar, and a bad one. I was actually alive back then, unlike you were and that was the best-case scenario. 9 times out of 10 you were stuck fiddling with installers and then fiddling with settings to try and get the sound to work, then trying to keep it from crashing.

>> No.10648159

>>10648152
>try and get the sound to work
That's what I remember fucking with the most. That wasn't so much the case 1998-2004 as I recall. But DOS/3.1/W95 was another story.
>>10648134
Is there a breakdown of what sort of DRM they use?

>> No.10648163

>>10648150
You're a dumb faggot if you think it was any different on GUI-based operating systems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izJUrU6uu1A

>> No.10648165 [DELETED] 

>>10648152
>You're a liar, and a bad one. I was actually alive back then, unlike you were and that was the best-case scenario
Don't make me post pictures of my stripped down 2001 Sony Vaio desktop that I played Ragnarok Online and Quake 3 that's sitting right next to me.
>9 times out of 10 you were stuck fiddling with installers and then fiddling with settings to try and get the sound to work, then trying to keep it from crashing.
What kind of shit games were you playing that you couldn't just insert the disc and follow simple installer instructions?

>> No.10648170

Steam's introduction is more of a general time period than an exact date. Retards like >>10648020 are speaking more to that period than how gaming was before or after broadband internet (the real difference maker here, way more so than Steam). You can't sell a digital download service to the same market that just spent five hours last week downloading one song only to find out it was the wrong song.
PC gaming prior to broadband and the PC market being geared toward multi-processor capabilities was dumpster tier.
The Venn diagram of "the few best PC games" and "games that weren't absolute shit" was a fucking circle.
The distribution networks were shit, the packaging was shit, installation was shit, hardware and software compatibility was shit, controls were shit, screens were shit... the only redeeming thing PC gaming had going was that it had some games that weren't available on consoles (and even then consoles usually had a better version or at least a shitty port).
Bought a shitty game (because marketing and word-of-mouth was almost non-existent for PC games)? LOL, too fucking bad, there's no aftermarket for PC games, especially shitty ones. Well, maybe at a garage sale, which would inevitably have something missing. Like one of the disks, or the key, or the manual you absolutely needed for the game's convoluted download and saving scheme or mapping out how the aspie dev laid out unchangeable hotkeys because they didn't have a wrangler on staff.
Want to know how they used to market PCs?
>Brand X!
>it will totally work when you turn it on!
Most people, including the gaming industry, didn't give Steam much value until post-WoW.

>> No.10648171

>>10648165
>Don't make me post pictures of my rig that I bought off ebay my guy!
Oh no, look out for this dude!

>What kind of shit games were you playing that you couldn't just insert the disc and follow simple installer instructions?
Oh, you know, that little old game nobody ever heard about, I think it was called Half-Life or something?

>> No.10648184

>>10648171
You mean the game from the company who made steam to "solve pc gaming problems" by showing how easier it was to install under their own store where you give them directly the money? Well i cant see anything wrong with that, Valve are the good guys TM after all, its not like they would have any interest in propping their own store over others, just look at how to this day they value freedom of choice and put their games everywhere unlike the evil cdprojektred who locked Witcher 3 to their exclusive store...

>> No.10648186

>>10648170
Most of your post is correct, save for this
>controls were shit, screens were shit

Controls were actually far superior. Screens, not sure what you mean, but if you mean "graphics", they were better too. The redeeming factor of PC Gaming was multiplayer, graphics, and control customization.

>> No.10648192

>>10648184
Hey GOG. No, I will not use your service, especially after you locked me out of my account even though I provided receipts to prove it was me. Cope and seethe.

>> No.10648196

>>10648192
>STEAM SAVED US FROM THE DARK FUTURE OF DRM
>why arent you using the store that doesnt use DRM then
>hey now DRMs are pretty cool sometimes

>> No.10648208

>>10647993
Warm apple pie.

>> No.10648220

>>10648196
Nice strawman you got there.

>> No.10648262

>>10648056
>There's no DRM in steam unless the developer forces it
it's literally on by default. developers have to turn it off.

>> No.10648271

>>10647993
Go to Walmart
Look on their one wire rack of PC games
Buy a broken console port

>> No.10648284

>>10648262
I don't think it was when I tossed my game on there.

>> No.10648295

>>10648024
>like games that needed Direct X, Glide, OpenGL, 3D Acceleration, dedicated sound cards, and then on top of that all of the different fucking OS's that were popping up every other year
nothing changed then

>> No.10648306

>>10647993
better

>> No.10648314

>>10648295
Except it was a lot more hardware specific back then. Also, Glide doesn't exist anymore.

>> No.10648335

>>10647993
Retards mostly stayed on consoles. Now they're everywhere.

>> No.10648339
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10648339

>>10648020
This is mostly true but only for games that were properly coded and tested.

Most of the time you had to deal with graphics glitches if not outright crashes and had to consult the readme.txt for fixes, usually it was just updating drivers, sometimes there was a conflict with a resident application, sometimes your videocard simply did not support something required (in the pre-Geforce days, every videocard supported different things and it was extremely wild). Sometimes you had shit like the game loads for 2 minutes if you have more than 1 CD drive.
Creative's soundcards were also responsible for a lot of shit because they installed like 14 different things you didn't need but were memory resident drivers.
But if you had the brain to actually use your computer, it wasn't much of an issue, and there were tons of online forums to discuss crap like that. GameFAQs comes to mind. At worst you had to spend a few minutes reading game documentation.

And yeah the custom autorun.exes were sometimes glorious, though most often they were very basic. Red Alert 2 warning you about MILITARY SOFTWARE DETECTED, TOP SECRET CLEARANCE REQUIRED and when the installer (a full blown custom program with music and animations) asks for the CD key, it goes ENCRYPTION CODE REQUIRED. YOU HAVE 30 SECONDS TO COMPLY.
But most games just had a popup graphic were you could choose to launch the game, read the readme, set some configs, visit the website, or quit.

>> No.10648350

>>10648024
If you had an IQ above 60 it wasn't that complicated. In exchange you could customize games out of the box in wild ways, sometimes even changing rendering engines which made the games look totally different.

All Steam did was consolise the installers and controller support (to be fair, Microsoft is responsible for a lot of that too).

>> No.10648354

>>10648186
screens used to mean levels, but it'd be weird for someone to use that term now

>> No.10648372

>>10648339
>And yeah the custom autorun.exes were sometimes glorious, though most often they were very basic. Red Alert 2 warning you about MILITARY SOFTWARE DETECTED, TOP SECRET CLEARANCE REQUIRED and when the installer (a full blown custom program with music and animations) asks for the CD key, it goes ENCRYPTION CODE REQUIRED. YOU HAVE 30 SECONDS TO COMPLY.
I miss that sort of shit. I pooped open a computer gaming magazine demo disc the other day and it was all fun chunky animations and sound effects.
Straight fucking fun. Bored of flat UI design. It's to the point where it's not even better functionally, all the windows just blend together.

>> No.10648375

>>10648372
>I pooped
Sorry. So sorry. I'm sorry.

Popped.

>> No.10648393

>>10648375
there is no coming back

>> No.10648419

>>10648393
fuck

>> No.10648457

>>10648339
You just reminded me of IRQ settings. Fuck old PC gaming.

>> No.10648462

>>10648020
Games i had problems running where dos games and I was not computer savvy in the mid 90s. Windows games always worked for me back then.

>> No.10648467

>>10647993
You'd buy a boxed game from a store, pop in the discs that it had, and wait for the installer to finish copying it to your computer while you read the manual. That part really wasn't a whole lot more different than Steam where you clicked to download a game except you had to physically go get it and keep up with your discs.

Mostly what was different was PC games' approach to multiplayer. Most games, if they had multiplayer, were decentralized affairs where you had to connect to player hosted servers by an IP address, sometimes by looking up a list of servers on a web page if the game in question didn't have a master server that cached all the official ones running. External applications like Gamespy Arcade were sometimes used to handle server browsing as a sort of middle ground between an official in game master server for listing player hosted ones and needing to check a website or know a specific IP for one. This is in comparison to modern multiplayer game which completely lack player hosted servers or even LAN play, instead forcing everyone to connect to a very opaque master server that handled finding a game for you. Some games of the past had something like this, but it was usually in addition to LAN or local play.

Some games today still have this older style of multiplayer interface, but by and large no AAA title does and I suspect it's merely done in smaller games because the cost to implement it is very low. Steam wasn't really responsible for this, but it was one of the forerunners that did begin to implement this style of play--the first time I really noticed it affecting me was Starcraft II's release, in which not only was the multiplayer locked to an official master server only, even the -singleplayer- required you to sign in to an account and authenticate via the internet to play. I begrudgingly put up with it for a while, but eventually I got sick of the lack of control I had compared to the past. It basically killed old LAN parties.

>> No.10648496

>>10648071
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_DRM-Free_Games_on_Steam

There's quite a few, but it mostly isn't AAA games anymore. I think this list is important because it determines what I could download on my home computer and put on a flashdrive to take elsewhere.

>> No.10648515

>>10648467
>Steam wasn't really responsible for this, but it was one of the forerunners that did begin to implement this style of play
In what way? I feel like that developed entirely independent of Steam.

>> No.10648519

>>10648128
How come the Zoom platform isn't brought up at all? I never hear anyone talk about it.

>> No.10648550

>>10648519
Because it's absurdly small potatoes compared to other platforms. They're a neat store though. No launcher - probably also why they're not brought up. They have a lot of old edutainment and such that no one else does. And they put a fair amount of work into making old games run on newer machines.

>> No.10648603

>>10648515
It did, but like anything, it needed traction to stick. Steam was a huge driver in pushing for it because it could hold games like Team Fortress and Counter-Strike hostage unless people went along with it. Blizzard did the same with all of its games, get the Battle.net launcher or you can't play.

Had less popular developers tried it, they would've had a much harder time implementing it because their games didn't hold enough appeal. Even now, after it's been deemed "acceptable" by many, some fairly large entities still can't get theirs across: Ubisoft's Uplay, EA's Origin, and Bethesda's Launcher have all met with very low adoption rates because people are willing to forgo their games to avoid having to use it.

>> No.10648851

>>10648603
I meant player hosted servers vs matchmaking. Valve games post TF2 have matchmaking as well as a server browser. Matchmaking as the only option was right out of XBox. The fact that it ever infested PC games is fairly disgusting.

>> No.10648905

>>10647993
mostly fine, game generally were working out of the box. You still sometimes would prefer to patch things, but it wasn't as mandatory.
but you also had to have half a brain to buy/get something which actually works on your PC. And not buy something like Black and White when your PC doesn't have proper 3D accelerator card.

if you go with licensed soft you have to deal with drm at times, which can be an issue, but I didn't have much of problem even with Starforce
if you go with piracy, sometimes have to physically to disconnect cd drive to bypass DRM, or deal with gutted games so they fit few more on cd/dvd

You'd also had to get used to troubleshoot your own PC, but usually it just meant to format C drive now and then and reinstall windows. As long you kept your files safe, wasn't much of issue outside of time constrains.

so overall, some good, some bad. Each has it worth. But I'd prefer older approach since I'm tired of everchanging games in my steam library.
I miss the time when you could just finish something and move on. Nowadays ethernal lifesupport seems expected and it did enough damage for me to stop mostly care for modern PC games as much.

>> No.10648915

>>10648020
I still distinctly remember one game I played of Age Of Empires 1 through zone.com and the four of us just wound up talking about what we thought the Xbox was going to be and we just stopped fighting each other and shot the shit building neat cities and talking about how hyped we were for the future of gaming.

It's weird thinking that zoomies and aspies and newer generations will never get to experience tech hype ever again.

>> No.10648929

>>10648262
It's not. When Cleve released Grimoire, there was no DRM at all. He had to include some Valve stuff to have steam DRM on his game.

>> No.10648937

Steam only became mandatory for most pc games from about 2010 onwards

>> No.10648941

>>10647993
How old are people who make these threads... I'm 21 and I remember PC games as a child

>> No.10648946

>>10648941
Steam is almost 21 years old.

>> No.10648959

>>10648946
Well steam didn't totally take over immediately, and if you were a kid you weren't playing the latest AAA's or anything.

I mean to this day there's non-steam games that exist. People don't come here and ask what console gaming was like back then, even people who weren't around know the gist. What makes old PC games so obscure to these peeps.. Don't get why you'd ask this question unless you always had little interest in games in general.

>> No.10649027

>>10648959
let's be fair, for modern user - if something is not on steam - it may as well not exist.
outside of commonly known launchers especially (epic/battlenet/etc)
yea you can go to itch.io or other stuff, but generally people who make posts on 4chins don't have experience of buying PC game in a store and installing it or downloading shareware/freeware to try
nor experience of reading game magazines, trusting screenshots on the box, demo-discs.

Nowadays you just google name and go to youtube and that's it. Quite different experience.

>> No.10649086
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10649086

It was comfy. I remember installing Neverwinter Nights, which came on 3 or 4 CD's - the installer would pause and prompt you to change discs before it continued. And while the game installed, which took like 10 mins if it was big game like NWN, you read through the PAPER manual, looked at the pictures within, read hints. It was glorious - zoomers will never experience this.

>> No.10649087

>>10648851
Does it? I thought a server browser was dealt away with in Counter-Strike Go. I'll admit, I only briefly played CS Go and that was one thing I greatly disliked about it, lack of a server browser and no custom maps.

>> No.10649102 [DELETED] 

It was made for white people, complaining about troubleshooting is for brownoids.

>> No.10649115

>>10648186
a number of RTS, construction, and city building games had almost no key rebindings built into them and still dont now. it was mostly pc fps that had key rebindings post Quake 2.

>> No.10649161

All I miss about old pc gaming are the boxes that the games used to come in. It was cool having a tangible physical item that felt like it was yours. Nowadays though, I don't really care, and I enjoy the convenience of simply buying whatever I want whenever I want.
t. 20 year old steam account

>> No.10649450

Everyone with half a brain would understand, or at least feel, what was beginning to happen here. Steam came around at a period when the internet was in the process of turning from a playground for freaks and misfits into a corporate bullshit mind control and surveillance machine. If you don't remember scroogle.org, then your opinion on literally anything is automatically invalid.
Steam turned out to enforce uniformity on gaming. Gamers would still host their own servers, running games on any version number that they thought was the best one. This was the only diversity that gaming ever needed.

>> No.10649456

>>10647993
>Install game from 2 CDs
>Type in CD key code
>DRM can’t connect to server and crashes computer to keep you from pirating game
>Computer reboots and you have to do it all over again

>> No.10649467

>>10649161
I like the idea of the games being physical, but the cardboard boxes were shit and it was always only a matter of time before they started degrading badly.

>> No.10649480

>>10648048
Don’t really see the steam hate, the amount of free products and support they add is kinda insane. They arnt perfect but we really got lucky with our corporate overlords and Steam.

>> No.10649483

>>10649456
>DRM can’t connect
that's a post-steam thing. games never required internet connections to work, mostly because internet connections were still a mixed deal and not everybody had one.

>> No.10649492

If Steam had stayed a platform just for Valve games they'd still be making games

>> No.10649551

>>10648081
>zomg I need to configure my sound card properly
Yeah, once.
>zomg floppies were shit which is why they'd stay forever if not for HOLY E-STORES, which obviously invented CDs, HDDs with greater capacities, flash drives
Uh-huh.
>zomg I hate freedom, why do I have control over how much shit is loaded into the computer's memory, why don't I have so much bloat that every key press is processed over 5 minutes
Yeah, you need to configure things once here too. At the same time as when you configure your sound card, normally. That or call a competent man if you're a woman (or a "woman").
>zomg mouse drivers
At the risk of sounding repetitive, you do that once. Also MS-DOS predates computer mice being commonplace. Crazy, I know.
>Syndicate then worked, but crashed.
Works on my machine. Always did. Without crashes.
>I don't know how to change environment variables and call editing a fucking text file "memory hacks"
I hope his neovagina has healed well.

>> No.10649605

>>10648170
What a load of hogwash.
>The Venn diagram of "the few best PC games" and "games that weren't absolute shit" was a fucking circle.
Shit taste.
>The distribution networks were shit,
Depends but okay.
>the packaging was shit, installation was shit,
Blatant lies.
>hardware and software compatibility was shit,
Sometimes. There's a reason some games were notorious for that. When something stands out it is talked about.
>controls were shit,
Actual, literal brainlet.
>screens were shit...
Screens of what, you fucking retard?
>Bought a shitty game (because marketing and word-of-mouth was almost non-existent for PC games)?
Go choke on your corporate master's dick, you vile shill.

>> No.10649626

>>10647993
>What was PC gaming like before Steam?
Even normies liked piracy.

>> No.10649627
File: 50 KB, 620x409, hooray.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10649627

You know what I find funny is that seemingly nobody EVER remembers that for over 5+ years Steam had no functioning friendslist and chat. The chat actually used to work at first when it was the military green interface in 2003, but then Valve fucked something up majorly when they switched to the Dark green iteration and Friends was completely non-functional until around 2008 or 2009, I do not remember when it was. That's why programs like Xfire became so extremely popular and necessary just to play with others. Of course I also played BF2, WarCraft 3 and other non-Steam games with it, but it's just that fact that nobody seems to remember, how badly Valve fucked up.

>> No.10649635

>>10649627
and yet if any new storefront launches today without being more feature complete than steam all the gabedrones call it complete shit and want it dead. boggles the mind

>> No.10649639

>>10649635
Yes, EGS is a bad storefront because it's missing basic functionality that everyone expects as standard

>> No.10649646

>>10648008
>you didnt contribute to some fat fuck getting rich
You always have been though.

>> No.10649647

>>10647993
>What was PC gaming like before Steam?

depends on what period.

dos games are their own beast. windows games that come on disks are their own beast. Early cd games are their own beast. So are games that can run on just the motherboard vs games that need a graphics card.

Like there is a giant difference between trying to play a cartridge game on an Atari XE computer and playing a dos game or a cd game on windows XP.

I guess to look at it pretty high level, sometimes you just went to the store and got a game. You'd probably go to EB games or walmart. Buy a game in a big fat box. Then you went home. If you were lucky you just popped it in, installed and it worked. If you were unlucky you had to install drivers and fiddle fuck with it t get it to work.

For a long time console gaming and arcades were able to stick around because of the things PC gaming could not do well. Console games just worked. Pop it in and worked in seconds. Consoles were also cheaper than PCs for a long time. Arcade machines also just worked and had superior graphics than consoles or home PCs for a long time. It was like that until like 64 bit games, then PCs caught up.

>> No.10649676

>>10649087
All the ones I've played. I haven't played CS GO though. So idunno.

>> No.10649832

>>10649605
>Shit taste.
The handful of games you remember doesn't eclipse the decades of trash mountains the PC gaming market built.
>Blatant lies.
"Here's your oversized, flimsy box with randomly sized manual(s) and loose floppy/compact disks bouncing around in paper sleeves! Oh, don't bother throwing anything way, you'll need all of that at some point, and to remind you we put a partial installation key on 3/4s of the items! Yes, even all the disks; sometimes you'll need one of the disks to boot or continue playing! Which one? Why, that's the best part, you won't know until you try to play!"
>some games were notorious for that
No, MOST games.
Why does everyone seem to forget most games ran like trash on most PCs just because they can watch a youtube video of someone running games through an emulator on modern PCs?
>Actual, literal brainlet
Oh, you either don't remember at all or never played them at the time. The only major control scheme PC gaming improved on was mouselook, and even that shit wasn't popularized until after consoles started doing it.
>Screens of what, you fucking retard?
Retard, what in the fuck did you use to view the game? The rest of your post seems to be based on your imagination, so maybe you used that too in order to see the gameplay.
Monitors were shit outside of high-end, special order screens for digital design until Apple started marketing their screens to professionals (no, not the berry colored computers, retard).
>Go choke on your corporate master's dick, you vile shill.
What in the absolute fuck are you talking about? Consoles being better in the past and PCs being better now is me sucking corporate dick? You're not in touch enough with reality to make statements with a historical basis.

>> No.10649883

>>10649605
>>10649832
get a room

>> No.10649913

>>10647993
Better because my money wasn't going to a fat ugly slob.

>> No.10649957

>>10648220
Anon, he's holding a mirror.

>> No.10650015

>>10647993
Better.

But then again, steam kinda launched around the same time PC gaming as a platform was losing its uniqueness in its genres focused on the platform drying up and fag companies going full cancer with drm attempts.

The golden age of PC gaming was the start of the multimedia boom era and Half Life 2 was basically the end point of that era. Everything beyond, its just a platform for console ports, indie games and GaS shit. Emulation is the only reason I would use a modern PC for anything gaming related.

>> No.10650029

>>10647993
CD codes weren't single use only. Now they're all locked on Steam.

>> No.10650037

INSTALLERS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cioyLQ2O6ycin

>> No.10650103

>>10647993
You actually had ownership with your physical copy. Whereas with Steam it's all digital. I can still download my copy of GTA games on both my PC's thanks to my DVD drive on my old one and my Blu-Ray drive on my new one. With Steam however, if it's tied to your e-mail address and you lose it(hacked and compromised), you no longer have access to your Steam Account. Which is exactly what happened to my yahoo e-mail account. This is why I update my passwords across all my accounts every 6 months. Luckily I didn't even start buying from Steam yet on that account, so no big loss.

>> No.10650198

>>10649467
Yeah, and then you are left with a bunch of decaying garbage that you either embarrassingly display on a shelf like a coomlector or put in storage. I understand the philosophical angle of digital downloads not really being yours, but that is the only valid argument against them as far as I'm concerned. I just don't give a fuck about collecting garbage which is the bottom line.

>> No.10650216

>>10649161
I guess I would elaborate a bit and say I miss dedicated servers. TF2 still has community servers which are fun to play on, but CSGO/2 was dominated by matchmaking which I absolutely hated. The feeling of being a regular on a server and getting to know the people you are playing with is a relic of the past and I miss it. I can't fucking stand "lobbies".

>> No.10650220

>>10648354
>screens used to mean levels

Must be mid-west retard-jargon, like "pop" for Soda, or "extra guy" for Lives. Never heard anyone use the term "screens" for levels once in my entire life....Probably because video games have always used the term "level" so anyone with a brainstem just repeated that word.

>> No.10650227

>>10647993
If Steam hadn't come along, we'd all be stuck with Direct2Drive.

>> No.10650228

>>10648086
>he called out a samefag correctly

KEK, you love to see it.

>> No.10650254

>>10649115
>a number of RTS, construction, and city building games had almost no key rebindings built into them and still dont now.
Why point this out exactly? RTS's and city-building games weren't particularly good on consoles, if existent at all.

>> No.10650262

>>10649832
>mouselook wasn't popularized until consoles started doing it
Are you a dumb-faggot retard, or are you just trolling? Please explain.

>> No.10650281
File: 130 KB, 800x600, 345347654.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10650281

>>10647993
We went to the store and bought CDs, which we had to store somewhere too. Around Steam came out, downloading a game was faster than installing from optical media. Autists and hoarders like physical disks, but for sane people they were a horrid hassle.
DRM, always-online, and licensing software instead of owning it have always existed and have nothing to do with Steam specifically. Kids just didn't know they didn't own the software on their disks.
"But I own the CD" is a stupid argument. It's piracy if your license is revoked and always was; and if you don't care about legalities, downloading a pirated copy is still much easier than installing from a CD.
Purchase or pirate, optical media were just inferior in every way.

>> No.10650286

>>10650220
>like "pop" for Soda
This is relatively common in parts of the UK, "soda" is more of a 'muricanism

>> No.10650291

>>10650281
> Physical copies bad hmmkay?
t.Digital DRM shill

>> No.10650293

>>10650281
lmao

>> No.10650298

>>10650291
On-disk DRM was even worse: it installed malware and ruined hardware. DRM is bad, it just isn't a Steam-specific thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal

>> No.10650302

>>10650281
I can drive a store and buy a game quicker than downloading some 100gb monstrosity.

>> No.10650306

>>10649551
>Yea, once
Yea, for each individual fucking game, and then you had to do it all over again if, by some bolt-of-lightning-chance-of-turn-of-events you felt like, for some reason inescapable in the known universe, you happened to feel like playing a DIFFERENT game *GASP* Yes, I know, who would think of such a thing? Back in my day we all played only one game, ever, at a time, and liked it!

>zomg floppies were such shit
Yes, they were. Shit storage space, took forever to load, then had to deal with load errors which were common, on top of the fact that they corrupted WAY too fucking easily thanks to their magnetic tape because if it was too humid, too hot, too cold, too dusty, bent slightly too much, or got jostled around just a WEE bit, they were fucking ruined. CD's were an incremental improvement, but even then you had to deal with 4 or 5 CD's in a box, fiddling with jewel cases which would crack and break, or just the fact that installing it from CD took forever. I go on steam, click "install", and it downloads and installs it for me in one go, taking at most, 10 seconds for a game made before 2001, and for larger games from the oughts, it might take a gargantuan 3 to 4 minutes.

>mouse drives
Stopped being a problem in the late 90's so not a really big issue.

>works on my machine
Neato.

>zomg I hate freedom
Yes, because being limited to an arbitrarily small amount of RAM is "freedom" and not a self-limiting shit stain.

>calls editing a fucking text file "memory hacks"
It was DOS, they weren't held on text files you zoomer shit. He was likely referring anyone of a number of sys or bat or exe files.

>> No.10650308
File: 121 KB, 1004x800, Speed_Racer_behind_the_wheel.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10650308

>>10650302
100 gb is, like, a 15 minute download, but you do you.

>> No.10650309

>>10650298
That was only used in audio cds, was recalled, and had major consequences for Sony.

>> No.10650313
File: 179 KB, 1056x594, goalpost.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10650313

>>10650309

>> No.10650314

>>10650308
Some people have rural internet.

>> No.10650317

>>10650308
probably lives in some red flyover in Bumfuckistan, ShartSA

>> No.10650319

>>10650314
Then THOSE people shouldn't use digital storefronts. What's the problem?

>> No.10650321

>>10650313
I don't remember music DRM ever being the goal.

>>10650319
Steam killing physical releases.

>> No.10650325

>>10650281
You don't even need to always be online to access STEAM. You just need to go offline manually so STEAM can download the proper files to run without online service and then you can use it with no internet access.

>> No.10650329

>>10650321
It's been killing for twenty fucking years and still hasn't killed them. Your putbull will eventually kill you faster than downloads will kill optical media, my luddite friend.

>> No.10650337

>>10650321
>I don't remember music DRM ever being the goal.
It's safer to download a song today than it was to buy a Sony CD back then. Same with games. That's the point.

>> No.10650352

>tfw buy those games on disc that STILL needed Steam in the early 2010s

>> No.10650357

The stores you bought games from couldn't just decide to erase your entire collection by a whim.

>> No.10650359

>>10650352
Can you name one game that didn't use the Steam service for multiplayer but still required Steam even when installed from a CD/DVD? (I'm not saying you can't.)

>> No.10650360

>>10650298
That's only with Sony music CD's and they were recalled. Where as my PC game discs have no malware of any sort. Otherwise I'd sue their asses.

>> No.10650380

>>10650359
Not him, but Skyrim did this. I think Civ V as well?

>> No.10650389

>>10650360
Some, please.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecuROM

>> No.10650391

>>10650380
Just after I post this, I remembered your comment about not using the Steam service for multiplayer, so scratch that regarding Civ V. Still, Skyrim is entirely single-player and needed Steam.

>> No.10650395

>>10650380
Skyrim forced you to install Steam to play? Really? That sucks.

>> No.10650446

>>10650298
Now you have rootkits on downloadable games and no one bats an eye.

>> No.10650448

>>10650389
>wikipedia
Not a reliable source, especially when it comes to certain topics that are one sided on those issues.

>> No.10650452

>>10650446
no its different you see if gaben allowed it then it will surely cause no harm cause valve is the good guys

>> No.10650474

>>10650389
>SonyDADC
>Only on games I don't play
So 100% of my collection of PC games are safe.

>> No.10650512

>>10650395
Nowadays they sell it DRM-free on GOG, but it took them a while

>> No.10650527

>>10650448
Lmao, look at the coping seethe.

>> No.10650539

>>10650389
SecuROM didn't damage any pcs.

The old versions of it very also just pretty benign copy protection.
Until post-Steam, version 7.x introduced a whole lot of bullshit.

>> No.10650782

>>10649646
No instead of fat fucks it was skinny pedos.

>> No.10650829

>>10647993
Hardware and driver incompatibilities driving you up the fucking wall.

>> No.10651065

>>10649161
The thing that got me to use Steam was the fact that the games were so cheap, I didn't care if the service died the next day because I'd still get my money's worth. The 90s and early 2000s were a time when I'd still rent games from Blockbuster and spend $5-10 for a few days of a rental, so paying the same price for a game on Steam and potentially keeping it forever was more attractive. If a year later I lost the games I spent money on, I'd still be a net positive vs rentals, and I still had plenty of boxed games and pirated games to play.

It's a little more strange now, there's no boxed games to buy anymore, but I'm buying fewer games than ever. I completed a rom collection for every system up to the PS2 and earlier, so I feel somewhat secure in that no matter what happens I'll still have the majority of the games I play. I only wish I had a good way to download pre-2010 PC games in bulk in the same way.

>> No.10651106

>>10650829
I remember I couldn't play Mechwarrior 4 because my drivers were "too new" on my Nvidia 8600.

>> No.10651110

>>10647993
Cryptic DRM was common

Pay to access servers through services like gamespy

Loss of disc = buy the game again

Sometimes computer games would have weird compatibility issues and would not run even if you passed the minimum specs due to esoteric reasons

>>10648008
>consoom box

>> No.10651127

>>10648024
Those problems were all sorted out by the time steam launched.

No one used 2k or NT unless they were super nerds that's knew what they were getting into.

Me had the same compatability as 98.

>> No.10651138

>>10648052
Anon didn't say valve cares he says they beat the hell out of Ubishit.
Someday you'll realize the fattest, dirtiest cock is your shitty useless contrarianism

>> No.10651157
File: 139 KB, 1157x800, 4272368-gold-games-7-windows-front-cover.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10651157

>>10651065
You could get games pretty cheap retail too.

Similar to Steam, old games got cheap re-releases in just a simple Jewel Case without a box.
And like Steam bundles, you had game compilations.
Not to mention, used games.

>> No.10651326

>>10651157
And sometimes I got them like that as well. I remember going to Hastings and picking up Fallout 1 and 2, Rise of Nations, Temple of Elemental Evil, and a few other games like that. But there were also games on Steam that I couldn't find boxed like that at the time and wasn't going to wait for a potential price drop. By and large when Steam sales began in earnest, I could find more games priced cheaply, some even sold for $2 or less, which was virtually a non-cost.

Stores for the most part start discounting software that isn't moving so you could sometimes find things for cheap, though it was subject to supply--if something was discounted because it wasn't selling, it wasn't going to be restocked when it was gone, so it was luck of the draw if you got it. In Steam's case, the supply was infinite and a lot of more greedy devs would drop prices to nothing just to try and make a few bucks off of old games that weren't bringing in any income anymore, so it was more common to find cheap stuff there, especially because distribution costs meant you wouldn't be selling at a loss.

In the case of digital distribution as a whole though, there's cases where stores are clearly superior to digital storefronts even before considering the argument of ownership. I've virtually never seen a first part Nintendo title drop in price on its e-shop or website, but I could go to electronics stores and find their games marked down 75% off. It really depends on the company strategy, N's vehemently opposed to Steam's slash and burn sort of sale method because in a way Steam is single-handedly responsible for devaluing the video game market--things are sold so cheap and frequently that a significant amount of people won't buy games unless there is a sale, and $50 and $60 purchases are reserved only for absolute major releases.

>> No.10651328

It honestly didn't really change that much in the grand scheme of things until like 2009/2010ish. Games still came with retarded DRM, you could still buy PC games off the shelf and install them directly off the disc, a lot games still released independent of steam, a lot of PC ports still fucking sucked ass, steam's attempts at community and chat features were basically a joke for the longest time and had no influence on anything (SPUF lmao). Really the only difference was that sometimes the retarded DRM was just steam.

>> No.10651332
File: 34 KB, 791x559, 1706752654060.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10651332

>>10647993
>50 mib/s
>2004
I couldn't even imagine having internet that fast back in the day.

>> No.10651341

>>10651326
That final point is why I could understand the argument that Steam is damaging to video games as an industry from more than just the idea of ownership. When it sells games so cheaply that it makes it hard for AAA titles to move unless they're a massive name like Call of Duty or Skyrim, it leads to a scenario where a lot of old AAA devs can't compete anymore.

I always assume the market will naturally adjust to this shift and previously big name developers will adapt, but some companies keep trying to punch above their weight and take massive losses on sales. For example, EA's had losses on new IPs like Anthem, but also on established series like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Star Wars, Dead Space, and Battlefield. Ubisoft has had slimmer and slimmer profit margins on its flagship titles like Fry Cry and Assassin's Creed because development costs keep rising faster than player interest. I seriously wonder if the suits who run these companies will finally accept they need to reduce the bloated budgets for their games and focus on more efficient returns by looking at a lower priced AA market.

>> No.10651365

>>10647993
PC gaming switching to digital distribution convinced me to stop buying PC games. I have boxes of jewel cased cds/dvds from 20 years ago, but I haven't paid a cent to the longnoses on Steam in years.

>> No.10651371

>>10650360
Yup. I'm happy with owning PC games on disc too. I own a very rare version of Splatterhouse for the PC and let me tell ya, it is arcade perfect! Damn well worth owning.

>> No.10651474

>>10651371
Can't you just download it and mount the disk. What's the difference.

>> No.10651561

>>10651474
Yes. However if my PC were to go to shit, if my downloads were somehow erased or if websites no longer host that rom, I'd still have that disc as back-up. Plus it comes in a CD case with a manual, with cool artwork. Sure I could get the artwork digitally, but again...it might not be on websites forever. As a matter of fact, there's some porn videos I can't re-download again, even if I went to the official website where I first found it. Point being digital doesn't stay hosted forever.

>> No.10651696

>>10650262
>Please explain.
Explain why I won't let you suck my dick or explain why mouselook wasn't commonplace until post-GoldenEye? Neither need explanation.
Feel free to hump Quake for a bit, like that was nearly as relevant, and get that all out of your system first.

>> No.10651705

>>10651332
>Lived in average city in Australia
>Download speed of 20kb's throughout the early 2000s
>Speed got upgraded to 500kb's with a 20kb upload speed
>Internet remained at this speed until the late 2010's
>Now it's 5mb's download and upload
My internet being so fucking slow is why I still bought a lot of physical games in those days. My parents were also adamantly against buying anything online because they didn't trust anyone with their credit card info.

>> No.10651706

>>10651341
>more efficient returns by looking at a lower priced AA marke
that would be nice, but look at current amount of daily released games
it'll all be swept away unless you are sorta big name
It's too late, we live in age where games abudant to point of being worthless. Good luck trying to make decent AA game and sell it for decent price without people screeching at you "How dare you price it that expensive" when money is way fucking more worthless than ever

gaming is fucked, thanks to everyone involved

>> No.10651725

>>10651706
This is probably correct, but perhaps it was the way things were always going to be. If you asked me in the 90s if gaming was ever going to be bigger than Hollywood and music combined, I'd have laughed. Now it's one of the most profitable entertainment industries out there.

People talk about a crash, but I think it's more going to become a contraction and not in a good way. Despite digital distribution allowing anyone to get their game to market, we're just going to see a few major releases per year since those are the only things that can sustain themselves. When you have thousands of games releasing each month, even if each of those games are good and worth the money, the fact is peoples' budgets are limited and the money gets spread so thin few of those releases wind up recouping their cost.

I guess I'm ok with that though. Not consciously, but implicitly. In the last few years, every time I want to buy something, I take a good long look at my backlog, realize there's still tons of stuff I haven't even played, and wind up skipping out on something new. It's not even that the new is bad, it's just that new stuff has to compete against a running history of really, really great games, or at least good games priced at pennies, and so it's doomed from the start. I spent a grand total of $60 on things from Steam all of last year, and less than $500 in gaming in its entirety, lower than any other year since I was still in high school. It wasn't because the releases were terrible or anything, I'm just continuing to play old stuff and not buying things that arne't going to get immediately played.

>> No.10651746 [DELETED] 

>>10651696
>mouselook wasn't commonplace until post goldeneye

Ohhhhh. You're a fuckin idiot. Okay, gotchya.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminator:_Future_Shock

>> No.10651747 [DELETED] 

>>10651696
>mouselook wasn't commonplace until post goldeneye

Ohhhhh. You're a fuckin idiot. Okay, gotchya.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminator:_Future_Shock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_(video_game)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_(video_game)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_(video_game)

>> No.10651750

>>10647993
Xfire and AIM groups for chat/games, it was kino. I still remember the day Xfire shut down.

>> No.10651756

>>10651696
>mouselook wasn't commonplace until post goldeneye

Ohhhhh. You're a fuckin idiot. Okay, gotchya.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminator:_Future_Shock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_(video_game)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_(video_game)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_(video_game)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Nukem_3D

>> No.10651762

>>10648350
If you knew how to customize you knew how to crack, if you knew how to crack you could distribute cracks and trainers to anyone knowledgable about piracy. The consumer market is most profitable when products are convenient and simple like the people buying them.

>> No.10651806

>>10651725
>but perhaps it was the way things were always going to be.
maybe
No one knows what future holds, but I think main issue is combination of factors.
After all, no other media ever experience such explosive growth while also experiencing skyrocketing production costs. In but a few decades to boot.

Crash will not happen, gaming became staple way of life and part of it for basically majority of people at this point. I'm not really sure what needs to happen for public to lose interest. Outside major crisis of sort.

From player standpoint, yes, things probably at the best - since we have access to unlimited amount of entertainment on our demand, usually for cheap or free. We all settle on our specific tastes and series, follow them if new happens or rerelease of old, with occasional wild card which grabbed attention.
At least if you forget to expect more of specific things you liked in the past and just will be content with backlog. We did lose many genres and series to sands of time for one reason or other.

But for developer as a business company who is making new game? Oh boy, I don't want to be in their shoes, even if I'm partially in. Your audience is bunch of ever hungry for content and quality people who experienced best media has to offer and will compare your game to those ones. You are expected to keep game afloat with updates and DLC for years to come after release. And be "reasonably" priced. And you have to be lucky enough to catch attention.

Each game can make or break company now, considering risks, time and budgets involved.
And if you don't have funding or publisher? Good luck trying to find one, with such abundance of games and game developer tools, people look to fund nearly complete games now.

I'd say the best we can expect now is for some small groups to form which make games for specific other small groups. Outside of mainstream. No clue what so ever what form it'll take, but I'm too optimistic either.

>> No.10651831

>>10651806
I sometimes think about all that when I'm playing a randomizer for old games. I've got countless hours, days, or weeks out of playing the Super Metroid Randomizer, which is nothing more than a tool built upon a old game that shuffles stuff around made and maintained by a group of hobbyists. I haven't paid a dime for it, yet I've played it more than most modern releases in the last few years.

How is a company supposed to compete with that? Some guys in their spare time have made something more attractive than what they could spending full time at an office trying to design and develop. The answer is they can't, and so they'll more than likely seek to stamp out the means for these groups to release content for people.

I think we're rapidly approaching the point where the traditional sales model for software is no longer applicable. Businesses are in a rush to find ways to monitize products but everything they do just pushes people away. It's honestly starting to look like we're reaching a point where commercial development is going to shrink to just a few names and the majority of gaming will just be made by non-professionals.

>> No.10651852

>>10647993
DRM free. Before I was born my dad make bootleg copies of X-Wing and Age of Empires to play with my brothers.

>> No.10651868

>>10648095
>Games For Windows LIVE
Always worked on my machine. Cope and seethe.
>Denuvo
That's odd. Steam takes those games just fine. It's almost like the existence of Steam didn't end up being a deterrent for worse forms of DRM like you're claiming it did.

>> No.10651870 [DELETED] 

>>10651868
>Steam takes those games just fine.
And then they get review-bombed until they remove it, like with Resident Evil 8.

>> No.10651875

>>10651868
>Steam takes those games just fine.
And then they get review-bombed until they remove it, like with Resident Evil 8.

>Always worked on my machine. Cope and seethe.
Don't need to. It's dead and buried. Cope and seethe.

>> No.10651893
File: 193 KB, 324x396, Screenshot 2024-02-01 at 04-12-55 Hogwarts Legacy on Steam.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10651893

>>10651875
>And then they get review-bombed until they remove it, like with Resident Evil 8.
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/26095454-Denuvo-Games/
Maybe it is just me, but this does not look like a bomb reviewed game, sweaty.

>It's dead and buried.
Works on my machine. Not my problem you got filtered.

>> No.10651896

>>10651831
>I think we're rapidly approaching the point where the traditional sales model for software is no longer applicable.
well hence you see subscription based things pop up everywhere. And it is hated with gusto in some cases, yet accepted.
Game pass is hugely popular too.
I think eventually you'll just have to subscribe to published to play their games and pay monthly gaming "tax".

Professional/non-professional distinction is weird.
Back then to work on now famous franchises, company recruited whoever, with or without any experience or interest. At least from anecdotal evidence I have after watching/reading some old JP gamedev interviews.
Now everyone who trying to get into gamedev at least played some games to some extend and aware of them. And need like years upon years of experience to do something of importance, and not design space shitters for space station where player will pass by for a few seconds.

Still I know what you meant by it. But I prefer to use "professional" in sense - do you earn money doing something? Yes? Then you are professional. Outside of expertise/scope/skills/etc.

>How is a company supposed to compete with that?
To add a bit of hope - people still getting excited about new things. Even if those new things don't essentially have anything outstanding to them. Hence while competing is hard, it also still possible. No matter how jaded you become, you do still harbor some hope to come across something that excite you.
I for example usually bounce off DRPG games, yet managed to stumble upon Quester, little game made by few people. And now engrossed in it, despite all exposure I had to other games, and that Quester doesn't do much of complicated. And they recently managed to fund jp only so far prequel via few hundreds of supporters.
It'll never be some sort of hit with more than few thousand of people will play, and that's fine.
So that what I meant about small groups making games for other small groups.

>> No.10651902
File: 128 KB, 591x800, 6192447-fear-first-encounter-assault-recon-windows-front-cover.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10651902

My favourite thing of PC gaming at the time was getting somewhat old games with magazines.

>> No.10651909

>>10651893
>sweaty
It's spelled "sweety", sweety.

>Works on my machine. Not my problem you got filtered.
STEAM won, cope and seethe "sweety", works on my machine ;)

>> No.10651914

>>10651909
>STEAM won, cope and seethe "sweety", works on my machine ;)
I know, and PC gaming got worse because of it.

>> No.10651916

>10651909
new and gay

>> No.10651918
File: 66 KB, 220x153, tears.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10651918

>>10651914

>> No.10652023

I know I'm going to get called underage for this, but what's the difference between patching and updating?

>> No.10652027

>>10652023
nothing essentially different.
Just "updating" presumes whole game is being updated. Which can mean replacing most if not all of game files.
"Patching" comes from "patchwork", so you update specific key parts of the game which take effect on a whole game.

Other part is that updating usually done remotely via online to the latest, and patching done via user by running specific executable to patch to specific version.
maybe someone non-ESL will correct me tho

>> No.10652046

>>10652023
An update is just replacing files with a more up-to-date version of a program. It's an "official release" with a number.

A patch, especially in video games, can be used interchangeably with update, usually for an update that's only bugfixes instead of a feature update.
It can also be used to describe a change to files outside of official updates, like a fan patch. It might come from the unix "patch" file type which is used to change source code in certain files, or the term existed before that I dunno.

>> No.10652067

>>10648457
>You just reminded me of IRQ settings.
That was only really required for DOS gaming. Native Windows games didn't need that (PNP was a thing).

And setting up IRQs was nothing compared to having custom autoexec.bat settings for each game - one required mouse.com loaded, another would require more base memory so you could not load mouse.com, etc.

>> No.10652084

>>10649635
That's because it's not 2003 anymore. Do you have any concept of time and progress whatever?

>> No.10652085

>>10647993
Finding no cd cracks for shit you bought.

>> No.10652097

Finding cracked CD keys on shady ass websites sucked

>> No.10652098

Stuff like Factorio absolutely could not exist in the late 2000s, that is an essential digital distribution game.
If you have niche tastes it is an incomparably better situation now. AAA is getting worse maybe, but that's what people that play AAA deserve

>> No.10652125

>>10652098
>If you have niche tastes it is an incomparably better situation now
lol
lmao even
compare amount of SRPG games released now and during PS2 era for example. You'll have to start scrapping bottom of the barrel nowadays to get anything.
Or how generally rare turn based games became in favor of action based games.
Factorio is nice, sure. And I do agree that there are plenty of great games which exist now thanks to modern day. But that's nothing but a tradeoff.
There are tons of niche or neglected genres or types of games. Sure they all still exist in some capacity, but certainly nowhere near of shape nor polish they did before.
Shit like that ended with 3DS, cause it was last system with lower development costs.

So as someone who enjoys niche games, I'm in no way in better situation. It's a tradeoff as been mentioned. You get some, you lose some. And even surviving genres and series which have some budget - get worse immensely, like SRW 30 or Disgaea 7.

>> No.10652132

>>10652125
>>10652098
not to mention niche licensed stuff like gundam games, it's now all either F2P/mobile or one game in few years
that niche is fucking gone

and factorio is not niche. Was at first but not anymore. I'm happy for it and for singlehandedly "creating" genre, but at this point it is as niche as vampire survivors and it's clones.
Yes those exists thanks to modern day, but they are also basically lottery winners in sea of abundance.

>> No.10652179

>>10647993
you post this b8 topic every week, botnet.

>> No.10652180

>>>>>>>>factorio is not niche

>> No.10652202
File: 484 KB, 424x580, file.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10652202

>>10652180
140k reviews total. Which is a fraction of copies sold.
140k sold copies are more than some games can hope in their entire lifetime, and even those not always called a niche. Cause it can be relatively healthy number.
I get that you want to wank your "poor indie studio sleeper hit can't exist unless sold digitally". But factorio is not a niche for awhile.
Games which spawns entire genre especially can't be niche.

>> No.10652216

>>10651909
>STEAM ARE THE GOOD GUYS THEY DONT LET DENUVO WIN PC GAMING WITHOUT LORD SAVIOUR GABEN WOULD BE FULL OF DENUVO
>heres plenty of denuvo and steam allows it just fine
>hehehe lol doesnt matter steam win lmao cope seethe hail gaben