Hl2 Tier-based Pricing Scheme
DOOManiac
Worst. Critic. Ever. Join Date: 2002-04-17 Member: 462Members, NS1 Playtester
Worst. Critic. Ever. Join Date: 2002-04-17 Member: 462Members, NS1 Playtester
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">What do you guys think of it?</div>For those that don't know, its the latest "wild running rumor taken as fact by news sites but not denounced by Valve so there's probably some truth to it" rumor that HL2 will be distributed in 3 different versions, each priced different, and with different CONTENT. Not just a different person's face on the box, but what you actually get is more or less depending on the version you get...
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->1: Retail box, singleplayer, no multiplayer
2: Retail box, singleplayer and multiplayer
3: Retail box, singleplayer, multiplayer and other unknown cool stuff (collectors edition)
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--><span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>From <a href='http://www.shacknews.com' target='_blank'>Shacknews</a></span>
The first type would be commonly distributed at places like Wal-Mart, maybe Best Buy, and other mass consumer places. Second and Third types would be at specialty stores like Babbage's and Electronic's Botique. Obviously first type is cheaper than the second, with the third being the most expensive.
Personally, I think this system, if the rumor is true, is a gigantic mistake waiting to happen.
What happens to all the people who don't know what Half-Life 2 is? The people who aren't aware of the version differences? Those who don't know of multiplayer (or mods) at the moment but would probably try it later? Like it or not, the vast majority of game sells come from Wal-Mart and similar mass market places. There are also thousands of people (I bet a few are on this board) that live in areas where there isn't any EB or Gamestop to get the "regular" version.
Now, most of you are probably saying "big deal, who cares" or maybe "well if they buy it from wal-mart they get what they deserve" or "buy it online". But there are concerns there too. We all know how stores like to say they have the lowest price, well what if it has "single player only" in really tiny print in the ad? You're thinking you're getting a deal, but you'd be stuck w/ the inferior version. This would especially be true online, where the product shipped to you could be the "light" edition instead of the normal one (either maliciously or by accident), and then you'd be screwed, as you can't return software...
This would absolutely KILL the mod community and would almost gurantee HL2 to be a multiplayer flop.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->1: Retail box, singleplayer, no multiplayer
2: Retail box, singleplayer and multiplayer
3: Retail box, singleplayer, multiplayer and other unknown cool stuff (collectors edition)
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--><span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>From <a href='http://www.shacknews.com' target='_blank'>Shacknews</a></span>
The first type would be commonly distributed at places like Wal-Mart, maybe Best Buy, and other mass consumer places. Second and Third types would be at specialty stores like Babbage's and Electronic's Botique. Obviously first type is cheaper than the second, with the third being the most expensive.
Personally, I think this system, if the rumor is true, is a gigantic mistake waiting to happen.
What happens to all the people who don't know what Half-Life 2 is? The people who aren't aware of the version differences? Those who don't know of multiplayer (or mods) at the moment but would probably try it later? Like it or not, the vast majority of game sells come from Wal-Mart and similar mass market places. There are also thousands of people (I bet a few are on this board) that live in areas where there isn't any EB or Gamestop to get the "regular" version.
Now, most of you are probably saying "big deal, who cares" or maybe "well if they buy it from wal-mart they get what they deserve" or "buy it online". But there are concerns there too. We all know how stores like to say they have the lowest price, well what if it has "single player only" in really tiny print in the ad? You're thinking you're getting a deal, but you'd be stuck w/ the inferior version. This would especially be true online, where the product shipped to you could be the "light" edition instead of the normal one (either maliciously or by accident), and then you'd be screwed, as you can't return software...
This would absolutely KILL the mod community and would almost gurantee HL2 to be a multiplayer flop.
Comments
I don't think it will kill the mod community at all, you know what you bought, and if for some odd reason you don't see SINGLE PLAYER ONLY printed on the box then whack yourself in the head and take it back. They sure as hell arent going to not let me return something when I mistakenly bought the wrong product in the first place.
Besides Im hoping to get the uber deluxe edition with uber deluxe goodies <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->
See my comment:
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And yeah, I'm getting the uber platinum special edition too. But I'd hate to see HL2 fail as a mod platform over such a stupid stupid stupid sales decision...
You know almost all the guys here who are going to purchase HL2 are at least at a minimum going to purchase the version with multi and mod capabilites. The SP Stand-alone is fine and all, but you will never see a gamer purchasing it.... I don't really know who they are trying to appeal too with the cut-back version. I just don't think the market is big enough to warrant a small version of HL2.
I for one cannot wait for HL2 multiplayer.
<b>BRING BACK THE BOUNCE!</b>
Rocket Crowbar 2 on Bounce. Hell yes.
Are you kidding me? After 2 years in retail, I can confidently say that customers don't read signs.
And it appears that Half Life 2 isn't delayed anymore.
On a related note, the $9.95 / month Steam cost seems like a bit of a waste if you already have all of Valve's titles. If you don't, it's great cause you can download a whole lot of games at first for just 10 bucks. But if all you're doing is buying HL2 and then banking on new games coming out soon, after just half a year you've paid $60 for nothing extra. But who knows, Valve probably has something planned.
IT'S BECAUSE THEY ARE GOING TO RELEASE TF2!
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* sp only version <b>CAN</b> be upgraded to mod/mp version
* you can "rent" it for $10 a month and then get all future and previous updates for that same ten.
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Most of you guys seem to be missing the point. The main concern is community growth (especially for mods). When "n00bs" (people new to gaming/multiplayer/mods) aren't allowed in to the community (cause they got a cheaper version due to fraud/misinformation/ignorance), that does nothing but damage the community. It does **NOT** filter out the bad. Remember guys, you were all nubs once you had to say "what's multiplayer?" and "what is a mod?", whether you said it regarding Half-Life or DOOM 2. Do you think you should have been punished because at the time of your purchase you weren't aware of this great thing hidden inside?
Most people who are just finding out about multiplayer, and mods, will get to the $10 upgrade barrier and say "oh well, screw it. I'm not gonna pay for it". And thus, the community doesn't grow...
HL2 will still be good no matter if they make bad marketing mistake, anyone worth their salt should know the deal, and if not they can always go whine to the store they bought it from and sue valve <!--emo&:0--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wow.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wow.gif'><!--endemo-->
And there's no mention of the subscription choice either...www.planethalflife.com has all the details.
See my "you were a nub once" comment.
And I totally agree about the no newbies to mods. I mean, I bought HL for the game originally, I didnt even know what a mod was! If I found out later I would need to pay an extra $15 or so (Canadian) to play online mods, at that time there is no way I could of, and my parents definately would not of. *sigh* Valve, all you genius making an awesome game, supporting it to death, and then smacking yourself in the face with a large unused fiber connection cause half the fans can't play multiplayer... <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
I mean, if they packaged 'Half Life 2: Uranium Edition' and 'Half Life 2: Plutonium Edition', which one are YOU going to buy, just looking at them on the shelf? More importantly, which one is Joe off the street going to buy, if both are even in-stock?
Likely the one that costs less.
Which means $10 that will go directly into Valve's pocket when Joe decides to 'upgrade' to Multiplayer over Steam, instead of requiring the middleman's fee.
I also don't see anything about if you have to KEEP paying for the multiplayer upgrade, if you get it via Steam. Paranoia cha-cha-cha.
You can already pre-order HL2, yes?
So surely that <i>suggests</i> that there is only ONE version, since otherwise lots of peoples would get angy that "OMG THEY DIDN'T TELL ME THERE WERE 3 VERSIONS I WANTED THE UB3R L3ET ONE!"
Of course this could be speculation.
May I also point out that Valve are (quite sensibly) saying "No comment" to just about EVERY question that comes their way. The fact that they said "No comment" to this does not suggest anything, to ME it suggests they are thinking "O.k, that's the millionth stupid question i've been asked today, can't be bothered to think up a reply, no comment".
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Which means $10 that will go directly into Valve's pocket when Joe decides to 'upgrade' to Multiplayer over Steam, instead of requiring the middleman's fee.
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There's nothing immoral about recieving money for goods and services. You can certainly bet on $10 being the price difference between the 2 retail versions, perhaps even less, so Joe Public is hardly being ripped off here. Plus you can be certain the lite version will be packed with promotional material enticing anyone who buys it to upgrade. At worst, the only party being screwed over here is wal-mart, and even then you could argue that they will probably sell more copies of the game to their brand of consumer because of the reduced price point of 'lite'. I don't see how you can imply that anyone in this situation is getting a bad deal.
As for getting johnny nub into online gaming, i'd like to point out that counterstrike has already done the job of getting most of the market into that area of interest. How many people are there playing HL and HL-related mods online at present? All of these people are already online gamers, and will most likely be taking the full retail package. How can mod makers really complain with a player base like that? Additionally, lets not forget what got most of them online in the first place - counterstrike retail. I hardly think much time will pass before valve pulls a similar rabbit out of the hat (TF2 anyone?) to draw people into online gaming, which it now has an incentive to do, thanks to steam.
The steam subscription idea is potentially a very good thing for both the dedicated online gamer and companies that are interested in catering for them. With steam, developers are now obliged to properly support their software after the point of sale. You're looking at everything valve did to make HL the ongoing success it was, except on a larger scale. Potentially, you're looking at official mods with a significant budget. Ongoing patches that do more than simply fix bugs, but support and develop the official game much like a mod. Also think about the likes of VAC, valve now has a real incentive to pump money into services like this, up untill now the only reason for valve to bother with VAC at all was to hang on to its playerbase long enough to make money out of them with HL2.
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I also don't see anything about if you have to KEEP paying for the multiplayer upgrade, if you get it via Steam. Paranoia cha-cha-cha.
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The multiplayer upgrade for the lite version of HL2 would probably be a one off charge, i don't see anything about a relationship between steam and the multiplayer upgrade. Of course if you're getting HL2 itself via steam instead of buying a retail box, you'd expect to keep paying for it as long as you want to use it. The steam subscription would presumably give you access to valves entire catolgue, including the full version of HL2, for as long as you keep your subscription going.
Of course this could be speculation. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Valve has already confirmed this:
3 Retail packages -
No multiplayer
Multiplayer
Collectors edition with multiplayer
Steam subscription -
Access to HL2 with multiplayer + all new content that they create for it + anything else valve produces and their back catalogue. If you have a retail version of HL2 instead of the steam subscription you will have to pay for new HL2 content (Think mission packs)
There is a forum thread and a few news articles with the full details somewhere, i'll see if i can find them again.
<Edit> ok that didn't take long:
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As I'm sure you are aware the HL2 community is going crazy with the rumour that HL2 is going to be like a MMORPG and you will have to pay a fee each month via Steam to play HL2 multiplayer.
I don't believe this to be true but can you please put it to rest once and for all. PLEEEEEEASE.
Gabe Newell: Here's my current thinking: Some people want to buy Half-Life 2 in a store. Right now we have three SKUs planned at three price points. One will have single-player only and not play MODs and we think of that as the mass market SKU (sold mainly at the Costcos and Walmarts of the world). The second is our traditional single-player plus multiplayer SKU that runs MODs and is sold at places like EBX. The third is the collector's edition SKU with lots of cool bonus stuff for people who like cool bonus stuff.
In the Steam world, some people will want to buy it once, like the middle SKU above. Other people will want to buy the game on subscription (e.g. $9.95/month). The good news for the "buy it once" crowd is, well, they only have to pay once. The bad news is that when we come out with new content (expansion products, TF 2, and presumably other games) then they have to pay separately for those. We're pretty sure that the $9.95 guys are going to get the better value, as we've been pretty good over the years at generating a lot of content.
Now nobody has done this before, so we're scratching our heads and massaging the plans to make sure we've got the best set of options. We've had some feedback that we should sell the top SKU (single-player only no MODs) on Steam, and my reaction has been "yeah, right, for the three people in the world who have a broadband connection, are sophisticated enough to purchase software over the Internet, but DON'T want to play MODs and multiplayer". Some people have said "I want a subscription, but I think the box and the manual are cool, so what about sending me those" and I think that's pretty interesting and we're trying to figure out what to do for them (needless to say Sierra isn't exactly jumping for joy at the idea of selling us boxes so people don't buy Half-Life 2 in stores).
But nowhere has there been a suggestion that people pay in the store and then pay a monthly fee on top of that a la the MMORPG.
And Gabe makes this follow-up response in this forum thread:
The various SKUs will be available at the other stores. It's just how we think of them (we think of the lowest price one as the "Walmart" SKU even though Walmart will probably be the biggest single seller of all three SKUs given their volume).
TF2 isn't a MOD, correct. However the subscription will be for anything we make. So when TF2 ships, the subscribers get it as part of their subscription.
We've been talking with retailers about the retail SKUs for a long time. Steam pricing was what I was trying to explain. Steam options seemed to require an explanation of the retail SKUs.
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For people who buy the less expensive version, they can always upgrade to MOD and multiplayer using Steam. The price difference will be about the difference there was between the two versions.
The theory is that it helps out retailers like Walmart who have very broad reach into customer bases that don't care about multiplayer and who are very price conscious. Rather than having to wait a year for the product price to come down, there's a special version for them on day one.
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Now, anyone who knows what multiplayer gaming is and wants to participate in it is probably going to buy their games from game shops, rather than supermarkets. I don't know about the USA, but in Australia the supermarkety places' selection of games is awful; you don't go to one looking for games if you know what you're doing.
You're an online games player, you want the multiplayer version - go to the shop and buy the multiplayer version. How is that difficult? I hardly think finding the multiplayer version will be akin to the search for the holy grail.
Not everyone who buys computer games wants to shell out extra for a multiplayer mode they will never play. Likewise not everybody who buys a video card is interested in paying $300 for a top of the line card. The radeon 9000 sells to an OEM or budget market who want cards at that price point and are very happy to buy a rad 9000.
Out of interest - do you go into a car dealer's and complain about them carrying stock of a certain make/price bracket, on the grounds that this stock is not what <b>you</b> are interested in purchasing, and that your dumb self might buy one of these cars by accident?
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JUST to get peoples money.
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They're a freaking business, getting money in exchange for goods and services is the entire point of their existence. You make it sound like they're robbing you?
That's the point I made in my very first post: there will be a legion of gamers alienated because they can't get it at a specialty shop. There are thousands of gamers who live in regions where Wal-Mart and equivilents are their only source of buying things online..
And as for steam: When I buy something, I want to keep it. If I bought HL2, I'm going to want multiplayer to be out of the box, so that 10 years from now when Steam is long dead I can still play multiplayer, rather than being screwed because Valve cut off Steam in 2010.
You're an online games player, you want the multiplayer version - go to the shop and buy the multiplayer version. How is that difficult? I hardly think finding the multiplayer version will be akin to the search for the holy grail.
Not everyone who buys computer games wants to shell out extra for a multiplayer mode they will never play. Likewise not everybody who buys a video card is interested in paying $300 for a top of the line card. The radeon 9000 sells to an OEM or budget market who want cards at that price point and are very happy to buy a rad 9000.
Out of interest - do you go into a car dealer's and complain about them carrying stock of a certain make/price bracket, on the grounds that this stock is not what <b>you</b> are interested in purchasing, and that your dumb self might buy one of these cars by accident?
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JUST to get peoples money.
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They're a freaking business, getting money in exchange for goods and services is the entire point of their existence. You make it sound like they're robbing you? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
It plays on people who DONT look....which is the vast majority.
PS: Walmart is evil, never ever ever shop there or you are a supporter of slavery and fascism kthnxbai.
PPS: CWAG, your lack of attention to detail is not Valve's problem. I hope you do better with things like stop signs. Or do you just have to memorize the shapes to avoid killing pedestrians?
I'm still buying uber special edition though. :P
PS: Walmart is evil, never ever ever shop their or you are a supporter of slavery and fascism kthnxbai.
PPS: CWAG, your lack of attention to detail is not Valve's problem. I hope you do better with things like stop signs. Or do you just have to memorize the shapes to avoid killing pedestrians? <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I said vast majority...I am superior