Re:Steam Machine Teardown
by xhrpost on Thursday December 19, 2013 @02:16PM
(#6937055)
I remember going to E3 some ten years ago with friends and we couldn't stop laughing at the Phantom. IIRC, they were either going to charge per minute played or the games were going to be rent-only or something of that nature. It just seemed more like "how can we possibly exploit more money from players" versus Steam's idea of changing the way we do gaming. So I would personally argue that Steam is significantly different.
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Aren't games on Steam pretty much "rent-only"?
Considering your don't own them in a sense that you are not able to use them without your Steam account.
With Steam at least you only pay once (and FYI some Steam games don't have any DRM but they are a minority). I'd have to dig but the impression that is in my memory is that you would get a game for a time period for a price and then pay again if you wanted to play again. I could be remembering completely wrong here though, I just don't recall the idea of "pay once, play until we go out of business".
Steam is a pay-once indefinite rental, the same as any other software that is sold with fine print that disclaims first-sale rights with the excuse that it's only a license, not a sale. This is very different from a fixed-term renewable rental.
How is that any different from Xbox One? Buy a disc off the shelf, get caught swearing online, get banned from Xbox Live and lose everything!
Far as I know, nobody was banned from Steam for swearing online.