Indie Game Steam Package Deals

By: Paul Eres

On: August 7th, 2009

Seems Steam has answered the indie games D2D package with a package deal of its own (two, in fact): Audiosurf, Blueberry Garden, Braid, Crayon Physics Deluxe, Darwinia, Everyday Shooter, Gish, Mr. Robot, The Path, World of Goo, all in one package for $30. And a subset of five of those for $20. Ends Monday.

Posted in Business, Steam

bob

@QXD-me: I don’t believe you can install a game from a backup without first contacting Steam’s servers for permission. And you can’t install Steam from scratch and get into your account in offline mode again without contacting the servers. Otherwise everybody would just trade backups/disc images back and forth and never go into online mode at all. They’re just there in case you have a slow internet connection and want to be able to avoid waiting for downloading again in the future.

So when Steam shuts down, it’s presumably going to be The Pirate Bay that lets you keep playing your games. Which is why I like Steam; there’s enough users that cracks for everything will be easy to find. Or, you know, maybe Steam will keep Gabe’s promise in the face of bankruptcy and spend their last cent removing any value from their last remaining asset (a captive audience) by pushing out a patch disabling the Steam authentication check. And then, you know, turn themselves in to go to jail for defrauding their creditors.
http://studioeres.com Paul Eres

the idea that steam will ‘shut down’ is a bit weird. they are very successful. they’ll be successful for years to come. by the time steam goes out of business you’ll likely be dead
Esquar

Got it, basically for the Path.
I’m wondering if I will agree that Mr. Robot has that “je ne sais quoi”, as I hadn’t really the impression it was all that special.
Trav

I hope this is still running when I get home tonight, looks like an AWESOME deal.

Re: The steam debate, I also feel that handing them the keys to your software is pretty homo, but I’m fairly hopeful that should it go down, either a pirate solution will be made available, or some legislation will show up in one of the free-er nations requiring vendors like steam, apple, msoft and amazon (just off the top of my head) to do what Gabe promised before caring about creditors.
Anon3354

@Paul: So … Steam is too big to fail? ;)

Going out of business is only one scenario, though. What if they get bought by MS, Sony, EA or worse: a capital firm that guts them for their IP? They are merely a speck of dirt compared to any of those. Once bought, all bets are off.

I doubt Steam will be around in a decade or two. Bigger gaming companies withered and faded away. Very few companies live that long and Valve is comparably small.
QXD-me

@Bob

You’re probably right, I’d never tried it, but what you say makes more sense than what I said.

But still, Steam’s going to be around for a fair while and even if it’s bought out, whoever takes over would probably keep it running or merge it with their service (it’s too much of a money spinner not to).
neil

i’ve been reading this website for a while now and saw this as the perfect opportunity to get into indie gaming. thank you for bringing the deal to my attention.

please can i join the tigsource group on steam? my username is nrvallen.
wiivn

I was lucky enough to log in for the first time ever on steam and to find out about the packages without even knowing they’re such a great deal for a short amount of time! And I’ve made my first purchase order :).