I wish it was available off Steam. I refuse to rent games (and no I don't trust Valve to release the code for all the games they host if Valve ever goes under).
Agreed. I stopped playing new PC games when everything went exclusively to Steam model. I had so much trouble with Steam when it was new (Steam down, can't play any games; Steam needs to update, please wait 3 hours to play any games; internet down, can't play any games), and I lost so many purchased games on iPad and iPhone when the developers decided to pull their games (which I purchased) off the store because they didn't want to maintain them after a couple years. Sure I could keep playing...until I bought a new device or the "Genius" factory reset mine while trying to fix an issue, and the games were no longer available to download.
I hear you guys. But I have old games on 5.25" floppy, 3.5" floppy, CD games meant for DOS and Windows 3.x, shelves full of Talonsoft wargames I can never likely run again . . . so I don't really mind spending a little bit and getting, essentially, a game rental. They've all turned out to be rentals, in the end, even the ones that cost me $60 back 30 years ago. I don't disagree but my value calculation is different and, these days, very much front-loaded.
I can respect that, buuuuut... I still play Master of Magic. Granted for my ease of playing I have repurchased it from GOG, but I was continuously just using the old version with DOSBox for years.
I also replay Jagged Alliance 2, and a bunch of other old games like Kings of Dragon Pass, og X-COM and Appocalypse, etc, all of which still work fine on Win7 (though we'll see how long MicroSoft lets me keep not updating... I may just have to make a dedicated old games machine).
And GOG has tons of games so skipping the Steam "subscription" method is pretty easy. May have to hunt down an old version of OGRE and see if I can't finagle DOSBox to work with it.
It isn't even about value calculation for me. I still have and play a lot of ancient games: Sim City and 2000, Civilization and Civ 3, the entire "Gold Box" collection (I have the collector's CD) and construction set, all 3 Eye of the Beholder games, the entire Doom series, the original Half Life, the entire Descent series, Lands of Lore, the entire Bard's Tale series with construction set, and Diablo 1 and 2. You could call me a retro-gamer since I'm still mildly obsessed with 30 year old games. And because I OWN the games I can continue playing them 30 years from now. But the stuff I bought on iOS, some of it I was as obsessed with as the old DOS and Win95 games, and I was not told I was renting them. I was very upset when I found I could not play the Infinity Blade trilogy anymore or Deathwatch or a dozen of the early tower defense games (there are 4 that I replayed multiple times). I played those things to death and still loved them, then got a new device or had a problem with my device and the "support" they gave was to factory reset it and then I was shocked to find I could not get my games back. My saves were stored in the cloud but the games themselves were lost forever!
I wish it was available off Steam. I refuse to rent games (and no I don't trust Valve to release the code for all the games they host if Valve ever goes under).
ReplyDeleteAgreed. I stopped playing new PC games when everything went exclusively to Steam model. I had so much trouble with Steam when it was new (Steam down, can't play any games; Steam needs to update, please wait 3 hours to play any games; internet down, can't play any games), and I lost so many purchased games on iPad and iPhone when the developers decided to pull their games (which I purchased) off the store because they didn't want to maintain them after a couple years. Sure I could keep playing...until I bought a new device or the "Genius" factory reset mine while trying to fix an issue, and the games were no longer available to download.
DeleteI hear you guys. But I have old games on 5.25" floppy, 3.5" floppy, CD games meant for DOS and Windows 3.x, shelves full of Talonsoft wargames I can never likely run again . . . so I don't really mind spending a little bit and getting, essentially, a game rental. They've all turned out to be rentals, in the end, even the ones that cost me $60 back 30 years ago. I don't disagree but my value calculation is different and, these days, very much front-loaded.
DeleteI can respect that, buuuuut... I still play Master of Magic. Granted for my ease of playing I have repurchased it from GOG, but I was continuously just using the old version with DOSBox for years.
DeleteI also replay Jagged Alliance 2, and a bunch of other old games like Kings of Dragon Pass, og X-COM and Appocalypse, etc, all of which still work fine on Win7 (though we'll see how long MicroSoft lets me keep not updating... I may just have to make a dedicated old games machine).
And GOG has tons of games so skipping the Steam "subscription" method is pretty easy. May have to hunt down an old version of OGRE and see if I can't finagle DOSBox to work with it.
I prefer GOG myself, for the same reason.
DeleteIt isn't even about value calculation for me. I still have and play a lot of ancient games: Sim City and 2000, Civilization and Civ 3, the entire "Gold Box" collection (I have the collector's CD) and construction set, all 3 Eye of the Beholder games, the entire Doom series, the original Half Life, the entire Descent series, Lands of Lore, the entire Bard's Tale series with construction set, and Diablo 1 and 2. You could call me a retro-gamer since I'm still mildly obsessed with 30 year old games. And because I OWN the games I can continue playing them 30 years from now. But the stuff I bought on iOS, some of it I was as obsessed with as the old DOS and Win95 games, and I was not told I was renting them. I was very upset when I found I could not play the Infinity Blade trilogy anymore or Deathwatch or a dozen of the early tower defense games (there are 4 that I replayed multiple times). I played those things to death and still loved them, then got a new device or had a problem with my device and the "support" they gave was to factory reset it and then I was shocked to find I could not get my games back. My saves were stored in the cloud but the games themselves were lost forever!
Delete