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mrchris
No more bailouts
Premium
join:2002-10-01
North Babylon, NY
 ·Optimum Online
edited
|  To clear out rumors...
Kamakiri mailed Valve's Gabe Newell about those "pay to play" rumors, and received the following response (We at Half-Life Source has confirmed this as legit):
quote:
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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.
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And Gabe makes this follow-up response in this forum thread:
quote:
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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.
[text was edited by author 2003-09-15 18:24:08] | |
oliphant5
Got Identity?
Premium
join:2003-05-24
Corona, CA
| So all they have to do is wait 6-7 months between releases and they can rip off their customers more than normal. Bitchen plan. How long is it between Valve releases? Too long to be paying $10/mo for questionable, unreliable software and an extremely limited library.
No thanks Valve...I'll turn my attention (and wallet) to other titles from other publishers.
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-- Munis Killed the Telco Star -- Powered by Barry McKockenner Racing in association with Jack Mikkokov Motorsports | |
Ateam311
Mr. T Is Back
Premium
join:2003-03-08
Harrisonburg, VA
clubs:
| reply to mrchris
By just reading what you posted, it makes it seem like some devious scheme to suck money out of our pockets for a worthless cause. My question is, though, what else is going to factor into the $9.99/month charge besides a few mods here and there? Obviously there's got to be a whole other side to paying the fee that we've yet to be told about, at least I'd hope so.
I think it best that we just sit back, relax, and just wait to see what happens as HL2 begins shipping. | |
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