How did apple do it?
We used to be able to do that with PC games, too. But then Valve and Apple killed physical PC games.
Squizzy@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Infrapink@thebrainbin.org 1 day ago
Yeah, I have a copy of Half-Life: Blue Shift on CD somewhere, from before Steam was a thing.
Two things happened in parallel. This wasn't a conspiracy and there was no collusion, it was just businessmen making canny decisions which worked out. Fair warning, this post is longer than I expected.
In 1998, Apple released the iMac, the first PC without a floppy drive. In 2008, they released the MacBook Air, the first PC without an optical disc drive, for the sake of making it really really thin. A few subsequent Macs did have optical drives, but the last one was the MacBook Pro, released in 2012. On both occasions, people predicted that Apple was DOOMED, because who would want to buy a PC without basic hardware?
But people did. Some people depend on Mac-exclusive software, and come Apple fans are just cultists. In any case, removing components didn't adversely affect sales, and so other companies concluded they could make cheaper PCs by dropping floppy drives and optical drives, which they did. As such, you can't get a computer with a floppy drive at all any more; you can get one with an optical drive, but you have to know where to look and specifically ask for one.
Meanwhile, Valve were doing pretty well with Half-Life and its expansions. Releasing updates and patches was very much a fuck at the time, because Windows didn't have a package manager (and I'm not sure it has one even today). Valve's programmers started work on Steam initially as a way to distribute updates easily and automatically, but its potential as a DRM system quickly became apparent.
In 2004, Valve released their long-awaited and highly-anticipated new game, Half-Life 2 both physically and digitally... and all versions required Steam. No, you couldn't just put the DVD you owned into your PC, install the game, and play it. You needed to also install Valve's own DRM system, which would regularly call home, in order to play a copy of a game you physically own.
(Pedants and lawyers will say you only license, not own, the game on the DVD. This is true. However, you do own the DVD that the game is on. You don't own the game itself, but you do own that specific copy of it).
People hated this. PC gamers already found it intolerable that they had to have the CD in the drive to play games they owned as if it was a PlayStation, but having to register over the Internet? That was a bridge too far!... but this was Half-Life 2, and gamers™ will talk a big game about boycotting up until it's time to actually boycott. Everybody wanted to play Half-Life 2, because it's the sequel to one of the best, most influential games ever made, and it honestly really did live up to the hype. So they sucked it up, installed Steam, and had a blast with Half-Life 2. Steam also had a storefront grafted on top, allowing people to buy Valve's back catalogue through it, and would also serve as
The next year, Valve figured that hey, if they can sell their own games, why not those of other devs? So they started selling a selection of smaller games, and this is what really led to indie games becoming viable. Without the expense of packaging and distribution, smaller groups and solo devs were able to release smaller, cheaper, and more niche games and passion projects that didn't need to sell like gangbusters to make a profit without having to set up and maintain their own online shops. Steam became the standard vector for selling indie games, and over time, bigger and bigger games started being sold on Steam until it morphed from a major shop into infrastructure. It's no longer just a shop/DRM system, it's now The Thing That People Use For PC Games.
Just three years after Steam started selling third-party games, Apple started phasing out optical drives. Two years after the MacBook Air, Valve released Steam on Mac. As Steam grew and expanded, PCs with optical drives faded away, leaving PC gamers with no choice but to buy digitally, and that meant using Steam, which [https://www.xda-developers.com/valve-steam-monopoly-real-gamers-chose/](does have a monopoly in the PC gaming space).
And that is how the independent parallel actions of Apple and Valve killed physical PC gaming.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Phasing out the optical drive from laptops was just about inevitable regardless of what Apple did. It saved a lot on battery life, not just form factor. I might see digital distribution of music, not video games, as a bigger driver for removing the disc drive, too.
Infrapink@thebrainbin.org 1 day ago
Of course Apple weren't thinking about video games. But they still dropped optical drives, which led to everyone else dropping optical drives, hence no more physical PC games.
MurrayL@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Valve, sure. But this is a leap of logic that I have to hear more about.
caseofthematts@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Didn’t they stop manufacturing computers with CD/DVD drives a while ago? Perhaps that’s what they’re referring to.
Infrapink@thebrainbin.org 1 day ago
Yes, Apple were the first to make PCs without floppy drives, and also the first to make them without optical drives. Mac users kept buying Macs; other PC manufacturers saw that people were willing to buy PCs without optical drives, so they copied Apple, and now you can't buy any PC software (including games) physically.
hraegsvelmir@ani.social 1 day ago
Reading this and your other comment, this bit seems a bit disingenuous to me. Nobody is insisting on Steam in order to have DRM. Valve found a way to make Steam’s DRM palatable to gamers, and from there even managed to make people have a preference for it as a distribution channel. You pointed out yourself, gamers were not happy about this with the initial roll out with Half-Life 2. Whether it was their own games, helping jumpstart the age of indie devs, or the other parts of Steam like the communities and chat, they did actually add stuff to the program that gamers found value in. Nobody should operate under the illusions that a corporation is their friend and will actually look out for their interests, but it doesn’t help anyone to exaggerate making claims like “PC Gamers insist on DRM.” Heck, one of the most common complaints I see about Steam is people complaining about it having DRM like Denuvo in some games, or requiring you to launch some publisher’s launcher and sign in to one of their accounts to play a game when you’re already signed in to the account in Steam you bought the game with.