6 ms·

Still a no deal for me, if my purchases in Stadia cannot grant me access to the game on other platforms. Who knows when Google decides Stadia isn't worth it any

• chronogram 7y ago
  And with Google's legendary support quality, will you even get an answer to your questions when something is wrong?
  • stcredzero 7y ago
    Isn't the cold, heedless authority a trope of fiction? Doesn't it signify, "the authoritarian power that everyone agrees is bad, so can be used as a villain without offending anyone?" Isn't that a trope of future dystopian Sci-fi? The cold, heartless, amoral mega-corporation, uninterested in any individual's plight, only in efficiency? We no longer own our entertainment purchases. We no longer hold the data. We no longer own our communications with our friends, relatives, and coworkers. The very fabric of our relationships and our most intimate and valued expressions is now wholly contained on the servers of mega-corporations, to be traded and sold to other corporations, to be mined for information for profit. Medieval peasants no longer owned the land they worked. There was another level of status in medieval England, the villein: a feudal tenant entirely subject to a lord or manor to whom he paid dues and services in return for land. The villein didn't own his land. He was a chattel accessory to the land.
• notimetorelax 7y ago
  Isn’t it very similar to Steam?
  • zeusk 7y ago
    Not quite. I can play steam games offline, I can share them with my friends/family and the most important part being - steam's platform has been reliable with top notch support since 90s while Google hasn't gotten that even in 2019.
    • nathankunicki 7y ago
      You can only play them offline as long as it can check in to Steam every few days. If (once) Steam is turned off, it will no longer be able to do that.
      • Aeolun 7y ago
        The difference is that 90% if not more of Valve’s income is from Steam, so unless they feel like killing their company they won’t turn it off.
      • zeusk 7y ago
        > If (once) Steam is turned off Big if, and if Steam doesn't provide an alternative method or change their DRM before turning off. Something unprecedented for Steam over 20+ years, but not so for Google.
        • nathankunicki 7y ago
          Steam, one day, will disappear. Not tomorrow, but perhaps 100 years from now. On that day, you will no longer be able to download or even play those games for more than a few days.
          • deleted 7y ago
            [deleted]
          • gnufied 7y ago
            Will I be alive to care?
            • nathankunicki 7y ago
              That's a sad response. Video game preservation efforts are ongoing for games older than the NES right now, I don't see why that wouldn't be the case in the future for the current generation of consoles.
            • 7y ago
  • Arelius 7y ago
    I think the primary worry is that A. Google has a long history of shutting down products that seems erratic. and B. the economics of this seem precarious, thus pushing on A. Where Steam has proven to be very profitable and Valve has a longer track record, and this is their primary business.
    • v7p1Qbt1im 7y ago
      Tell me a mainstream (for Google scale) service that shut down. Offline Trips, Reader, Inbox, etc do not count. A couple of million users (at max) are just not enough. If bigger things shut down they either have a replacement or they are Google+. And no one complained when that was shut down. Also Stadia has a subscription basis. Cloud gaming is just too important to let Microsoft win. Just like cloud in general. Regarding the primary business argument. This is exactly what they are hedging against. Google knows ad revenue can‘t grow forever. Regulation might be coming. Cloud and stuff like this will have to take more and more of the load.
      • ncallaway 7y ago
        > Offline Trips, Reader, Inbox, etc do not count. A couple of million users (at max) are just not enough. What if Stadia under-performs their financial expectations? What if it under-performs those expectations for 2-4 years? I'm not certain that Google will shut-down Stadia in that time-frame, but I'm absolutely not certain that it will also be running at that point. I'm extremely confident that Valve won't shut down Steam in that time-frame, though.
        • opendomain 7y ago
          What if Google takes away enough revenue with Stadia? Then Valve may no be able to keep Steam up in the time frame.
          • dingo_bat 7y ago
            But all games you bought from steam will still be yours to play. Stadia games will just stop working as soon as Google pulls the plug.
  • msbarnett 7y ago
    Not at all? You can (indeed, have to) download your purchases from Steam. Many of which are DRM free. Valve has also said they'll remove Valve DRM from the games that use it in the unlikely event they shut down. There are, in other words, obvious contingency plans. With this, the game you "own" lives and runs solely on Google's servers. If they decide to shut those servers down, you're fucked. But good thing Google isn't known for suddenly EOLing popular products, right?
    • Godel_unicode 7y ago
      DRM doesn't matter for most video games, only servers matter. If steam shuts down you won't be able to play most games regardless of DRM.
      • msbarnett 7y ago
        I don’t think “most” games are multiplayer only
• deleted 7y ago
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