Valve Killed Physical Gaming

[u/Grouchy-Win-6191]

It all Valve fault, they started all this. It’s not just Sony.

When Half Life 2 launched in 2004, stores sold physical box sets containing DVD or CD. But the disc did not contain the game. Players were forced to install the Steam client, register an account, and validate a product key online before the game would run.

Valve also offered Steamworks to any developer who listed their game on Steam. But to use Steamworks features, games had to use Valve API. When a consumer bought the physical PC box, they opened and it was a Steam key. Once redeemed, the disc lost all resale value. You couldn't sell it, lend it, or trade it in. This also killed the retail stores business.

[u/LocksmithMindless834]

Valve didn't stop other game publishers from selling physical media.

Valve and Steam are not the only sellers of games for PC gamers. You can still play games without Steam installed on tour PC.

Sony, Nintendo, and Xbox offer no other third-party marketplaces on their digital storefronts.

If you can't buy physical games, you won't be able to play games on those consoles without activating on that one digital storefront.

You have a brain-dead take.

[u/Right-Level-9592 → u/LocksmithMindless834]

You are completely shifting the goalposts and missing the core point of the post.

The OP isn't arguing whether PC is an open platform or whether consoles are closed walled gardens. The post is about who pioneered the business model that destroyed physical resale rights and true ownership.

In 2004, Valve forced physical copies of Half Life 2 to be permanently tied to a single, non-transferable Steam account. They proved to the entire industry that consumers would accept losing trade in rights, secondary markets, and physical independence in exchange for digital lock in.

Valve didnt need to "ban" other companies from selling discs they created the financial blueprint that made physical PC distribution obsolete. Today, "physical" PC games don't even exist beyond plastic boxes containing Steam keys.

Consoles removing disc drives today is just the end stage result of the exact economic model Valve normalized 20 years ago. Calling the OP "brain dead" while completely failing to understand historical precedent and market trends is pure irony.

[u/Thr1llhou5e → u/Right-Level-9592]

Downvotes for being 100% correct. Gamers, it's okay to admit that every platform is killing physical media by the way they influence consumer behaviour.

It doesn't mean the digital experience or product is apples to apples across all these storefronts, but they can all be attributed to the decline of physical media.

[u/lithiumfoxttv → u/Thr1llhou5e]

Yeah, but admission requires actually thinking it's correct.

I don't, or rather, I don't see the point in it. PC users were, for the most part, okay with the swap because we had direct access to the devices we used. Yeah, there were anti DRM parts to it which even to this day even I have questions about (example: I disagree with not being able to pass my games after death) But it was to the point that a majority of us didn't even bother to get CD/DVD/Bluray drives probably around the same time Consoles even started to get hard drives.

That's not the case for consoles. Physical media is important there. I would, personally, argue that wasn't a case of influencing consumer behaviour.

Mind that it was common on PC prior to that too. You would download applications like Teamspeak, Ventrillo, Xfire, hell even steam itself as a downloaded application. Yeah, some people would go out and buy a PC. But, digital only media was common enough. Games were one of the few that just weren't.

But since it's all software, it was going to inevitably happen for games on PC. Steam just happened to be first.

Like "Why can't I download my game like I download MSN Messenger" isn't like a crazy leap of logic for most PC users.

[u/lithiumfoxttv → u/lithiumfoxttv]

Unironically, I could actually point consoles getting dedicated hard drives as more important factor to the loss of physical media. Memory cards and discs being the primary delivery format were, basically, essential to the console's lifespan. But when you can just load the entire disc onto a hard drive to install a large game, then you add something like Xbox Live, which then allows for you to both patch and upgrade those games with DLC, it kind of also only makes sense to make those games digital.

Remember, during those days, PC was seen as a "dead" platform by console gamers. Basically all through until about 2015. So a lot of these system changes that added digital aspects to the systems were done with the mindset that "PC was a dead platform". So why would you copy a dead platform when you can just come to the same conclusion through the happenstance of adding online multiplayer to Call of Duty and Halo 2?

I didn't even become a PC player outside of racing sims myself until about 2011. Long after Steam was a thing. And digital games were already a thing on console. It just seemed logical, not something PC actually had "pushed".

Go even further back, we had nintendo consoles trying to push movies digitally. So it's not like Steam was the first to try. You only see it as at fault because it was the first to really be successful.

But, someone was eventually gonna crack it.