>Unfortunately for you, the game's industry is slowly and inevitably moving towards personal subscription based purchases.
It's my guess that this model will work until the first major publisher, for whatever reason, collapses - or simply stops bothering with providing access to older games. Then people will realize how insane and retarded this entire system of "paying for access" is. Same goes for cloud computing, by the way.
Besides, you are confusing publishers and developers. Valve is a rare case where both are one and the same, making them a very weird exception, but in general, direct distribution is bad for publishers (which is a good thing). It's really the same as with the (major) labels.
>Imagine how much Portal 2 cost Valve to make, was it worth it?
Valve is also a rare case in that they still make games worth playing. Most of the rest of the industry is a sea of bland, uncreative genericness with fancy graphics. I acknowledge Valve for this, but I still refuse to pay for access to games. I want a copy that plays where I want, whenever I want, and that still works three decades from now.
Until this insanity stops, I hoist the black flag. Yarr.
How about this alternative: "Until this insanity stops, I don't purchase their product, and instead buy indy games or games from publishers that support my policies". Voting with your wallet will encourage these policies in developers.
If you don't adopt this approach, you look more like the normal "entitled, rationalising pirate", a story I see regularly going something like:
1) I want games that aren't just fancy graphics! Give me gameplay, and I'll pay!
2) Oh, so there are these games now. Well, now I want easy access! Give me downloads, and I'll pay!
3) Hold on, I can download? Well, now they're too expensive! Make them cheaper and I'll pay!
4) So iOS games are about $4.99 for a high quality title? Well, that's still to expensive! Make them cheaper, and I'll pay!
5) Oooo, $0.99. Well, that was published by EA, sooo - use a publisher that doesn't use DRM on any title, ever, even back in time and I'll pay!
n + 1) Insert new demand here, then I'll pay!
The result here being that, actually, said person didn't actually want any of these things. They just want excuses to rationalise away their taking the work of a group of people that they evidently do want (otherwise, why bother pirating it) without any kind of remuneration so they can do those crazy greedy things like feeding their family and raising their kids.
You should check out the roaring indie game scene. The Humble Indie bundle (http://www.humblebundle.com) has given me spectacular gameplay for very little money. (No, I don't pay pennies for the bundle).
I know a bit about and highly respect the indie scene. They are, in my opinion, the future of game development in general. I paid for the second bundle, and was highly entertained for quite a while. It's a very cool project.
Thanks for the link! The concept from part 3 of treating the axes as unit vectors that default to (1, 0) and (0, 1) but can be rotated at will really helped bridge the gap in my mind between rotating vectors "manually" and using matrix multiplication.
I love buying these bundles to support the charities and the developers even though I never really play the games. But it does seem to me that there is more innovation occurring in the indie space than from the mainstream developers.
It's my guess that this model will work until the first major publisher, for whatever reason, collapses - or simply stops bothering with providing access to older games. Then people will realize how insane and retarded this entire system of "paying for access" is. Same goes for cloud computing, by the way.
Besides, you are confusing publishers and developers. Valve is a rare case where both are one and the same, making them a very weird exception, but in general, direct distribution is bad for publishers (which is a good thing). It's really the same as with the (major) labels.
>Imagine how much Portal 2 cost Valve to make, was it worth it?
Valve is also a rare case in that they still make games worth playing. Most of the rest of the industry is a sea of bland, uncreative genericness with fancy graphics. I acknowledge Valve for this, but I still refuse to pay for access to games. I want a copy that plays where I want, whenever I want, and that still works three decades from now.
Until this insanity stops, I hoist the black flag. Yarr.