HL2: Pay To Play?

[Bigjakkstaffa]

So was I impressed with what I saw? Did it make the wait worthwhile? Well unfortunatly I'd have to say No. They didn't have anything new to show us at all, we were treated to the video's from E3 with matching commentry and absolutely nothing new. A bit of a shame really I was hoping they would have rendered some new scenes for us to make the trip worthwhile but alas it seems ECTS doesn't warrant anything new from Valve.

There was no Q&A session after the showing, and we were hurridly rushed out of the door to let in the next bunch of eager journalists, however I did manage to grab the only valve representative on my way out and fire a couple of questions at him.

The first question was on Half Life 2's release date, and they are 100% committed to a 30th September release. The game will be available so they say. Secondly I asked him about some rumours that we have heard that Half Life 2 multiplayer is going to be Pay to Play only, unfortunatly the only official response that I received was no comment. I have to say I was a bit surprised as I was expecting a definative no, so it looks like Valve may be toying with the idea at the very least. If we find out any more info about Pay to Play we will let you know straight away, but if valve do go in this direction with Half Life 2 we may be looking at the whole industry making a shift in this direction as well. Food for thought.

Quoted from www.ukgamer.com

--Jakk:t

[germanNiklas]

:(
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

i like the bit tho that he says 30th september

i was at game tho yesterday
and they always have like a list with release dates
and it said, HALF LIFE 2, NOVEMBeR
confusing this is

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Well, their website still says Sept 30th

As for the online play, well, im not massively bothered as i preffer SP to MP

--Jakk:t

[ComPooTer]

ooooh september 30th yessss..................

pay to play what **** = / the single player and multiplayer mods was what got them famous in the first place.

TFC and CS are still being played today.........i think pay to play is lame

[Cyan]

If they do have Pay to Play then they better only do it on their own servers. It's a ridiculous idea, that's like saying you can't have a LAN without paying :rolleyes:

I'ts like paying to walk through the front door of someone’s house so you can take out their trash.

[NJEnviroguy]

Thats rediculous for a FPS if they try to implement it. Its no MMORPG where servers are tracking 1000s of stats realtime across the world 24/7.

What are they thinking?! Oh right, just another way to sap the consumers for a buck.

[ComPooTer]

sure they will sell a lot of copies of hl-2, but im thinking making u pay online might their lower their ovverall sales and they will lose a lot of money. most of the common people only like playing online for "free" and the rich people who have the money can afford to play everquest, planetside, etc.

i hate u rich people!!!! and i especially dislike the people who charge u to play online :rolleyes:

[ComPooTer]

true nj why would anyone pay for a first person shooter? we dont even have STATS that have to be recorded........thats crazy
the only way u should pay money is a MMORG like u said, its ridiculous if we have to pay for a FPS

[Bigjakkstaffa]

TO be honest, even despite the guys refusal to comment, i still doubt this highly. If anythign Valve have always seemed to me a company that cares for their customers, look at the volume of official support for free mods and continual support for HL, a game approaching its 5th Aniverssary, and they seem to have the consumer in mind with this 30th September deadline, they seem to be strivign to hit it to keep their promise to gamers, wheras the likes of 3d realms would tell everyone they had changed their minds and to bugger off until they said it was done.

This is one rumor outside the sort of stuff the enquirer publishes that im taking with a hefty pinch of salt, you'll probably find the spokesperson in question was caught totally out of the blue by this and simply replied 'no comment' to cover himself...at least i hope so

--Jakk:t

[germanNiklas]

i hate games where u have to pay monthly
but WORLD OF WARCRAFT, that will be my first MMORPG
i dont actualy lik them but WoW will ROCK SO MUCH

mmorpgs are bad for people unser 18 like me who have no credit card and have parents who say NO, THESE FIRMS JUST RIP YOU OFF blablabla :(

[ComPooTer]

i want world of warcraft bad, but im not buying it because my parents wont pay for it

well the monthly fee that is

[cbh]

Everything is money and money and money!!

[jbell255]

The worst is when they charge you $50 for the game and then they charge you for each month to play online.

[Bluehail]

Originally posted by jbell255
The worst is when they charge you $50 for the game and then they charge you for each month to play online.

Thats true. If they want to charge for online playing, then the game should be free.

[Cyan]

Thats true. If they want to charge for online playing, then the game should be free.

Or at least (and better yet) make it so that you can also play single player too if'n you wanna.

[rusty4x4]

Pay to play is the best way to alienate the strong and loyal following Valve has built to date. IMHO, that income generating model is best suited to multiplayer games with a large world, where there's an incentive to explore (e.g., Everquest). For the limited maps in HL, where the idea is to fragfragfrag, I do not see anyone wanting to pay repeatedly for that experience. I hope these rumours are not true.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

See ab=nother post i made about 3 different versions of Hl2 for release..it seems it wont be stirctly pay to play, bit there will be a subscription based system running offa Steam of sorts

--Jakk:t

[CrazyCrusher]

I dont know if this will answer your Q's or leave more open I know it made me think to. its a copy n paste save ya from going to the site :)

More On Half-Life 2 SKU
9/3/2003 19:32 PST | Half-Life 2 | by redef
GNS Project received (from Gabe Newell) another piece of info regarding the different Half-Life 2 SKU’s. This quote explains it all:
For people who buy the less expensive version, they can always upgrade to MOD and multiplayer using Steam. The price difference will be about the difference there was between the two versions.
The theory is that it helps out retailers like Walmart who have very broad reach into customer bases that don't care about multiplayer and who are very price conscious. Rather than having to wait a year for the product price to come down, there's a special version for them on day one.

When will the controversy and outrage cease?!

Gabe Newell on Pay to Play Rumors 120 Comments
9/3/2003 2:50 PST | Half-Life 2 | by Fragmaster
A fan by the name of Kamakiri mailed Valve's Gabe Newell about those "pay to play" rumors, and received the following response (which has been confirmed as being legit):
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.

And Gabe makes this follow-up response in this forum thread:
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.

This clears up a lot, and I think this is the first public mention of the collector's special super edition. Oh, if you don't know what an SKU is, "SKU stands for Stock Keeping Unit and is a number associated with a product for inventory purposes. Each product must have a SKU, and each SKU must be unique."

if you want to read more about it, you can go to http://www.planethalflife.com/ but I think almost every thing is coverd in this port from BigJaks,

[Baby Arm]

Hmmm this makes me nervous. One way or another this is going to cost us more money I think. I wonder if the mod and internet version will be the normal 49.95 or if the basic no multiplayer version will be 49.95.

I hope valve has worked on this game as hard as they have on this BS.

[Logan[TeamX]]

This is crazy. All I want to do is to play CS. Buy a box, get CS as a retail game or a mod... don't care. All I want is the same functionality as CS1.5 and before. Download the update, install... keep playing.

What's so hard about that?

[NJEnviroguy]

First he says:

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.

Then he ends with:

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.

Sounds like double talk or just putting a wolf in sheep's clothing. OK, so they don't want to come out and say they are chargeing for monthly play rights. But, we're gonna have to subscribe in order to get the add-ons, mods, etc?! Please, they can scratch their heads as much as they want, all they are doing is deflecting an avenue of revenue from one aspect to another.

I'm gonna reiterate what I said in another thread...by implementing this fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants updating on code....assuming this is part of your "monthly fee," its gonna hurt the modding community. And they are a pretty vocal ciricle in any group.

[Baby Arm]

It's sad. I'm not that old but i feel like the best days of the internet may have already passed. From people calling me a criminal for downloading mp3s to this constant 'lets find more ways to nickel and dime people to death' mentality at companies..it's really beating me down.

From what I understand non-valve created mods will be free, unless they want to charge through this steam thing. I can't imagine paying for a new mod without ever playing it. I'm confused about the subscription..do you get to play all valve games or just the one's you have bought? Patches will still be free. Heh that's what I'm waiting for..the day when we have to pay for patches.

I just can't believe there are enough people who can 1)afford to keep their machines upgraded so that they can 2) play expensive games and then 3) pay monthly charges on top of that. It seems like sooner or later this subscription **** will crater..unless everone doesn't mind a 1000$+ yearly gaming cost. Crazy. If they start charging me to play BF1942 I think I'll kill myself. :-@

[CrazyCrusher]

This is one of the problems the gamming community is going to come across, and the only way its going to stop coming is if people don’t buy it simple as that, I will never pay for game use online, I don’t care how good the game is, let it be HL2 DoomIII TF2 BT1942, if it does come to that them games will not!! Be on my shelf at home but on the store shelf because I for one will not buy any of them, they need to fix this rumor and come out with a better explanation than they have, they are all backing talking them self, and not telling anyone what’s really going on, and they need to, I suggest a Pole email, lets get a huge email of Question looking for answers and send it to them<-----ye thats going to happen, but thats what people need to do, I new there was something up when they came out with that steam BS, but we all dont know whats going on at this time, but im sure know one is going to know the full truth about anything untill the game comes out and we all buy it, then find out, I hope to god we dont have to pay for patches and so on after this comes out, as for mods, I think we will not get them unless we pay for them, its all a money thing, and they will not get money from me if it ends up pay for play :)

[Someone Stupid]

With how moddable CS is if they make it pay to play, nobody will play HL2 online and just stick to the old CS instead and mod the new weapons and whatnot into it.

[Duke523]

I hate pay to play games....I have already purched the game, Why must I pay agian? GREEDY!!!!!!!!

[ROFISH]

Please repeat after me:

YOU DO NOT PAY FOR PLAYING ONLINE!

YOU PAY FOR EXTRAS LIKE CS, TFC, ETC.

[CrazyCrusher]

Originally posted by ROFISH
Please repeat after me:

YOU DO NOT PAY FOR PLAYING ONLINE!

YOU PAY FOR EXTRAS LIKE CS, TFC, ETC.

dont use caps when posting its a form of YELLLING, the point people here are trying to make, if you read the post right, WE DONT AND SHOULD NOT HAVE TO PAY FOR MODS!!! or any other lil add on they come out with, from mods to playing online, thats what this is about, we allready pay for internet use, so i would sugest reading the post correctly b4 posting.

[ROFISH]

helo I spek teh AOL. b4 u post agn, type RL englsh plz.

There's a reason I "yelled." It's because you guys are taking this well beyond any drama I've seen. (Plus, in MY forum, you'd get yelled at for quoting a post right above you, BTW.)

About the mod part, you can play all your mods from the net for free too. Valve owns CS2. If they want to release it for free, they can. If they want to make you pay for it, they can. It's their property. Quit complaining.

[CrazyCrusher]

:)

[CrazyCrusher]

Originally posted by ROFISH
helo I spek teh AOL. b4 u post agn, type RL englsh plz.

There's a reason I "yelled." It's because you guys are taking this well beyond any drama I've seen. (Plus, in MY forum, you'd get yelled at for quoting a post right above you, BTW.)

About the mod part, you can play all your mods from the net for free too. Valve owns CS2. If they want to release it for free, they can. If they want to make you pay for it, they can. It's their property. Quit complaining.

helo I spek teh AOL. b4 u post agn, type RL englsh plz<----to funny, u ask me to speak real english

well guess you are one of the suckers who would pay for play, hmmm go figure, and for one thing, Ill complain to my lil hearts desire, I just love it, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, hmm and let me see oh ye, but this is not your forum, and if i did yell in your forum and i got yelled at because of it, well dont you think you should know better. plus this is not your forum, so get back to the post. oh and are you telling me to stop complaing or every one is this post, because I really dont think im the only one, so pls close your lil mouth:t

[Someone Stupid]

First read the TOS that you agreed to, now see how many things you violated. Yelling in a derogatory manner and moking people with your "AOL" speak. Both of those can be construed as enough to get you banned. Seeing as you have a grand total of five post, it easily could. What I'm about to tell you below might get me banned and I have a thousand, but if it happens, it happens. At least I'll have been banned knowing I've actually contributed something to the forum before I left other than a lot of whining.

Secondly, read the whole thread and you'll see what you screamed about was already addressed in several different formats. He quoted you because you acted like a bloody fool and to try to make it a bit more obvious to you since generally teenieboppers have problems comprehending or even remembering what they posted. I see no problems with quoting that, nor I'd imagine would anyone else here would except for you. In fact in most debates/arguements, quoting the person above you to tear him or her apart on each sentence is quite common. Grow up kid.

Doom 3 wasn't going to ship with multiplayer until people complained about it, now it's shipping with multiplayer. That is called feedback. Granted no developers are here (but Carmack got feedback through forums and other means), but people here do post on other forums which do have developers checking up on from time to time - so talking gets others views.

Well I'm glad this isn't your forum (or should we call it a playpen), we don't go by your childish acts. We try our best to act like adults instead of children (though the occasional moron does push that *hint hint*), we don't yell, flame, etc, GENERALLY. Nobody is dramatizing it if you knew anybody here you'd know that this was a discussion, nothing more, nothing less. If you think this is drama your life must be really dull - get off the internet and go outside for a change - or go back to your own forum to have your ego trips.

We never said they couldn't make us not pay for it, and we have a right to complain, just as we have a right to lavish praise. Seems that since your favorite developer (I'm guessing here) is being questioned your going off the deep in. Some just questioned the ideal of paying for mods from Valve since mods aren't exactly hard to do when you have the source code in hand and all you do is sit on your laurels for years and years. How long has CS and Half-Life been out? Thank you. We weren't talking about Team Fortress and such if you'd have any reading comprehension, but more on the ideal of mods on the independent type.

Come back after you've gone through puberty please. You can spend the time in your forum yelling at fellow 3rd graders for qouting othe 3rd graders. Either grow up and lose this holier than thou attitude or leave. If you don't like what is being said, leave. Nobody forced you to come here and act like a jackass and nobody is keeping you from leaving. The door is the little X in the upper right corner of the window.

PS. Don't expect me to respond, I'm only pointing out all the reasons why your acting like a fool here, and I could be MUCH MUCH harsher but seeing as I'm thinking that you can't get into PG-13 movies with how you are acting. I'm trying my best to be polite as possible on this since you didn't understand it the first time someone explained it to you in simple english.

[ROFISH]

If font/size/color tags aren't allowed, have them physically removed from the code. I assumed that since they're in, it's OK to use them. I'm sorry I broke the rules here. I'm new here, gimme a break. :/

Secondly, I did not break any of the TOS rules. Although I probably have broken a million unwritten rules of the forums, I did break any of the terms I have agreed to. (And then there's the whole is clicking Agree is a legally binding contract or not, but that's a different argument.) (And then the terms I have agreed to are for internet.com. Again, it's just me being nit-picky.)

Thirdly, I have a extreme distaste for "AOLSpeak." It is commonly referred to as replacing "ur" as "your" and "2" for "to/too" and not having proper grammer, etc. Personally, I think it makes it look like someone as less as they should be considered. Also considered with this should be double-posting, quoting the person above, and other things that are just take up unneeded space.

Lastly, why must you assume that all lamers must be under the age of twelve? How do you know it's just someone who doesn't know the "neighborhood rules?" I may have been a jerk, but have you seen your own post? Calling someone a child doesn't make you any more mature than myself in this instance.

[Duke523]

I never signed up under anything by earthweb.com or internet.com. I signed up under some ultimate formboard and it was in a link that showed me what I was a member. I don't know how I did it, but Sysopt is about the only place I ever post anymore.

It was 3 years ago.....OK. :p