Last Remnant activation hiccup fixed News

There's as good a reason as any not to buy games through Steam. Another is the fact that you can buy it cheaper than their asking price of £29.99 online anyway, e.g. GAME have it for £24.99 and I'm sure it can be found cheaper elsewhere.

Someone remind me again what the point of digital distribution services like Steam is? It's certainly not for buying games cheaper or earlier, that's for sure.

The Last Remnant is £23.04 at Amazon by the way. ;)

and on EU steam it cost 39.99€

shopto.nets selling it for 22 pounds

QVC sneaking up with a Today's Special Value at £21.37.

"Someone remind me again what the point of digital distribution services like Steam is? It's certainly not for buying games cheaper or earlier, that's for sure."

No disc needed, multiple copies if you play on different PCs, no silly box cluttering your shelves.

I am at a point where I prefer DD if it costs the same. Why Steam is often so much more expensive noone knows, though. Although the differences in Germany aren't that dramatic, as PC games don't get sold nearly as cheap as in the UK.

And the whole story here was hardly a drama - a miscommunication between Square and Steam regarding the release day, which was fixed the very same day.

@Darren
There's as good a reason as any not to buy games through Steam. Another is the fact that you can buy it cheaper than their asking price of £29.99 online anyway, e.g. GAME have it for £24.99 and I'm sure it can be found cheaper elsewhere.

Indeed, since the introduction of Euro/Sterling pricing it sure as hell isn't cheaper. You're crazy to buy new games from Steam. Unless you live a thousand miles from the nearest game store and you must play it instantly (or rather after downloading).

Someone remind me again what the point of digital distribution services like Steam is? It's certainly not for buying games cheaper or earlier, that's for sure.

Let's be fair here, this was an isolated incident. It was a failure on either Square's or Valves part (or both) but this is the only case I ever heard of anything like this happening with Steam.

That said, Steam was never cheap: they always sold games at full RRP but they used the US RRP so, with favourable conversion rates, it was cheaper than over here in Europe. Right now it's between €10-20 more expensive than main street stores near me for relatively new titles and a hell of a lot more expensive for games a few months old.

As for playing earlier I pre-ordered L4D from Steam and could play it when it launched in the US, mind you that was buying a Valve game in dollars back in, what, November(?) so I saved money and played it early then.

Now regional pricing has been introduced, no you probably won't get games earlier or cheaper anymore. The only thing Steam has going for it is the convenience factor and for impulse buying games, mind you, their prices don't encourage impulse buying.

Apart from Zeno Clash at 50% off (€8) I haven't bought a thing on their service since they introduced regional prices. I've bought several games locally that I would have previously bought on Steam (Empire Total War, DOW II and so on) as I don't really want the boxes cluttering up my apartment any more but I'm not paying more for less.

This thing kinda proves that perception rules. Steam had the luck of geting good word of mouth for some reason, now they can do whatever they want.