Hi everyone. Bit of exciting news for you all this week, I'm heading back to Australia on Friday! Just for ten days though, a little bit of a holiday to see everyone again. Also, when I get back to Japan, I'm going to head up to Izu for a bit of a beach getaway (it's not a real summer vacation until I've been to the beach!)
As such, don't expect too much in the way of updates for the coming month! My Escapist news stories will also probably see a bit of a decline.
Last week was my "training week" for my day job as an English teacher. It was good to see all the Nasushiobara ALTs again, and to cap it off we had a poker night on Saturday. It's a very nice change of pace from my regular teaching work, and a good lead in to my lengthy summer vacation.
I bought a car this week! It may just be a Kei car, and it may have only cost me $500, but it's a car nonetheless. Even if I end up going back home in March, I'll have still saved money over renting every month, and if I do decide to stay another year, I'll end up saving a LOT of money.
On that front, it's looking more and more likely I will end up staying here one more year. Next year, my car, and my apartment's start up fees will be completely paid off, and with my current work pace at the Escapist I reckon I can save up a LOT of money. I do miss being home, and it's particularly hard with several of my best friends in the country having left Japan earlier this year, but at this stage in my life it may be best to just burrow down, save up a wad of cash, and then blow it all on a big vacation (or... sensibly save it with the intention of possibly buying a house...). It would be nice to visit all my friends in America...
My new car
Anyway, here are the last couple of week's stories (sorry about no update last week):
Okay guys, that's it from me for this week! Be sure to subscribe to my twitter for up-to-date news and blog updates, my youtube channel for gaming videos, and check back here every Saturday for a roundup of my Escapist news pieces!
Big exciting news from me for this week, my first official escapist feature is now live! The feature is about mechs in videogames. Overall, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I knew I was going to step on a lot of toes by not including every single mech game and anime, but I feel like I covered the most important stuff. Please check it out below, and I hope to be able to deliver more features in the future.
So I'm at week three of four weeks of straight elementary school and the summer vacation can seriously not come any faster. I'm dying here. It's great fun, the days go by quickly, and the kids are great (most of the time) but Lord Jesus am I exhausted at the end of the day. At least i'm getting plenty of exercise.
I'll be visiting Australia from the 2nd of August till the 12th, and I'll possibly be going on a roadtrip to Osaka and Hiroshima after that, so next month you'll probably not see too much of me.
Okay guys, that's it from me for this week! Be sure to subscribe to my twitter for up-to-date news and blog updates, my youtube channel for gaming videos, and check back here every Saturday for a roundup of my Escapist news pieces!
Now that I'm writing daily news stories for The Escapist, I've decided to collate all of the articles I post during the week right here on Steve's Game Blog! Here's this week's stories:
Okay guys, that's it from me for this week! Be sure to subscribe to my twitter for up-to-date news and blog updates, my youtube channel for gaming videos, and check back here every Saturday for a roundup of my Escapist news pieces!
Welcome to the Saturday Roundup, a (bi)weekly roundup of all the
important news going on in the gaming world. If you’re sick of gaming websites' content turning more and more casual, or trying to pass off a single sentence and a link to a cool picture they saw on deviant art as ‘news,’ you've come to the right place. I aim to consolidate and summarize only the stuff
that’s most important to gaming enthusiasts. It’s a mix of hard news,
interesting features, and other titbits that I feel like you guys would enjoy. Let’s
see what’s been going on this week:
Blizzard promised that content patches forMists of Pandaria would be released more frequently in order to
address complaints that Cataclysm had
very large 'lulls' in between major content, and it seems set to deliver with
patch 5.1 to be deployed on public test realms very soon. Patch 5.1 promises to put the 'war' back into Warcraft, with new daily quest
hubs centered around the conflict between the Horde and the Alliance over
Pandaria.
First person stealth action adventure game Dishonored shipped this week, and has
been generallywellreceived by notable video game critics. Not sure what platform to buy it on? Check out
this PC/console comparison video
Long in-development sequel to popular
half-life mod Natural Selection finally
has a release date! Natural Selection 2 will launch on the 31st of October. Releasing exactly one decade after it's predecessor, Natural Selection 2 blends elements of both FPS and RTS. Check out
my beta impressions of Natural Selection
2 here.
LAN party favorite 'The Ship' is getting a sequel. Developers Blazing Griffin have announced a series of events leading up to the
release of the game, including a 75% off sale of the original The Ship.
Borderlands
fans were treated to a nice surprise this week when
the first piece of Borderlands 2 DLC
released a week early! Gaige, the Mechromancer is an all-new playable class for the first person shooter, free to all players
who pre-purchased the game, and costing $9.99 for all those who didn't.
If that's not enough Borderlands news for you, hows this? Gearbox today announced the Captain Scarlet DLC pack, to release on October 16th. Captain Scarlett will introduce new enemies, new weapons, a new vehicle called the sand skiff, and seraph crystals – a new form of currency. Please note that Captain Scarlet and the Mechromancer pack are NOT included in theBorderlands 2 season pass. Check out my Borderlands 2 review
here.
Microsoft Points have been the bane of many
gamers, spanning both Microsoft's Xbox and Windows gaming platforms, and
forcing gamers to purchase arbitrary 'points' before exchanging them for DLC,
digital downloads, and other services. Fret no more, for Microsoft plans to
follow the example set by other digital stores such as Steam and Nintendo's 3DS
online store and do away with Microsoft Points for Windows 8. However, this happy news was countered by the rather unpleasant revelation that Windows 8 would not carry games rated above PEGI 16+. I guess we're going to stick to Windows 7 quite a while.
Disappointed that giant mech robots will never be a reality? Pirahna Games can give you the next best thing: they are making a MechWarrior MMO and they want you to test it!
“Make a MECH-sized marking in your calendars for Tuesday, October 16th. In just one week, we will be opening up the InnerSphere to all MechWarriors and their friends.”
Resident Evil 6 is already not getting much praise from fans and critics, and the latest revelation that it
has on-disc DLCdespite Capcom's claims that it wouldn't pull this kind of shit any more is
definitely not helping. An extra
difficulty mode, as well as unlockable costumes, melee attacks and taunts have
been found hidden on the disk by modders.
ZombiU is shaping up to be one of the 'killer apps' of the WiiU's launch lineup. It's unique use of the WiiU's gamepad controler can hopefully put a new spin on the tired-and-true zombie survival formula, as Gamespot takes us for an exclusive walkthrough of one of the game's levels.
So that’s the news for this week. Be sure to subscribe to my twitter for up-to-date news and blog updates, and check back here every Wednesday and Saturday for more content!
No-one expected the first Borderlands to be as big as it was. The FPS slash RPG hit came out of nowhere, billing itself as ‘Diablo but with guns’ and despite an archaic quest system and an underwhelming finale, it was a very solid game. What Borderlands got right was the very core of the game – you shoot stuff and collect loot. It’s the same carrot-on-a-stick gameplay that caused Diablo to make people abandon their families and quit their jobs. It’s success was rewarded with multiple DLC packs (some goodand some... not so good) and last September developer Gearbox gave us a fully-fledged sequel: Borderlands 2.
Let me say this first and foremost, as it’s probably the most important point in this entire review: Borderlands 2 is a multiplayer game. While it is possible to play through the entire game singleplayer, I guarantee you that you will have much more fun playing with other people. If you don’t have any friends, try the online matchmaking included in the game – it works quite well. Even with just one other player, your abilities will synergize well, and you’ll find more loot that people will actually use instead of just vendoring.
You definitely want to bring your friends along for this one
To say that Borderlands 2 plays the same as Borderlands is an understatement. While it has a shiny new coat of paint and a whole new cast of playable characters, explorable locales and killable enemies, at its core it’s the same kill-waves-of-bad-guys-and-check-their-pockets-for-guns that made its predecessor so fun. And I do mean waves of enemies. Oftentimes you’ll find yourself cutting through swathes of psychos and midgets like a hot knife through butter. It feels really satisfying when you get enough gear and just the right skill points that you can become nigh invincible in some circumstances. If brute force isn’t your style you can sit back and snipe enemy weak spots from a distance, attack intermittently from cover, or even use the terrain to your advantage by creating chokepoints to funnel bad guys into your waiting shotgun blast. Like I mentioned before, having teammates with varied play-styles and classes really helps with maximise whatever strategy you choose.
I played the Gunzerker and my main play-through buddy was on the Siren. We worked up a great synergy routine where I would spec myself down the ‘tank’ tree, and he would spec himself down the ‘healing’ tree. Then I would sit there and soak up all the damage while he kept me topped up and took potshots at the baddies running towards me. Another friend of mine played the Assassin, and I also tried out the Commando for long enough to get a feel of him, so between the three of us we have some insights on all four classes. How about some introductions?
Pleased to meet you, Sir. Mailbox
I’ll start with Salvador, the Gunzerker – the spiritual successor to Brick from the first game. The biggest complaint about Brick was that in a game all about collecting guns, his action skill completely forwent the use of his equipped weapon. It didn’t help that his action skill was so powerful and could be upgraded to the point where, by the end of the game, I was throwing more punches than shooting bullets. Gearbox has fixed this problem and then some with Salvador, by giving him the ‘gunzerking’ action skill. Gunzerking makes Salvador pull out a second gun and dual-wield, while regenerating ammo and health. His skill trees augment his guns, his gunzerking, or his tanking ability. He feels really good. The skill is on a long enough cooldown to make it feel meaningful, but short enough that you can have it when you need it. If you want to feel like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the end scene of Commando, the Gunzerker is the class for you.
Salvador's gunzerking is a welcome change from Brick's berserk.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is Zero, the Assassin. In the first Borderlands, the ‘Assassin’ play-style was oddly split between two characters, with Mordecai getting the long-range sniping and Lilith getting the turn-invisible melee attack. Thankfully, Borderlands 2 has combined both of these traits into Zero, giving him a skill tree that focuses on sniper rifles as well as an action skill and accompanying skill tree that are all about going invisible and backstabbing dudes with your katana sword. My friend who played him, however, felt that the action skill was a bit underwhelming when you chose to focus on the sniper rifle skill tree.
Maya, the Siren, is the new Lilith, and the ‘Mage’ class of the group. Her action skill ‘phaselock’ can be used to lift up and incapacitate enemies, deal massive damage, or instantly revive fallen teammates depending on what skill tree you go down. She definitely feels a lot more Mage-like than Lilith ever did, being capable of dealing a lot of damage as well as supporting her team, with the tradeoff of being squishy. Again, my friend who played her felt a tad disappointed with her action skill, not because it didn’t feel powerful, but because its cooldown was strange. He said it was too short to simply save for the more powerful enemies, but too long to use on EVERY enemy. It kind of hit this middle ground where it was just being used randomly, instead of tactically.
Lilith's phaselock is great for lining up shots on weakpoints
Lastly, you have Axton, the Commando. Many people, myself included, felt that Roland, Axton’s counterpart from the first game, completely trumped the other classes. He was meant to be the ‘jack of all trades’ class, but he ended up excelling at almost everything. His turret could heal, replenish ammo, and do a shit-ton of damage. Its only real drawback was its cooldown, which could be reduced with class mods and skill points. With ammo regeneration given to Salvador, and healing given to Maya, it leaves Axton feeling a little underpowered. His three trees focus on improving the turret, improving his own gunpower, and improving his survivability. The latter two feel like weaker versions of Salvador’s trees, and the turret feels a bit underpowered, at least compared to the other action skills. He fills a nice niche with events where you have to defend an area, or boss fights, and your teammates will really appreciate your turret drawing fire, but he is in my opinion the least fun class to play.
Axton's Turret is a little underwhelming
Moving on from the characters, the story is a little bit more engaging this time, with a lot of the side quests being well written and filled with more pop culture references than an episode of the IT Crowd, and the main quests having a lot more memorable characters and about 80% less Claptrap. I particularly liked the extremely over-the-top James Bond villain personality of Handsome Jack, the game’s main antagonist, and seeing the playable cast of the original game turn up as major NPCs was always a cool surprise. The only time the writing gets stale is when you get tired of the half a dozen one-liners that your character yells out when getting a kill streak.
Seeing the original cast return was a welcome surprise
The quest and map systems have been cleaned up a lot from the original game, and the addition of a minimap is a godsend. However, it’s still far from perfect. All throughout the game, particularly when I had to drive across the map for a mission, I kept wishing for the amazing waypoint system of the recently released Sleeping Dogs, which literally highlighted the route I needed to take in real time. Sometimes I felt like I spent more time studying the map and figuring out which route wouldn’t lead me to another dead end than I did actually playing the game.
Speaking of the driving, it’s still shit. Again, after having played Sleeping Dogs, and even id software’s Rage, which both managed to have fantastic driving sections, it’s so frustrating to see Borderlands 2 fail so miserably. The game forces you to use the mouse to steer, which is just infuriating, and the vehicles bounce around the map with all the grace of a seven-year-old in a bumper car. Their usefulness has been toned down a little bit from the previous game - you can no-longer instagib every enemy by running them over - and they are fragile enough to warrant getting out of them when under heavy fire. They suffice only to get you from point A to point B, which could have been better handled by expanding the fast-travel network.
The UI, while seeing some improvements, still feels too 'consoley' and difficult to navigate with a keyboard and mouse
One excellent addition is the new ‘Badass Ranks,’ a great little idea that makes your achievements actually mean something. Basically, in the first Borderlands, you had challenges, such as ‘Kill 50 skaggs’ or ‘Kill a midget with a grenade’ or whatever: stuff that you would just kind of get as you were playing the game normally, but were still sort of mini-achievements. They gave you a small bonus of XP when you finished them. In Borderlands 2, instead of XP, they are added to your ‘Badass Rank,’ which is like another XP bar. When you ‘level up’ your Badass Rank, you get a Badass token that you can use to give a permanent boost to all of your characters. The boosts are usually quite small, like 0.7% health, but they add up as you accumulate rank, and the fact that they are shared across all of your characters means that it is quite helpful when deciding to level a new class. The ranks are also infinite, meaning that even after hitting the level cap you have a way to improve your character.
Did someone say 'pop culture reference?' No? Okay, I'll just leave then
Finally, the game looks better graphically, but it’s not that noticeable unless you are really looking. The great thing about the cell-shaded cartoon graphics of games like Borderlands is that they age exceptionally well; meaning that the first Borderlands still looks good and the sequel will look good for years to come. That said, the physics of this game are absolutely phenomenal and if you have a physX capable video card, I highly suggest you turn the advanced physics on. Blood and water ooze and form pools like you would expect them to, banners and cloth tear apart as bullets fly through them, and the terrain explodes and kicks up debris when under heavy fire. It’s one of the first games that really take advantage of the physX technology and will hopefully set the standard for games that follow.
Borderlands 2 is the first game I've seen that really takes full advantage of physX
Borderlands was a game that had it’s flaws, but had a solid engine that was really, really fun. Borderlands 2 is… still not without it’s flaws, but is also still really, really fun. Again, I can't stress enough that playing this game alone and playing it with other players will directly impact on the amount of fun you’ll have. If you like murdering a whole town full of dudes and then checking to see if the numbers on their guns are bigger than the numbers on your guns, Borderlands 2 is the right game for you.
Hey guys, coming at you with a fat dosage of ‘new regular feature’ is
the Saturday Roundup. The reason for this feature is twofold, one, so that I
can bring more content to you guys on a regular basis and two, so that I can
improve and broaden my writing by utilizing the different writing styles that
news writing demands.
Welcome to the Saturday Roundup, a (bi)weekly roundup of all the
important news going on in the gaming world.If you’re sick of gaming websites' content turning more and more casual, or trying to pass off a single sentence and a link to a cool picture they saw on deviant art as ‘news,’ you’ve
come to the right place. I aim to consolidate and summarize only the stuff
that’s most important to gaming enthusiasts. It’s a mix of hard news,
interesting features, and other titbits that I feel like you guys would enjoy. Let’s
see what’s been going on this week:
Cliff Bleszinski
Gaming great Cliff ‘CliffyB’ Bleszinski, the man responsible for
multiple iconic gaming classics such as the Unreal
and Gears of War series has
announced his sudden departure from EPIC games studios. ‘I’ve been
doing this since I was a teenager, and outside of my sabbatical last year, I
have been going non-stop. I literally grew up in this business, as Mike likes
to say. And now that I’m grown up, it’s time for a much needed break.’ Cliff
was a much loved gaming personality who constantly pushed the boundaries of
game development and will be missed by many. Hopefully he’s back on the scene
sooner, rather than later!
Resident Evil 6 released this week, and is already being
slammed by user reviews on Metacritic.
Many fans felt that the series had strayed too far from its survival horror
roots, instead providing us with a generic cover-based ‘Gears of War but with zombies’. This feeling seems to be confirmed
with comments by game director Hiroyuki Kobayashi that Resident Evil 6’s survival horror elements were indeed toned down
to get that mass-market appeal.
‘We’re making games and we need to have mass-market
appeal in order to survive. How far do we go into horror before we lose the
support of the average player?'
Done with Borderlands 2 already
and craving more? Gearbox has you covered. As well as the four planned DLC packs, 2 of which are
already in development, brainstorming has already started on Borderlands 3, which if released will give Gearbox an opportunity to gloat over their previous
employers, Valve Software, by actually releasing a game with a ‘3’ in it.
Borderlands 2
Speaking
of Valve, they are one of the most secretive companies when it comes to what
they are planning next, and Chet Faliszek is one of their most famous
employees, providing the writing for many of Valve’s biggest blockbusters,
including Half-life 2: Episode 2, Portal and Left 4 Dead. VG24/7 racks his brains to try and decipher what goes
on behind Valve’s tightly closed doors.
Distraught that there wasn't enough of The Sims in Skyrim?Fret no more, Hearthfire has appeared on the steam store! Hearthfire is the second peice of official DLC for Skyirm, and for just $4.99 willallow you to design and built your own house, as well as raise a family by adopting a child with your wife.
Digital
download services like Steam and Origin, as well as the major console platforms
now offering digital downloads of much of their catalogue have us asking the
question, ‘when will we forgo physical media entirely?’ TheGameJar’s Chris Jacobs seems to think the answer is ‘soon’,
and discusses the possible implications of living in a digital world.
King Washington
Assassin’s Creed III has been pretty low
on my radar, but a little bit of interesting news has cropped up concerning its
first DLC pack. It assumes an alternate reality where George Washington, upon
freeing America from the British, rose to become a tyrannical king. The DLC will have you do what every hot-blooded colonialist has always dreamed
of – kill George Washington
SimCity is shaping up to be a great game, and while it won't be released until some time next year, lead designer Stone Librande takes us through a ten minute gameplay walktrhough. SimCity is the latest reboot of the titular 'SimCity' franchise, and is due out in 2013, with a promise to return to what made the city building sim that spawned dozens of offshoots (including the immensely popular The Sims) so popular in the first place.
So that’s the news for this week. Be sure to subscribe to my twitter for
up-to-date news and blog updates, and check back here every Wednesday and
Saturday for more content!
In the past year or so, something completely
unprecedented in the entire history of PC games has started to become common
practice. I'm talking, of course, about region locking. It's made most bizarre
by the fact that consoles, the very things that facilitated region locking in
the first place, are actually moving away from it, with the PS3 being
completely region free and the Xbox 360 having a sizable chunk of its library
region free. Both the PS4 and the Xbox One will be completely region free. To understand why it IS happening, we must first understand why it
SHOULDN'T be happening.
Being an Australian, this is a very common sight on the Steam Store
Let's travel back in time
to when personal consoles were first starting to gain popularity. Back then,
people had those big ugly blocks that our parents called 'analogue TVs' or just
'TVs'. Analogue TVs were split into two major broadcasting encodings: PAL,
which is used in Australia and Western
Europe, and NTSC which is used
in America. There was also NTSC-J for Japan. Basically, all of these encodings
have slight differences, such as an increased or decreased frame rate, which
meant that creating a 'one-size-fits-all' game for all of them was impossible.
Every game had to be modified for its respective region, and thus, 'region
locks' were born.
But back here in the
present, the majority of people serious about gaming have upgraded to a
digital, High Definition TV. In fact, some countries such as Japan, have
already completely switched over to digital, meaning you can't even get a
signal on a standard analogue TV. Accordingly,
there is no legitimate reason for developers to impose region locks on games in
this day and age.
So if there is no
legitimate reason for region locking, then why are games, and specifically PC games that were
never even affected by the reasons behind the original region locks,
increasingly being shipped with locks? There are two reasons, and they are both
shady, business centric, and all-around dick moves from publishers and
developers (probably more so the publishers).
The first reason is to
enforce region pricing.
I'm an Australian. That means we get fucked over on the
price of video games for some arbitrary reason. For perspective? The Australian
dollar is more or less equal to the American dollar these days, yet our games are
almost comically overpriced. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which costs $89.99 in Australia is a whopping 77% cheaper in the US, where it retails for $19.99. Before the days of region locking, frugal gamers could utilize
grey-import sites such as Play-Asia and Green Man Gaming in order to do what
should be a god-given right on a system as free as the PC: find the best deal.
With a lot of games these days, it's now impossible to do a grey import, as
copies sold in specific regions will only work on a machine with an IP address
in that region.
Average new release price in the US: $39-49. In Australia? $90-$120
Let me give you an example. Last year, I purchased
RAGE. As you know, I currently live in Japan, where the PC gaming scene is...
minimal. At best. As such, I would be hard-pressed to find a copy of the game at
retail. So, I did what I have done countless times before when trying to find
cheap games and directed my web browser to www.play-asia.com. I purchased the
'Asian Version' of the game. I figuredthat Japan, being a country populated mostly by Asians, as well as
being in Asia geographically, was a sure fit for the 'Asian'
region of the game. Unfortunately, id'sdescription of Asia
includes only Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand,
Brunei, the Philippines and South Korea. Pretty much every Asian country EXCEPT
Japan. Consequently, I had a copy of RAGE sitting in
my hand that I had paid for in full, that I could not play because my computer
was telling id Software's servers that I was Japanese.
My RAGE experience...
The second shady reason
behind region locking is to avoid hurting the publisher’s relationship
with retail stores.
I know it's inconceivable for all of us gaming enthusiasts,
who purchase the majority of our games as either direct downloads or from
internet import sites, but a sizable majority of our more casual brethren still
buy their games from brick and mortar stores like EB and JB Hi-Fi. Thus, in
order to not give grey importers or direct downloaders an 'unfair' advantage
over shoppers at the brick and mortar stores, game
releases are locked to whenever retail copies arrive in that region's stores.
To quote the immortal Penny Arcade, 'We're slowing down every car just so
we don't hurt a horse’s feelings'
You know what? Fuck horses
I’ve clashed with this
second kind of region-locking twice: first with Skyrim, then with Borderlands 2. Both times I have
bought the game via Steam (in the case of Skyrim, I actually prepurchased the
game from the Australian Steam store while in Australia), yet because the
little boxes hadn't moved around in Japan, I was unable to play said games.
They were fully pre-loaded, sitting on my Steam account, yet I was being told
'No. You can't play these games, even though all of your friends are playing
them. You have to wait like all the other good little Japanese children'. The
case of Borderlands is particularly significant, as it is billed as a co-op
game. What good is playing a co-op game a good month after all of my friends
back in Australia have finished it?
So what can I, and many
others, do, when faced with these situations? The first answer is to use a VPN
to 'trick' steam into thinking you are in a different country. The only problem
is this potentially risks having your entire steam account banned, as using a
VPN to 'disguise' your location for any reason is technically against the steam subscriber agreement(You agree that
you will not use IP proxying or other methods to disguise the place of your residence,
whether to circumvent geographical restrictions on game content, to purchase at
pricing not applicable to your geography, or for any other purpose. If
you do this, we may terminate your access to your Account.)So what does that leave us? Piracy. Yarrrrr!
Steve and stevesgameblog in no way, shape or form endorses or promotes internet piracy.
One of the best
explanationsfor piracy I have heard is that it becomes prevalent when the pirates
offer a better service than the publishers. Let's look at Russia and Eastern
Europe. Piracy is so incredibly rampant there, not because Russians are dirty
thieves, but because most publishers neglect the regionentirely. Games are released
months late, if at all and face numerous region restrictions. I complained
about Japan's version of borderlands releasing a month late, but the Russian
version released ONLY in Russian (screw you, Estonians!) and was only able to be played with other people in Russia. In Russia, the only way to play
a majority of games on release date with the full set of features is to pirate
them. That's the pirate providing a better service than the publisher.
Region locks and intrusive
DRM, as well as the 'always-online' requirement of many of these modern games
can also be bypassed by pirating. Pirating a game gives you a much better
quality-of-life than actually buying it. In fact, as was especially frustratingin the case of RAGE, I was actively punished for purchasing a
legit copy. Thus, as more and more games become region locked, you can expect
piracy rates to increase accordingly. If you think that's scary, it's now time
to have a look at the 'how,' as in, how all this PC region locking is possible
in the first place, and
how it implicates the
unlikely villain in this picture.
Borderlands 2 is a game that's built around co-op. Region locks can unintentionally remove this feature
Did you manage to guess the villain already?
I actually dropped his name a couple of times: Steam. Yes, Steam
-- the platform beloved by pretty much every PC gamer out there for its ease of
use, support of indie developers, great customer support and of course,
the delicious holiday sales -- is the reason why modern PC games can be region
locked. Steam has become so popular that it essentially has a monopoly on PC
game digital downloads. While it seems like a perfect company, ANY kind of
monopoly is a very bad thing, and the increasing prevalence
of region locking is the first sign of this. It's gotten to the point where
even if you buy a game retail, you still have to activate it on Steam.
This means that you effectively have to be 'always online' to play your
games, and publishers can use this requirement to constantly check your IP
address and block you from playing their games. While this hasn’t happened in any Valve-produced game, the fact
that Valve actually allows publishers to do this is a sign that Valve is
willing to look the other way with Publishers trying to exploit gamers.
Scumbag Steam
So, as you can see, this
is a very real problem that is bound to especially affect those in markets such
as Australia and South East Asia. What can we do about it? I might be crucified
for saying this, but maybe Origin isn't such a bad idea after all. While we are
happy and content to have our entire game libraries all in one place, Steam
continuing its monopoly unchallenged is only going to give rise to more shady business practices.
The lack of competition may also slow down its drive to improve itself at the
rate it is now. Origin is far from perfect, but given time I actually
hope it grows to become just as big as Steam. If you still have hatred for Origin, try using alternatives such as gamefly, gamer's gate and especially good old games.
And all you big name publishers out there, next time you cry foul of PC gamers and
their rampant piracy ruining your bottom line, maybe you should think about
actually offering a service that is at least comparable to what is being
offered by the pirates themselves? Liked this article? Check out my other opinion pieces!
Subscribe to my Twitter and my YouTube channel to keep up to date on Steve's Game Blog news!
