In a move that may seem crazy to many gamers, high street retailers in the United Kingdom have begun considering banning game titles that have Valve's Steamworks built into them. According to website MCV, some of the biggest high street game retailers such as "Gamestation" and "Game" are planning to stop selling Steamworks titles like Civilization 5 and Call of Duty unless publishers remove Valve's software.
With Valve already holding what is believed to be around 80-85 percent of the PC game downloads market, many retailers have become wary that having Steam support in games may well lure users away from returning to the store. This is especially true when they can easily sit at home and buy a title online.
If some titles have been in production for a long time it may be unrealistic for retailers to demand publishers remove Steam from their titles. Even more so, if the titles make full use of Steam features such as Steam Cloud and achievements. Therefore, things may not go well for the retailers particularly with PC game downloads starting to outdo high street stores.
Many online stores already offer games at much cheaper prices than you will find on the high street. Even "Game-online" offer titles up to £10 cheaper than their high street partner "Game" do.
107 Comments - Add comment