Whats awesome about your points is that most companies are really looking at these alternative measures and moving their business strategies in this direction. Unfortunately I'm sure a lot of good companies may get left behind and disappear in this changing times, but the ones that don't will definitely be more stronger and MUCH less susceptible to economic shifts as the new model prevents lows from severely damaging their profit line due to the consistent flow of subscription fees. How many people get rid of cable due to hard times? Not many, they'd rather evaluate their budget and cut out physically purchased expendable goods (like say your morning coffee from the local cafe) rather then deal with the hassle of canceling subscriptions and restarting when money isn't so tight.
On a side note, everyone I know in the p2p/pirating arena LOVE the Steam service and highly support it.


Only thing that bothers me about this reason is it is one I've heard many times that I've NEVER seen it used other then an excuse to get free goods (in reality most of the people don't care that much about the intro junk and its proven by certain files I see where a sloppy rip job left all that on and they still get shared even by the people who use the excuse), but I highly agree and feel that the commercials are why they have movies out in the theaters first imo, and if you buy a DVD, it should come commercial free TOTALLY, including those stupid anti-copyright screens (put that info on the box or in an add-in sheet, which they usually do anyways, no need to spam the movie intros). Subtitles themselves are quickly becoming less of an issue and to me the easiest way to tell the quality of a rip is if the subs were included, it means it wasn't just a quick rush xvid/avi job, which the torrent users prefer (the group that needs severe "re-education" as I said earlier lol)

Subtitles are crucial for me, since I'm deaf.......

Myself I barely download anything but games. I think we've been to the movie (or rented a movie) more often than I even downloaded movies... Besides, my point is: Pirates often don't experience the downsides of anti-piracy measures, more often the legit customers do.

In my P2P scene I've heard a lot of whiners about the Steam service, mainly those with negative experiences. For example, with Steam all your games are on one account (unless you create multiple accounts...) so if your account gets banned because of a failed payment through PayPal, you've lost your games (which for some can get into the hundreds of games!). Which again is a point for a subscription-based model.

The main issue with moving to a subscription-based model is that several major publishers will insist on their own platform so they can save money and that is exactly the reason why it is doomed to fail: It needs a neutral (or established) publisher behind it, like Valve/Steam currently does, with a major list of games.
An advantage of such a subscription-based model is that the customers don't have to choose, you just need to convince them to give your game a chance if your customer has the 'new and hot stuff' subscription. Instead of having to pick between (for example) BattleField and Call of Duty you can just play both. My main concern is the monthly fee though: €60 for just a game or two a month is definitely not gonna cut it, it'll have to start with a big library of games and a reasonably fee. For example, look at what Steam currently has. They even have a game publisher catalog and during major sales they even had a package where you could buy all games from publisher X for a strongly reduced price. Just like their own Valve Complete Pack (I actually purchased the Unreal complete pack for €15 or so last major sale even though I already owned UT3...).

The only issue with a subscription-based platform is: Download caps. Australia, Belgium, just to name a couple countries with download caps. There will still be a need for retail purchases and such. I think that for a console it'd be already a lot more easy to create such a platform....

I wonder whether Valve can be pushed to try to persuade publishers to join in such a subscription based platform based on Steam.

Oh don't get me wrong, I TOTALLY agree on the issue of accessibility for a disability (That rant was up after your first post on this lol). I just see a lot of people (mostly young people on the p2p bandwagon so they can get free stuff) that use the excuse of cut beginning commercials, and better rips are DVD style (audio and video folder with the bin/cue) and contain the subs.

Originally I think I saw a bit of initial backlash for the Steam service (mostly the same groups complaining about the terrible DRM measures Stardock started off), but for the most part I see an overwhelming support from the groups for Steam


Don't get me started on that lol Currently the only solution I see there is bandwidth shaping/trafficking (which they could allow more bandwidth for specific sites) which I think is ABSOLUTELY intrusive. Jerk-off companies need to stop being unrealistic about the costs of transporting packets and give the people truly unlimited internet paid for like any other utility. Metering rates is one thing(which again i don't like the capital gain nature of these businesses but for the sake of argument ill agree with it for this) but shaping traffic bite me. If they can come up with a viable plan for flat rate internet, even better, but for one DON'T LIE (Comcast unlimited net my ass, glad they got exposed on that garbage), and two have it scalable so people are not trapped in a bubble that they have to watch how they use the service. I could imagine if water or electricity had a cap and then shut off because you hit it (and the argument that internet isn't a utility is not an argument, because then electricity isn't either on the same grounds)