A GamersGate To... Where?
Where digital distribution is concerned, many see Valve's Steam system to be the shining example of "how to do it." It's a sophisticated, self-contained system, which integrates store with download manager with game interface into one neat .exe file. Valve's approach is a neat one, but it is not the only game in town.
Valve's main competition in the digital we-don't-need-middle-men-thank-you-very-much distribution market is not a mega publisher like Electronic Arts, rushing to sell its vast stockpile of games on the new and bold frontier; oh no, that'd be too nimble and smart a move for an established company to make. Rather, it is the up-and-coming Swedish development and publishing outfit Paradox Interactive, which is moving into second place on the digital distribution podium.
Paradox originally made its name as developer of real-time, grand-scale, historical strategy games such as Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron. More recently Paradox Interactive has become a publisher in its own right, setting up North American operations and offering up its back-catalogue of games via an early digital distribution system called "Paradox on Demand" in 2005.
"Paradox on Demand," or PoD, gave way to GamersGate.com in April 2006, and in less than six months Paradox has signed developers ranging from DarkStar One creators Ascaron Entertainment to Ship Simulator 2006 creators Lighthouse Interactive. The GamersGate.com catalogue is growing as fast as - if not faster than - Steam with 33 games currently in the catalogue. And while it's not a case of "one or the other has to go," Steam and GamersGate.com are matching up to one another in terms of hitting power.
Steam is the far better known of the two services; having Half-Life 2 in your catalogue, and making Steam a prerequisite to play it no matter whether the game was purchased online or in a shop, has probably helped to make Steam the most widely known digital distribution system. The catalogue of games on each service is as eclectic and interesting as one would expect from traditional publishers on the shop shelves - Steam has games such as Darwinia, the quirky RTS that unfortunately languished in retail, and T-72, a Balkan tank simulator.
GamersGate has titles such as Rush for Berlin, the rather fetching WWII RTS, and Ship Simulator 2006 - exactly what it says on the tin, really - and so for consumers buying via Steam and GamersGate should be roughly the same as buying EA or Activision - whoever has the interesting game at the time you have cash in your hand will get the purchase.
In the world of online transactions, digital distribution systems and Digital Rights Management however things are not as clear-cut as in retail. You're not just buying into a product - you're buying into a system. How accounts are handled online is critical to the success or failure of a digital distribution system. Steam ensures that when you purchase a game it is credited to your account for life so that - for example - if you wipe your computer, you don't need to have burned a copy of the install files to get the game back again. How does GamersGate stack up against the proven Steam system?
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