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Comment by henning | Hacker News Reader

Valve's Steam system is built around DRM. You can't even play a singleplayer Steam game without a connection to the Internet with Steam phoning home. And it's Windows-only.

What does this have to do with organizing the world's information, what does it have to do with "don't be evil", and what does a computer science outfit know about making stuff that's fun? I don't get it.

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All I know is I'm still fully addicted to Counter-Strike a full 8 years after I first played it so Steam is alright with me. I don't even remember paying the original fee (maybe $50 years ago), and I don't need to mess with discs or reinstalls. Just download Steam, login to my account and BAM! all my games are downloaded and ready for playing, no patching no mess. Genius.

Now if Valve wanted $50/year to maintain my access to CS:S (something I can see Google doing), I'd find a new game.

Steam has some great games and I prefer not having to sling discs around, either. I just meant, how is this so obviously good for both parties.

Agreed, overall I'm favorable to Google but I do not like this plan ONE bit. I mean if they're buying it to get at the code base, that's fine provided they leave Steam, the Games, and the Community alone. But if they go poking their fingers around in this stuff I'll be upset.

In TFA, there is much focus on the quality of Steam as a content distribution platform, and it's relevancy to Googles own efforts in that venue.

It sounds more like Google want to use Steam technology in other products, and don't have any particular interest in Valves current business.

<dream class="pipe">Maybe they'll even opensource CS, since cash flow from that is probably pretty insignificant by now, and there's a lot of good-will to obtain.</dream>

Open-sourcing CS would be awesome. Bring the game full circle back to the days when it was just a fee mod made by Gooseman and Cliffe. What ever happened to those guys?

Hah. If this happened it'd be more likely that CS:S would become free, as a vehicle for google's ingame advertising.

Note that id is working on doing a free version of Quake with in-game advertising called Quake Live.

Steam doesn't always need to check online to play single-player games, only occasionally. And for my part, not having to store CDs and keep track of CD keys is worth having to stay connected to the internet (oh noes!) and not being able to trade away my PC games.

And if Google did buy Valve, they obviously know enough about fun to purchase a developer/publisher who knows what they are doing. That said, I doubt this deal is going to happen as I think Valve is comfortable with the position they are in.

what does it have to do with "don't be evil"

What does Google have to do with "Don't be evil?"

Only the fact that its google's mantra/tagline...

The article stresses the value of Valve's content distribution system, not their content protection system or their content production system. Would you have been as incredulous if Google was proposing to buy, say, Akamai?

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