Steam Digital Game Rentals

[King of Evil]

I noticed Steam has been selling & renting movies for a while now.

Why can't we rent games on Steam as well? Asides from the every now and then free weekends or waiting for a good sale deal what if there were a system in place that developers could opt into for players to rent their games for 3-7 days?

[Start_Running]

Differnt things. You can rent movies because most people only need to have a movie for s hours to extract the full utility from it. Not so with a game. PC games have never been rented and never will. Also because you actually need steams player to even watch the movies they have more control over your access.

[King of Evil]

That's not entirely true as Steam can delete games in your library & on your PC if they are connected to Steam. If you ever refunded a game you'd see it vanish from your library & from your hard drive. Same for Free Weekends. I can play during the weekend but afterwards the only option I have for it in my library is "BUY".

Steam can control your games & access to them fairly easily. It is a DRM afterall.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Originally posted by GAGMR:

That's not entirely true as Steam can delete games in your library & on your PC if they are connected to Steam. If you ever refunded a game you'd see it vanish from your library & from your hard drive. Same for Free Weekends. I can play during the weekend but afterwards the only option I have for it in my library is "BUY".

Steam can control your games & access to them fairly easily. It is a DRM afterall.

There are no rental services on Steam, let alone for movies. A few indi movies have been sold on Steam, but that is about it (maybe on major one?).

No, if you refund a game, it will only vanish from your library. The files are left on your computer. Same for free weekends, the files are left so you don't have to re-download them, if you choose to re-purchase the game.

Steam has less control then you think (by design) and it may include some DRM, but it is up to the developer if they wish to use it. Steam was intended as a digital distrabution system to keeps games updated, it just happend to evolve into it's current state.

Developers don't want a rental system. Why rent out a game for $5, when someone is willing to buy it for more then that? There has never been a rental model for PC games, for good reason. It is also why the used PC market dried up realy quick.

[King of Evil]

Well I still think it's a good idea. Not everyone can or want to pay $40-60 for games anymore, myself included. Albeit, those people are the minority.

And there are some movies up for "Rental Periods" on Steam.



$3.99 is a 48-hour rental.

However, I agree that a full download for a rental seems a bit off. If this were to work they'd probably have to impliment a game streaming service similar to Playstation Now.

[Gus the Crocodile]

Originally posted by GAGMR:

Steam can control your games & access to them fairly easily. It is a DRM afterall.

Agreed. Control over your access is not a concern here.

Originally posted by Spawn of Totoro:

There are no rental services on Steam, let alone for movies.

Yes, there are.




I'm sure there are more, I just clicked a few things on the first page of video results.

If individual developers don't want rentals, then - just as with movies already! - they don't have to offer them. I don't think anyone's suggesting that every game on Steam be forced to offer this particular business model. It is just as you say, Spawn: it's up to developers if they wish to use it.

[Start_Running]

Do you know any developers that want to rent their games? Please find me one.

[76561198001062896]

Originally posted by GAGMR:

Well I still think it's a good idea. Not everyone can or want to pay $40-60 for games anymore, myself included. Albeit, those people are the minority.

And there are some movies up for "Rental Periods" on Steam.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/439650/

$3.99 is a 48-hour rental.

However, I agree that a full download for a rental seems a bit off. If this were to work they'd probably have to impliment a game streaming service similar to Playstation Now.

If someone cannot afford to buy a game at said price, they can always wait for sales

Gaming is a luxury hobby

[King of Evil]

Originally posted by Zetikla:

If someone cannot afford to buy a game at said price, they can always wait for sales

Gaming is a luxury hobby

Every hobby is a luxury hobby.

[76561198001062896]

Originally posted by GAGMR:

Originally posted by Zetikla:

If someone cannot afford to buy a game at said price, they can always wait for sales

Gaming is a luxury hobby

Every hobby is a luxury hobby.

good point

moreso gaming is not a human right

[Joki the Disco Bandit]

You're already renting them. You could lose your entire library at any time, at Steam's discretion, sans those games you may have that are DRM free. The only difference is the the rental period is undefined, and you pay a fixed price up front for it as opposed to a weekly or monthly fee or the like. But you're already renting them.

[hrsh.smpt]

i wish they did there were so many games i wanted to try but they were too expensive and by the time sales came out the player counts were so low that i wouldn't be experiencing the game at its prime, look at for honor, free forever if you downloaded it for that weekend or evolve, thats why games have free weekends in the 1st place they get to demo their game to possible customers and they can boost player counts for people who already bought the game also steam doesn't need drm for games you play online ... it would be great for internet cafes too outside of the us the icafe owners only download free to play games cause they don't want to use hard drive space or affect their download limit for a game most people don't own but if there is a way to rent game time from steam people might try it out that way, fewer people would have to download the files to try the game too cause the icafe only has to download the game once for any number of people to try it ... AAA games can capture a broader demographic with icafes cause not everybody has a pc powerful enough to play those games meanwhile icafes have the hardware to run the games but only keep the free to play ones which you can play on a 10 year old pc cause nobody is going to buy a game for a computer they don't own or wait an hour to download a game at an icafe ...

[dave2164]

It's not a bad idea but I guess they determined it just wouldn't be as profitable enough for them. Some people may buy the game afterword but a lot of people probably wouldn't. I think the free weekend system is best. It allows people to try games they might not otherwise even consider playing or renting and may like it enough to buy it. It's also great for poor players to try out a nice new game but can't even afford to rent it. So I think steam does things very nicely.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by daveblade:

It's not a bad idea but I guess they determined it just wouldn't be as profitable enough for them. Some people may buy the game afterword but a lot of people probably wouldn't. I think the free weekend system is best. It allows people to try games they might not otherwise even consider playing or renting and may like it enough to buy it. It's also great for poor players to try out a nice new game but can't even afford to rent it. So I think steam does things very nicely.

If you're too poor to try out a nice new game there's a good chance you don't have a system capable of running it optimally

[dave2164]

Originally posted by Start_Running:

Originally posted by daveblade:

It's not a bad idea but I guess they determined it just wouldn't be as profitable enough for them. Some people may buy the game afterword but a lot of people probably wouldn't. I think the free weekend system is best. It allows people to try games they might not otherwise even consider playing or renting and may like it enough to buy it. It's also great for poor players to try out a nice new game but can't even afford to rent it. So I think steam does things very nicely.

If you're too poor to try out a nice new game there's a good chance you don't have a system capable of running it optimally

Still a nice feature

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by daveblade:

Originally posted by Start_Running:

If you're too poor to try out a nice new game there's a good chance you don't have a system capable of running it optimally

Still a nice feature

Unless you're the person who earns a living selling the games you make.