Steam Rental Program

[FafnirChaos]

I'm just going to put this here:

Have a Service so that people can Rent games so they can try them out for a day or two.

- Have Achievements Locked during that rental service.
- At the end of the rental Agreement, all save data will be deleted, and you lose access to the game.
- Have the rental agreement were it could not be extended - so that people could not abuse that system, unless they want to spend more money then what the game cost.

While we do have a 2 Hour window refund policy - That requires you to pay full price for a game or wait for a deal - that can also abused by developers knowing about 2 hour window - along with demos.

Having a limited time full access to a game allows you to make a better informed decision on whether or not you want to purchase that game.

That also prevents players from abusing the refund system - who just want to try out the game themselves - or end up accidentally going over the two hour mark.

This is how it was done in my day - It worked great back then - don't understand why we don't have that today.

Edit: Any short length games would NOT be able to be in this service, and would only be part of the refund system - 2 hours is more then enough for a short game.

[Spanky]

it's called a demo. but in my experience, all demo's do is bloat and cause damage to a PC. They aren't intended to be played forever as the use of which, like a TV demonstration wears out the whole PC and it's fast.

However, rentals are intended to be bought but since the dawn of rentals they aren't the full version rather a changed version more or less cut short of less cinematic.

I always bought my rented games i liked.

[✨Saint✨]

Rental shops failed in the past, it wont work in the future. It also has been discussed countless times, you will find plenty of posts similar to yours using the search function.

[FafnirChaos]

Originally posted by NeBaZ-):

it's called a demo. but in my experience, all demo's do is bloat and cause damage to a PC. They aren't intended to be played forever as the use of which, like a TV demonstration wears out the whole PC and it's fast.

Demos have cut off periods - That can easily be abused by developers.

[FafnirChaos]

Originally posted by ✨Saint✨:

Rental shops failed in the past, it wont work in the future. It also has been discussed countless times, you will find plenty of posts similar to yours using the search function.

:saint:

The reason why is because the rental company paid for their games - In a rental agreement both steam and the developer gets money from the rental sale.

[✨Saint✨]

Originally posted by FafnirChaos:

Originally posted by ✨Saint✨:

Rental shops failed in the past, it wont work in the future. It also has been discussed countless times, you will find plenty of posts similar to yours using the search function.

The reason why is because the rental company paid for their games - In a rental agreement both steam and the developer gets money from the rental sale.

It does not matter how you turn it, it wont work, Something that has been said before.
Rentals?. Just forget it.

[Spanky]

the only way a rental would work is a game pass or subscription. And I Already said this long ago on steam that Steam needs to integrate third party publishers and developers subscriptions and game passes. Like Xbox did with the universal platform play.

Which it has a little. It's getting better. It's not there yet by far.

[FafnirChaos]

This isn't movies where you rent it once and you never have to rent it again or purchase it.

You can make a better informed decision - then what you would get from a "Reviewer". Plus it's no different from a free demo or a 2 hour window - you just have more access to the game.

If you want achievements or to actually beat a game you'd have to purchase it.

For games that are short, I wouldn't have an agreement for that - 2 hour window works perfectly.

[FafnirChaos]

Originally posted by NeBaZ-):

the only way a rental would work is a game pass or subscription. And I Already said this long ago on steam that Steam needs to integrate third party publishers and developers subscriptions and game passes. Like Xbox did with the universal platform play.

Which it has a little. It's getting better. It's not there yet by far.

The problem with game pass - is that it's specific towards the games on it - If there is a game that's not on it that you want to try - tough cookies.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by FafnirChaos:

Originally posted by NeBaZ-):

the only way a rental would work is a game pass or subscription. And I Already said this long ago on steam that Steam needs to integrate third party publishers and developers subscriptions and game passes. Like Xbox did with the universal platform play.

Which it has a little. It's getting better. It's not there yet by far.

The problem with game pass - is that it's specific towards the games on it - If there is a game that's not on it that you want to try - tough cookies.

Problem?

I have a ubi soft account and subscription, i have an xbox subscription. I can play my ubisoft PC games on my Windows PC.... Done with this convo.

[FafnirChaos]

Originally posted by NeBaZ-):

Originally posted by FafnirChaos:

The problem with game pass - is that it's specific towards the games on it - If there is a game that's not on it that you want to try - tough cookies.

Problem?

I have a ubi soft account and subscription, i have an xbox subscription. I can play my ubisoft PC games on my Windows PC.... Done with this convo.

Ubisoft and Xbox are not the only publishers/developers on steam.

[Start_Running]

fearture already exists,. Dev/Pubs simply have to enable it

[Spanky]

Originally posted by FafnirChaos:

Originally posted by NeBaZ-):

Problem?

I have a ubi soft account and subscription, i have an xbox subscription. I can play my ubisoft PC games on my Windows PC.... Done with this convo.

Ubisoft and Xbox are not the only publishers/developers on steam.

youre just witnessing a new era of gaming.

Blockchain makes it even awesomer with added financial gains.

[Gwarsbane]

In a day or 2 you can beat many games. Any game that can be beat in under 20 hours could be split over 2 days. Or even done in one day if the person doesn't care about sleeping. There has been times I have been up and home for 2 days, and the only thing that helped keep my mind off what was keeping me up was gaming.

Before you say Valve can keep track of how much you have played, they can't and won't do that. That would be invasive and they have tried invasive stuff in the past.... the community didn't take it well.

Then you have the issue of people renting it on one account, and then renting it again on another account to finish it. How do you solve that issue? Also same issue as above, anything invasive will not go well.

So unless you are charging half the price for the "rental" or the full price for the "rental" there is no way to stop developers from losing money from this.

Developers can already give out free weekends and other stuff like that. They want to make money, this won't make them money.

They can also already setup subscriptions for the games... most don't because they would lose to much money from people beating the game and then going on to the next game.


It was not done this way in "your day"... ALL rentals were done with physical copies of games that at the time, could not be easily pirated.... which means once CD burners came along, PC games were no longer rented. In my area, PC games were never rented.


Digital only games are much different then physical games being rented. Developers and game companies have been trying to kill the rental market because they make far less money because of it. And yes, this is all about them getting money... they kind of need it to do stuff like pay bills and make more games.

I rented lots of games for the NES/SNES back in the day, do you know how many of those games I bought after renting them for 99 cents for a day or 2.99 for a weekend? Zero. Why? Because I beat them or got to a point where it was rather pointless to buy them and renting them one more time I could finish beating them.


No matter what the price is people will not be happy with it and want it cheaper, but people are not going to want to pay half or even 1/4 of the price. People are only going to want to "rent" the game for like 99 cents or so if its only for a day or 2.

Also why bother renting a game when it goes on sale for like 90% off or more. I doubt people want to wait that long though, people want to play and beat the game for a much cheaper price when its new instead of paying 70 or 80 dollars or more.

You want to try a game, ask the developers for a demo. Most do not make them because its a waste of their time and money as it brings in nothing.



The only kind of games that "renting" makes sense for are live service games that are multiplayer only with no save files and no story. But many of those have been going free to play anyway.

[FafnirChaos]

Originally posted by NeBaZ-):

Originally posted by FafnirChaos:

Ubisoft and Xbox are not the only publishers/developers on steam.

youre just witnessing a new era of gaming.

Blockchain makes it even awesomer with added financial gains.

What I'm witnessing is Developers pandering to Journalist to get a good review - and releasing games in broken states, only to fix them up as time goes on - or the game being completely different from a biased review.

[FafnirChaos]

Originally posted by Gwarsbane:

In a day or 2 you can beat many games. Any game that can be beat in under 20 hours could be split over 2 days. Or even done in one day if the person doesn't care about sleeping. There has been times I have been up and home for 2 days, and the only thing that helped keep my mind off what was keeping me up was gaming.

Before you say Valve can keep track of how much you have played, they can't and won't do that. That would be invasive and they have tried invasive stuff in the past.... the community didn't take it well.

Then you have the issue of people renting it on one account, and then renting it again on another account to finish it. How do you solve that issue? Also same issue as above, anything invasive will not go well.

So unless you are charging half the price for the "rental" or the full price for the "rental" there is no way to stop developers from losing money from this.

Developers can already give out free weekends and other stuff like that. They want to make money, this won't make them money.

They can also already setup subscriptions for the games... most don't because they would lose to much money from people beating the game and then going on to the next game.


It was not done this way in "your day"... ALL rentals were done with physical copies of games that at the time, could not be easily pirated.... which means once CD burners came along, PC games were no longer rented. In my area, PC games were never rented.


Digital only games are much different then physical games being rented. Developers and game companies have been trying to kill the rental market because they make far less money because of it. And yes, this is all about them getting money... they kind of need it to do stuff like pay bills and make more games.

I rented lots of games for the NES/SNES back in the day, do you know how many of those games I bought after renting them for 99 cents for a day or 2.99 for a weekend? Zero. Why? Because I beat them or got to a point where it was rather pointless to buy them and renting them one more time I could finish beating them.


No matter what the price is people will not be happy with it and want it cheaper, but people are not going to want to pay half or even 1/4 of the price. People are only going to want to "rent" the game for like 99 cents or so if its only for a day or 2.

Also why bother renting a game when it goes on sale for like 90% off or more. I doubt people want to wait that long though, people want to play and beat the game for a much cheaper price when its new instead of paying 70 or 80 dollars or more.

You want to try a game, ask the developers for a demo. Most do not make them because its a waste of their time and money as it brings in nothing.



The only kind of games that "renting" makes sense for are live service games that are multiplayer only with no save files and no story. But many of those have been going free to play anyway.

That's why I mentioned in one of my comments any short games would not be able to be in that service - and only the refund policy as that 2 hours in a short game is more then enough.

A lot of longer games that are 40+ hours long could benefit from it.