Activision Responsible For Modern Warfare 2 Delay, Not Steam

I'm getting quite a bit of heat reading some article and Steam forums about the Modern Warfare 2 Steam release debacle. Let me state this once: release dates have nothing to do with Valve/Steam!

Steam is merely a platform that publishers like Activision can use to publish their games and have some protection from piracy. It is up to the publisher to decide when the game is released.

Activision. Not Steam.

So all this hate branching towards the digital distribution service is quite unwarranted.

Now on the other hand, releasing a game in retail, which you then install and cannot play for two more days is very annoying. I can clearly see why some of the hate is going towards Steam for this.

PC World have published quite a informative article on how Steam is clearly to blame. It provides quite a few misconceptions on innacuracies that I would like to clear the air with.

"Yes, wait. Sadly, inexplicably, maddeningly, Valve's elected to exacerbate the Modern Warfare 2 launch kerfuffle by delaying availability of the online-bought Steam version until Thursday, November 12th"

That was Activision's decision, and Valve had previously stated that the game would unlock on the 12th. This is nothing new. Anyone who has done their research would know this.

"All courtesy Valve's digital rights management technology, which allows Valve to decide on its own demonstrably mercurial terms who gets to play, and when."

Very unneeded hate there. Valve have been excellent with Steam and it's DRM. They have never limited how many computers you can use it on or ever denied people playing a certain game once it has been released. Unlike other DRM products Valve acts more like a gaming portal than a restrctive device. Hell, they even have an Offline mode.

"You've probably read that Activision elected to slip Valve's Steamworks technology into both retail and digitally downloadable PC versions of Modern Warfare 2"

They didn't "slip" it in. It was clearly announced a few weeks back that this was going to happen. Very few complained then. There is no point in making this sound negative, as Steamworks offers many benefits, especially the VAC system which is the most secure anti-cheat services around compared to anything else out there.

"The breaking response on Steam's Modern Warfare 2 boards has so far been scathing."

Welcome to the Steam forums. These people are hardly a reliable source for unbiased reports. People use the forums to complain about one thing or another. Even if MW2 were released on time people would complain that it took too long to install. Move along.

"Unfortunately these issues seem to be setting Steam up to remain the backseat driver when it comes to PC gaming sales," wrote another."

This is a weak argument considering the fact that Steam is the most successful digital distributor, which has many deals with publishers and produces record profits for both itself and its partners. Again, this is a another reason not to trust Steam forum users for their "facts".

"Valve's not offering a "why" (yet--email inquiries dispatched per usual) but Kotaku speculates it might have something to do with capacity load"

Valve doesn't need to. Activision does. Stop confusing service platform with publisher. And blaming it on capacity load makes no sense when they have more servers setup for the launch of the Xbox/PS3 versions. If capacity load were the case they would have it setup in advance rather than push the release date out.

"Of course Steam's already come between for online pre-purchasers. What's the difference between Steam crashing repeatedly during the game's first couple days and not being able to play the game for another 48 hours?"

Are they implying that Steam frequently crashes? I for one have had very few crashes with it over it's lifetime. I believe the writer is trying to imply the problems Steam had in it's initial launch with Half Life 2 in 2004. Well here's hoping they have improved something over 5 years...

Lets take another look at something that WAS Valve's fault. The L4D2 early demo access WAS delayed well over a day. This WAS Valve's fault and people were seriously angry over this. Yet, somehow because MW2 has alot of publicity and the general habit is to poke at Steam lately website feel they need to contribute un-needed facts to cash in views and publicity.