ObsessiveMathsFreak's Journal: Valve, Microsoft and Whale Meat

There's yet another discussion about Half-Life 2 and Steam going on. Some might wonder why so many slashdotters defend Valve, yet would scream blue murder if Microsoft ever tried anything remotely like Steam.

Two reasons I think.
One, the games section is populated by windows pc gamers, more so that regular tech heads. Most of these are young and innocent when it comes to IP issues. Kind of like a missing link between regular users and frequent slashdotters. Anyway, these gamers do love their games and the companies that make them and will brook no critisisms of them. They're also more likely to be confused by comments slamming windows XP, as they still regard it as "Way cool! I have a computer with XP!"

Two, Steam gives you Half-Life 2 which is a very popular video game. An MS scheme along the same lines would just give you Windows. Not so popular. People will support one and not the other simply because Steam gives them something they really want. I'm sure if Half-Life 2 was awful, no-one would support steam. It's kind of like people who've eaten whale meat, at special restauraunts.(Before you burn my house down, I haven't) Anyway, these people, having tasted the whales flesh are much more open to the idea of hunting whales than other. Well, I know of at least one person who was dead set against hunting whales, a big conservationist. He went abroad, sniffed a whale meat stand, took a bite, and now he's softened up to the whole idea. Apparently it tastes like beef, go figure. The point is, slashdotters hated Steam, then they tasted Half-Life 2, and now they're alright with the whole idea of Valve licencing a video game. We're all just animals underneath it all!

My 2 cents.