News
2UK retailers accused of Steamworks blacklist
Darryl Still, of IL2 Sturmovik publisher 1C Company, tells CVG: "[Retailers] recently sent a command to publishers that if they include Steamworks in their title it will not be stocked...They need to grow up, stop bullying, and focus their attentions on making their offerings as attractive as the people they are obviously looking over their shoulders in panic at."
Source: CVG
Comments
2Activating a game with a steam account effectively locks the game to a specific computer, thereby rendering any second-hand purchase useless, which means less money in the tills for retailers, as pretty much all of them now are into used games as well as new.
Look no further than there.
The used PC games market doesn't exactly set the world on fire, so I don't think it's that. It's more likely that bricks-and-mortar stores are being short-sighted - their real competition is sites like Amazon (because of its size) and Play (because of the VAT avoidance of sending items from the Channel Islands), but they'd rather bully publishers to try and keep their bottom line. :/