Thirteen1

No doubt the the title will cause controversy, but it has to be said. Digital distribution is a great thing, but when retail stores (the latest being HMV) jump on the band wagon, we’re just going to end up with a complete mess of an industry.

HMV have jumped on the digital distribution bandwagon vowing to offer their own in-house digital distribution. This is a retail store embracing technology, something which I applaud them for, but I can’t help but feel a little cynical about the way they’re going about it.

Currently there are a lot of digital content providers around, the most prominent of which, is the Steam platform. Steam is successful for a reason, it was the first to the game, it offers constant updates, a catalogue of games bigger than any retail store and some great social features. It’s evolved from a digital store into an entire platform offering its own social aspects, DRM and anti-cheat methods. Quite frankly, it’s refined, it’s well thought out, and it keeps all of your games safe (presuming of course that they don’t go bust).

The last thing we need now is another digital provider. I’m all for competition, but to compete with Steam you’re going to have to have one hell of a product with a truly fantastic back catalogue. Currently, I don’t see anyone offering anything close. The multitude of digital providers popping up doesn’t seem like a bad idea, but when you consider that big business can mean exclusive titles, we’re going to end up with our game collections spread across the internet like a double rainbow. What does it mean? (sorry for the crap reference) It means that ultimately we’re going to end up with lots of different platform software to play a game, we’re going to end up with games all over the web, we may forget where we bought our games and they’re lost forever.

Worst still, if more and more companies jump on the bandwagon, there won’t be room in the market and some of them may go bust. What happens when the provider goes bust? Bye bye games!

I’m not all against digital distribution, I prefer having a disc, it means my retro stuff will always be with me on and offline, and I like that. But I also have an ever-expanding collection of games on Steam, and I love that too. I just despise people jumping on bandwagons with little to no enthusiasm or imagination, creating just another generic service. HMV, please don’t fall into that trap!