-- [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ] Anyone else thinking that ads could be a toe in the water test for giving the game away for free?
Think about it, Valve get no revenue beyond the initial purchase price at the moment, but if they could get a regular stream of cash from ads then maybe they could use it to fund ongoing development and give the game away free in the same way many websites give their services for free and are funded by ads. This could lead to episodic games (such as the HL episodes) where each episode is free because advertisers have paid for it, or versions of CS : S which can be downloaded for free because the in-game ads have covered development costs. This would also reduce the need to scale up the licensing/authentication servers for steam servers because I suspect that most users would use the free paid for by ads version, for which there is no no need to track license keys and logins. They could also offer a pay-for non-ad version which costs either a subscription fee, or the traditional one of payment. What does everyone think??? _________________________________________________________________ Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d -- _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds
