I pay 10€ per month for 16/8Mbps internet - if I wasnt able to afford internet I would have bigger problem than not playing games. Also even for those who are unemployed some basic cheap internet cost less than sending CV via mail or extra driving when looking for job - and getting job ASAP should be priority of anyone who is unemployed.

Because if they somehow manage to make a service that becomes popular then they get a larger share of the pie.

If Internet access was that cheap in the U.S. i would agree with you. But depending on your location in the U.S. a far slower connection will cost you ~50-60$ a month. Many people only have 2 basic options for internet access. Cable connection through their local cable company and DSL through their local telephone company and prices are pretty much the same either way. Outside of limited time promotional offers, and "bundle" options pricing is pretty much fixed. There are more options in some larger U.S. Cities... but not everyone lives in a large city.

Its funny that country with 10M people (Czech Republic) has more ISPs than entire USA - competition FTW!

/waiting for upgrade to 40/40Mbps/

There are a quite a few ISPs in the U.S. but due to geography consumer choice is usually limited to 2 or 3 ISPs. Competition for any one particular customer is almost non existent. The size of the U.S. alone makes it difficult for most companies to even begin to setup any kind of infrastructure to compete. Which is why you may have more options in a larger city (more potential return on infrastructure investment).. but those of us outside of major urban areas are far more limited. Add in the fact that those few existing ISPs are mainly running on old infrastructure and it means we pay more for slower connections

Its one of many areas the U.S. is behind the rest of the modern world, the politicians speak of expanding broadband access.. but ignore the fact that even if everyone has physical access..without competition access is extremely limited by economics.

Even in the heart of Manhattan my options are pretty limited when it comes to ISPs. While the city itself has a number of different ones, the options in any given neighrborhood are more limited. You can go to a library for free internet connection but your time is limited, you may have to wait in line, and it wouldn't take that many trips before the subway fare would add up to be more then internet costs.

Regarding job hunting, at least in the United States, the vast majority of help wanted ads are online so you'll never even find them without the internet. And many of them don't give any contact information except for an e-mail address.

While your right about the help wanted ads being primarily online. Depending on your level of education and chosen field your more or less likely to find a job that way. Remember a major employer in the U.S. is small businesses. Your not likely to find a help wanted add for your local coffee shop etc online (maybe its different in your area since they're all starbucks in Manhatten  ). A lot of smaller businesses still rely on walk in applications. Those in these lower paid service jobs (which btw is still one of  the largest and still growing job sectors) are not only less likely to be able to afford internet.. but will most likely find it less useful having it in the instance of financial hardship.

But I digress.. back to steam.. lol

Well even in the more mid advanced job fields they say your much more likely to find a job not by answering want ads but by calling up every place that hires people in your field and asking them if they have a job for you. Even that is going to be much easier with the internet though, because that is by far the easiest and most efficient way to find the people you need to call. But yeah if you want to work as a waiter or barrista you can probably wander from store to store. I've still never met someone in  a low level service job who didn't have the internet though, even when they were struggling and hand a family to feed.  That doesn't mean they aren't out there of course, and it may be partially a cultural thing based on where I live.

there's nothing wrong with monopoly in the name of convenience if that monopoly is accountable and doesn't act as an obstacle. some people call it standardisation. the DVD, CD and BlueRay are monopolies, as is the shape of a power socket. it would  be chaos without them. what is needed is to make steam independent of any given developer or publisher.

i guess what i'm talking about is a public movement for gamers to buy steam off of valve and have it's business run democratically by it's customers, who have voting rights in how the service operates. a small fraction of the sale price of each game then goes to pay for a few staff (ie, a democratically elected president of steam) and to pay valve for maintenance.

that way no changes are made to the service without the approval of it's users, and if valve ever tanks then steam continues, and the users allocate the maintenance contract to another company.

how many of you would object to steamification if it was run like that?

I agree with first part, because even if one service had monopoly developers and publishers would still have to compete for customers money, so it would be unlikely to have negative effect on prices.

few problems with second part:

1. People (users) would vote themself money - just look at Greek government (and USA is getting close to that situation with their 1.7 T$ deficits). This works very poorly (from PC gamers perspective) for most gaming related public companies - their decisions are mostly short term based - for example EA, Ubisoft, Activision etc.

2. Who has billions $ to buy Steam from Valve?

point 1... first i simply feel it's very pessimistic. i think a better comparison is companies like john lewis, or the co-operative. if you think of the owners as small share holders, then it's in the interest of cutomer's to vote for profitability as that earns them dividends. true, none of us have millions to spare, but there are 30 million OF us, many of whom can spare to spend $100 or more a year on games. i'd recommend some sort of pledging system where users agreed to pledge $50 in advance, that would be returned if the initiative hadn't achieved sufficient numbers within a year. they have similar systems for paying for unsigned bands to record an album by getting fans to confirm to buy it. a lot of gamers are very well read and have strong feelings on this issue. look at the success penny arcade have had with child's play, for example. they've raised $9 million dollars, and that was charity, not investment. real madrid and barcelona are owned by their fans, and though they have accumulated significant debts, they have achieved great success and no one expects them to go under or sell up, largely because of the shear size of their fanbase (read: userbase). neither is spending 4.6% of the federal budget on loan payments going to sink america. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fy2010_spending_by_category.jpg

finally, it's not even necesarry for the entire company to be bought out. if microsoft had a share in steam they might be persuaded to abandon (or at least integrate) the mess that is games for windows live (which almost everyone agrees is far worse than steam, and simply divides, confuses and hamstrings the digital distribution/integration movement).

a steam that was owned by a triumvirate of valve, microsoft and users might then be able to operate in a responsible and profitable way that benefited everyone and facilitating PC gaming by providing one standardised and tri-partisan platform that everyone could agree on.

It kind of sounded like a co-op board to me too, at least in theory. In reality though I'm not sure how different it would be from a regular corporation. It would have shares owned by the public and they would determine the staff that leads it. Isn't that how every corporation works?

1. US estimate is to spend 8% of its income (4.6% of budget) on interest in FY 2010 - while interest is lowest in recorded history (part of the reason for that is that FED is buying lots of that debt as part of QE2 - at the end of QE2 FED will have over 2T $ in US debt) as soon as that stop and fed has to start selling it to open market those interests will go up. I dont think US government will be happy to pay 20% of its income just for interest.

2. While Steam has 30+M users, its hard to organize  to raise billions of $ by users - I dont know of any such succesfull project. That said - I wouldnt mind to invest 10 000$ in Steam if I could expect good ROI. 

3. I wouldnt trust MS to spend billions and not to expect to make demands/orders - MS is also very schizofrenic about PC gaming. 

4. IMO it would be very very hard to convince Gabe Newell to sell majority share in Steam - IIRC he already turned down offers from Google, EA and few others.

I agree that result would be very similar to normal IPO.

1. Now, when Impulse is being bought by GameFuck eh... Gamestop, will Stardock sell its games on Steam?

2. Looks like non-gog version of Witcher 2 will use Steamworks http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showpost.php?p=13026222&postcount=501