In October 2005 Computer Gaming World handed out its annual report card for “Games-on-Demand” services, and Valve’s Steam was one pupil among five. Direct2Drive, which let you download a full-price game and fetch it again later because “the site tracks what you’ve bought”, got an A. Turner’s GameTap, a $15-a-month library of games going back to the Atari 2600, was the “most promising new student”. Steam, the magazine’s mock “Coaster of the Year” for 2004, was “showing signs of improvement”. Within a few years Steam had become the main way PC games were sold, but it had not invented the idea. People had been renting, borrowing and buying games down cables, telephone lines and broadcast signals for a quarter of a century.
Fast facts
- Earliest services: PlayCable, sending Intellivision games down American cable television, introduced in 1980; GameLine for the Atari 2600 and Micronet 800 and Ceefax telesoftware in Britain, all in 1983.
- Kiosks and satellites: Nintendo’s Disk Writer machines in Japan from 1986; Nintendo’s Satellaview in Japan in 1995.
- Games by cable: the Sega Channel for the Mega Drive, in the United States from December 1994 and in Britain from 1996.
- PC storefronts: Stardock, Direct2Drive, GameTap and Valve’s Steam, which came out of testing in September 2003 and sold other publishers’ games from 2005.
- What changed: the buyer gains instant access and loses the box, the second-hand sale and, often, any guarantee that the game will stay available.
By cable and telephone in America
PlayCable was a joint venture between Mattel and the cable company Jerrold. It broadcast Intellivision games over a cable channel to an adapter in the home, and, as Blip put it in 1983, let players “play whatever game is being telecast at a certain time”. Computer Gaming World dated it to 1980, and by December 1983 80 Micro counted 20 cable companies offering it. Others planned to follow. In September 1982 Computer Gaming World described The Games Network, a Los Angeles company testing a cable service for home computers that promised 80 games a year and two-way play between homes.
Control Video Corporation’s GameLine used the telephone instead. Electronic Games explained it in June 1983. A GameLine Master Module, a modem built into a cartridge, plugged into the Atari 2600 and dialled a free 800 number. Owners could “buy playing time on any of more than 30 cartridges each month, at a bargain rate that works out to roughly $1 for 40 minutes of action”, and all they needed was “a TV set, an Atari 2600 (or a 2600-compatible system such as the one sold by Sears), a credit card and the GameLine Master Module”. The company’s president, Bill von Meister, said the service depended on “the cheapest auto-dial 1200-baud modem on the market by a factor of 100!” A dollar bought one play session: perhaps a single game of chess, or five or six attempts at a hard shoot-’em-up. Parents could set a monthly limit for each child, and von Meister planned national tournaments and a messaging service called MailLine. The magazine’s advertisement for charter membership offered the $49.95 module with “$25 worth of free play time” and the line “Pay only for the games you play”.
It did not last. In March 1985 Electronic Games reported that GameLine had “failed after a few months in service, during the videogame shakeout”, with no new titles for almost a year. Control Video Corporation was trying again with Masterline, which sent Commodore 64 and Apple programs by phone for under $20 a month. Twelve of its first 20 programs could be played as often as the subscriber liked; the rest could be used only five times. The company later became Quantum Computer Services, which ran the Commodore 64 service Quantum Link and renamed itself America Online in 1991.
Telesoftware in Britain
Britain had two routes of its own in 1983. Micronet 800, carried on British Telecom’s Prestel viewdata service, went live that March, and its advertisements promised “hundreds of FREE games” and other programs that owners could “call down” to their computers over the telephone. The BBC broadcast programs instead, as pages inside the Ceefax teletext signal. The BBC Micro had been designed with a teletext adapter in mind, and Acorn User reported that the BBC’s telesoftware service was due to launch on 20 September 1983, using “Acorn adapters which download transmitted programs directly into the Beeb’s memory”. Lawson Brown, head of the service, promised “five or six meaningful pieces of software” at a time, many for schools, from the Microelectronics Education Programme and Brighton Polytechnic (see the BBC Computer Literacy Project).
A broadcast is not a download on request. Nothing is sent back, so the catalogue is whatever is being transmitted: programs went out in a cycle, “for four weeks in six months”. And nothing can be sent again on demand, so a bad signal breaks the program:
The odd error in ordinary Ceefax transmissions merely results in a spelling mistake, but a corrupted character in telesoftware is likely to prevent a program being downloaded.
The telesoftware filing system therefore checked each program with a cyclic redundancy check, and Acorn’s £225 adapter, designed for a signal of 800 microvolts, worked in practice with as little as 200.
Acorn User’s reviewer, Malcolm Hall, set the two routes side by side. “The advantage of Prestel is a lower initial cost, and a larger database: the big disadvantage is the telephone bill.” The teletext adapter cost £200 or more, “However, all the software is free”. One route had a cheap terminal and a running cost; the other an expensive terminal and no running cost at all.
Kiosks, cable and satellites
In Japan, Nintendo’s Famicom Disk System, launched in February 1986, used rewritable disks. Owners could take them to Disk Writer machines in shops and write a different game onto them for ¥500, Edge and Retro Gamer later recalled; some games were sold only that way. Nintendo kept the rewriting service going until 2003.
In America, Sega announced a cable channel in 1993 for downloading games “to their cartridge consoles for the price of a specialty cable channel”, as Computer Gaming World reported. The Sega Channel launched in December 1994 and, according to later accounts, closed in 1998. It offered “up to 50 games a month” and previews of unreleased ones, in its advertisements’ words, for “one low monthly price”. When it reached Britain in 1996 through cable operators, Computer and Video Games described 25 games for £9.95 a month, “downloaded into a special Mega Drive adaptor where they are stored until replaced by another, or the console is switched off”. Nothing was kept. Sega of America’s president, Tom Kalinske, told Edge that this helped shop sales: people “fall in love with a game on the Sega Channel and then, when the selection of titles is rotated each month, they find that they can’t play it any more”, so they bought the cartridge.
Nintendo chose a satellite. In 1995 its Satellaview adapter for the Super Famicom received broadcast games, including a reworked Zelda. Hiroshi Imanishi of Nintendo told Edge that cable would have given game producers too small a return, and that the company wanted to use Satellaview “as a means of advertising, not a way of selling games”.
The PC stores
On the PC, games spread first as shareware through bulletin boards and online services, then as downloads sold by stores. Stardock sold its own games through a program called Stardock Central from about 2001. Valve’s Steam, announced in March 2002 and out of testing in September 2003, began as a way of updating Counter-Strike. Half-Life 2 had to be activated through it in November 2004, even when bought in a box, and from 2005 Steam sold other studios’ games. It was one store among several: in 2005 Direct2Drive, GameTap, Yahoo! Games on Demand and Comcast’s service were selling or renting games too. The Steam entry tells how it came to dominate.
The consoles followed. Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade sold small downloadable games, and the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii each had an online store. When the PlayStation 3 launched, Edge was told that the only way to download and run a program on it was through the PlayStation Store, with “encryption and DRM” part of the policy. On the PC, GOG.com opened in 2008 selling older games without copy protection, and in December 2018 Epic Games opened a store taking 12 per cent of each sale against the usual 30. For small developers the download stores replaced the publisher as the way to reach buyers, and the store as the gatekeeper (see indie games).
What buyers lost
A cassette bought in 1985 needed no server and could be lent, sold or kept as long as the tape lasted. A download is usually a licence to play, tied to an account and to the seller’s servers staying online. The Sega Channel’s customers already knew the other side of that bargain in 1996: the game stayed only until the console was switched off.
Sources
- Computer Gaming World issue 6, September 1982, pp. 25–26: “Computer Games by Cable” (PlayCable introduced in 1980; The Games Network).
- COMPUTE! vol. 3 no. 8, January 1981: the Mattel/Jerrold PlayCable system.
- Blip vol. 1 no. 3, April 1983: “Dial-a-game” (PlayCable).
- 80 Micro, December 1983: PlayCable “now offered by 20 cable TV companies”.
- Arnie Katz, “What Mother Bell Never Told Us About Fun on the Telephone”, Electronic Games vol. 1 no. 16, June 1983, pp. 30–36: GameLine, prices, requirements, von Meister on the modem, play sessions, MailLine.
- Electronic Games vol. 1 no. 17, July 1983, p. 66: GameLine charter membership advertisement.
- Electronic Games vol. 3 no. 3, March 1985, p. 8: “Masterline phones in software” (GameLine’s failure; Masterline).
- Computer and Video Games issue 15, January 1983, and Your Computer, January 1983: Micronet 800 advertisements; Dragon User, June 1983, p. 7: Micronet 800 “was launched last March”.
- Acorn User issue 15, October 1983: news, “Telesoftware service ready to go” (launch date, Lawson Brown, the cycle, the CRC, the £225 adapter and signal strengths); Malcolm Hall’s teletext adapter review (Prestel, Micronet and Viewfax 258 against Ceefax; “all the software is free”).
- Retro Gamer: Videogames Hardware Handbook volume 1 (2009): the Famicom Disk System (February 1986, Disk Writer machines, ¥500, download-only games); Edge issue 54, January 1998: the Disk Writers.
- For the Disk Writer service’s end in 2003, see the Famicom Disk System entry and its citation of Nintendo’s own pages.
- Computer Gaming World issue 108, July 1993, p. 162, and COMPUTE! issue 155, August 1993, p. 40: the Sega Channel announced.
- Sega Visions, April 1995: Sega Channel advertisement (“up to 50 games a month”).
- Edge issue 19, April 1995, pp. 96–100: interview with Tom Kalinske (the Sega Channel and retail sales).
- Computer and Video Games issue 177, August 1996: the Sega Channel in Britain (25 games for £9.95 a month; games stored until the console is switched off).
- Edge issue 24, September 1995, p. 92: interview with Hiroshi Imanishi (Satellaview).
- Computer Gaming World issue 255, October 2005: Darren Gladstone’s Games-on-Demand report card (Comcast, Direct2Drive, Steam, GameTap, Yahoo!).
- Edge issue 169, December 2006: interview on the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation Store (“encryption and DRM”); Edge issue 225, March 2011: advertisement pointing to the Wii Shop; Edge issue 146, February 2005: Xbox Live Arcade.
- For Steam’s dates and Half-Life 2, see the Steam entry and its citations; for Epic’s store, the Epic Games entry.
- “Sega Channel”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): launch on 12 December 1994 and closure on 31 July 1998. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Channel
- “GameLine”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): Control Video Corporation, Quantum Computer Services, Quantum Link and America Online (October 1991). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameLine
- “Digital distribution of video games”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): Stardock Central (2001) and GOG.com (2008). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_distribution_of_video_games