The folks over at Shack­news have pub­lished an inter­est­ing arti­cle on dig­i­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion. I tried myself on its mer­its here. They begin by focus­ing on the per­ils of this type of dis­tri­b­u­tion. Refer­ring to a recent exam­ple they show that par­tic­u­lar ser­vices may cease to exist. Indeed, that poses quite a prob­lem if it hap­pens quickly and unex­pect­edly. Frankly, I was in a rush writ­ing about its ben­e­fits lest I for­get some­thing, thus, I didn’t even think on that. Can’t be helped now, the rem­edy is over at Shacknews.

How­ever, they con­tinue with the Steam ser­vice which has become quite pop­u­lar ever since it has been estab­lished as a means of dig­i­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion. Now, even big pub­lish­ers like Activi­sion are going to come on board which clearly shows a con­tin­u­ally grow­ing sup­port for Steam. I don’t think Steam will pre­vail, though, at least it can’t in it’s cur­rent shape. There should be oth­ers pro­vid­ing such ser­vices rather than the devel­oper itself. As always, com­pe­ti­tion is healthy and helps shap­ing the mar­ket. Obvi­ously, con­sumers do have lotta ben­e­fits result­ing from a strong competition.