With Call of Duty 4 released two days ago in the US, yesterday in Australia and tomorrow in Europe, gamers everywhere are indulging in Infinity Ward’s latest shooter in the hugely succesful CoD series. Well, not exactly…
Steam users will not be able to play the game until November 12th, but pre-loading has already begun with pre-purchasing available even earlier on the 6th. It is quite baffling that the game is being played by thousands of gamers all around the world but Steam users have to sit and wait while a locked copy of the game sits on their hard drives for another week.
Another issue with the Steam version is the pricing. While US and Australian customers get the game for $49.95 USD, European customers are being charged an extra $20, which jacks the price up to $69.95 USD! Again, it is quite baffling that one group of gamers get treated differently than another group even though all of them just want to play game!
Finally, one of the larger issues with Steam, users not being able to activate games on Steam using a retail key, has struck again. If you buy the game retail, you will not be able to activate it via Steam and you will have to manually download updates and patches. Valve have said that in the future, CoD4 retail keys may be added to the pool of Steam keys, but that line has been used too many times in the past.
Because of these issues, there are obviously quite a few unhappy Steam users and they have had no qualm expressing their opinions over on the Steam Forums. It’s doubtful Valve or Activision will make any changes to the Steam pricing or release date, but they would have to at least take note so that these types of situations don’t occur too often, if at all.
