http://store.steampowered.com/news/3792/
I wonder if this means Brad Wardell will stop working with Civ V.
I just can't support DRM, that while not TOO bad, helps enforce a near-monopoly. This may be a blow to the other DD providers- as this is the biggest game to do this so far.
Hopefully EWOM is everything I want, because now I'm relying on it.
(Note: I do use Steam, I just won't support being forced to use it on non-Valve products)
That's not the point. The post is trying to imply that those of us who play multiplayer, regardless of how few we are, wouldn't have a problem with Steam because all the bells and whistles attached to the multiplayer portion of the game. I am here to tell you, as someone not happy about being forced to use steam AND who plays multiplayer... that's not necessarily true.
Not sure why you keep thinking I'm talking to you when I'm quoting bonscott. Obviously, you don't share his opinions and my replies to him don't apply to you.
If you want to make arguments on why Steamworks is a bad multiplayer service and is worse than Gamespy, GFWL, or in house coding, then by all means. You don't have to reply to every reply I make to bonscott, though.
I didn't think that you were talking to me persay, but you seem to think that the only people who object to Civ V being wrapped in Steamworks are people who won't use Steam and don't play Civ multiplayer. That's not necessarily true. Since you are trying to get me to talk about Steam being a bad multiplayer service you STILL don't get it. At this point, I doubt you ever will.
Let's all agree to the following table, and let's move on eh?
Single Players:
- Like/Don't mind Steam
- Hate Steam
Multi Players:
Please choose your category and let's move onto something else.
I'm a SP who likes Steam.
Err nope sorry, I don't hate Steam either. If you don't like the discussion points, why even bother to post in the thread?
Steam shouldn't have an impact on the multiplayer side of this game since turn based games are least effected by lag, though when you do get a game like Codmw2 tied to a peer to peer multiplayer service with steam thats only when steam really starts to be piggish server based FPS with steam are unaffected.
unless it gets really great reviews and is praised for bring something new to civ 5 i won't buy it steam is a key factor but i will let that go if its really great though so far seeing how its hexs now no stacks i am yet to see how well it will work, but so far the unit changes seems to be good since a unit doesn't need a damn transport to cross a sea now, though not sure about how range units will be balanced now also units are not destoryed when defeated in battle not sure how fair that will be or the effect of that yet.
The DLC part is also putting me off so unless the game is really great its bye bye to its chances of me getting it.
though some how i am getting the feeling that even if its not that great that it still will out sell Elemental even though Civ 5 comes out almost a month later.
steam was basicly the first DRM for Pc.... and now turning DLC power house for pc, seems that people will just buy the smallest things for a large price.
People are stupid. I know I am.
People need to get used to more games requireing steamworks (and hopefully gamespy burning a death in hell itself) wether they like it or not. There is no choice for developers right now, and that means no choice for us. Even when reactor comes out I doubt any AAA game publisher will go that route (market share), I expect a lot of smaller stratergy game publishers to do so (kind like how Impulse works anyway).
You don't reinvent the wheel when you build a car, buy your wheels from a good wheel manufacturer. Right now there is one good wheel company, called the Steamwheel Cartel.
I've bent over and accepted steam is always going to be on checking out my computer when Im playing coop with my friend or when Im playing dirty single player. Its quite nice really... once you get comfortable with intrusion...
Is 8 "Best of E3" nominations enough?
I know Brad is optimistic, but I don't think he's crazy. If Civ5 hits the same mark as Civ4 did then Elemental will have to sell more than 2 million units. Possible, but I doubt it.
i guess thats why they got the elemental army thing going to spread the word about elemental, still elemental will the most modern up to date fantasy 4x rpg tbs around for ages, wonder if there will be a fall from heaven mod for Civ5 but even fall from heaven 2 isn't as in depth as elemental is going to be though i do hope Civ 5 is great i hope elemental is better, though steamworks is a drawback i would rather have DRM and not the steam kind and Ubisoft has made the most evil DRM this far with needing to be online all the time even for singleplayer and if you lose connection the game pauses.
mainly don't want Civ 5 to cause people to overlook or shun elemental, i do have a fear of Civ 5 causeing elemental to not sell as much as it could but what really is the main factor is how well they are both reviewed.
at least there are not isane amounts of Civ Zealots if everyone was crazy about civ 5 as much as the ipad or iwatever then there would be an issue
at least elemental is only $50 civ 5 is like $80
I am pretty sure Spore and Black and White and a number of other games received some E3 awards that weren't exactly as good as a lot of people were hoping. I am still disappointed about Spore myself. Civ V, well I am fairly confident they won't let the game become shallow eye candy.
Is that some international pricing thing?
Elemental - $49.95 USD
Civilization 5 - $49.99 USD
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=365614&page=4
As you can see many heavy steam users are complaining about their games having crashes and problems related to steam. A friend of mine can't get her mic to work on TF2 and tech support has no idea what the problem is even though the mic works fine on non-steam products. She complains about Steam really too much as I don't care that much:)
Personally, I was going to pre-order and as a long standing fanatic about civ I'm going to wait awhile to see what the consensus is. If there are no gameplay problems and no steam related crashes then I'll consider it. Overall I'm pissed at 2k and saddened that Sid would allow this travesty of forced Steam. I don't play multiplayer except LAN with friends so I have no reason to play via the internet mainly because I don't want any connection to any gaming community unless I'm pretty damn certain the group is quality. Left4Dead was great until it got popular and the trolls and kids got on. It would depress me to play a civ game and be forced to read leet speak or listen to the babble of idiot preteens and teenagers.
its 80 for me through steam.... now i guess i am going to ignore it even more.
My interests as a game player are best served by a fun, bug free game. A game using Steamworks for connectivity has a pretty good chance of working, so that's not a bad thing for me. If they go their own way and it goes wrong? Well... it was several days after release before I could play Demigod online at all, and a couple of weeks before I could play it online without Hamachi.
There's no way to sugar coat that fiasco (Stardock put a herculean effort into fixing it, but that doesn't change the mess it started out as). Online connectivity is hard. A proven working system lets them spend more development time on gameplay and less on the intricies of connecting to other players. That's in the player's interest as well as 2k's.
The game almost certainly has a budget, along with it's set release date. Any time gained in one area (Steamworks) is time/budget spent on something else. Even Brad commented on the production values, it doesn't look like 2k is trying to cut corners here.
I can't see how Steam could be to blame for a microphone problem, that sounds more like an old fashioned game bug. Possibly to do with the middleware audio solution they used (World of Warcraft had all kinds of sound issues when they upgraded to a newer version of Fmod in order to add voice support and it took months to sort it all out again).
As for the other stuff... I'm really sick of people bashing teenagers and preteens on these forums. The majority of online gamers are adults. The majority of online gaming jerks are adults. It's been that way for quite a while. Some of you people are the online equivalent of the old man with the shotgun yelilng "get of my lawn!"
It's sad.
The difference between a teenager and an adult is that teenagers don't know how to be total jerks yet, so they can only become jerks.
Has anyone ever read the multiplayer lobby chat for Civ4? Omg that was some serious wtf there. Arn't you people suposed to be sophisticated stratergy gamers?!?! Why are you talking about how you would bang a horses ass in front of "leetCivMan's" mother? Or the person obssed with the word penis. I like them too but you don't have to spam the word in the chat box for a minuet....
lol
Your response quotes but doesn't address my question. Perhaps I was unclear so I'll try again... First the points I'm considering, then putting it together:
-Valve, 2k, and Take2 are taking a cut from civ5.
-Today the net has changed (or can change) the old model for distribution/etc. -- the stuff publishers typically do for studios like Firaxis.
-Firaxis is a proven success, and doesn't have to shill for $ like an unknown, unproven startup.
So, could Firaxis take the $ that's going to Valve, 2k, and Take2, and self-publish/etc., and implement themselves all the useful things steam does (without the stuff like sharing personally identifiable info with unspecified third parties), and still make as good a profit and be as successful? The bonus is that they'd be masters of their fate -- no outside party dictating how some things should be done.
The studio-publisher-steam model is just getting going, but the net may be making another model as or more viable. Consider what's happening to the music industry as a possible example of what the future may hold.
Anyhoo that was my question that you quoted and apparently tried to respond to with your above quote.
The stuff that steam handels will be more bug free than if they made it themselves...
Working on the assumption that they have the same manpower, budget, and time in both scenarios? Yes. There is no replacement for Steamworks that you can simply drop in, they'd have to use something inferior (GFWL or Gamespy) or roll their own solution. Creating their own solution is time spent building, testing, debugging, testing, implementing, testing, rolling out servers... and testing. Locklear93's post on the last page talked about that, from the perspective of QA.
Worrying about money going to Valve here is like saying that FPS games would be better if they built their own graphics engine instead of licensing a solution. Does anybody really think that money spent on the Unreal/Crytek/whatever engine isn't worth it compared to every FPS developer building their own? How about Havok for physics (for an Elemental example)? Havok's not free, but Brad licensed it anyway. Developers do that for a reason: it's cheaper to buy an already built and largely proven solution over building your own, especially when you don't have the knowledge to do so in house already.
What Steamworks provides is no different, and it's a business decision. Valve can provide that code more cheaply then each developer can implement it themselves due to scale. Developers can focus on their game and not on the little details of how to implement a friends list and provide server infrastructure for it. (Blizzard can do that, and is rolling out their Real ID solution today for WoW/Starcraft 2 in fact, but Blizzard has their own little empire and has more money then some European countries.)
Pretty sure I did answer it, but alright. The budget doesn't change because of Steamworks. If the cost of Steamworks is less then the cost of implementing the same feature set and supporting infrastructure, Firaxis comes out ahead by using it. Since the budget doesn't change, less money spent on those features/infrastructure means more money spent on gameplay and artwork. Since the budget is fixed, the only way a CEO bonus goes up from it is if the game sells more due to being more polished due to having more developer time spent on gameplay (and less on achievements). If the CEO gets more money because they put out a better game? I'm cool with that, the better game part is what I care about as a customer.
If it's sold on Steam at all, Valve would already take a cut from those sales. Take Two owns Firaxis, so strictly speaking they earn whatever Firaxis does anyway. 2k gets a cut as the publisher...
According to Brad, the overwhelming majority of game sales are still retail. I believe he's in a position to know the numbers, as the owner of a company in the business. That being true, publishers still play a role in the logistics of actually getting a game boxed and out to retail, as well as marketing.
They *could* do it, but it means hiring networking guys, buying servers, server admins, and so on. They'd then need to contract someone to handle the logistics of shipping retail copies, or hire staff to do it. Same thing with marketing. Of course they won't need those marketing/shipping people until they're ready to ship an expansion, so those would be temporary contract workers or put out to third party companies to do... which is pretty much what a publisher does.
On the networking side, they need to pay for those servers as long as people are playing Civ 5, even if no particular revenue is coming in from it. Firaxis isn't a big company and they don't exactly put out a ton of games. I'm not seeing any particular gain for them in paying money to do things they have no internal skill in doing, when they can contract out to companies that are already providing those services and can do it with the benefit of economies of scale.
So no, I don't see how they'd do better by going on their own. In terms of having control themselves... they seem to have control over Civ 5 for the most part anyway. Gameplay wise there are a lot of radical changes happening, and corporate suits tend to dislike radical changes in proven franchises when sequels that don't change things much sell reliably. Does anybody really think someone from 2k came in and said "hey, completely redo the entire combat model"?
The only decision likely made by 2k here was a release date and Steamworks... and really, there isn't a better option then Steamworks right now if you want the functionality it provides.
I understand what you're saying but experience tells me there's another side to this that isn't being presented. We're mainly seeing the views of those convinced this is the way to go. I'd like to see the other side present their case.
The game (pun intended) is changing, with the music industry leading the way. The game industry is different but similar. Valve, 2k, and Take2 have a financial motive to present this as a fait accompli and the best/only way to progress. That's a sales job and when we hear it it's prudent to hold on to our wallets and seek out the other side of the story.
I'm still curious to know how much Valve, 2k, and Take2 will take out of the Civ5 pie, and how much will be left to Firaxis, and what Firaxis could do with all of the pie. I'm also curious if the cost/benefit to steam was done by Firaxis or 2k/Take2, and who's benefit was considered, as they're not necessarily the same.
Anyhoo, thanks for the effort you've put into responding, and your polite and well-reasoned replies
Are you talking about unit sales on steam or some sort of "kickback" from using steamworks? These two things are not linked are they. (?)
That's the Steam store cut. That's the amount Valve would get if you bought Elemental on Steam (in fact he mentioned that in a "put Elemental for sale on Steam" thread IIRC). Obviously Elemental doesn't use Steamworks. Impulse and the others also take a cut, though I don't know the size. That's how the DD stores make their money.
Funny thing is that strictly speaking, Firaxis is almost certainly still making more money even with that 30% cut then they are off retail copies, given the lack of need for disks, boxes, shipping, and a cut to Walmart.
Most of this thread is people saying they don't like Steamworks, and its really only in the last few pages you've gotten a lot of pushback against that. The difficulty is that the people who dislike it do so for totally different reasons then the people who don't. You've got single player folks who want their game unencumbered by this stuff, and programmers telling you why it's a better way of doing things for the online features. So it kind of goes in circles.
Music and games are drastically different. Music is created by a small group, and can be done mostly at home. All you need to create a good CD is the musical talent, and some money to book time at a proper studio to do the cut. AAA games have budgets in the millions.
If you take Valve's cut out, the game can't be sold on Steam. Taking out similar cuts for Stardock et al, and you're left with just retail... and Walmart/Gamespot's cut, which isn't any smaller. Firaxis could set up their own store and keep the whole pie for themselves, but then they have to set up download servers and an online store. And marketing. Most of the "cuts" here aren't just some greedy guy taking money out of the pie, they're providing essential things required to actually sell the game, and which pretty well everybody has to pay when selling something.
Considering how many games are using Steamworks lately (even switching from other solutions), it seems like someone with access to the numbers thinks its a good idea. Fallout NV is a good example for you - Bethesda is their own publisher. There's no "what's good for the publisher but not the developer" line of reasoning going on there, and they still made the switch from GFWL to Steamworks. If they didn't think it was a better solution, what reason is there for doing that in their case.
Edit - According to this news story and the Steamworks page, Steamworks itself is free. So yeah, I can comfortably say the cost of using Steamworks is considerably less then rolling your own solution. It's hard to beat $0. The 30% cut is typical of the Steam store and doesn't depend on Steamworks.
What does Valve get out of it? Well, every game with Steamworks increases the value of Steam as a platform, and drives more users (in particular retail customers who may not know about it) to Steam. You can't buy marketing like that.
I use steam (mostly because some of the games I wanted to play require it) and while I do find it intrusive it is not a deal breaker..
I use Impulse.. I have been a fan of stardock ever since galciv. so when they launched impulse it was natural for me to give it a go. It does feel less intrusive to me.
impulse feels more like a source for the download then big brother forcing me to use his choice.. (this is how it seems to me)...
I fall in the camp that does not like games that only work on steam, or for that matter games that on work on games for windows live, as a whole I choose not to buy many of these types of games.. this is largely because I do not like limiting my self to only once source of friends, software, and expanded content..
so will i buy civ 5 ... probably some day ... but i am in no hurry now....
Steamworks isn't free. From the FAQ page:
We don't discuss our distribution deals publicly. Once we take a look at your game, we'll get to those details.
And from the Steamworks page, first paragraph: "Steamworks is entirely free." Also from the brochure:
"Distribution" is selling a game on Steam. You go through that if you use Steamworks or not. There's no extra charge for using Steamworks.
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