http://gbxforums.gearboxsoftware.com/showthread.php?t=117553
Impulse will be mising out more and more games if they continue to refuse sell steamworks games.
I'd really like to hear more about the techs. Remind me (if I saying it wrong), but isn't SD developing impulse reactor (name?) that will do something similar - eg add support for trophies/achievements? I haven't heard much about this in a bit. That still something you are working on?
Also - I assume steamworks is how they provide achievements, etc... guessing its also how they support saving games in the cloud. That something you guys are working on too?
I know some people care a bit about the achievements - I don't as much, but I do like seeing those little pop ups from time to time showing me that I did XXXXXXXXXXXXXX achievement. Anyway, its a nice thing to add if its not excruciating to implement (heck if I know if it is).
Because it hasn't been used by any third party developer as far as i know.
Correct. You can find more information on Steamworks in this PDF: http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/SteamworksBrochure2010.pdf
Ah, how money will make hypocrites of us all:
http://www.next-gen.biz/news/randy-pitchford-%E2%80%9Csteam-isn%E2%80%99t-the-answer%E2%80%9D
I'm sure Randy Pitchford changed his opinion of Steam when confronted with the fact that Valve's endless horde of fans would eagerly devour his game if it had STEAM ACHIEVEMENTS!
After tweleve years of seemingly endless false starts, cancellations and delays, and after the single longest development in video game history, Duke Nuke Forever is now a game I can never play. Way to fuck it up at the 11th Hour, Gearbox.
Yes, because I'm sure the first thing on the minds of people at Gearbox was all 50 people who refuse to buy Steamworks games, rather then the enormous amount of effort saved on implementing the features Steamworks provides.
At the end of the day, it's the best solution on the market. Until somebody has something comparable to use instead, developers and publishers are going to keep making the decision to use it.
Pretty much what Tridus said. You can complain about Steam as much as you like, but no other platform offers so many features in a free-to-use package. It's pretty much a no brainer for publishers to use it, especially since most of the DD services are hosting Steamworks games. The gain far outweighs the comparatively few people who refuse to use Steam on principle.
Yet another game I won't be getting because it requires Steam. Guess it just saves me a lot of money to support small publishers like Paradox.
How the hell are COMPETING DIGITAL DISTRIBUTORS not competing with steam but Stardock is?!
Oh btw...
http://news.bigdownload.com/2010/12/20/gamersgate-now-offering-games-with-required-steam-download-and-s/#comments
Gamersgate is now selling RUSE, a steamworks game.
I guess Stardock stands alone in in 'competing'huh?
Btw, whats games for windows live also a monopoly? Certain features like achivements and such are disabled if I don't use steam with a steam works game, same with games for windows based games...
I've come to realize Steam as a unifying platform for PC games is a good thing Zehdon. Its basically the PC's equivalent of Xbox Live, except with all the more things you get with a PC title. I open EA games almost wishing they had Steam integration.
I would suggest against talking sense in this topic polynomial. Esp. after people are saying that:
Amazon.com, WHICH HAS IT'S OWN DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SERVICE, is not competition to Steam.
Direct2drive is not competition.
Gamersgate is not competition.
Gogamer.com, WHICH HAS IT'S OWN DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SERVICE, is not competition to Steam.
Gamestop.com ALSO HAS IT'S OWN DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SERVICE and sells steamworks too.
At this point in the topic I think it's safe to call these people Stardock fanboys and anytime any news about Steam comes up expect them to trash it for no good reason at all.
I bet Stardock / Impulse is on the last place on the list of digital distributors .
Well there is always piratebay
By that thinking, ANYTHING that does something useful is something we should be afraid of because it might become a monopoly.
The reality of the situation is simply that Steamworks does what it does better then the alternatives, and in some cases does it better while costing less. Not many developers are going to pass that up when the alternative is to either use something inferior (and pay more for it), code their own solution (and spend a lot of money on development/testing), or simply not have it at all (people like their achievements).
In a functioning market economy, it's entirely the expected outcome that people will choose the superior solution. I don't see why the rest of us should get something worse because a few people are worried that Valve might become a monopoly and then might turn evil (and that when they do, nobody will create an alternative like usually happens in the online space).
It's just going to be another game I'm not buying.
Just for kicks, they should have made it run on... um, well ARPA Net! No, wait, that's older than DNF.
You know, this is Duke Nukem Forever we are talking about. I would have bought it without a second glance on release date. Now though, I'm wavering. I'll probably buy it anyways. I already use Steam for a bunch of other games, so one more Steam game doesn't bother me.
And that's how monopolies are built. Im glad I got to see Steam become one, I didnt with windows. this seems like a planned move to both make people buy the console release, and to destroy the used games market. Steamworks does NOT stop illegal copying.
If only one person is putting out a comparable product into the market it turns into a monopoly? Well yes. It's hardly Steam's fault that they're doing it better then everybody else is. Tell the competition to shape up.
And what does it have to do with illegal copying? If you want things like achievements or cloud saving in the game, Steamworks gives you an already built solution that you can just drop in and use. Game developers are always short on time, something that lets them use an already tested and proven library to provide functionality that saves them from having to write it themselves is a GOOD thing.
There's nothing nefarious going on here. Steamworks gives developers a better feature set, so they use it. The problem is with the lack of anybody else offering a viable competitor, which is hardly Steam's fault.
That is one thing I do agree on, Stardock does need to be doing more with Impulse if they're going to claim to be valid competition for Steam.
I like Impulse, but it could do some things a lot better then it currently does. I'll say this though, Impulse integration within Elemental was really good.
Things I'd like to see
- a better community system
- better MP integration
- some reduced wonkiness, I had an issue with the Elemental beta last week that I likely wouldn't have had with Steam. If I didn't know about IRC, I may have had real problems.
- more indie games. I love that Stardock has stuff like Din's Curse and Shira Oka on Impulse, give me more stuff like that, I'd rather have that then the AAA games.
- bug reporting through Impulse on Stardock games, maybe have it autofetch your needed files as an option when you do so (the debug, autosave, and other file)
No argument here.
That said, we will won't put titles that bundle a competitor's external store client on Impulse.
Impulse makes millions of dollars a year in profit. There's not a lot of incentive for us to change our policy.
I agree that Steamworks is the only free solution to provide DRM and MP match making. It's "free" because they make their money back by bundling their store with the title. It's an ingenius business model.
Impulse::Reactor is still in development and we haven't had the developer resources to dedicate to it because those resources last year were directed at increasing Impulse's scale to handle the volume of users.
You can assume that Impulse's model is similar to Steam's except at a smaller scale.
If the PC became as you described in terms of its financial model (like Xbox live) why would a developer bother to make games for the PC?
On the consoles, the unified model is a negative (financially) but you get far lower support costs because it's a consistent platform. The PC has no such advantage. If I'm forced into a closed system then the PC is going to lose, badly.
Steam fans may wish that there were no other options. But if they got their wish, they'd soon find there were few games being made for it. It never ceases to amaze me how oblivious users are until the hammer comes down.
For example, look how people are shocked..shocked about Apple's new subscription model that's making the news rounds. It's only surprising to consumers. It was predictable to those of us who create content for a living.
At the end of the day, if the PC becomes effectively a closed platform then it competes against other closed platforms and that will spell the effective end of significant PC games because the PC is so uncompetitive in every other way. It's only advantage (economically) is that it's an open platform.
I agree. I don't see anything wrong with anything Valve has done here. I fail to see how anyone can object to what they're doing.
Personally, I only object when people try to tell us what we should do. At the end of the day, my job is to maximize our profits both short term AND long term. Putting Steamworks titles on Impulse where Steam gets bundled is simply dumb in my opinion. Sure, in the short-run, we'd generate more revenue. But in the long-term, it's a killer.
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