Its the end of an era folks.
Quoting Yarlen, reply 41The Steam client will be required for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion for initial install, updates and Internet multiplayer, regardless of purchase location. You can choose to play in offline mode via the Steam client after initial install, though ICO features and achievements will no longer be available.
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8. Gamers have the right to use their games without being inconvenienced due to copy protection or digital rights management.
Now its debatable whether this news actually goes against the PC gamers bill of rights Stardock pushed forward 3-4 years ago, but it certainly seems an ominous change of pace for the company to me. Are the other Stardock gaming communities concerned? Will other Stardock titles follow suite? Does this symbolically show the finalization of the Steam monopoly, short of the self sufficient EA and Blizzard titles? What does the wider community think, and what can we do about it?
Unfortunately it also automatically pushes out updates from mod authors who aren't under any obligation not to make breaking changes. I was amazed at the number of Skyrim mods up there now that say things like "make sure you remove all of your items from the chests before updating, because otherwise my new version will DELETE ALL OF YOUR STUFF"... disaster waiting to happen, since Steam doesn't give you a choice not to update mods added via the workshop.
Well to be fair, Wincustomize doesn't check the Sins mods either. Plenty of out of date stuff on there. Though I guess no one is forced to get update from it, so that is a poor design decision on steam's part.
Is it not similar to how it work for any official update from soase... with each new patch, it invalidate previous savegame... why will modders have a obligation that game dev don't respect...
To my knowledge, with soase, when a mod break a game, it is usually because it upgrade from one version of sins to the other...
By the way, in the case of soase, simply adding a mod version number for the main directory name resolve problem... by example, you can have a structure like :
- Mods-Entrenchment v1.052
-- mymod v1.02
-- mymod v1.03
- Mods-Entrenchment v1.053
-- mymod v2.0
Well, it am not sure that the steam mod thing will be able to handle the complex soase structure for mod directories...
By the way, in some case, modders need to make breaking changes for reach the desired effect... for example, i have made long time ago a skin job for Dragon age origins... it was impossible to reach the desired effect in game with playing on the tint parameter... so, for my little mod, you need to run a config tool before begin play for setup a body not shared with other character in game and create a fully new character else the head will be flooting over the body... final result was great, and the more important, the new character was not reversing to basic character in the cinematic scene :
I just upgraded to Win 7 and haven't experimented , but I used to regularly shut Steam down as a background program in Task Manager with XP all the time. And continued whatever game I was playing.
And for those paranoid with what Steam is watching....I would be a lot more leary of your cell phone.....
The average user's level of investment in a single Sins match is substantially less than in a game such as Skyrim, but more importantly, Sins patches (outside Steam) aren't automatic. Without forced updates, you're free to finish the map before taking the update if you've read the change notes and saw that saves are invalidated. And game updates are generally spaced months apart with plenty of notice when one is expected.
On the other hand, when you've got myriad mod authors all updating their mods, those updates being pushed to your game without informed consent at the time of each update, *and* those mods have the ability to irrevocably destroy a game you've put hundreds of hours into, that's pretty significant. Developers have reputations to maintain, but if Joe does this with his Super Awesome House mod, he doesn't really have much to lose when he decides he wants to rearrange the furniture and winds up deleting the chest that you've put all your loot in.
And yes, I'm personally opposed to blind automatic updates in general. You should know what you're getting, and when, and have the choice to refuse it (especially in a single player game--in multiplayer games you will need to keep your version matched to others, but your important "stuff" is also generally stored safely server-side in a database).
Believe me, i have SOASE game who have last for month... of course mod and custom map was involved...
Well, this will be soon done since Sins rebellion will need Steam...
Only stupid people can think that developers are responsible for a mod who mess up a game... if something bad happen because a mod, only the mod team is responsible... well, in a lot of case, the player is responsible because it don't read the mod description, because he install it incorectly, because he don't wish to loose any time for read a file called readme.txt, etc ...
I dont see this as a problem, put a steamworks game (which I cant wait to see, since I love how and what steam does)
and on install ask ppl if they want to have steam startup or not.
If not, no other options except single play and lan play.
The game code itself? (self-supporting) Anything (features) beyond that can go by the wayside...
Who wants to play a 10min game with some ADD teenager that they don't know, I call up my buddy and we play games that last DAYS... or did...
As for me, I'm voting with my dollars, if Stardock will let me anyway, I sent a request for a refund for my pre-order into customer support stating STEAM as the reason...
STEAM may be the way of the future, and maybe even the majority, but without me and at least 2 others I know..
BTW: How did this conversation ever get beyond the Bill of Rights that was so much the foundation of this community, how did it get beyond the general "no DRM" that was so much the theme that created the up-rising in the beginning???
It cost lots of money and time to create good tools for all those features - why the hell do you think Steamworks dont have any real competition?
I did exactly the same yesterday.
If they decide to release this without a requirement for Steam, then I will purchase it. As it is, it's not acceptable to me.
I'm surprised and disappointed at you Stardock. The one company i could trust to not screw me over with their titles, and yet.....I hate game clients. Impulse was terrible, but at least you only needed it to install and patch your titles, other than that, you could uninstall it. It's not that i hate Steam specifically, i hate all clients. I would never have used Impulse if it strangled you with the requirements that Steam does.I admit, i don't know what Steamworks is and why it's such a great thing. I assume it's some how tied to Multiplayer, a feature of SINS i don't use, and would never use with Rebellion. I cannot believe though it's something that great for Stardock to not hold to their own convictions. Yes..yes, "no alternative, there is only Steam"
Err Brad, you sold the alternative. Again, no steamworks, and again, i don't know...or care.
Apart from GC1 and Elemental (that genre simply holds little interest for me) i have bought every title/expansion from SD without question, this is the first time i have had to consider alternatives.
At the risk of incurring the wrath of many, i'll happily outlay what i see that alternative as being. If Rebellion indeed launches as a Steam game yet can be purchased from SD, i will consider the following. A purchase of Rebellion at the SD store , then proceed to torrent a cracked version and play that, free from steam and secure knowing that i payed my dollar, and got what I wanted.
I can't see why Stardock can't just have all their published games available on Stardock Store, but also available at other DD providers if someone wants to buy them from there, but *without* the obligatory tie-in to Steam that is proposed for Sins, and maybe Elemental games in the future too. Stardock, what say you? What's wrong with selling from Steam without requiring Steamworks on every copy regardless of where it's purchased??
Then there would be no achievements. Not sure if the other multiplayer features of Steam rely on Steamworks.
Isn't the actual version of sins already with achievements ? Remember the space ponies thing by example !!!
Sure, the actual sins multiplayer have not all the gadget that steam have but it finally work almost perfectly after years of fine tuning... desync problem have become history...
The was a comment on the first page about not using Steam would cripple the game for 95% of the player base. That's the wrong way round - just look at how many people buy games and how many play online. Multiplayer is very poorly supported - you'd be lucky to get 5%.
I do not want multiplayer or any of its features. I want a game I can play on my pc, when I like and how I like, without some other program there.
Achievments are only small part of Steamworks
Its major parts are related to multiplayer, cloud saves, community, autoupdates etc.
If I understand it right, you could do without Steam, but you need Steamworks for the feature you want implemented for multiplayer. But you cannot have Steamworks without Steam so in fact your are sticking with Steam and the game will require it for anything. In opposite to what Impulse Reactor was build for, working without being chained to a dd client.
One question: was it mandatory to sell Impulse Reactor with Impulse? While impulse was unsuccessful, Impulse Reactor was still growing and had the potential to become someday a viable option. Wasn't there a way to sell only Impulse and keep Reactor, they were two different piece of software anyway?
On the "we need steamworks because there's not another option" I want to ask: wasn't game developer putting this kind of feature in their game even before steamworks existed? I can agree that it is easier with it but couldn't it be done in another way without relying on a premade framework?
I'm asking also because, today is a SINS problem, but someday it could affect all Stardock games.
Impulse was most profitable part of Stardock. Brad wanted to focus on game development, not on digital distribution, so he sold it.
Cant believe that you risk alienating so many customer for silly gimmicks like achievments and leaderboards. Nor does Steamworks solve any connectivity issues (try hosting a local left4dead game and see how far you get, valve just throws dedicated servers en mass at it).
ICO works well enough and should have been fine with further tuning.
What I meant was: couldn't they sold Impulse but keep Reactor? Reactor is not required for digital distribution but in their control it could be still used for adding multiplayer feature. It was already meant to be used in third party games withour requiring a digital store, so that's why I'm asking if it was not possibile to keep it instead of selling it with Impulse, they are definitly two different product.
Achievements: nice idea but not necessary. Multiplayer: small market, except for FPS games. Cloud saves, nice have but not crucial. Community: Stardock has a great community so doesn't need extra community features. Auto-updates: as far as I am concerned this is actually a *negative* for mostly single player games, which you can spend months on only to have saves invalidated. Even worse when mods auto-update.
For an established mostly single player game like SOSE, I would say Steam has some nice-haves, one big negative but no essentials. Especially since there will be a small but significant number of people who won't buy Rebellion if it comes with required Steamworks integration. Many people have cancelled their pre-orders already.
Stardock, do you still support the Gamer's Bill of Rights? If you do then morally you can't support required Steamworks integration for any of your games. Optional buying from Steam yes. Required Steamworks integration no matter where you get it, no.
Brad, what say you?
To me, none of the features that Steamworks supports are worth the inconvenience. I haven't purchased a game that needed Steam since Dawn of War 2, and I'm going to keep it that way.
So much for the Gamer's Bill of Rights. Learning about that was what go me into Sins in the first place.
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