I bot the original Sins of a Solar Empire. Because they started to shocked the steam DRM BS down our throat. I also remember them saying they will never force use to play their games on steam. *Looks at stardocks and calls them hipercrits. Yet when I bot the original Elemental: War of Magic it was so bad they gave me a free copy of Elemental: Fallen Enchatress. Would you look at that. A new game that is not forcing Steam down my throat.
Yes that is right. I am playing Fallen Enchantress with out steam and getting updates through StarDock Central. So with this great new thing. It has giving me much hope that they might do the same for their other games. So like the the title says. Will this game get a non steam version?
What's fundamentally wrong is the ridiculous sense of self-entitlement gamers seem to have. You aren't forced to do anything- you are given the choice to abide by the terms set forth by the developers or not play. I can never fathom why people feel that it is their god-given right to play this game, and any rules or restrictions are forced upon them as a result.
You're confusing their right to do so with reality. Realistically speaking accounts don't get revoked, the only exceptions being actions that are borderline crimes anyway. The overly broad language they use is only to ensure that in these very rare cases the person losing their account has absolutely no legal ground to complain on. It's not exactly new for companies to do this to avoid problems- look at the ridiculous number of warnings on any given bottle of pills for a common example- it's just an example of the company preparing to protect themselves from every foreseeable legal inevitability by saying right off the bat they aren't responsible.
For 10000 € you expect to own the car and to do with it whatever you please whenever you please. Of course you have to abide to the common sense and to the law, but thats about it.
A car is physical. it can't be duplicated a hundred times and given to all your friends. Digital possessions such as games are a different matter.
And frankly if you play by the rules, you're no morel ikely to get your steam account revoked then you are to get your car impounded, towed, or the like.
Or to go back to games sold the classic way or at least games without steam or something similar.
Steam and similar digital distribution methods have damn near killed off the traditional box-copy sales of PC games for a reason.
For the seller it results in more sales, less expenses(nothing physical to produce), and less piracy & other abuse of the license sold.
For the buyer it results in more convenience and for most players more actual security in their ownership of the game( no disk to be lost or destroyed, you can download the game on any computer with an internet connection without having to tote said collection of disks around with you). And frankly it reduces clutter and organizational needs when you own large quantities of games.
I do acknowledge there is a portion of gamers who feel very strongly about not wanting to use steam- but honestly sales have shown them in practice to be a fairly small minority- and that minority isn't going to be enough incentive to define corporate policy.
And guess what? A lot of people aren't. I know a number of people who own steam copies of games they never would have purchased could they have pirated them.
Steam-exclusives certainly do alienate some people, but when it comes down to it, on the topic of DRM alone, frankly the system does work- which is certainly going to be an incentive for developers to go with steam
But as a developer, please do understand as well, that I have the same reasonable wish to own a copy. One that does work, long after Steam or Stardock (which I really hope I will never see of course!) has gone bankrupt.
Stardock I could see- but Valve has found such a sweet spot it's pretty safe to say they are in for the long haul. Heck, even if they did go bankrupt I highly doubt they would just have every steam user lose their entire library of games- more likely they sell off the steam engine to some other company in a last effort to recoup losses. Steam when it comes down to it is a pretty efficient bit of infrastructure that's made a name people remember- Even if by some unlikely twist of fate the sales-aspect became obsolete, it could easily be retooled to any number of uses by another company.
Right now my only gurantee to play Sins Rebellion as long as I wish isa. The way of illegal download
b. Stardocks continued existence... which is not guranteed to be eternal. (Again, I really like Stardock (after all I tolerated Steam just for you) and I really dont wish them anything harmful. But contrary to all our wishes they may go out of business one day. Imagine a car that stops working the moment the factory who is building it goes bankrupt. Sounds like a bad idea, huh? Especially if said car cost the same as a competitors car that has no such problems.
Again, I think this hypothetical situation is a bit of a longshot, but let's suppose stardock goes under, valve goes under, and the ownership of steam does not change hands.
Honestly at that point, I don't think there is going to be a huge list of parties that really care about you downloading the game illegally.
Let me get this very straight. I love Sins. I love Rebellion. But the rights I have on this game via Steam, are basically nonexistant.
And here we come to the whole crux of the issue: Whether people are more concerned about what COULD happen, or what in all probability will happen.
you're correct in that you have less hard-cast rights- mostly in the sense that someone else has more control over your access to the game. But I feel like it's kind of insane to act like just because you lack the rights means that the purveyer of the product will or is even likely to abuse those lack of rights.
To give a more extreme metaphor it's like saying: "There's a chance a house burns down due to faulty wiring, so I should never buy or live in one".
look in any terms of service agreement and you'll find language every bit as broad and shady sounding- that doesn't mean you're going to get screwed over every bloody time. So no a few quotes from the etrms of service are not hard-cast proof by any stretch of the imagination.
That just sounds petty to me. I may disagree with the other side of the argument, but I don't wish a large company goes bankrupt and thousands of people lose a large investment of money just so i can say "told you show. or I suppose the direct parallel would be wishing for a situation involving the loss or destruction of their disks/serials/ect...
And dont come me with "There will be a Non Steam patch" shit. For current games. yes, but for anything older than 1 year i would have very little hope. Ohh, but you could buy the successor - for just 60 €. Want the old game too... ohh just 120 €.
Again, it seems a long shot to me that valve somehow manages to go bankrupt, doesn't seell the steam platform to anyone else, and just closes the servers without any modification tot he regulations udner which players may use their games.
And frankly from what I've seen a vast majority of the anti-steam people's arguments tend to flow in this manner, an armada of "what if" arguments for event of unknown probability- generally ones which are rare enough to have either never happened or happened infrequently to steam users.
So for now... I can tolerate Steam.... but it leaves a bad feeling and I would congratulate Stardock on offering their game on Steam in the future... as it indeed brought a lot of sales and new people in. But please dont force it upon people who dislike it. You are considerable testing their patience..... not a wise thing to do to any customer.
Honestly, when it comes down to it here's the deal: for one reason or another they have made the deicson to be steam exclusive. The only way to really convince them to change their minds is to show them that the benefits of changing(the quantity of players who feel vehemently about the matter or will only purchase the game off-steam) is a sizable enough portion relative to total sales that it's worth changing their policy.
And frankly IMO there hasn't been nearly enough debate on this topic or overwhelming majority of players disconcentent in the existing debates to indicate that the people really pissed off about the steam exclusivity is anything besides a small majority.
Personally I find the steam hater's a bit unreasonable, but in truth that is not the core of my argument. Ultimately we have to look at this decision from the standpoint of the devs- and ultimately it will take more then talks about what is "fair" by what at least appears to be a minority among sales to change distribution policy.
When you own a physical copy of a game you cannot "do whatever you want with it". It is still copyright material, you agree to an EULA, etc. etc. There is absolutely no difference to a Steam version. You can play the game in off-line mode. You can utilize the cloud to play on a different computer. If you are not engaging in illegal activity, it's highly unlikely your account is going to get suspended, let alone banned. People are just paranoid.
The sales, the patches being up to date automatically, the lack of space required to store all the physical copies, the ease of accessing Friends to play with online, the easy access to demos and game forums for feedback, the flourishing of indy games Steam has aided in bringing to much bigger audiences etc. are all huge pluses. Valve is honestly one the best things to happen to PC gaming. The "if Steam goes bankrupt" argument might as well be the "if I lose my job and can't buy any more games" or "if someone breaks into my home and steals all my physical copies" argument. Valve is in fantastic shape business wise so I wouldn't worry about this in your lifetime.
I can somewhat sympathize with people who are used to owning physical things and only care about SP but technology marches on and it's silly to blame Stardock for this (as they said, 90% of their sales volume). I still have some cassettes of music that I can't play any longer - and CDs are basically obsolete themselves - digital distribution is convenient and much less intrusive/annoying than many past DRM schemes that were installed with your CD-ROM games. The whinng is honestly people just thinking about their own little world and not seeing the bigger picture.
No worries, it was just confusing me.
-Huzzah!
You know, there's all kinds of restrictions of a physical copy of a game as well, you still agreed to this stuff before. It's just that developers couldn't really enforce it, so nobody cared. Heck, nobody reads the legal crap anyway. Now with Steam the developer/distributor suddenly has much more power to enforce these rules that were always in place, and people are up in arms about them.
I understand the concern about what could happen if Valve or Steam suddenly goes under, but let's be realistic here. They're just about printing money, in what alternate universe are they anywhere near bankruptcy? Is it possible this may happen in the distant future? Sure, but then again, if you look at current games that are 10-15 years old and you'll see virtually none of them run on a modern system without help in the first place. Even the old games I own and still want to play, I often have to find third party patches that make it run on a modern system, or do something like run it in dosbox. Most of the time I just end up paying the 3 bucks or whatever it is on GoG so they can deal with the hassle of configuring dosbox for that game for me (plus no more need to keep track of my CD's).
The simple fact of the matter is, Steam is insanely popular. Someone from SD above even said they estimate it's 90% of their sales now. Of course they're gonna do everything they can to support it, and make it easier on regular steam users. That includes using SteamWorks, so that you can use your steam nickname online, use your friends list online, etc. Insisting developers not use Steam simply because you do not like it is like insisting we stop using electricity because you liked it better before it became widely distributed. Like it or not, technology has moved on, online distribution is replacing brick and mortar stores and owning physical copies of games.
Make sure to send that information to Valve, I'm sure they'll take it into consideration when pricing their next games.
I have no doubt of the power of Steam as a distributing company, and as the OP states, FE does not require SW to run yet I am willing to bet those numbers are very similar. WTH OP (Requires the Steam client to install and play.) I will not believe that online achievements and a nickname drives 90% of the sales as does just distributing through Steam.
The biggest issue for me is the TOS, the vague language, being able to close your account for anything they find to be IMPROPER BEHAVIOR, and absolute control of everything you do or post or upload over Steam.
They quickly backtracked when people stood up and started closing accounts but who would do that when you lose all your games? and it really pisses me off when they can change the TOS and you have no choice to accept it or again lose all your Steam investment.
EDIT: Just looked up FE requirements and it does require Steam. Am I missing something from the OP?
From Steam StoreOther Requirements: To activate this game you must create a Stardock account while launching the game on Steam.
GamestopRequires the Steam client to install and play
90 %.... Holy crap.... that probably makes the idea of offering Rebellion on Steam one of the most profitable ones for Stardock.So I assume Rebellion did and does sell very well?
Still, I have to ask.... what are the advantages for Stardock to enforce Steam? Are there economic advantages over just offering it on Steam instead? If you are allowed to answer that, it would certainly be interesting for the community as a whole.
I never said it is evil. I am graduate of a business school, I know what is important and that is the money... and only the money. Of course they are not evil, they are just doing business. It is the customers who I do not understand as a majority. Again, the security of your owned copy is far less than that of a classical owned disc. Again, you rent the permission to use a car, but you pay the same as if you had actually bought it. And all of that because the rented car is possible bit more comfortable.... I just fail to understand.
You are totally right. Of course there is absolutly no right to play anything.
My point is merely:
Call me a cold calculating economist if you want, but the second point is clearly less value for the money. So where is my discount?
The term of aquiring the game have become considerable worse on my end. Yes, you are very right, I dont have to buy it. But I reserve the right to complain about that.
Just because it isnt done doesnt mean I have to like people being capable of it. You see one could even argue against democracy that way....
If a absolute King is only making good decisions and does never abuse his powers, the goverment is not better or worse than a democratic one making good decisions. The King could execute you, just for the fun of it. But he is not going to do it.... are you sure you like that new way
There is another concerning tendency. Media companies demand that creating a digital copy should be punished as hard as stealing a physical copy in the shop. That is remotly understandable.
On the other hand, the same companies so far enjoyed excessive freedoms from laws that protect the customer from fraud.
Yes, yet another car example. The prospect says this car has 5 gears and can go up to 200 km/h. But the car that is delivered only has 4 gears and does not go faster than 150 km/h.
Now, under the laws of most countries this means I can sue the factory for a refund or demand that the car is brought up to the standards in the prospect.
But now lets assume it was not a car, but a piece of software. It claims to support LAN Multiplayer on the package for up to 10 people.
But in reality, it does not support LAN at all.
You know what rights, I the customer have under this circumstances? None! You bought a use license, nothing more. You dont have any rights.
In short, they want the same rights for intelectual property than for physical property. I am fine with that, but then I demand the same rights.
Ohh, sorry, that would mean EA had gone bankrupt 5 years ago... because they were sued 20 billion for not delivering what they claimed one day before release.
To be quite frank, they didnt really tried to pirate the games then. They instead looked for a quick way to get them.
Steams influence in reducing piracy comes 98 % from the convenience of its use. Especially for people who already have it.
Old way:
I want the game..... I could go into the city, go to the shop and then buy it there.But thats annoying and takes 1 hour at least.
Or I could download it illegally. having it "instantly" - after looking arround in the web for 5 minutes --> This option is far more lazy.
Steam way:
I want the game... I might have to register on Steam/I might login to Steam and buy it, having it "instantly"
Or I could download it illegaly.... having it "instantly"... but meh... have to look arround... check for viruses... click away annoying banner ads.... what does it cost again? Only this.... hmm.... time is money and I want to play ASAP... ahh to hell with the money, I buy it.
Never underestimate what people will do for a little bit of convenience.
DRM itself is highly ineffective and as an economist I never understood why companies spend so much money on something that does clearly not work, unless the target is to annoy the paying customers, which is downright suicidal for a company. If you are small, in the short term. If you are large, in the long term. Or why do you think EA has such a bad name and is in somewhat of a financial trouble?
Your userbase is divided into 2 general groups. The people who have no knowledge about the WWW or computers at all and the people that have a bit of knowledge.
The first group does not need any DRM system.... because they need a manual to turn the computer on in the firstplace. Some recently released games in Germany targeted the audience 40 +... they did not have any DRM with it.... guess what.... they outsold all expectations. (Of course this is due to the fact of them being very good games, too)
The second group is not going to be impressed by any DRM system. Because downloading a small exe file requires very little in computer skills. The bad news for the companies is that this group is getting larger, as average computer skills increase.
But of course you can use things like Origin for entirely different things. Like gathering valuable data about your "customers" and then selling it to the highest bidder.
So again, before I bought the game for 50 € and that was about it.
Now I pay 50 € for less, are being spied on and have to worry that somebody someday hits the red button. How high is change for that to happen is secondary, but it is always going to be tremendously higher than the old way. So again, where is my discount? Where are the awe inspiring features that justify that cost? Not there? Nice new world.
Yes, the digital revolution has changed a great many things. Old certainties and business models are crumbling under both the speed and the power of change. Those companies who do not adapt in time go down. Altough according some prominent lobby group, home taping had killed music well over 2 decades ago. Or at least it killed their dreams of making another 2 billion profit a year from the same old music. We live in quickly changing times. A business model was never ever a thing for eternity in the entire human history, but the sheer speed of development is new. Nokia was world leader in mobile phones.... only a few years ago. They just missed one trend... smartphones. Today they are fighing for their very life. This is new... the speed. Market leaderships did always change, but it was usually a slow process, taking at least a decade. Nowaydays.... your famous company may go down from market leader to bankrupt in less than 5 years.
I think this is why Microsoft is so desperatly trying to make Windows 8 a mobile phone operating system. They fear that those mobile devices are the future.... and they know how brutal this market can be.
Top on Monday...
Flop on Tuesday
Chapter 11 on Wednesday...
But we are drifting off. so back to topic. Yes, society as a whole needs to find new compromises that allows both user freedom and companies successfuly selling products.
We need a new middle way, one that can satisfy both customer and companies alike. But currently the trend goes cleary in the direction of giving companies all rights and the customer none. And that cannot be good. E-books for example.... the Kindle can delete any of your books... via remote.... now tell me, would you buy a book that comes with an burn mechanism that can be triggered any time the producers wishes to? Perhaps, but certainly for a lower price than one book that has no such "feature".
I can go to court if my car has been impounded illegaly.... I have no such option for the majority of what is called intelectual property today.
Digital distribution is without any doubt the future. But digital distributions kills the middle man.
Sony Music.... has no future, at least not with its current business model. They are no longer needed. In time most creators will sell to the customer directly, because selling over the internet is so cheap and easy.
Naturally the middle man companies try to do whatever necessary to protect their old cash cow as long as possible. Some rumours claim that Megaupload was specifially taken down not only because it hosted a lot of illegal stuff but because Mr. Schmitz DARED to show the entire world that he - contary to the most classic content providers - knew how to make money in the time of WWW.
Now, dont get me wrong.... this guy is a gangster to some extent.
But tell me.... if I can get people to paying 30 dollars a month for ILLEGAL content.... what are the people who offer legal content doing wrong?Perhaps they dont offer anything after all or making to is tedious to use that no sane human being will bother with that?
I am a Star Trek Fan. I would love to have every episode of Voyager at home. Sadly, when the last DVD release was shipped, I didnt have the money to buy it. So I waited. Unfortunatly after my wait was over it was outsold.... only available on e-bay.... for a hefty price tag 3 times as high as the original price.
In the classic release world this was justified. Creating thousands of DVDS costed a lot of money, and you needed a reasonable customer base to justify a relaunch of any sort.
But today.... this no longer true.
One webserver, HD quality files and a shop system in front of it. Done
Monthy cost.. perhaps 200 €....
You could easily outsell those costs... probably on first day.
For a new DVD release you needed maybe 40000 or 50000 customers to bring in the costs and to make profit. Today the front end costs are far lower.... so why dont they do it?
IDK.
I however would bet any ammount of money with you that mentioned stuff is on the net.... for free.
You cannot blame piracy if you dont sell the product yourself in the market it occurs.
Games of Thrones.. this new and highly popular series.... it is not distributed into Germany. Any German who wants to see it has resort to downloading.Today, you could easily transfer those downloads into sold units. But you have to offer it first.... and of course to reasonable conditions.
1 $ for one song... does anyone remember the outcry of the music industry? Oddly enough... they are still alive today... although no DRM is there anymore.
Who would have guessed that Lehman Brothers... and over one century old rich bank could go bankrupt? Had you told anyone the day before they did... they would have called you a maniac. As I mentioned above this market is very fast paced.
But besides that, good points in your post.
You are right, that was uncalled for. I withdraw my point and apologise.
Yes, but I dont want to bring my car to a black market garage just because the factory that did built it went bankrupt yesterday.
Human history sadly clearly proves that in most cases a right that cannot be enforced is usually not worth the paper it is written upon.Sure, the King may not behead you for the fun of it, although he could. Just pray he never changes his mind. There is a reason democracy is the superior form of goverment- although having many flaws of its own.
Lets say that instead of going down, Steams from now on demand 10 € monthly fee from you. If you have one game... you laugh them away, but if you have 100 games, you pay... teeth clenched, but you pay... and that is the only thing they are interested in.
Of course not. But there is nobody who can take it away from me at the press of a button.
Perhaps people are paranoid because it has happened in the past.
Windows stored the keys that allowed Microsoft DRM protected music to be played in some well unknown files and folders. Folders normally nobody bothered to back up. So when your windows went down, for what reason ever and you made an reinstall all your bought music become garbage.
The Microsoft Zune player came with DRM.... when it flopped Microsoft announced the shutdown of the DRM servers a year later. They suggested that you circumvent the protection by burning a CD.
Many people missed this announcemnt.... well when the servers went down.... their music collection again become garbage.
If all of those people just had illegally download their music they would have never any stress, any work and they could still play anything they ever aqquired.
Ahh, now I understand partially what features Steamworks offers.
I did.... oddly enough I did not receive any answer.... (joking )
That is exactly the issue. A classical bought game is a one time contract, that cannot be altered in the future without both parties agreement.
On the other hand Steam could easily introduce a 10 E monthly fee... and would get away with it because there are so many people that have well over 1000 € worth of games there.
This may easily be the longest post i have ever made but two final points:
Well worth the read, thanks
EDIT: just looked at steamgamesales.com and found a different distribution company "Green Man Gaming".
It actually offers trade ins and the game I tried was
Not at our site.
GameStop and such are just reselling Steam serial keys (not sure what the point of that is when it doesn't use Steamworks, but it's their choice). But even at that Steam would only be used for the download and/or install.
As I said in my post, they use SteamWorks. SteamWorks makes the online stuff easier on regular steam users because it'll go by their steam name/friends/etc. It also allows for cloud storage, which is nice for those who often switch between gaming on a home PC and laptop. Are these necessary to make the game run? No, probably not, they could add all this themselves (and I guess did, before Rebellion). It's just that this way it's much more convenient to use for their steam userbase.
Thanks for the clarification Kyro. And thank you for allowing us to continue this debate. I have a lot of respect for this forum and the way SD runs it.
This is the thing that I find hard to understand. Why do you have to make your game Steamworks to do this? If I understand it correctly, to use these Steamworks features, you have to make your game Steam exclusive. But there is no technical reason for this, Valve could offer this support to any game it sold so long as the version it sold was steamworks, without restricting game studios from making any other version of the game that are steam independent.
To me this is would kind of be like Gamestop requiring any game it sold in its physical stores to only be sold at gamestop. It's an anti-competitive practice clearly meant to make Steam a near monopoly in the PC market, and while it hasn't abused that position yet I'd rather they not have that kind of power in the first place. They should rely entirely on providing the best user experience, not relying on exclusivity deals with publishers, to drive sales.
^ This. All of this.
I don't think this is a choice Valve/Steam makes, but the developer. The SteamWorks info states exclusivity to Steam is not required, so I don't see why developers couldn't make a second version if they wanted to. The real question is though, is that even worth it? The two wouldn't be able to play together, so you'd split your online community in two, and if the community split really is as big as 10%/90% mentioned, the non-steam guys would basically have nobody to play with and likely soon wishing they had a steam version anyway (at least, those of the 10% that play online).
Well, if you want to use Steamworks, your game has to run through the Steam client. Therefore, while point of sale may not be exclusive to the Steam digital storefront, everyone who buys the game still has to end up installing Steam to install and play their game. Technically it isn't a Steam storefront exclusive, but Valve is definitely bundling Steam with every copy of every Steamworks game that gets sold, and that could certainly be considered an anti-competitive act, much like bundling IE with every copy of Windows (although I rather like that idea by Microsoft since it provides a GUI with which I can download Pale Moon ).
Why would you want to play it not on steam... Steam is awesome!
Steam does have many awesome features, yes. That doesn't mean some people want to be locked into a single platform for their owned video games.
ROFL @ "owned".
I think that's part of the problem, people think that when they hit the buy button, they're actually going to 'own' it.
EDIT: Still a valid point though
just looked up buy from oxford, dictionary.com and websters, only websters includes paying for a service.
Well Sins for example is still using ICO for online, just as it did before Rebellion or any steam version. The only thing is the friend system now uses Steam friends, but I don't think it's that hard to make a system where non-steam versions use the default friend system and steam users use the steamworks one.
If Steamworks is so necessary for MP, what I don't get is why not make an SP-only (or SP+LAN) version of Sins to sell elsewhere? Make it a bit cheaper perhaps, but if MP is the limitation for a non-Steam version of Sins, would it really be that difficult to have a non-MP version for those who are willing to pay for it?
Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion comes with LAN functionality.
and I can hear Dirty screaming from his home to mine about this idea
Well aware of this. Saying if MP is stopping non-Steam Sins, why not make a non-MP Sins?
Why not? I quite happily play all my games on Steam. It's just so awesome!
I have not heard the same thing over and over since I played a badly scratched album on a turntable.
Must be a Steam employee or own Steam stock.
Valve never went public- there are no shareholders they have to please. It's one reason they are a bit likely to do new and inventive evil things for a quick profit then other companies which need to frequently please and placate their shareholder. Besides they don't need to go out of their way for profits with their existing digital hat empire, distribution system, and the like.
Presumably because it would take money to do so, and they don't think the amount of people who refuse or unable to buy on steam is large enough to justify the investment. At this point steam features are actually hardcoded into the game. And that's to say nothing of the hastle/work orchestrating a new distribution method creates.
"removing steam features" sounds simple in principal, but things like that generally have a price tag attached. Honestly when it comes down to it, if you want a nonsteam version you'll need to prove the people who will only buy the game if made available off-steam is a significant number of people relative to total sales.
Honestly though I doubt a large enough number of people exists being that threads like this are pretty small and both sides of the argument are similarly represented(usually in cases like this the malcontents are more likely to post, meaning if they represent a notable portion of the community they tend towards being in the majority in this sort of thread).
Can the pre-rebellion non-steam guys go into the lobby with steam players? I assumed that whatever system they went with, if they used the SteamWorks API it wouldn't be possible to mix it with other players, but since you bring up the ICO thing, maybe it would be possible then. Of course possible and actually being worth the time/money is another matter, so that may have been the concern, rather than whether it's technically possible at all.
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