Let me get this out of the way: I like Steam. I like Valve.
We have a poll up right now that asks whether you use Steam. Let us know please.
I’ve been in digital distribution since before digital distribution was a thing. The very first computer game that was launched at retail and digitally distributed was Galactic Civilizations back in February 2003.
For us, digital distribution was a matter of life or death. Consider this, how many other independent (or heck, just non-publicly traded) game studios have been around 20 years? Go ahead. Count them up. Not many eh?
I incorporated Stardock back in 1993 from my college dorm room. And I can tell you, if it weren’t for digital distribution, we would have stopped making games a long time ago. That’s because the more people that are between you and your customer, the more opportunities there are for theft. Not by players but by retailers, publishers, distributors, etc.
One of the reasons why the whole “piracy” bellowing from publishers irritated me was because the biggest obstacle to getting paid for my work wasn’t from pirates. It was from the middle men.
In 1994, we released our first game. Galactic Civilizations for OS/2. It was published by a company called Advanced Idea Machines. The game was a huge hit. So I heard anyway. We didn’t get paid. And being a poor college student at the time, I couldn’t afford a lawyer.
So in 1996, we released Galactic Civilizations 2 for OS/2. This time we released it ourselves. But our retail distributor, Micro Central, went bankrupt and didn’t pay us and our mail order distributor, Blue Orchards went out of business as well and didn’t pay us.
So then we moved to Windows and we released Galactic Civilizations for Windows, published by Strategy First….and again, didn’t get paid.
Do you see a pattern here?
What saved us was digital distribution. With it, we could sell directly to customers, cutting out the middle man.
As you can imagine, when Steam came out we started to get a little nervous. Not because of the competition but because we feared the idea that we would one day need to sell our software through a third party and hence risk not getting paid…again.
As it had turned out, our fears have been unwarranted. Impulse, now owned by Gamestop, pays like clock work and so does Steam. By contrast, with a retail distributor you were lucky to get paid merely 90 days late. And that’s not counting the obnoxious and expensive RMA games they play. I like the service Steam provides. They’re easy to work with, they’re honest, and they’re passionate about what they do. And most importantly, they let me, as a game developer, focus on what matters: making games.
Anyway, the point here being, what are your feelings on Steam these days?
As mentioned above, GOG only sells Witcher II because the same parent company owns both.
GOG is great, but it's no Steam. It doesn't keep a nice list of all my games for easy access and keep them all updated automatically (not that these old games have any updates coming). If I can get a game on GOG or Steam, I pick Steam every time for convenience.
I can't say that I hate Steam, but if there is an option to purchase directly from developer so as to not use Steam, then I would do that instead. Reasons: beta patch access. Also to provide more profit for developer.
I am a big fan of steam for many reasons.
I'll try and list them in an easy to read format.
1) Getting games from steam and paying for them is so easy it is addictive. Everything you need to make a decision is on steam. Try checking metacritics from a retail store. In fact trying buying any PC game from a retail store these days. Even 10 years ago you had to ask in GAME to for expansions because they just didnt put them on the shelf at all.
2) Updates, this is really good until its forced on the user like skyrim updates is. By passing "do not update option" turns the benefit in to a pain in the .... well you get it. But when everything works, this takes the old surf time looking for patches out of the equation.
3) Steam Workshop. Great idea, as a former nexus modder for TES games I saw some very low down, dodgy people running mod hosting sites and making a profit from it. Often abusing the modders rights in the process. Happened a lot. Steam dont do that, they just host the mosts and clean up any mess if you report it to them. Its hassle free. Except for the issue with their servers under performing because Steam workshop is growing to fast.
4) I love the idea of owning game grants you access to mods. It seems like a sweet deal to me that a dev that supports modders is rewarded by the sales mods generate in 100% of cases. No pirates with a free ride. In return I expect that dev to keep making good games like Sins, like Galactic Civ and like FE. After all no game keeps us playing for ever. Its in my interest too to ensure the devs have the cash to make the next game I will buy. Id be bored to death in no time if that was not the case.
5) My friends all use steam now, we chat in game, we talk about games we like. We see what our friends are playing and games that get played a lot advertise them selves to us. We notice when a friend is always on one game and we thing, must be good and take a look for our selves. Its the new word of mouth, because talk is cheap, its also more reliable than a simple verbal recommendation.
6) The new gamehub idea on steam is pretty cool too, even if you do not own the game you can see what players of that game are doing. Its like the ultimate fan zone.
Does this bother me as a website owner my self, do I feel threatened by this ?
No because those sort of things are gathering points, not specialist sites, they focus a community and specialist sites like my need a focus just as a focus needs sites like mine.
So i see Steam as a win win situation.
Except for the downtime of Steam Workshop, I like Steam Workshop, it takes the politics out of modding but the downtimes suck.
Personally i love steam and wouldn't have bought this game or probably even knew it existed if it wasn't for steam. I'm glad i did get it because it's an awesome game. But steam is also a new avenue of revenue for stardock that it might not have had otherwise.
Just wanted to point out that Beta patches can be made available on Steam. Skyrim does this, you can opt in for beta patches. So developers can do that on Steam as well.
I do had a game in steam, but only because game said must use steam, and I dislike it. Most of time I hate steam when come to download mod...and I don't like steam doing if you want all good stuff, must be online, as some game do, thugh not all...even you can play offline game, not all dlc can be play offline...
Thanks for pointing that out. I assumed all developers offered no beta access via steam since paradox had been that way. Per paradox, "only official patches get released on steam." Maybe they changed their patching policies?
Since you received no payment from me buying Galactic Civilizations 1 from Strategy First, I went ahead and bought it again from GoG.
Frogboy, that not getting paid stuff sounds incredibly harsh. A pity you arent based in Germany or one of the Scandinavian countries, you can get something like "Process Fee assistance" if your case is deemed likely enough to win, and then the state pays your lawyer fees (which are also much lower than they are in the Anglosphere).
While you are correct about the ability of recieving Process Fee assistance in Germany, winning the process does not help you much when the company you sued goes bankrupt.
As far as Steam goes I will NEVER buy anything retail from them as far as full price goes. I will wait until it is bargain bin for $5 or less but if it's a really really great game I might pay $9.99 max. Mainly because of the way Steam does business with its customers and the fact that Steam owns the games we don't. Now, if you want to talk GAMERSGATE or GOG then we can talk and I'll surely buy retail games from Gamersgate and GOG because "I" OWN the games when I buy them. I can save the setup.exe file to my harddrive and never need them again to load up or download my games (if I keep the setup.exe saved properly and I have 3 backups of all my games now). Same with GOG I OWN the game because I can download the full setup file and store it on my hard drives. The ONLY thing I'll have to deal with is the stupid ONLINE activation some of these games have and those I will never buy full price retail either. IF it has a CD KEY or offline activation codes then that's fine they will get my money. Otherwise all these publishers, developers and STEAM can KMA as far as buying their products go unless they are bargain bin priced.
The only reason I got LH was because it was FREE because of the crappy 1st game Stardock put out called Elemental War of Magic and I wss promised two games in the future from the series because of it. But, now I'm done if they release anymore on Steam until they are bargain bin.
Giana Sisters, which is fairly new, also made GOG. AOW3 will as well.
You won't see many new games on GOG, but if you could just combine GOG and Desura, you'd get what I wanted Impulse to be, and what it showed signs of being before the Gamestop sale. It's not the fault of the Impulse team that Gamestop mismanaged Impulse.
I'd add to this, from a purely economic perspective, anytime the chain of distribution narrows to a single conduit, control usually passes to that conduit, and technical development tends to slow to a halt. Plus, the conduit gets to make a lot of decisions that force users to opt in, or opt for a difficult alternative. I can still recall the way game retailer Gamestop began buying out or merging with its US competitors one after another--after which they narrowed product selection to move inventory faster, and started telling customers to contact companies directly to buy the other games they wanted. This may not happen to Steam, but it does seem poised to grab more and more of the game distribution market.
Which is why, if I can't get the game directly from the developers, I'll try other online distribution methods first before Steam, whether that's Gamersgate, GOG.com, or Desura. It's not that Steam is an "evil empire," something I definitely don't buy. It's just that I don't want to see any distributor monopolize delivery.
The only problem with that is many of them just link right back to Steam as the 3rd party client you have to have to play the game even if you buy it from Gamersgate, GOG or even the developer themselves.
No game from GOG.com links back to Steam. That would go against their DRM-free principles.
Gaunathor is correct.
Many games link back to steam even if bought on steam's competitors or a disk in the store.
But GOG does not allow that (and as a result they do not have certain games which have such a deal with steam).
The reason developers are using Steam have nothing to do with DRM.
Valve has made Steam compelling to developers through things like Steam Pipe (i.e. I copy my files onto a remote directory and the game is updated), the underthehood features of Steamworks (it gives me all kinds of debugging info when a user crashes, very easy connectivity features, FREE hosting -- that's a $15k per month freebie for us).
Now, Impulse had a lot of this stuff very early on too but GameStop seems to have chosen a different direction for the Impulse technology than we would have taken. But gamers had an opportunity to choose and they chose Steam.
I still think there is room for multiple options but at a minimum, they would have to provide the equivalent of Steampipe and as the architect behind Impulse::Builder I can tell you it's a non-trivial endeavor to do what Steam has accomplished and therefore, I am pretty coinvinced that the PC game platform, at this point is the Steam platform and for most gamers and developers, that's a good thing.
I have no problem with games being offered on Steam, as long as Steam is NOT REQUIRED! Don't force it on those of us who don't like it!I hate Steam and will not use it. I used to love Stardock because they offered an alternative and didn't sell out to Steam for the big bucks. Those days are over. I've been getting all my games either from GOG or other non-Steam vendors. There's no game that will entice me to use Steam, and there have been many games over the years that I would have bought instantly if they didn't require Steam. Just another lost sale.
Exactly
Gamers shall have the right to have their games not require a third-party download manager installed in order for those games to function. Gamers have the right to use their games without being inconvenienced due to copyright protection or digital rights management.
Gamers shall have the right to have their games not require a third-party download manager installed in order for those games to function.
Gamers have the right to use their games without being inconvenienced due to copyright protection or digital rights management.
Exactly. Sure, you do 90 % of the sales on steam, it would be insane not to OFFER there.
But please dont kill the other ways of distribution.
If Stardock made one minor change, I'd be fine with Steamworks being required:
Make it where if you click on the .exe, the game runs without Steamworks starting if it hasn't started. I know two games that do this , so it is possible (Dungeons of Dredmor and Mount and Blade)
Free: Last I read, valve takes up 30% of each sale. So its hardly "free" if you pay them for it.
Steampipe: Copying files into a remote directory isn't easier than right clicking the folder containing those DRM-free files, selecting "add to 7z", and uploading it to your host. This isn't steam being easy its some of steam's competitors being unreasonably difficult (due to it being difficult to code a client that is easy of course; but for 30% of the take they better make the investment). And if it is the DRM that is complicating matters than it IS about DRM
Hosting: Even blizzard subsidizes their networking costs by leveraging bittorrent distribution.
Features: I do agree that they have useful tools through. like the debugging data, built in chat, built in matchmaking...
Because gamestop is a blight and most sane gamers boycott them. Gamestop buying impulse was like EA buying a <insert dozens of good companies here>. And its not like I didn't give them another chance (not that they deserved one).
@Valve's take:
Valve only takes 30% if it's purchased on Steam. But by "requiring" Steam to download the game, we can manage all the channels (including direct sales where Valve gets 0) using Steam Pipe. Putting everything else aside, that one feature is enough to justify requiring Steam for most ISVs.
And no, putting up a ZIP of every change and requiring users to piece together all the ZIPs to get the latest update is not realistic would be a support nightmare.
Updating a game using Steampipe is measured in seconds. Updating the game via Stardock Central (for example) is measured in hours and requries an install specialist. Steampipe is even better than what we had for Impulse (Impulse was pretty amazing in 2010 but it hasn't advanced one iota in 3 years and Steam has caught up and surpassed it in every way at this point).
So Valve gets 0 from direct sales? Is that true for just you guys, or across the board?
I always assumed it was different, and it was a big reason why I chose non-Steam whenever possible in the past (I don't dislike Valve, but I didn't want them getting money for indy games instead of the developer)
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