Old Steam Poll posts split and 'archived'

[Vayde]

i really dont see the big deal about updates, its not like you have to pay to download them so egosoft would not be earning anything from users downloading the updates.
also some people might not want a certain update (look at the X3TC "update" that made boarding nearly impossible).

to me it looks like egosoft is going steam because they want to have multiplayer soon, which again the majority does not want...

Wanna bet?

Ego knows that modder's have kept their games alive for years after they should have gone off into the sunset. It's a vast untapped source of revenue for them if used correctly. Why let all those 3rd parties develop mods when Ego can do the same and then sell them as DLC. Chances are they already have the mods/DLC ready to go, after all they've had 4 years to get them done.

Just think, a reworked version of any of the great mods for TC on sale for X:R at just £1.99. Fully endorsed by Ego themselves and available now. And how would you know this? Because steams relentless advert stream would remind you.

I go down on my knees and thank whoever it was that gave me the power of choice.

[VincentTH]

Would be nice if steam was optional but that isn't going to happen. It'll be forced down our throats if we want to play XR.

.... Preparing to launch X Rebirth ....
20 seconds later
.... Game is busy ....
wtf? Restart Steam
.... Preparing to launch X Rebirth ....
.... Game is currently unavailable ....
What the ??!
Restart Steam in offline mode
.... Offline mode requires internet ....
PC explodes

You should also add the following:

Player: I have a problem with Steam
Steam Support: What game you play?
Player: XR
Steam Support: What is that game

a few days later

repeat at infinitum {

Steam Support: We cannot reproduce the problem you have. Please ask Egosoft
Egosoft dev: Yes I have replicated the problem, and will work with Steam

5 days later:
Steam Support: We cannot reproduce the problem you have. Please ask Egosoft
Egosoft dev: Please see if the newest Steam update fix your problem
Player: Problem still there, can you help.

}

This is NOT a hypothetical scenario. Just replace XR with X3TC and the DiD save game loss issue reported in the X3TC Tech forum.

Note: OT: but the real issue is that Steam update X3TC (or the DLC) somehow forces Steam Clouds to invalidate the Save game. That's why I am adamant that Steam should NOT update my game if I don't ask.An account without Steam DLC does not have this problem. It has been 3 months+, and the issue is not resolved.

[GCU Grey Area]

Why should I have to demonstrate anything, it's not my poll. I'm just interested in the results

Because you are the one who trying to claim the validity of the poll? Assuming the point is to convince the dev than it has to prove that it has sufficient merrit. What you're saying is like "I don't care how good or crappy the research was, I only care about the number?.

Don't be absurd, of course I wish the poll had been done better (e.g. the options on the German poll are a distinct improvenent) that's why I have made no attempt to estimate margins of error etc. Incidentally I was quite surprised by the results, initially expected slightly higher in favour, much higher for activation only & considerably fewer 'no steam ever' votes. On reflection wonder if that's maybe a consequence of the different demographics for players of X games compared to, for example, a generic FPS?

[Mightysword]

Why should I have to demonstrate anything, it's not my poll. I'm just interested in the results

Because you are the one who trying to claim the validity of the poll? Assuming the point is to convince the dev than it has to prove that it has sufficient merrit. What you're saying is like "I don't care how good or crappy the research was, I only care about the number?.

Don't be absurd, of course I wish the poll had been done better (e.g. the options on the German poll are a distinct improvenent) that's why I have made no attempt to estimate margins of error etc. Incidentally I was quite surprised by the results, initially expected slightly higher in favour, much higher for activation only & considerably fewer 'no steam ever' votes. On reflection wonder if that's maybe a consequence of the different demographics for players of X games compared to, for example, a generic FPS?

What absurd? And again, your conjecture hardly has anything to do with justify the result. And don't even go with the demographic and gerne bashing direction, provided you're trying to be serious, it will not help your point.

[greypanther]

When it comes down to it Steam can provide convenience to many, especially the developer it seems, but tying XR to Steam in a non reversable way is in fact all about money.

I would imagine that a multiplayer online game could generate more revinue for Egosoft, than all the rest of the X games put together. Can we really blame Bernd for wanting that? Bloody good business sense imo!

Not sure who said it, but I agree that Egosoft will already have paid for add ons ready to go, at least if the have any sense they will. I would also agree that Egosoft can see the great potential of these add ons. I mean face it, the initial game has a great many limitations and the potential for expansion with XR is going to be huge. Whats more, how long before the modders get their hands on the game? If i was in charge of the business side of things I would slow the modders down as much as I could to maximise revinue.

If Bernd is not already a millionaire, I would imagine that he soon could be if he plays this right. Whats more I would say good luck to him, he deserves great sucess in my opinion, considering all the great games he has already brought us.

I agree cycrow that the poll would be hard to proove to be representative. Even if it was that 40 % truly would be irrellevent when compared to all the new customers Egosoft could gain. ( How many people play World of Warcraft and Eve again anyone? )

Well I have just had a quick look and Eve claims over 350000 players, whilst WOW claims to have over 11 million!

[GCU Grey Area]

What absurd? And again, your conjecture hardly has anything to do with justify the result. And don't even go with the demographic and gerne bashing direction, provided you're trying to be serious, it will not help your point.

Sorry, not sure what you mean by 'gerne bashing direction'. Would be grateful if you could clarify.

[Vayde]

Not sure who said it, but I agree that Egosoft will already have paid for add ons ready to go, at least if the have any sense they will. I would also agree that Egosoft can see the great potential of these add ons. I mean face it, the initial game has a great many limitations and the potential for expansion with XR is going to be huge. Whats more, how long before the modders get their hands on the game? If i was in charge of the business side of things I would slow the modders down as much as I could to maximise revinue.

Try 4 posts above yours :)

[greypanther]

[Oldman]

Good evening

I would like the choice of buying Rebirth with or without 'Steam'.
Is that possible?

A straightforward answer 'Yes' or 'No' from Egosoft direct would be very much appreciated, thank you.

....Hey!....That sounds good 'www.Egosoftdirect.com'....much as in the same way as 'Argos Direct'...or 'Tesco Direct'
....."Get your Steam free version of X Rebirth at Egosoftdirect.com"!....

Just a thought (puts on flack jacket & heads for bunker )

Oldman

[TTD]

ok guys and dolls,

I do not think that any additional votes will make a lot of difference to the %ages now.

40% average against Steam seems to be the norm,even in other games forums.

This thread has revealed a lot of information.

Let's try and keep it informative from here on,please.

Else if it becomes a "My toy's bigger than yours" debate,with verbal missiles being sent at each other,then I will fully support the moderators locking this thread.

I may even ask them too,so be warned.

In response to Bernd's interest,it seems he may have given us some more information.
The reason for this poll was to get the current views of the players....Not to highlight any developer's advantages of Steam.But to see if players were willing to use Steam in a limited sense,for activation etc.
I expected some to be against Steam.That is why I included that option.

If the threat of losing the right to play games I have paid for is there,(I did not realise that before this poll),then I will probably wait until all the bugs are dusted out and the game is much cheaper.

But if as Bernd hinted,but not confirmed,that a DVD installation will only need activation , and be usable whenever,then I may go that route.

Bottom line is...
We still do not know all the details of how much control Steam will have on our game.

[Shimrod]

I think the poll component should either continue to exist or get restarted, if the thread is to be closed. I feel its important to show an increasing number that reflects lost revenue if there is no alternative option to Steam (in particular a standalone offline DVD version).

Perhaps if restarted we could align the options with the German thread, to allow the results to be readily collated.

I suspect a single steam thread is going to be inevitable. The board would be overwhelmed with individual posts and mods would likely want to concentrate them in one place.

[EmperorJon]

A better poll would be the exact truth:

"If you could buy the game by digital distribution or in the store in a box, but either way would have to activate the game online via steam before playing, would you buy it?"

As I've said, I'm not concerned on the Steam matter, except addmitedly on one point: If the contract between the publisher and Steam forced Egosoft to release payable DLC, I would not be happy. Egosoft have got where they are by providing so much content for their games free of charge, years after the release. If the game was tied to Steam, there's a slight worry that they may not be allowed to release all the content free. I would like Bernd to answer this, though I seriously doubt he will. (And he may not even know himself.)

[perkint]

The figures are of mild interest only, for a few reasons:

1. The only people taking part are ones who see the thread title and decide it is of interest. Not a representative sample, more likely to be people with strong feelings (more likely to be negative).
2. People change their mind! Not aiming this at any one individual, but I'd bet a hell of a lot of money, there are quite a few people who have said "never!" to steam, who will change their minds if it is the only way to get the game, and the game turns out to be brilliant!

Both the above are really just human nature!

Having said that, I'm still surprised at how negative the results are

Personally, I'll get the DVD version, and I'd rather not have to activate it through steam. But, nothing is very likely to stop me getting the game

I don't know much about steamworks, but assume it is this:
1. You have to have a steam account to activate the game.
2. The steam engine will update to the latest patch during install - how big patches are, is up to the developer
3. You will be able to play with updates off and in off-line mode (assuming you do not suffer any issues with off-line mode)
4. If you want to update, you will have to wait, without playing, for Steam to download and install the latest patch
5. You will not be able to pick the version you play, beyond remaining in off-line mode.

If Egosoft have managed to come up with a mod system which is not as affected by updates, the only three reasons I see against steam are:
1. Poor bandwidth availability can be inconvenient or even crippling for something like this
2. You have very limited control over which version you play
3. You are tied into a third party app for the game

How much these matter to each person will vary. And there have been some good reasons already listed why, for some people they are big issues. Others have said they are perfectly happy with this (and I wouldn't say I'm perfectly happy, but I don't object too strongly to having to use Steam).

I can't see Egosoft being able to offer a non Steam version if their publisher has an agreement with Steam - unfortunately. We will not have the same freedom as we had with X3TC which had the ideal balance - DVD, Steam or both!!!. Hopefully the game will be good enough to make up for it

As for those suggesting Egosoft already have chargeable DLC ready - I (personally) don't believe that. And I'd be willing to put (some) money on that, as well!

Tim

[lostone1993]

ok from what ive read, forgive me if this was stated before

one major con for steam
is when it can go wrong it can be crippling, in my case tried to update steam one day refuses to update, talk to steam support go though everything still not working, then i was ignored without any knowledge of what was wrong

I have about 20 games on steam which add up to $600
searched consteadly for solutions, none worked

this has put me a frame of mind where if I see a steam required game, I will shoot myself

just so you know I was having trouble last year and still am

This is why i will not buy another game that requires steam, no bad how much i want it

[VincentTH]

ok from what ive read, forgive me if this was stated before

one major con for steam
is when it can go wrong it can be crippling, in my case tried to update steam one day refuses to update, talk to steam support go though everything still not working, then i was ignored without any knowledge of what was wrong

I have about 20 games on steam which add up to $600
searched consteadly for solutions, none worked

this has put me a frame of mind where if I see a steam required game, I will shoot myself

just so you know I was having trouble last year and still am

This is why i will not buy another game that requires steam, no bad how much i want it

See my post in the previous page. Steam Support is kinda poor, at least in my experience. Egosoft may think highly about Steam, but Steam people kinda say: Who is Egosoft, and what are the X games? What I am afraid of with mandatory Steam requirement is that customers (us) will be caught in a pingpong game when Egosoft thinks that the problem is with Steam but Steam Support say they can't reproduce it.

See the thread "Losing DiD save game" in the Tech Forum for details.

[Bernd]

I am trying to find the arguments that people have against Steam, but (short of reading the whole thread), these are those that I found:

- I dislike Steam because I do not want to be dependable on any online service. What happens if it goes down?

- Steam caused problems with X3TC in the past

- Steam service may not run or cause technical problems

- Egosoft may start charging money for updates

- I want to be able to play offline

I am going to adress these below. For those points that I forgot, would somebody care to collect them and send me a message please?
Of course in addition to all of this there may also be general "unlogical" I simply dont like it kind of arguments, but in that case there is nothing I can do, so we dont have to repeat those.

Anyway... here I go:

- I dislike Steam because I do not want to be dependable on any online service. What happens if it goes down?

First of all this is of course highly hypothetical, because Steam WONT go down, simply because of its size. But anyway, IF Steam would ever go down, we would make sure there is a "non Steam" patch just like we did for any of the DRM systems we used on X2, X3 and X3TC after one year.

What if egosoft is not there anymore to release such a patch?
Well if egosoft is not there anymore, then of course there would not be any support for any non Steam version too. Would it run with the then up to date Windows version?

- Steam caused problems with X3TC in the past

I am not an expert on these problems that we had in the past but please understand that in the past Steam was just one of many versions and not the biggest one. We had to release lots of different patches and support them across many distribution systems. If Steam is our only distribution system for a patch, it also means that we will have 100% of our time to focus on any possible issues there may be with that version.

- Steam service may not run or cause technical problems

I have not personally heard of such issues so I can not comment much, but again: the simple sze of that system means that problems will be quickly fixed if they are general Steam problems. If they are X Rebirth problems, it of course still has to be fixed by us. But that is a lot easier for one system than for hundreds!

Some people here claim that the Steam customer support was not great, and again I can not judge this. For me it was always great. But Steam customer support should never be needed unless the whole Steam system fails.

For anything that WE had to do directly with Steam e.g when we release a new update to them and need to test it, I can assure you that the Steam guys are extremely professional and very helpful (of course this is not customer support, but developer support). So if X Rebirth has problems on Steam it is very likely OUR problem, not theirs (and for that see question before)

- Egosoft may start charging money for updates

Thats again very hypothetical.
I can of course tell you that we will never charge for patches, because we WONT! But yes one of the great advantages of Steam for us as developers is that we can in the future also sell upgrades that add features (DLCs).
I am not talking about selling patches, I am talking about being able to develop DLCs that wouldnt even exist otherwise. Its not like we develop some content and would give it away for free if it wouldn't be for Steam. On the contrary: Because Steam allows us to sell DLCs, we may be able to finance the development of cool new things that we couldn't afford otherwise.

- I want to be able to play offline

You should be able to play offline. You only need to be go online once for activation. If this did not always work it may be because some things were simply wrong. Again: Only having to support one version will help us make sure things like this dont happen in the future.

phew...

Hope I could get at least some of you to undestand our side a bit better even if you wont change your mind

-Bernd

[Mightysword]

@Bernd, sorry to break it to you but what you just said had been covered by us (the people defending steam). Well, I hope an official have better chance of being listened

The one noticeable you left out is people with a physical limitation, having too bad an internet that they can afford patching from steam.

[greypanther]

Thank you for your answers Bernd.

I will think on what you have said.

I do have one question you have not answered, will we be tied to Steam for the life of the game?

[amtct]

Thats again very hypothetical.
I can of course tell you that we will never charge for patches, because we WONT! But yes one of the great advantages of Steam for us as developers is that we can in the future also sell upgrades that add features (DLCs).
I am not talking about selling patches, I am talking about being able to develop DLCs that wouldnt even exist otherwise. Its not like we develop some content and would give it away for free if it wouldn't be for Steam. On the contrary: Because Steam allows us to sell DLCs, we may be able to finance the development of cool new things that we couldn't afford otherwise.

I think its because there was alot of new content for TC .v2.0 Aldrin missions for example was free and not many companies do that

[StarSword]

@Bernd, regarding Steam being too big to go down: Tell that to PSN users. I distinctly recall a big hullabaloo* about that going down for a few weeks earlier this year.

That said, I've really got nothing against Steam as a distribution platform (don't know enough about it to say either way), but I can't use it because my Internet connection stinks. Downloading more than about 100MB at a time results in my family's ISP all but locking us out (goes from about 150 kbps peak down to 6). And believe it or not, that's the best option we have where I live.

The only way to avoid this is a no-throttling window from 2 to 6 AM. But I couldn't possibly download a game even as big as X3 in that amount of time (based on the fact that it takes about two hours to download an HD TV episode from iTunes).

Therefore, if Rebirth is Steam-only, I will not be purchasing it because I can't download it.

* Christ, I sound like my grandpa.