Split from X-Rebirth Steam poll thread - Round 2

[fairywhipper]

And this ... the moment you all have been waiting for: the game ... DOES ... NOT ... NEED ... STEAM ... TO ... RUN !! Upon installation and activation, I turn off Steam and go directly into the bin folder, locate the executable, double click it and voila, the game runs without Steam running at all. To quote a Paradox's rep on another game on Steam:

tried that before steam tried to patch games, didnt work for me....
maybe i dont do right

[fairywhipper]

And this ... the moment you all have been waiting for: the game ... DOES ... NOT ... NEED ... STEAM ... TO ... RUN !! Upon installation and activation, I turn off Steam and go directly into the bin folder, locate the executable, double click it and voila, the game runs without Steam running at all. To quote a Paradox's rep on another game on Steam:

tried that before steam tried to patch games, didnt work for me....
maybe i dont do right

[dougeye]

I heard valve are going to charge by the hour for half life 3. something like a £1. Im well in favour of this as valve/steam are my idols! yes pay as you go gaming finally!!!!!

[Mightysword]

And this ... the moment you all have been waiting for: the game ... DOES ... NOT ... NEED ... STEAM ... TO ... RUN !! Upon installation and activation, I turn off Steam and go directly into the bin folder, locate the executable, double click it and voila, the game runs without Steam running at all. To quote a Paradox's rep on another game on Steam:

tried that before steam tried to patch games, didnt work for me....
maybe i dont do right

The game has to be particular set up like that to work that way. Not every games are set up like that. In my experience, it seems this is the way most Paradox games are. There are many level of Steam integration the developer can choose, I think Paradox's level is the lowest possible. They only have STeam manage the game, ie patching and activation without any other integration.


I'm not saying this is the case for "ALL GAMES" on Steam. The point I'm trying to say with my post is that Steam is rather innocent in this regard, and it's actually the publisher/developer who decide most of the things that are argued in this thread. If Egosoft wants to have Steam just for activation and patching, it seems to me that they can and whether they choose to rely on Steam on other aspect is their decision, not Steam. So I think people should stop demonizing and ripping it like the current trend. Really from my point of view it's rather innocent and provide most of the options table here, but it's getting flakked to pieces for what seems to be decisions of others. I.e it doesn't dictate whether a game have to be online, off-line whatever. So it seems what people is doing is essentially the same as ripping a retailer because a publisher decide to put a certain DRM on it.


In short, what I am saying: if you have a game on Steam that requires you to stay online all the time, then it is not Steam itself asking you to do it, but rather because your publisher/developer chose to do so.

[greypanther]

I understand where you are coming from apricotslice, I really do, but if you react this way about the enforced Steam, how will you react when ' they who decide,' decide you need to play games via the cloud now?

It is coming.....

Resistance truly is futile.

[apricotslice]

I understand where you are coming from apricotslice, I really do, but if you react this way about the enforced Steam, how will you react when ' they who decide,' decide you need to play games via the cloud now?

steam, cloud, its all vapour to me.

[Texhnolyzed]

yeah yeah, so now it's joker act when confront with a fact heh? Oh well should have guessed ... not the first time it happens.

Yeah, I noticed that as well. I'm starting to think that he never had the intention to ever contribute anything worthwhile to this thread anyway. *shrug*

[apricotslice]

yeah yeah, so now it's joker act when confront with a fact heh? Oh well should have guessed ... not the first time it happens.

Yeah, I noticed that as well. I'm starting to think that he never had the intention to ever contribute anything worthwhile to this thread anyway. *shrug*

What is there to contribute ? I dont want steam. Period. Contribution made.

Its a sad joke, so why not make jokes ?

Beats the hell out of some of the back and forth thats been going on.

[X2-Eliah]

What is there to contribute ? I dont want steam. Period. Contribution made.

20 times, 30? or whole 40? It looks like you have an infinite looping condition stuck before that period.

[apricotslice]

What is there to contribute ? I dont want steam. Period. Contribution made.

20 times, 30? or whole 40? It looks like you have an infinite looping condition stuck before that period.

Damn ! You noticed that.

[Texhnolyzed]

People here contribute by informing people about what is true about Steam and what is not, for example. Even I did that at times... and I'm certainly not the best at contributing. You on the other hand, posted nothing but a whole lot of... nothing, in two threads/about 120 pages.

Not posting false information and such, would be a good for a start for example, but then you, and others, could stop posting altogether, I guess.

[apricotslice]

People here contribute by informing people about what is true about Steam and what is not, for example.

The thread is not for informing people about anything. Its a poll to see what people prefer.

but then you, and others, could stop posting altogether, I guess.

You first

[Texhnolyzed]

The thread is not for informing people about anything. Its a poll to see what people prefer.

That is what the poll is there for, but there's that thread kinda thing that gets dragged along... there you usually discuss, or make useful, if possible informative posts. Then there's the other thing. When arguing about why or why not to go for Steam, and someone posts false information or in ignorance, it is informing for the others as well, if said person is corrected.

You first

Nah, I'm fine.

[apricotslice]

The thread is not for informing people about anything. Its a poll to see what people prefer.

That is what the poll is there for, but there's that thread kinda thing that gets dragged along... there you usually discuss, or make useful, if possible informative posts.

Personally I've found it very entertaining.

You first

Nah, I'm fine.

Me too.

Edit : Actually, I'm not that fine. Sugar rush from raiding the Halloween goodie bag.

[NUKLEAR-SLUG]

@Slug
As said in my last post concerning the digital distribution quota, let it be the whole 20% that were sold on Steam and nothing was sold on GoG.com if you think that this is more realistic. This does not in the slightest alter my argument that the mass majority did not buy the game on Steam.

I'm not going to suggest it's more realistic, without the breakdown it's impossible to say either way. However I am more than happy to agree with you that what your example demonstrates is that 80% of sales were non-digital.

Now unfortunately I'm not that familiar with the Witcher series but my understanding is that is a fairly high profile title riding off the success of their first title and as such probably had some pretty good marketing support and consequently retail prescence. That's fine if you happen to have a publisher that's willing to support that, but Egosoft aren't in that position. They're a small outfit that doesn't make high profile titles. They're not going to be able to apply that same marketing muscle. Steam however gives them a lot of marketing clout for a very minimal expenditure. For Egosoft it's ideal.

I read the question over and over by the spurned third of X fans; why not disk without Steam as well as Steam sales?
Indeed I have asked the same question myself repeatedly.
Well we have to face the fact ES has sold out on us! This is far from suprising, it is the normal way of doing business for companies like Steam. They will have offered ES a better cut of the return per game sold, probably 10%, for an exclusive contract. From what has been said in posts I believe Steam have not only got a contractual agreement out of ES but have been clever enough to get ES to code the steam system into the game.
This will mean that if we did get ES to change their mind, not only would they get dragged through the courts for financial compensation but they would have to produce an entirely separate version for Disk sale!
Lets face it pigs are not going to fly on this one, the best we can hope for is, that if this site and comunity survive this indifference of ES, they come to their senses before producing X4!

Full marks for drama there!

Egosoft have chosen to go with Steam because Steam has a lot of benefits for them and they consider those benefits to outweigh the negatives. It's no more complicated or conspiratorial than that, much as you might like to believe otherwise.

This could well be a very good choice of the publisher or a very bad one, and in such cases the publisher should focus upon what people actually do with their money, and not what they write in a forum they will do.

The overwhelming consensus from all the polls, boycotts and what have you that I've ever taken any notice of over the years in various communities is that people complain bitterly, make grand gestures and statements and then, when it comes down to it in the end, a sizable chunk suddenly decide maybe they can do without their principles after all and go and buy it anyway.

[apricotslice]

You know, its gotten kind of ironic.

For 30 years I've struggled to keep my hardware updated so that I could always play the latest game.

But now that the latest game is going to be vapour-ware, I'm looking at ways of dumbing down my computer so that I can replay some of the great oldies.

Is that ironic or what ?

I even found downloadable versions of the original 2 Wing Commanders ! I may go back and start them again for nostalgia's sake. I still have the floppies somewhere.

[Antaran]

- Steam DRM: this is an option the developer can choose to turn on or off when they submit the game to steam.
- Steam Multiplayer: this is an optional premium service that Steam offers to developer for a royalty. A game doesn't have to use Steamwork for MP, in fact SoTS2 use Gamespy for MP.

And this ... the moment you all have been waiting for: the game ... DOES ... NOT ... NEED ... STEAM ... TO ... RUN !! Upon installation and activation, I turn off Steam and go directly into the bin folder, locate the executable, double click it and voila, the game runs without Steam running at all. To quote a Paradox's rep on another game on Steam:

Actually the game does need steam to run, you just said it yourself, you have to install steam before you can activate the game, hence steam is required.

[quase]

I found it interesting that Sword of the Stars 2 should not need Steam after the activation. I fired up a few of my 50+ Steam games through their game.exe in the Steam folder and found two games, Gratioutous Space Battles and Eufloria, that started without error message ("Use Steam Dumbass") or without also just starting Steam. (By the way none of these 50+ games had cost me more than 5 to 10 €. The same fate that X Rebirth will have with with a forced accout binding.)

I am not even sure if DRM oppositions like CD Projekt Red are doing it this way for their Witcher 2 on Steam. I am pretty sure however that none of the big publishers are doing it this way and I highly doubt that Deepsilver, although a very small publisher, will allow this for X Rebirth.
The other big question now is, how do you find out if a game works without Steam before you buy the game? The level of Steam integration is usually not written on the box of the game or on the game page on Steam, the only thing known is that Steam is required.

Anyway, it is good to see this can be done with Steam and this would be acceptable for X Rebirth. As long as I would be able to copy away the folder from the Steam directory and use it from a flash drive for example without another activation (e.g. to create Steamless backups).

I have tried it with Gratuitous Space Battles and Eufloria just now ... works like charm for those two. Now I will just copy those games away from the Steam folder and never ever run them again with Steam. Happy happy, joy joy!

If Egosoft does it like this, I could probably decide to buy the game for more than 10 €. Maybe, just maybe though ...

@Slug again concerning the Witcher 2
Actually I did not see much official marketing from Bandai Namco (the retail publisher for the rest of the world, except for Poland and eastern Europe in general, where CD Projekt publish the game themselves I think) for the Witcher 2 except that they have been vocal about the game during the making. They had many developer videos as "making of" during the development and had a lot of interviews in the press. I think the most success came from the viral marketing through fans like me that proposed and advertised the game wherever we could (just like me doing it now again). I especially always praised the service to the customer by CD Projekt and the opposition to DRM. The various methods of purchase (digital as well as retail) and on top of it the package of the whole game. When was the last time you got so much stuff for 40-50 € in a game package (manual, soundtrack, goodies ... like a collectors editions nowadays)?
The first Witcher wasn't a big success by the way. It was OK and granted the development for the second game. On release the first Witcher game was a buggy mess, the re-release as The Witcher Enhanced Edition was very successful though. The reason was, it was a high quality product and just like the Witcher 2 a real benefit for the customer with a fantastic support service form CD Projekt.

I always said the same about the service for X, but with the current stand of development I can not find many good words for Egosoft and Deepsilver. It is still time to change the strategy and become a customer focused company once again.

[Antaran]

You know, its gotten kind of ironic.

For 30 years I've struggled to keep my hardware updated so that I could always play the latest game.

But now that the latest game is going to be vapour-ware, I'm looking at ways of dumbing down my computer so that I can replay some of the great oldies.

Is that ironic or what ?

I even found downloadable versions of the original 2 Wing Commanders ! I may go back and start them again for nostalgia's sake. I still have the floppies somewhere.

Dosbox ftw, also you might check out running old windows os on a image to run the games.

[Antaran]

People here contribute by informing people about what is true about Steam and what is not, for example. Even I did that at times... and I'm certainly not the best at contributing. You on the other hand, posted nothing but a whole lot of... nothing, in two threads/about 120 pages.

Not posting false information and such, would be a good for a start for example, but then you, and others, could stop posting altogether, I guess.

I don´t see "Whats wrong with you, st34m is teh awesomeos. yousa wrong, you just has to [insert random useless advice to shut off steam]" as being a contribution to the problem, nothing that you or the people here that seem to love steam have written has made me change my mind about steam, if anything it has enforced my view of not using steam.

Problem remains the same, this game is tied to a steam account with its online activation.