Steam & Launcher Poll + Discussion

Anyone that has any “issues” with using steam is in the extreme minority. I’ve been using steam since Half-Life 2 came out, and there’s never once been a sign in issue or connection issue for me. I may have been “lucky” but most of my other friends that game with me on steam games have had the same experience. By and large steam is a very stable platform with rarely any issues.

Millions of people use it at all hours of the day (Remember that’s millions), and there wouldn’t be such a large user base if it was anything negative about it.

They’ve even improved the steam client drastically since the original incarnation years ago too.

To anyone that doesn’t like steam: Just think, it could be worse. They could be trying to force us to use that god-awful Origin Client system.

[quote=“Killrob”]Make that 3, out of which one has a normal day job as well. :slight_smile: Otherwise you are correct! The Steam integration seems to be very dev-friendly, too.[/quote] There we go, that’s even more work for you guys then. I’d offer to help, but I’m no programmer. XD I just know enough to create basic bash scripts to automate things on my servers and windows login scripts.

Well, actually, negative aspects are not a deterrent to mass usage by the general public. Twitter, iCloud, Facebook, Windows XP Home (in fact most everything put out by Microsoft), all have serious negative elements associated with them. It certainly has not deterred mass usage. I am not saying Steam suffers from serious security exploits, but your argument is invalid.

Option 2: Convert ALL keys to Steam and focus on that platform.

i like option 1 to keep the normal launcher + add v6 engine

What ever makes Develpnet easier and faster for the team works with me.

option 1 If that is not possible Please do what Hillybilly ask option 3 maybe make a box copy for the people or leave it the way it is and updates on your website Please make everyone happy

Sorry about that ‘backstab’ from earlier. English is not my native language and I didn’t know that this word may have such negative meaning. It just boiled my blood when I saw that a project for which I was hoping for many years (since good old Detroit possibly?) is taking a turn only a bit better then shutting down - from my point of view of course.

One thing that Daffyflyer mentioned seems to clarify things for me. As I am not much into a multiplayer in general, I didn’t realise that this may be such a big problem. Yes, I see that going for Steam may be the best solution here - not too hard and still of good quality. And if there’s a chance to get the launcher only limited to single player then I’m into it.

[quote=“VicVictory”]Clearly you do not produce a good or service yourself that you distribute through an electronic medium, or you would never make such a statement.

I do (not games, book). What you just said is tantamount to “I’d like to buy your books directly through you, because Amazon is a middleman, and that’s stupid to go through them”. Quite the opposite. Going through Amazon makes my market and audience so much larger it’s ridiculous, and it would be stupid of me NOT to use them.

Pretty much the same here with Automation and Steam. [/quote]

Do you sell e-books or normal ones? Because there are a lot of differences between physical book (or any other good) and any e-thing, be it a game, book or picture. From my past experience I can tell you that very few people can handle it. One of the most silly things I heard were words of some book publisher about e-books. He was wondering how can they be cheaper than normal books if he have to manually scan the book, then convert pictures to pdf or something and then publish it - that’s a lot of additional work, isn’t it? Quite obviously he didn’t know how printing a book looks today, poor thing. :wink:
And as we’re about the middleman problem, there are cases when such agent is needed and cases when he’s not - and I see the latter ones just too often.

Well, luckily Borobecj your opinion of steam is a minority. Steam is an excellent service. If it wasn’t , i wouldnt have amassed a 300+ game collect on there since i first downloaded it over 8 years ago. I can uderstand you wanting to pay the developer directly - that’s fine. But if the developer decides to publish a game on steam,. then why is this still a problem for you? its good enough for the devs, it should be good enough for you.

Steam is absolutely the way to go. Looking forward to it, personally.

I think option two is the best because it saves working on both launchers and it you don’t have a steam account make one it takes five minutes

I know that its easy to say… but keeping “some” independance can be necessarily.

Steam doesn’t work for me and some of my friend what about people like me who spent money on your game to help support it? So you guys are just going to leave us and ignore us? I’m sure that there is other people who are looking at now or in the future that cant get access to steam. I think that steam is good for you guys but you should still release an independent launcher.

Looks like ideally we’ll have both, but Multiplayer is probably not going to work in the non-steam version, as we’ll need steam’s servers to do multiplayer well.

Out of interest, what prevents Steam from working for you?

It’s sad to see another independent production become dependent… :frowning:

Dependant because we’re selling it through something other than our own dodgy website infrastructure? It’s not like Valve has any control over the actual development process or anything…

Steam definitely. all my pc games run through steam anyway

[quote=“Daffyflyer”]

Dependant because we’re selling it through something other than our own dodgy website infrastructure? It’s not like Valve has any control over the actual development process or anything…[/quote]

I wouldn’t mind if it was limited to selling. I have, however, a bad feeling that some day I won’t be able to run it without that steam overlay crap.

It most certainly looks like both is the best option though; after all, 20% would prefer this current method, and while nowhere near a majority, that is a sizable amount. Much, much greater than I would’ve expected.

Does this mean you do not have to have your own servers that run the MP of the game?
Is it still possible for customers, like myself, to host a server for a multiplayer session, like you see with OpenTTD (even dedicated servers?)

I think he means that it is nearly impossible to connect the external launcher multiplayer to the Steam multiplayer. But I would certainly like to keep non-Steam multiplayer, as if there comes to be a choice, I’d play the non-Steam version.