Bionic Dues Now Available on Steam, Arcen Store

[Huw]

(I still can't quote on this forum!)

Tigersfan, how do you know Linux sales are bleak?  I bought direct from you, which meant you sold me a key.  I plugged it into Steam, and (now that I know it's available on Linux) I'll be playing it mainly in Linux from now on.

[Billick]

Commenting on a few things here:

I bought the game on the PC Steam client, but I've been playing on both my PC and my Linux machine
(Aside #1: The game runs perfectly on my crappy 6 year old laptop that's running Linux, which is awesome because most games crap out on it).
(Aside #2: How hard would it be to implement Steam Cloud support?  It would be neat to be able to share saves between my two machines)

"...mini-X-COM..." - Penny Arcade Report.  Awesome.

I saw that Rock Paper Shotgun also posted a blurb about the game. 

[Greywolf22]

Well, I thought I'd chime in my 2 cents.  Honestly until this game I didn't know what "rougelike" meant.  To me I thought rougelike meant games like Theif..so yeah a bit out of the loop (although I do own several rougelike games I just never realized that's what they were called genre wise).

Anyway, I still consider it just as much a strategy game (speaking genere type) then strictly rougelike...by that I mean, I think it does cover a fairly broadbase of player types.

I hope it goes on to sell a ton, and hopefully the demo will bring even more interest into the game.

I also tend to agree with the folks here, that besides this forum (and being actively involved in the Alpha), I can't say that I've seen it advertised very much...maybe because I know it's here and I'm already familiar with it I simply haven't been looking.

[Misery]

Hm, I think that Penny Arcade review of it is notable simply for how well it explains the way the game works.  That's the best write-up of it I've yet seen.

Been pretty much all positive reviews of it so far that I've seen, so that's good.  The only negativity I've seen about the game falls into the usual 2 camps that are always there:  1, the ones that complain about the artwork, and 2, the ones that think that since Arcen brings out games real fast, they must not be high quality.   There's ALWAYS people from both groups complaining about stuff every time one of these releases.  It's like clockwork. 

As usual I dont see the basis for the art complaints.  I think the art style is very good for this one, though I'll agree with some that have said that the title screen and team selection menus are a bit too spartan, if that's the right word.   But other than that....  the robot designs are cool and the levels are very atmospheric, in my opinion. 

Like with Skyward though, those people seem to be in the minority, so that's good.   .....not to mention that pretty much every indie game ever is going to have those same type of comments from some people, no matter what.  I think it's the only thing that really bugs me about indie gaming in general, is having to listen to that for EVERY game I'm into.


But yeah, pretty darn positive overall.  I really dont think there's any question that the game is bloody good, heh.

[Wacky Willy]

To be perfectly honest, I was at the Arcen store page about to hit the purchase button when I saw that the game was steam exclusive.  I consider steam DRM and I'm not willing to put it on my computer. 

No chance of relasing a steam-free version at the Arcen store? 

Any chance of you releasing this game on GOG?

[zespri]

Others can correct me but as far as I understand you do not need steam to *play* the game. You just need it to buy/install it. So there is no kind of "steam DRM" in this case.


This explanation http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,12507.msg149499.html#msg149499 I think also applies to Bionic Dues

[Castruccio]

You can download it through steam, move the 'bionic dues' folder anywhere you'd like, delete steam, and still play the game.  Steam is just a means of delivery.  Sort of like the GOG downloader.  You don't have to have Steam installed to play the game once you have downloaded it.

[zespri]

(Aside #2: How hard would it be to implement Steam Cloud support?  It would be neat to be able to share saves between my two machines)

When this was asked about AI War the answer was that it saves to much information too often or something, so this is not practical. For Bionic Dues though it sounds like it's a good fit. Keith/Chris, what do you think? You mentioned before that the API for that is dead simple to use.

[Wacky Willy]

You can download it through steam, move the 'bionic dues' folder anywhere you'd like, delete steam, and still play the game.  Steam is just a means of delivery.  Sort of like the GOG downloader.  You don't have to have Steam installed to play the game once you have downloaded it.

And when the inevitable cavalcade of Arcen patches comes out, all I have to do is re-install steam each and every time!

You're wondering why sales of this title have been lean, I was a lost sale.  Steam exclusivity was the culprit.

[zespri]

And when the inevitable cavalcade of Arcen patches comes out, all I have to do is re-install steam each and every time!
You're wondering why sales of this title have been lean, I was a lost sale.  Steam exclusivity was the culprit.

Not sure what you are complaining about. First it was DRM, then what...? Update delivery? What's your problem with steam anyway? It is *the* digital distribution platform for games at the moment. You don't have to like it, but then you are missing out on a lot of stuff anyway.

By the way you don't have to "re-install" steam - the steam client is very clever all you need is steam.exe - it will download/update all the missing files in case you happened to delete it etc. It's as hassle-free as could be.

[keith.lamothe]

You're wondering why sales of this title have been lean, I was a lost sale.  Steam exclusivity was the culprit.

You are of course entitled to your opinion, but for every single product we've released well over 90% of sales come direct through steam.  Therefore, it is highly improbable that steam exclusivity is the culprit here.  Do you disagree?

[Misery]

You can download it through steam, move the 'bionic dues' folder anywhere you'd like, delete steam, and still play the game.  Steam is just a means of delivery.  Sort of like the GOG downloader.  You don't have to have Steam installed to play the game once you have downloaded it.

And when the inevitable cavalcade of Arcen patches comes out, all I have to do is re-install steam each and every time!

You're wondering why sales of this title have been lean, I was a lost sale.  Steam exclusivity was the culprit.

I'm sorry, but I always have to wonder WHY some people dont like Steam, or say that it's DRM.  I've been using it for years myself, and have 155 games on there.  Never once had a problem.  At all. Not even if my connection drops out for the night, which it will do every few days or so, as is the policy for bloody Comcast.  My games seem to still work just fine in offline mode, except for anything like an MMO of course.

Frankly, I would very definitely not want to go without it.  By far the best method of distribution I've yet seen, under one of the absolute best developers/publishers out there.  It makes going to the store to buy games, or going to all sorts of different seperate, annoying sites for each one, seem like the Stone Age.  .....also the cost is often really dramatically less.  Quite often, there are times I wont buy a game BECAUSE it's not on Steam.   Though, I also use Desura, which is another pretty good one in it's own right.

You want to see real DRM?  Go try out Origin.   Just.... ugh.  I think that sums up my thoughts on THAT one. 

[GrimerX]

Yeah, Steam is awesome.  It's basically the reason I moved back to the PC after some time with consoles.

I see Bionic Dues is now in "Featured Games" -- hopefully that helps.

[keith.lamothe]

Personally I get why someone would just want to not use steam.  And if a game uses the "cannot start this game unless steam is also running" feature of steamworks, then yea that's definitely DRM.  We don't use that feature.  So I don't really see it as DRM in Bionic's case.  The control is at the distribution level, once you have the game it makes absolutely no attempt whatsoever to defend itself  

That's true of a bunch of games where if you have the files you have the game, so naturally the developers control don't distribute the files openly.

Btw, going with steam's update system is basically what made a Linux build feasible for us.  Which is more likely to add to sales: a non-steam version, or a linux version?  I don't know the answer personally, but I think in the future it will lean definitely towards the latter.

[PokerChen]

Just want to say congrats, now that I have had my own hands on the game.