Author Topic: Steam-exclusive AGAIN?  (Read 28410 times)

Offline KingIsaacLinksr

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Re: Steam-exclusive AGAIN?
« Reply #15 on: February 08, 2016, 05:13:38 pm »
Yea, I'll just add my support for GOG Galaxy as well. Been using it since it was released and it works very well. It's still pretty feature light but for installing and running games in a few clicks, it works.
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Offline ERISS

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Re: Steam-exclusive AGAIN?
« Reply #16 on: February 16, 2016, 02:32:03 am »
That last bit I dont believe for a second.
Some were less lucky than you:
http://forum.canardpc.com/threads/28607-Good-Old-Games?p=9447985#post9447985
http://forum.canardpc.com/threads/28607-Good-Old-Games?p=5233311&viewfull=1#post5233311
(Sorry for french language: to make short they say after 3 weeks without internet, Steam no longer launchs and they could no longer play with many games)
« Last Edit: February 16, 2016, 01:50:48 pm by ERISS »

Offline Misery

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Re: Steam-exclusive AGAIN?
« Reply #17 on: February 16, 2016, 02:46:00 am »
That last bit I dont believe for a second.
Some were less lucky than you:
http://forum.canardpc.com/threads/28607-Good-Old-Games?p=9447985#post9447985
http://forum.canardpc.com/threads/28607-Good-Old-Games?p=5233311&viewfull=1#post5233311
(Sorry for french language: to make short they say after 3 weeks without intenet, Steam no longer launchs and they could no longer play with many games)

I've never had it happen, regardless of how long mine has been off.

From what I can tell, the Steam client, at least nowadays, doesnt seem to even notice.  Maybe there was a time when it did that, but it doesnt seem to do it now.

Offline Aklyon

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Re: Steam-exclusive AGAIN?
« Reply #18 on: February 16, 2016, 12:53:00 pm »
I'd second Misery.

Offline Teal_Blue

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Re: Steam-exclusive AGAIN?
« Reply #19 on: February 18, 2016, 06:54:42 pm »
Instead of everyone offering 'opinions' on why steam is whatever, why can't we have Chris or Keith just say, yes, we will offer a DRM free version, or we won't.
Simple.
Lets people know what to expect, and lets people choose what they 'want'.

-Teal
:)

Offline Misery

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Re: Steam-exclusive AGAIN?
« Reply #20 on: February 18, 2016, 07:08:11 pm »
Someone could just send either of them a PM about if, if you'd like, and just directly ask.

I dunno how much time they have to go over the forums, so an answer may not happen otherwise.

Offline Logorouge

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Re: Steam-exclusive AGAIN?
« Reply #21 on: February 18, 2016, 07:46:21 pm »
I'll save everyone some time, here's the answer:


1. Yes!  100% for sure we'll have the DRM-free build on Humble.


https://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,18436.0.html

It's unfortunate that it was delayed, but a 100% chance still sounds like pretty good odds to me.

Offline x4000

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Re: Steam-exclusive AGAIN?
« Reply #22 on: February 19, 2016, 04:12:47 pm »
Apologies for being so slow on this.  I've been balancing a number of things, and that's been a low priority given our current circumstances.  It is something that will happen, though, I want to reiterate.
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Offline Wacky Willy

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Re: Steam-exclusive AGAIN?
« Reply #23 on: February 20, 2016, 11:17:39 pm »
Apologies for being so slow on this.  I've been balancing a number of things, and that's been a low priority given our current circumstances.  It is something that will happen, though, I want to reiterate.

Well I've got a fat wad of cash with your name on it once it happens.

Offline Misery

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Re: Steam-exclusive AGAIN?
« Reply #24 on: February 21, 2016, 12:22:22 am »
I'm curious, Chris, did GoG ever change their minds about hosting the game in their store?  I mean, the final product is COMPLETELY different from what they saw early on...

Offline x4000

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Re: Steam-exclusive AGAIN?
« Reply #25 on: February 21, 2016, 03:24:27 am »
I have had unrelated conversations with GOG since their decision, and neither side brought it up.  There's also no way they missed our financial issues story that was around, and there is the wishlist thread on their site.  It's not a matter of pride that I don't want to ask them again -- I'm not the sort.  But I see ample indication that they have not changed their minds, and so if I'm going to ask them again I figure I have only one shot.  And I'd rather have a super compelling case to bring them for why they should carry it.  Clearly nothing going on right now is compelling enough, so I'm just kind of waiting and seeing if something happens that will be a potential launching point there.

TLDR: I figure I only have one more valid shot to ask them to reconsider, and I don't want to burn that unless I'm pretty sure they'll say yes.  Given the above, I think they for whatever reason would still not say yes.  So I bide my time for now.
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Offline Wacky Willy

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Re: Steam-exclusive AGAIN?
« Reply #26 on: February 21, 2016, 04:09:44 pm »
If it's any consolation, the idiots at GOG turned down Degica's localizations of Cave's classic Bullet Hell arcade shmups, so you're in very good company.

So what's stopping you from uploading a DRM-free build to the Humble Store?  I've bought lots of DRM-free games from Humble months before GOG stopped dragging their feet (Freedom Planet comes to mind).

GOG customers aren't like Steam customers, we don't have some culty fixation on getting all our games through their service, they just happen to be the one distributor who most reliably delivers the kind of product we want.  We just want games we can burn to a disk and install offline.  If some competitor like Gamersgate or Humble Store beats them to the punch, you snooze you lose, GOG.

Offline Misery

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Re: Steam-exclusive AGAIN?
« Reply #27 on: February 21, 2016, 05:30:40 pm »
If it's any consolation, the idiots at GOG turned down Degica's localizations of Cave's classic Bullet Hell arcade shmups, so you're in very good company.

Well my hate of GoG just grew.

Offline x4000

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Re: Steam-exclusive AGAIN?
« Reply #28 on: February 21, 2016, 07:56:56 pm »
There have been a few things slowing down me getting up the DRM-free versions on Humble and our site:

1. We upgraded to unity 5, and for a bit we were having some compatibility issues with some linux versions.  I wanted that sorted out before we moved to a build that I couldn't just update quickly, and that's done.

2. With the update to unity 5, for some reason they decided to move -- on osx only -- where the dlls are stored for the game code.  So our in-game updater has to be slightly modified in order to point to the new location, which is annoying.

3. Overall there's a big hassle because I have to get the unix-style Execute flag set on the updater files and the game executable, and normally to do that right I compile on OSX.  However, now that we upgraded unity versions I have to install the new version of that there, and that takes an hour or so (mostly unattended).

4. Doing the builds on osx and then zipping them there takes a good couple of hours most times, semi-attended, and then there's another hour or two of uploading stuff that is largely unattended.

5. Then after that, for people using the drm-free version of the game, all of the updates that they download are costing us bandwidth every month, whereas with steam that's free.

All in all? At the moment it's set to eat about half a day of my time, and there's a whole lot of hassle for what feels like very few people.  Which normally I'd be fine with, but my work/life balance has been really terrible and I've been trying to fix that, and we're bleeding money again and so I'm trying to get to a point where our new game is ready for kickstarter (probably that) prior to me having to make yet more hard decisions, and so on.  So every half day counts.  Blah.

To be clear, if there wasn't time pressure and the game was doing well and so on and so forth, it would be a no-brainer for me to set aside feature development for a half day or so and do this.  But right now we've got freaking volunteers doing pretty much all the feature development and post-release support, which is something I wouldn't normally be able to conscience.  But desperate times, etc.

Not to try and turn this into a "oh you poor guy, nevermind" situation.  It is something I will get to, for sure.  I am determined to, and I won't be busy in this fashion forever.  But I've had to kind of drop the ball on a number of things such as even carrying the game in our own store right now (the number of sales there doesn't justify my time in setting it up), having it in the main banner rotation on our site, etc, etc.  These are real things that I need to do, but there keep being more urgent things in the short term.

Hope that makes sense, and again apologies.
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Offline x4000

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Re: Steam-exclusive AGAIN?
« Reply #29 on: February 22, 2016, 04:31:46 pm »
Right, so a topic split then since people asked for it: https://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,18578.0.html
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