Disclaimer: Personally, I avoid any PC game that has Steam mentioned in its back-of-DVD-case blurb. This I ascribe to a number of things, but perhaps most significantly some major troubles some friends of mine had (even
with my help, <blowingowntrumpet>which should have been more than sufficient</blowingowntrumpet>) getting a bought-on-discs-but-installed-with-Steam game working, and then when I'd pronounced it a lost cause and beyond my <trumpetagain>quite significant diagnostic efforts to resolve</trumpetagain> they'd sold the game on eBay. Only to have the buyers complain that
they couldn't run it because it was registered already. (As far as I can tell, we never
got that far, but meh...) Oh, yeah... And it was one of those "came on two DVDs, but at some point ended up downloading a lot of files" things. (No problems with friends' internet connection... At least not at that time, but that's another story.)
But, aside from that (and just wanting to explain how unknowledgable I am about Steam's condition, or at least its current efficacy, although I've heard "hey, it just worked"
and "th3y R th3 SUX0R!!!" responses, and everything in-between, up to and including this thread)...
If I understand it correctly, Steam has always had a problem getting a throughput of indie games on their systems. And now they're saying they're going to allow more applications. I can only hope, therefore, that this is in conjunction with new processes that can deal with the increase in applications. In which case, is there any sign that they've already rolled it out and cut down the
old backlog? Might be a good idea, or else (if it doesn't work as they wish) it might end up just making a bigger logjam.
In principle, I like the provision of games idea that Steam gives, from the end-user's (i.e. player's) POV. Like I disclaimed, I've not had that much experience of it
working, but I can see that it has pleased a majority of this thread's contributors. I'm always a bit edgy about DRM tech, but obviously that's what would be the minimum requirement for the big games companies. I don't see why it couldn't (in the case of "bought the physical box of media" examples) a case of a registration key being exchanged for an even more secure signature file, though. (Otherwise, empty box with 'certificate' string to activate the content downloading, right?).
But now, having (assumedly) gotten 95% of the player-end-user community sorted, perhaps sort out the developer-end a bit. I mean, without it being a 21st-century version of the "Vanity Publishing" phenomenon, where most (if not all, plus a bit more) of the costs, or at least effort, seems to be placed at the door of the originator of the work.
Ok, so some authors/developers would
never get their pet projects published, without a Vanity Publishing possibility. Although I think that (certainly in the most extreme cases) that's probably how it
should be. Now it makes me wonder, though, about the early days of Bay12. Now well established[1], what about the early days? I wouldn't consider it a smart move to take DF to Steam (it's been mooted before, and shot down in ways that I totally agreed with, if not vocally supported at the time), what might it all have been like had Steam been the primary outlet, from quite early on?
(And, totally unrelated, and you may consider this to be a rhetorical question, as far as this thread is concerned... Why is the BBC(.co.uk) site experiencing so much difficulty? I'm trying to get weather news on the other PC's screen and it's giving me server-side "sorry, unavailable, try again later" messages, when I'm getting
anything sensible back from them. Grrr... And, see, it's not just Steam that I can tell you my problems with.
)
[1] Well,
we've all heard of Dwarf Fortress (and probably the other members of the Bay12 stables)... But that's a bit of a self-selecting sample, with pretty much 100% bias in its result.
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Topic: Steam Greenlight (Read 24105 times)