Steam?

[Kal Naar]

Yes, one can only hope things get better (they can't surelly get any worst).

[romale]

Hello,
I'm one person, i read about distant worlds on hardforum.com. First thing i did was pull up steam and search for it. Didn't find it. Found matrix, searched for steam, found this thread. I'm one person. I know ultimately my opinion doesn't matter. I buy my products on steam because i have faith steam will always exist, i have faith i will always have access to my games. I dont have to worry about keeping a cd or i dont think i have to worry about the company going out of business. I like having all my games, in one place, up to date, and know they work (every steam game that wouldn't work on my system is flagged and only one i've ever seen was railroad tycoon 3)

Looking over matrix games theres a few titles i would like to buy. I would actually be willing to pay 5 to 10 dollars more if they were on steam. I'm not buying them because they are not on steam. Yes i know, there is some guy who said no. I get it. I went through all the trouble of registering an account and writing this out just so the powers that be know they have at least 1 sale waiting should they ever choose to be on steam

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: romale
Hello,
I'm one person, i read about distant worlds on hardforum.com. First thing i did was pull up steam and search for it. Didn't find it. Found matrix, searched for steam, found this thread. I'm one person. I know ultimately my opinion doesn't matter. I buy my products on steam because i have faith steam will always exist, i have faith i will always have access to my games. I dont have to worry about keeping a cd or i dont think i have to worry about the company going out of business. I like having all my games, in one place, up to date, and know they work (every steam game that wouldn't work on my system is flagged and only one i've ever seen was railroad tycoon 3)

Looking over matrix games theres a few titles i would like to buy. I would actually be willing to pay 5 to 10 dollars more if they were on steam. I'm not buying them because they are not on steam. Yes i know, there is some guy who said no. I get it. I went through all the trouble of registering an account and writing this out just so the powers that be know they have at least 1 sale waiting should they ever choose to be on steam

Hi Romale,

Thanks for your feedback. One thing you should be aware of is that our games are sold the way games used to be sold. There's no online activation, no reliance on an online store or server after you download your game. Once you have it, it's yours (and you can get a physical copy, often with a printed manual if you like). Obviously we are here if you don't backup the file you downloaded and lose it and need to download it again. However, once you have the game as long as you keep it in a place where you won't lose it, you don't have to rely on anyone else being around in the future.

Regards,

- Erik

[Shark7]

OK guys, just to offer a civil counter-point to the pro-Steam posters here. If Matrix sold games only through Steam they would lose at least one customer in me. It is the fact that by buying through Matrix I get the game and it is mine, no strings attached is the main selling point for me.

Steams main detracting point is that I have to depend on them for my game to work...better known as strings attached.

Here's some food for thought...last month, my computer took a lightning strike through the cable modem and failed hard. Since I had physical copies of all my Matrix titles, it was a simple matter of open the CD drive, place the CD in, enter my serial number at the prompt (serial is on the disk itself), install and play. No downloading, no online activation...simple and easy.

And if Matrix were to ever shut down (and I sincerely hope not)...I'll still have my physical copies and can still play my games, unlike a Steam or Origin where if they go away or if they decide to stop supporting a title, a game I enjoy is simply no longer available to me.

I realize that Steam and Origin are the shiny new toys of the digital download era. But sometimes old school is still superior when it comes to customer satisfaction. [;)]

[Bleek]

When you think about, Steam is actually a brilliant platform.

However just because you sell on Steam doesn't mean you can ONLY sell on Steam! Matrix could still distro their own product outside of the Steam platform.

[Shark7]

And as long as I can still get the game here from the Matrix site with no strings attached, I'd have no issue with it. It's the whole EA "Origin and Origin only" stuff that has really turned me off to that type of marketing. I don't want to spend $60-$70 on a game that may no longer work at the whim of the company that sold it. I get my money's worth out of my games, I still play games from the 1990s and enjoy them.

[Bleek]

We mustn't tar Steam with the same brush - Origin is horrible, EA are pretty dire, Steam is considerably better!

[hewwo]

Well, I'm going to add my 2ct and say that steam is awesome. Especially when it comes to multiplayer or mod support. There's just no excuse for not putting your games up on steam nowadays. It's the way forward for pc gaming, from my perspective (and customer is always king, right?

[feelotraveller]

I agree with Shark7.
 
There are many other things not to like about Steam.  For example, I have to agree to them installing software on my computer and collecting my personal information so that I can play a game I paid for.  Big turnoff.
 
I could be magnanimous and say that putting it on Steam is fine as long as I can get it straight from Matrix - I would add that I only want to pay Matrix what Steam pays them.  If you guys want to pay a premium to Steam (so that Matrix get as much money to keep developing the game) to get it from them, I am fine with that.  [:D] 
 
 

[Bleek]

Take "AI Wars: Fleet Command" as an example (another indie niche space game), even with Steam costs they've had massive exposure of an otherwise tiny independent game. The developer used to publish his Steam sales and stats and promote sales, and he still sold his titles through his own website and distributor, it was a win win situation. To his own admission he wouldn't be working on an expansion without Steam sales.

[Rtwfreak]

I'd bet nickels to dollars the main reason players want to see this game goto Steam or other online distribution sites would be for the eventual $5 sale lol They aren't fooling me.[:'(] Hold your ground Matrixgames don't let them have your great games for nothing. [:D]

[Rtwfreak]

The only thing I'd like to see is Matrixgames/Slitherine creating some type of storage system that keeps our games in the clouds that if/when we want to play them again we can just goto our members page, click on the game in the list of games that we own and it downloads an installs for us and we don't have to put that stupid CD key in again everytime there's an update or patch (you really need to fix that Matrixgames). To me that's the most annoying thing of Matrixgames games having to put that cd key in every single time we update or patch the game. You don't have to do this with Slitherine games why then do you have to do it with Matrixgames games?

[wozza]

ORIGINAL: Shark7

And as long as I can still get the game here from the Matrix site with no strings attached, I'd have no issue with it. It's the whole EA "Origin and Origin only" stuff that has really turned me off to that type of marketing. I don't want to spend $60-$70 on a game that may no longer work at the whim of the company that sold it. I get my money's worth out of my games, I still play games from the 1990s and enjoy them.

I agree with you. I only purchased the game because it didn't use Steam. And it is time for the pro Steam group to stop telling Matrix how to run there business. And so far they have run a very good business with out Steam.

[Bleek]

ORIGINAL: wozza

ORIGINAL: Shark7

And as long as I can still get the game here from the Matrix site with no strings attached, I'd have no issue with it. It's the whole EA "Origin and Origin only" stuff that has really turned me off to that type of marketing. I don't want to spend $60-$70 on a game that may no longer work at the whim of the company that sold it. I get my money's worth out of my games, I still play games from the 1990s and enjoy them.

I agree with you. I only purchased the game because it didn't use Steam. And it is time for the pro Steam group to stop telling Matrix how to run there business. And so far they have run a very good business with out Steam.

You're kinda' missing the point, they can still sell their own games through Matrix AND on Steam.

Steam opens up Matrix games to the biggest gamers marketplace on the planet, surely that can only be good for business (practically ever other publisher agrees).

[Kordanor]

Because it is always taken as extremely important what notch says, here is his latest comment on steam:

Yeah, it seems like pretty much all the things we wanted to do are possible on Steam now, which is brilliant! Since I made that blog post, Minecraft has kept growing very fast (and it selling faster than ever), which combined with us not being on Steam leads to some potentially interesting strategic positions. I’m not quite sure what those are, but we’re a bit wary to submit Minecraft to Steam without knowing more about what we want to do. As much as I love Steam, I do somewhat worry about the PC as a gaming platform becoming owned by a single entity that takes 30% of all PC games sold. I’m hoping for a future where more games can self-publish and use social media and friends to market their games. Perhaps there’s something we could do to help out there? I don’t know. If nothing else, we might work as an inspiration for people to self-publish. It’s probably obvious from this reply, but we’re trying to figure out what we want to do long term with the position we have now. We only recently decided to stay as independent as possible and cancelled an unannounced project that we were doing in collaboration with someone else. It’s going to be an interesting future.

To be found at: pcgamer.com/2012/07/25/notch-on-why-minecraft-still-isnt-on-steam/

[Bleek]

You're comparing apples with oranges.

DW is NOT Minecraft!

[Kordanor]

Never said that.
And if you look at the previous posts, you know where I am standing.

[Pipewrench]

ORIGINAL: Kordanor

Because it is always taken as extremely important what notch says, here is his latest comment on steam:

Totally agree.

In my opinion a key thing for free artistic creative design is to be able to sell your talent at a price you want to charge. If all independent's hand over that right to a monopoly in order to increase sales you will lose that right.

Regarding Steam

[Falokis]

After reading this thread, I'm rather shocked how much some people care how/where they download their games. It's minimal effort either way.

[Kordanor]

ORIGINAL: Falokis

After reading this thread, I'm rather shocked how much some people care how/where they download their games. It's minimal effort either way.

I can totally understand what you say. I guess it's more of a "collecting thing". For some people it's perfectly fine if they can play a game at a friend. Or if they buy a copy of a game and resell it after they are finished.
But some people still love to have boxes in their shelves for their games and keep them there. Not because they really need them, but just because it feels good for these people to have them in their collection.
And nowadays you have online platforms like steam which partially take the place of the shelve. It brings some pros and cons for the player himself. But besides that it's also a different feeling if you have another game in your steam library or at some random place in the internet especially if you also use steam as social platform.

People have very different preferences. And the best thing is to give as many options as possible.

Personally I normally either buy CE Boxes if they have really cool stuff in them or are in my favorite setting (post apocalypse) or I buy the game directly on steam. I can understand people who do not want to have their games on steam. But can't follow the argument of limiting purchase options by excluding steam being a good thing.
For me it's the same as saying that physical copies are bad, just because every indy developer needs someone to actually make this physical copy, who then gets his share.
It only becomes a bad choice if the distributer, being it steam or matrix games in this case, is really limiting the developers themselves. If that is the case of any of these both I can't say. But while I don't know much about Matrix games, basically all developers are happy about steam so far.