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"Old paradoxian" wonders what's all the deal with Steam and where did GamersGate go?

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DCyDe said:
Steam has the right to monitor your background activities and bann your account (which includes denying your right to play the games you paid for) if for example they see you using a torrent-software and pirating stuff, but that's already the only negative aspect about steam I could list.
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PDS games can be run without the Steam client. All it is required for is the installation process, just like with GG or any other downloader. Copy the games out of your Steam folder to anywhere, back them up on CD, anything you like - they are yours to keep forever. If you truly fear such things from them (IMO they would be derangedly self-destructive to embark on such a path, and they are simply not that stupid) then you have nothing whatsoever to fear.
 
Poppy Appletree said:
1. I believe Paradox produces games of incredibly high quality, and puts a huge amount of work into its games both before and long after they have been released to give their customers the best game experience possible; as such I am a customer who is willing to buy every new game released by Paradox, including every expansion to those games, and most likely also any DLC such as sprite or music packs for those games.

2. I am a customer who is not willing to use Steam.

As such, if all of your new releases require the use of Steam...well, sorry. I don't have to justify my decision in any way: If as a developer you are unwilling to accommodate, I am not willing to support you.
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And yet you are not willing to give Paradox the credit of having looked into these matters and having decided they are not a threat to their valued customers.

No, you don't have to justify your anti-Steam prejudice in any way to anyone. But you can't blame people for wondering what such rampant vehemence stems from, with no apparent cause in fact.
 
AndrewT said:
Copy the games out of your Steam folder to anywhere, back them up on CD, anything you like - they are yours to keep forever.
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Copying the game files does break auto-patchers and whatnot, so you have to edit the registry to point to the correct installation path. All in all, you can work around every one of Steam's restrictions, but it's annoying and unnecessary to have to do so. Compare it to a store, if you will: I can go pick up a Paradox game at the store next door, or drive across town to get one. The end result is the same; I'll have the game and be able to use it freely. But don't I have good reason to be annoyed if Paradox decides I can only get my games at the store across town from now on?
 
It's easy to set up an analogy that supports any position you want to. Viz:

Two stores the same distance away; one delivers goods to your home as soon as they are available, whether you ask them to or not; the other never delivers your goods and you have to go and pick them up.
 
AndrewT said:
It's easy to set up an analogy that supports any position you want to. Viz:

Two stores the same distance away; one delivers goods to your home as soon as they are available, whether you ask them to or not; the other never delivers your goods and you have to go and pick them up.
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That's not comparable because they're analogies of different arguments. :p You're talking about one of Steam's arguable benefits, whereas I'm showing how making Steam mandatory is a nuisance. You're not really responding to what I said at all.
 
Kimberly said:
That's not comparable because they're analogies of different arguments. :p You're talking about one of Steam's arguable benefits, whereas I'm showing how making Steam mandatory is a nuisance. You're not really responding to what I said at all.
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Then you probably shouldnt have made a analogy that involved you having to "travel" to a location, there is little similarity between traveling to a store and a few keystrokes. Tho why switch the roles in your analogy? Seeing as steam would be more equatable to the next door store (delivery FTW)
 
AndrewT said:
And yet you are not willing to give Paradox the credit of having looked into these matters and having decided they are not a threat to their valued customers.

No, you don't have to justify your anti-Steam prejudice in any way to anyone. But you can't blame people for wondering what such rampant vehemence stems from, with no apparent cause in fact.
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I have to assume you are attempting to represent Paradox in a quasi-official capacity. Your insistence upon attempting to dissuade Paradox customers from their viewpoints on Steam leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and frankly makes me think less of Paradox. The fact that you have decided Steam is perfectly fine does not mean that you can convince others of the same. How about instead of wasting your effort, you work from the assumption that you will never be able to convince us, and try to accommodate our viewpoint instead of enforcing your own?
 
Poppy Appletree said:
I have to assume you are attempting to represent Paradox in a quasi-official capacity. Your insistence upon attempting to dissuade Paradox customers from their viewpoints on Steam leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and frankly makes me think less of Paradox. The fact that you have decided Steam is perfectly fine does not mean that you can convince others of the same. How about instead of wasting your effort, you work from the assumption that you will never be able to convince us, and try to accommodate our viewpoint instead of enforcing your own?
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Fair enough: to make it 100% clear I do not represent or work for Paradox in any way aside from volunteer work in forum moderation and technical support. My opinions expressed are entirely my own.

I fail to see how I was trying to enforce my opinion on anyone. I was trying to understand the rational basis for anti-Steam feeling that a few folks here have expressed; if there is indeed none, then you are right and I'm wasting my time.
 
I'd like to call attention to something: Paradox has mentioned a feature which allows players to drop in and out of another player's single player game. Unless Paradox has developed a new system like Paradox Connect, it seems incredibly likely to me that this multiplayer feature involves Steam integration. If this is the case, a version of EUIV that was not attached to Steam - due to playing offline or playing without initialising the Steam client - would not have access to this feature. It would also make it incredibly unlikely that the game would ever be released outside of Steam, and if it did the feature would either have to be reworked for that version or would not be functional.

If this is the case, many comments regarding the usage of Steam being non-intrusive in this case would be incorrect.
 
Talar said:
Gamersgate gives me a guaranteed DRM-free game that I can just download and run and Steam requires me to run their client and could theoretically revoke the right to my games at any point = clear advantage GG for me as a customer.
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You only need to run Steam to install it, once its installed you can run the game without steam by launching it directly from the game folder.

DCyDe said:
Steam has the right to monitor your background activities and bann your account (which includes denying your right to play the games you paid for) if for example they see you using a torrent-software and pirating stuff, but that's already the only negative aspect about steam I could list.
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That is 100% wrong. I use torrenting software for years and have never been banned at all on steam. If you look at the steam software survay about a third of their users use torrenting software, I don't think they've banned a 3rd of their users.
 
DCyDe said:
Steam has the right to monitor your background activities and bann your account (which includes denying your right to play the games you paid for) if for example they see you using a torrent-software and pirating stuff, but that's already the only negative aspect about steam I could list.
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If you're using a web-browser, that's already happening.
However, they only track your programs to find out if you at any point tried to circumvent their terms of service, such as hacking in MP, or circumvented the store purchase system. They also have a full confidentiality clause in there, so if you're afraid the police is going to ask for a list of all the people that are using torrents for example, they're not allowed to give it to them, and the authorities need justifiable cause against one person to force extradition of such information. More likely, they would try and monitor you themselves, rather than go through Valve.
 
Ok, BOTH Gamersgate and Steam have just pissed me off. I headed to Gamersgate thinking I could buy March of the Eagles there. And It seemed I could. There was the pretty small box there and a place that said Buy. OK. SO I bought it and went to my shelf to download it. But the game refused to be dowloaded. Then, clicking on details I saw I had just bought: a Steam activation code¡. They didnt tell me all along the buying process (or, if they did, it was with a very small font).

So, OK, let´s download Steam again (I uninstalled it a few months ago). Now, after installing I try to log in and Steam tells me that it is the first time that I try to log in with this PC, and I have to introduce a new code they are sending me to... "my" hotmail account. I erased my hotmail account months ago and changed the Steam e mail account months ago¡ (a bit before uninstalling Steam). I have tried to fix the first problem with the hints given by Steam support to no avail. And I have no idea what to do with the second (Steam is freakingly BAD at "remembering" things, not only the autoupdate off) so I have had to contect the support team. Still waiting an answer.

I feel they cheated me 20 euros
 
No idea said:
Ok, BOTH Gamersgate and Steam have just pissed me off. I headed to Gamersgate thinking I could buy March of the Eagles there. And It seemed I could. There was the pretty small box there and a place that said Buy. OK. SO I bought it and went to my shelf to download it. But the game refused to be dowloaded. Then, clicking on details I saw I had just bought: a Steam activation code¡. They didnt tell me all along the buying process (or, if they did, it was with a very small font).
.....
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It's pretty obvious in details above requirements: http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-MOTE/march-of-the-eagles
 
Poppy Appletree said:
I'd like to call attention to something: Paradox has mentioned a feature which allows players to drop in and out of another player's single player game. Unless Paradox has developed a new system like Paradox Connect, it seems incredibly likely to me that this multiplayer feature involves Steam integration. If this is the case, a version of EUIV that was not attached to Steam - due to playing offline or playing without initialising the Steam client - would not have access to this feature. It would also make it incredibly unlikely that the game would ever be released outside of Steam, and if it did the feature would either have to be reworked for that version or would not be functional.

If this is the case, many comments regarding the usage of Steam being non-intrusive in this case would be incorrect.
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If everything here happens as you say, then youd still only lose the ability to use that feature by not logging on to steam. The rest of the game would still be fully playable, much like you already lose acess to the ingame store in CK2 when you run the game without being logged in to steam.

Regarding the topic at hand, the issue is simple: Paradox listened last time and released CK2 outside steam, the player community didnt reward the concession with purchases outside steam (in decent numbers), so I see no point in keeping up the ghost. Steam has a good pricing policy and until the latest upate, which forced me to seek customer support and deal with security mode and whatnot over it swearing that I had no internet connection, I never had any problem with it.
 
As long as I have the option to buy from GG I'll buy EUIV. If Paradox sells purely through Steam (which I can't imagine, but I suppose they might) then I just won't buy those titles.
 
Muskeato said:
As long as I have the option to buy from GG I'll buy EUIV. If Paradox sells purely through Steam (which I can't imagine, but I suppose they might) then I just won't buy those titles.
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There will only be a Steam version of EUIV. You can buy a license from other sites but this will still install steam and download it through it as it would if you bought it there. With that, and since the only advantage GG had over steam was the release of Pdox games coming a few hours sooner (now they have to wait for steam to update anyway), I cant see the benefits of GG over steam, unless the former take a cut in its margin to price the game lower than the competition..
 
OrdepNM said:
There will only be a Steam version of EUIV. You can buy a license from other sites but this will still install steam and download it through it as it would if you bought it there. With that, and since the only advantage GG had over steam was the release of Pdox games coming a few hours sooner (now they have to wait for steam to update anyway), I cant see the benefits of GG over steam, unless the former take a cut in its margin to price the game lower than the competition..
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Yeah, which means I still have the option to buy from GG. GG gives blue coins (which is where I get all my dlc), Steam gives me nothing I want.
 
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