Yet another steam (Digital Distro) thread

[impar]

Opinion about Steam sales:
Steam Sales and Devaluation

Would like to call your attention to this:

Dear Esther's Rob Briscoe revealed that that game sold 118k copies in just one 48 hour Steam sale - more than it had sold previously since launch. That's a lot of money made for a very worthwhile product.

[warhammer]

http://www.strategyinformer.com/news/19 ... 0000-units

http://www.strategyinformer.com/news/19 ... on-success

Also Paradox make huge amount of money on Warlock Master of Arcane( first Paradox game only in digital distribution> amazon, steam, impulse, GMG etc) Warlock is similar game 2 Panzer Corps (Turn based hex strategy game). Cant find now press info about selling report. http://www.paradoxplaza.com/press/2012/ ... vailable-0

[ElIndio]

For all the positives of Steam and there are many.....!

It is still annoying and sometimes intrusive, to have to load up a 3rd party piece of software to play a game you legally own and to have to pretty much alwatys be online to play it etc.

There is something really refreshing and almost "old school" with PC in being able to simply click the PC icon and play the game with no internet connection required, no DRM and no 3rd party log in etc.

While there is clearly an economic merit in developers using Steam for distribution, e.g. the high street is dead for PC games,I think as wargames have a distinct type of customer / user base then Slitherine / Matrix aren't really losing out by not going down the Steam / 3rd party distribution route.

[Chris10]

There is something really refreshing and almost "old school" with PC in being able to simply click the PC icon and play the game with no internet connection required, no DRM and no 3rd party log in etc.

This is not old school but should be the default setting and how its supposed to be...anything else is shenanigans.
Its more than prooven that DRM has never reduced piracy nor piracy has increased among PC titles without DRM.
Its all a huge hoax to deprive poeple of ownership of things they should own, instead you have a license to use the programm..whats next?
You purchase a car but its not yours cause you are only allowed to drive it as you adquired a license of usage..gimme a break
People nowadays dont realize that they are right on track to give away their rights and cede them to an allmighty industry which finally owns everybody and everything...you think this is Orwell 1984 ?..You are damn right...we are already there, people are just to lazy and ignorant to read up all these nasty laws enacted during the last 25 years which have sold literally the entire western population to the industry and the banks..democracy ?...nice laugh...just because a slave is free to choose every 4 years another master doesnt mean he is free, is he?
The steam issue is nothing more than a proxy war about civil rights and cooporations trying to sell things without ceding ownership to their customers..the perfect "Perpetual motion" model...why?..well..every half intelligent person can figure out the why...

yeah..there it goes...my weekly rant about a generic issue

[VPaulus]

Well spoken, Chris.

[ElIndio]

Bring on the revolution brothers.......!

Although having just bought Counter Strike Global Offensive on Steam yesterday, which is pretty awsome from my limited playtime, Valve / Steam ain't all bad...;->

[jaggy]

There is something really refreshing and almost "old school" with PC in being able to simply click the PC icon and play the game with no internet connection required, no DRM and no 3rd party log in etc.

This is not old school but should be the default setting and how its supposed to be...anything else is shenanigans.

Well said, ElIndio and Chris10. I like to be able to install and play a game without all this online activation crap.

[MrsWargamer]

Ownership. Key flaw in a lot of comments, is you really own JUST the piece of plastic, NOT the software on the plastic disc.

You were granted permission to run it for a fee which is the price you paid to THINK you had actually BOUGHT the program.

So many people simply never remember this reality. You didn't buy ANYTHING. The fact that Matrix Games/Slitherine is powerless to prevent me from loading the program (should they or the people they publish for wish for me to stop using it), is really only the reason I am so willing to pay them to use it. Because it comes with no annoying aspects.

I WANT to play the new Combat Mission. and I still don't have it, why, because Battlefront.com uses a method that pisses me off. And every time I see their boastful claim "Battlefront.com Home of Superior Wargames and Strategy Games" it is to laugh. They made ONE game (Combat Mission) and that is the only game of worth to that boast. They have had some spectacular duds in their time (Remember Eric Young?) and their Theatre of War series was a waste of money at the 75% off rate it was offered on Steam last year at one time.

The fact is, Steam CAN move incredible sums of games. It's not a secret, it's something that's easy to find examples for. I have seen games that were obvious barely better than free schlock, produce massive returns on investment. But it is ALWAYS the right of the game's owner to decide to use or not use Steam.

And at this time, I am happy paying the full price of Matrix Games/Slitherine's titles. I get value. I get it the way I want it. And if they are not swimming in cash, driving expensive cars, and lounging on the beaches of the world, that's their business
One has to wonder of course, precisely how many wargamers exist in the world today? If Matrix Games/Slitherine could sell a copy of Battle Academy + expansions to every one of them, how many units is that? Would that sum be considered a massive failure to the likes of EA or Ubisoft or Blizzard?

A vital question is, is there REALLY enough wargamers out there, to EVER make a lot of money off of?
There is an old expression, you can't sell an igloo to an eskimo. Even more importantly, you can't sell igloos if you have NO eskimos to sell to.

[Chris10]

Ownership. Key flaw in a lot of comments, is you really own JUST the piece of plastic, NOT the software on the plastic disc.

You were granted permission to run it for a fee which is the price you paid to THINK you had actually BOUGHT the program.

...The success in all the brainwashing the industry is injecting into our society is prooven efficient time and again by people saying what you just said...this license argument is preposterous...so with all due respect its you who dont seem to understand the basic fact that I indeed bought the car but not the technology of which it was made off...the same applys to a software programm/ game or whatever...I own the functions delivered by the program if I buy it, a functional product...in programmers language..I own the presentations layer (what works on the screen)... however I obviously dont own the source code it is made off. But I dont have to..its irrelevant...no layman can do anything with the programm anyway, he can not even read it from disc but only with deassembling the exe and still it isnt that easy...I do own the car too but I dont own the engeneering and knowledge it was made of,so what?
Try to understand that there is no difference between both things
This license shit is just what I said...the attempt of the industry to sell things without ceding ownership and still maintain control over the product...its ridicolous and not aiming to protect anything as everybody with enough knowledge can circumvent any DRM in minutes so this policiy aims at the general public and is meant to deprive people from their rights...already in making is music and movie...and cooporative explotation laws lice ACTA and/or SOPA are continously introduced by their lobbyists in order to censor and control the internet hence force people to pay any time they hear a song (thats the ultimate goal...)
if this is successful then this will expand towards other products..cars would be a great objective..maybe car producers will ask for a share if you sell your second hand car then...just as the US game industry files such claims in court to make even more money from people selling their second hand games...gimme a break...really
I better stop here cause I get excited

[Mark50]

Looking forward to the time when you`ll get cease and desist letters for borrowing your neighbor`s scissors instead of buying your own .. "scissor license" from the hardware store.

EDIT: btw, in the example above the point would be to make all regular cars single seaters. Anyone wanting to get a ride needs to buy its own car "license"(in the form of the actual car of course). Of course, loyal customers, could get a double, family pack license in the form of a car with two seats(to be used only by family members or in other words, in/by a single household).

[IainMcNeil]

I think there is a fundamental difference physical items and digital ones. Physical items wear out and have a life span and can only be used by one person at a time. Digital doesn't wear out, can be shared with multiple people at once while you continue to use it. This for me is why there needs to be a difference and the law needs to deal with them differently. I'm not sure what the balance should be, but its not fair for a developer to be expected to support a game for someone who never bought it and provide servers and bandwidth. You need to have protection that goes both ways. Saying that we don't believe in DRM and to be honest I think it causes more issues than it solves.

[Chris10]

I think there is a fundamental difference physical items and digital ones. Physical items wear out and have a life span and can only be used by one person at a time. Digital doesn't wear out, can be shared with multiple people at once while you continue to use it. This for me is why there needs to be a difference and the law needs to deal with them differently. I'm not sure what the balance should be, but its not fair for a developer to be expected to support a game for someone who never bought it and provide servers and bandwidth. You need to have protection that goes both ways. Saying that we don't believe in DRM and to be honest I think it causes more issues than it solves.

Well said Ian..however, this "digital doesnt wear out" is nothing but an excuse and the oldest argumentation trick in the industry...those who are 40+ and have been aware of how things evolved over time remember that by the time of the massive introduction of the magnetic audio tape (cassettes) into the consumers market the industry was proclaiming the apocalypse and the end of buissness as everybody would just reproduce music and give it to their friends and nobody would buy vinyl albums anymore...what a riodicolous lie...the rich got even richer and artists made even more money and the album selling numbers ever only increased...by the time the CD was about to be introduced into the consumers market the industry was using all its might and money to lobby against it cause they said it would ruin everybody...and what happend ?...the superstars made even more money and became even richer as their music proliferated into all corners of society with the new mediums...well..the story continued with the DVD and the massive lobbying from the film industry to prevent its introduction into the market...the stroy repeats over and over again...
fact is there is always a % of robbery doesnt matter the product and the whole issue doesnt change what I said.
If somebody buys a software application a game or whatever he owns a functional product (no matter the technology behind it). The theoretical possibility that this person now could unendlingly reproduce this product by copying it and giving it for free to others who again would copy it again and so on and so on is merely a theoretical issue and never turned out to be true as the industry always claimed...its happening but not enough to justify different legislation...nothing is perfect and nobody can expect things to be perfect.
A game like GTAIV sold more than 15 million copys worldwide...made about 900.000.000 $ for the company...so the game needs to be pirated 600.000 times (about 4%) to reach the average loss rate thru theft of Warehouses and Retailers. Iam sure as hell this wasnt the case and not thnx to its restricitve DRM...so why in gods name there should be some other legislation when the industry doesnt even reach the normal loss rate of normal retail buisnesses ?...Even the most docile person would find this questionable

Let me be clear..I have nothing against digital distribution...but no way activating a product online or being online in order to play or not allowing poeple to download and burn/store the installation data with installer or preventing people from reselling their legally owned "product" by denying to activate it again for the new owner...the list of clear violations of ownership rights in many countrys by the industry is endless and object to a truckload of court cases where mostly the industry looses in the end or where they withdraw the case before a verdict to not convert it into a leading case. Btw the "user-license and no ownership" thingi has been thrown out of the window by lots of courts all over the world in the last 10-15 years.

Looking forward to the time when you`ll get cease and desist letters for borrowing your neighbor`s scissors instead of buying your own .. "scissor license" from the hardware store.

yep..that sums it up pretty nice
Be warned...if people fail to stand up against cooporate totalitarianism and preserve their basic rights then this isnt very far away...one maybe two generations and we are there

[Bonners]

Couple of points to this. Firstly I have used Steam for many games, just because I had to, starting from Empire TW. From there I did actually find quite a few other games that I enjoyed playing. I've always felt uneasy about it from the start, the going online issue is not really a problem to me as once the game is registered you can set Steam to start in offline mode and still play your games.

I'm not too sure where Matrix/Slitherine games would sit in Steam though, to my mind it really is a niche market and is there the possibility that Steam could do more harm than good? I'm thinking here of patches and the modding community in particular; I dont use mods myself but it is a really active community and from my experiences with other games on Steam the modding communities suffer.

Obviously the main point that Steam make is that it helps to protect the copyright of games and prevent illegal downloading. I may be being totally naive here, but the impression I get from the wargaming community is that illegally downloading is not as much of an issue as with other markets. It appears to me to be a fairly mature player base who fully understand that most of the makers of these games are small companies who devote a lot of time and effort (see any game for patches and updates based on community feedback) and that effort is reciprocated by the community in only buying legitimate versions of the games. At least that is how I see it, I could be totally wrong though!

One final point for consideration is the nature of this niche market and how people find it. I used to board game loads in the past, but marriage, house ownership etc.. has gradually decreased the amount of time and space I have to do that. But I only found out about these games by chance at the tail-end of last year, I'd been missing out for years on the games that I really wanted to play - I just didnt know they existed. So there has to be a way to make these games more visible, I'm just not too sure that Steam is the way to go.

[IainMcNeil]

Do you think it is acceptable to have a membership say for example - a Disneyland year pass and only allow the person who's ID is on the card to use it or this a violation of rights?

[Bonners]

Do you think it is acceptable to have a membership say for example - a Disneyland year pass and only allow the person who's ID is on the card to use it or this a violation of rights?

Never been to Disneyland! Seriously though, trying to think of equivalents, like being a member of a gym, I would say that if I've bought that membership for me, then it should only be me that uses it. Going right back round to, in this case Panzer Corps, I've tried to get a couple of mates interested in it and I wouldnt consider making them a copy, I've pointed them in the direction of the demo version.

[warhammer]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/217060/

Steam greenlight live ! I hope Slitherine add PC and/or other games ?
http://steamcommunity.com/greenlight/

[danijocker90]

Voy a escribirlo en español para evitar usar las palabras inadecuadas, espero que alguien pueda entenderlo.

Desde hace poco más de un año he estado jugando a Commander: Europe at War, Napoleon at War (gran juego aunque otros opinen lo contrario) y más recientemente a Panzer Corps.

Pero como algunos deducirán, me he visto obligado adquirirlos mediante copias digitales y por tanto métodos ilegales.

Solo he podido pagar por la versión para iOS (gracias a las tarjetas prepago de iTunes) de "Conquest! Medieval Realms" el cual francamente me ha enganchado y del que solo puedo decir 2 cosas negativas: sobrecalienta mi iPod Touch y agota mi batería antes de lo que me gustaría (jajaja). En serio gran trabajo, solo espero ese modo multijugador tan solicitado.

Con esto quiero decir que los métodos de pago que tenéis no son suficientes para alguien que no tenga acceso a una tienda física con vuestros juegos (en mi modesta ciudad es difícil encontrar juegos fuera de los best-sellers) o que disponga de una cuenta bancaria para pagos online. [Yo utilizo PaySafeCard.]

Steam puede que me "robe" la propiedad de mis juegos, pero me da un servicio de completa disponibilidad geográfica y ha creado la mayor red social basada en los videojuegos del mundo.

Es más que una tienda virtual. Es Steam.

[MrsWargamer]

To be honest, Chris10's ability to post at all impresses me a great deal, as I assume English is a second language, and my hat is off to him for that alone.

Now I doubt I would NOT require his help in a court room but I won't tell him he's stupid either, as he is clearly smart being able to master two languages. But he doesn't seem to know much about copywrite law.

And in the end, it is knowing what will lose you a fight that counts in a court room.

I don't like a lot of laws, but I also know a lot about a lot of laws. And not liking them doesn't make them anything other than undesirable. Of course if enough people hate a law, it becomes possible to write a new law and presto it is now a new law and some things that were illegal become no longer illegal.

In Canada, it is LEGAL to possess software that can rip the DRM right out of a program, which would be an illegal process in some other countries. But Canadian law is what counts in Canada.

In Canada, it is legal to state flat out, that if the person was not able to say yes to a end user license agreement BEFORE cash hit the counter, then the EULA is void. Void, a key word void, it means that when I click yes to the EULA that was declared legally voided, all I am doing is clicking on a piece of programming to facilitate getting on with the program and not aggreeing to anything legally binding. Because being void, it means NOTHING. So if I say yes I won't do such and such with a void agreement, I am not legally required to honour the agreement to not do it. It's merely a barrier and an obstacle to making the program function and nothing more.

And if the barrier can be ripped out via a legally possessed program, I have not broken a law in the doing, because the barrier wasn't a barrier, but a nuisance I was removing because I didn't feel like being hindered by something that had no legal claim on being employed at that point.

I've done this before, I have ripped out DRM from software that was present simply because I wasn't interested in it impeding my use of the program. A good example would be disk in drive required program DRM. It's not a complicated process. Copy program, make an image, run the image as an emulated disc in a disc drive emulator and presto, the disk in drive DRM is worth nothing. And my disc drive doesn't get worn out, and I can use the emulated disc and not the original which then goes back in the box and stored on a shelf or whatever as even the most cautious computer user can rarely prevent scratches to their discs.

I like Matrix Games/Slitherine products simply because they sell the game as a full program installer file that requires no internet usage ever to play the program. It just needs a valid serial number to complete the installation. Painless, hassle free, and the reason Matrix Games/Slitherine doesn't really need to put their games on sale to make them attractive to me. Sure I like sales, but the games are worth full price as well.

I only wish they could use Steam, sell metric shittons of games this way, even if at insultingly low prices, if the end result was they out performed the process of full price all the same. I like Matrix Games/Slitherine and I wish them as many riches as they can generate.

But I won't defend inaccurate statements concerning law when I know them to be inaccurate. It's a debating thing

[Chris10]

Now I doubt I would NOT require his help in a court room but I won't tell him he's stupid either, as he is clearly smart being able to master two languages.

Oh gracias..very kind of you...pero no solo son 2, sino 3 idiomas amigo

But he doesn't seem to know much about copywrite law.

The fact that my argumentation doesnt align with the twisted logic used for the copyright laws in question does not mean that I not
know them indepth, which in fact I do.

In Canada, it is legal to state flat out, that if the person was not able to say yes to a end user license agreement BEFORE cash hit the counter, then the EULA is void.

Exactly..and not only in Canada...these are the cases I mentioned before and which the industry keeps repeating from country to country..from court to court and mostly they loose but they try and retry knowing that they are wrong
In Spain it is perfectly legal to download movies from torrent sites all you can...Spanish courts have thrown hundreds of cases of the big entertainment industry out of the window. In exchange ANY and ALL datastoring devices in Spain have a recharge of 10% extra over their price..this money goes to the artist association of Spain and is distributed among them once a year and this is major money. Everybody who publishes anything in Spain can become member in this association and gets money allocated thru a sophisticated calculation system...

But I won't defend inaccurate statements concerning law when I know them to be inaccurate. It's a debating thing

I havent made any statements regarding current laws..I know them very well for various countrys including US/UK and most of Europe...
I only have objected to the logic used to enact them and I will ever object to twisted cooporative logic introduced by lobbyists and written by cooporative lawyers...

Do you think it is acceptable to have a membership say for example - a Disneyland year pass and only allow the person who's ID is on the card to use it or this a violation of rights?

Good question..let me ask another...if you buy a book and you liked it would you pass the book on to your father or brother or friend or would you tell him to buy his own book ?...We all know the answer, do we ?
A cooporative lawyer would now argue that you could scan the book at your home PC and Scanner and make it available in an electronic form for free for hundreds of other poeple. So, to counter that theoretical possibility lets enact laws for book licenses and as well lets put a case into court so that second hand book shops have to pay a share to the author/publisher if they sell his second hand books...thats what the software game industry is doin right now for second hand games in the US and things are getting more and more ridicolous...thing is there is no big money behind the print industry but behind the game and movie industry there is billions and their lobbyists are all over the places introducing legislation after legislation trying to further twist common sense and common logic with more absurd laws.

Again..Iam not against digital distribution but any kind of DRM should be banned as illegal as it violates ownership rights at its very bottom....and just because some corrupt politicians who are owned by cooporative lobbyists say its law doesnt make it right.

yep...my weekly rant...now have a nice weekend gentlemen

[VPaulus]

Chris and everyone else, let's take politics away from this thread. I know it's impossible sometimes to avoid it, because we're all "political animals" and some subjects only make sense under its light.
But we're here in a forum, in a section about Panzer Corps... this is really a hot topic and I can see where this can lead into.
So no more political statements please. I mean it.