McLovin_Nice McLovin_Nice

Sins on Steam?

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Sins on Steam?

from Stardock Forums
Just a suggestion that Sins should be made available on Steam. Hope I'm posting it in the right place.

For those who don't know, Steam is a digital distribution programme. You have an account, where you can access all your purchased games (it offers a varied and great selection). You can buy new games there. They can be accessed at any computer, by simply logging in. They auto-update. It has a great community.

I think Sins can benefit from this.

Now, you'll probably say "Stardock offers this!" I don't personally know how it works, but I'm guessing it works in a similar way to steam. So why should Sins be made available on steam? No doubt it will increase sales and add to the community.

I think it would be great if this was made possible. I know I'd buy it from Steam, as would many others. It makes things simpler having downloaded games together, rather than, say, Steam for some games, stardock for others, along with Direct2Drive etc.

In terms of just ease of use, it will make the game more accessible for many. Steam offers various other features which will be beneficial to Sins, such as messengers, server browser (which may not be applicable here) and community groups.

But the main point is that it will definitely provide a larger market and make it easier to acquire, thus meaning better sales etc.

Also, as there is no retail version available in Europe, it will make it much more easily available here.

It's not hard to get a game on Steam I would think. Lots of new games come out on it, whether they are big releases or from small independant developers.

What do you think?

I'm also hoping someone from Stardock sees this and considers it.

:)




124,739 views 143 replies
Reply #26 from Sins Forums Top
And it's more expansive on Steam for us Aussies!

So SINS should stay on Stardock! Stardock For the Win!
Reply #27 from Sins Forums Top
Anyone who's ever tried to uninstall or deactivate a stardock product knows the reformatting which it will likely entail (has anyone tried switching back to a standard xp/vista theme?)..... 99% of the software on Stardock Online are not worth money, or the risk of installing a stardock product.
End of quote


Risk? What exactly is the risk with SDC, games, or anything else?

WB uninstalls just fine. Just set it back to Classic/Luna/Aero beforehand. Never had any issue with doing so myself.


Putting Sins on Steam would be require us to abandon our stance on copy protection and DRM--Hassles just to run games offline, a loader that wants to run all the time in the background, and disc checks on retail copies ON TOP of the online DRM? No thanks.

With Sins's success so far, and the coming replacement of SDC with something better, I think I can say we've only just begun to fight Steam :)


Star Control: Origins
Reply #28 from Sins Forums Top
Or keep TotalGaming.net and not give steam even more money.
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Thats because you have the ingame community chat program for steam enabled. Disabling it in steam settings will resolve your problem.
Reply #29 from Sins Forums Top
Amalinze - You comments are completely off base and unfounded and smell of a troll post of the first order.
Reply #30 from Sins Forums Top
Has anyone else had problems running Sins through Steam? When I do, the fonts don't seem to render at all, leaving me with an entirely blank menu. It's very strange.I think someone posted that if you point Steam to the Sins_launcher.exe it will work.But I haven't tried it.
End of quote


Sorry,

Quoted the wrong person.

You need uncheck your ingame community chat program in the your steam settings. That will solve the problem where no text is displayed in the game when you launch it from steam.

Reply #31 from Sins Forums Top
SDC is so much superior to steam, why would people ask to have Sins available on the less user-friendly system? I do not understand ...

Yes, steam is great mostly because of the great games it delivers (HL2, its episodes and of cause the by far best shooter-like game of this year, Portal). But as distribution system it is way too restrictive - much more then SDC for example.

The other way around would be great: Having more games available on SDC without the need for CDs or being online to play a singleplayer game and all the hassle other types of purchasing a game provide.
Reply #32 from Sins Forums Top
No thanks.With Sins's success so far, and the coming replacement of SDC with something better, I think I can say we've only just begun to fight Steam
End of quote

oh now i'm really curious, please do tell :LOL:

Reply #33 from Sins Forums Top
He's talking about Impulse.

-HM
Reply #34 from Sins Forums Top
He's talking about Impulse.-HM
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I can hardly wait!
Reply #35 from Stardock Forums Top
Steam may be a competitor of Stardock, but trying to compete head-to-head with it won't gain anything. Using it would benefit both sides.
If it were the other way around, for example Steam/Valve putting their games on Stardock it would obviously not be beneficial. This is not the case.


@McLovin_Nice - you missed the point. The ONLY way SD titles would get on Steam is if Frogboy did not own the company anymore. He is very adamant about the DRM thing and Steam is on the side of the divide philosophy wise.
End of quote

Steam has good protection. I understand it would be quite a bit of work involved with transferring the existing copy protection to steam, but it would easily be worth it.
This shouldn't be used as an excuse, it is only restricting their own possible potential.


Or keep TotalGaming.net and not give steam even more money.
End of quote

Or, keep TotalGaming.net and use Steam as well to gain even more sales/money.

im not shaking my finger suggesting people stop with the steam posts, i just think since they have made it VERY CLEAR there is no steam support. You folks should make one or ask steam to. However, i bet VALVE isnt interested in making the overlay work for Soase....course has anyone asked them yet?
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I'm talking about distribution, not chat/overlay features etc.

And I don't read around these forums, so I haven't seen any other steam-related topics. I just had a quick browse, saw nothing, and posted.

Sins will never appear on Steam as long as Stardock holds the licensing rights for it. People love Steam for some reason, but it will have some serious competition in a few months...
End of quote

There's a reason people love steam. It has a large, strong community; It has a lot of great games, at great prices; The features are brilliant; It is hassle free.

Steam would happily have Sins enter its range of titles, and Stardock should take advantage of this.


Steam would generate significantly more sales and publicity for Sins, and Ironclad would be wise to find itself a publisher willing to utilize the most effective online sales vehicle in existence at the moment.
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Exactly.

By using additional distribution oppurtunities, doesn't mean they have to abandon their own one. If anything, their own one will gain more publicity and become more known. From there, they can build on that.

I think considering headlines such as Sins of a Solar Empire Sells 100,000 in Three Weeks, Ironclad isn't too unhappy with their publishing related decision-making process.

-HM
End of quote

While that is a good number, it could be a lot better. Considering it is confined to retail distribution in North America, and only Stardock for digital distribution, there are a lot of markets open for Sins which it should use.


SDC is so much superior to steam, why would people ask to have Sins available on the less user-friendly system? I do not understand ...
End of quote

Ok, you need to look at the larger picture, not just your opinion. You may think that it is "less user-friendly" (which may be true, I don't know), but most people will not have even heard of Stardock.
If it were available on Steam and both stardock, then fine, stick to your personal favourite. But by having it on Steam in addition to Stardock, it will appeal to a much larger community as well as this one. Expansion will only make it better.

Reply #36 from Sins Forums Top
McLovin, assuming Ironclad was even interested in such a thing, we don't know what the deal would be. For all we know the amount of money they'd have to pay for Valve isn't worth it to them for the extra distribution. It's not like Valve just puts one's game on there with no strings attached. All angles need to be researched.

And again, I really take issue with the "hassle free" argument. Go back and see what I had to say about Steam's first few years of release. And just this week, they had a big problem with the release of Frontlines. Apparently if you bought it from Steam, and you said yes to patching the game, it would patch it with the retail patch. Which caused the game to want the DVD in the drive in order to start, which of course people don't have, because they bought it through Steam.

This is EXACTLY the sort of problem Ironclad is avoiding by using Stardock as a publisher.

-HM
Reply #37 from Sins Forums Top

Steam has good protection. I understand it would be quite a bit of work involved with transferring the existing copy protection to steam, but it would easily be worth it.
This shouldn't be used as an excuse, it is only restricting their own possible potential.
End of quote


Clearly you don't understand. The reason it won't transfer to steam isn't the "hassle" involved in transferring existing copy protection, its the fact that steam has DRM in the first place -- and SD refuses to use it! So long as Steam utilized DRM (which I doubt they'd stop doing... ever, they aren't that smart), SD won't do business with them.

Perhaps you aren't ware of this, but there is no DRM involved in any SD product. The only thing that even comes close is the requirement for a valid CD key to play online or download patches. SD (and by extension, IC) is married to that concept because it works.
Reply #38 from Sins Forums Top
*tosses Ron a cookie*  :CONGRAT: 
Reply #39 from Sins Forums Top
Perhaps McLovin thinks that using Steam's copy protection would be a gain due to the (theoretical) increased sales. It seems that Stardock is much more interested in having no DRM on the game itself, and I can't say that I'm unhappy with this choice.

-HM
Reply #40 from Sins Forums Top
Pure black & white competition is dead, that is an outdated business model.

Today co-op etition is the emerging model. Smart businesses realize that they share customers and that many products target the same people. So they buy marketing from each other, OEM each other's stuff, run promotions together, sponsor the same events.

To think that a person will use only one service, play one game, subscribe to one model is very narrow thinking and will limit success.
Reply #41 from Sins Forums Top
Heh, I don't understand what DRM Steam has. As far as I know, you pay for the game, and you can play it. If you don't pay for it, you can download the game and play offline with the numerous Steam cracks and torrents etc.

Isn't that the same as SD? You can download Sins from a torrent, and play offline without a crack....

Didn't I just describe exactly the same thing?
Reply #42 from Sins Forums Top
*tosses Ron a cookie* -Annatar11
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WTF? What about me? No respect... Never... :SNIFF!:
Reply #43 from Sins Forums Top
Thelen SharSF,

There's a big difference. Any Steam game has to be cracked by someone to play it without Steam. With Sins you can simply copy the official DVD from someone else, with any DVD burning software of your choice. The pirates/warez people did absolutely nothing to it before releasing it to the torrent sites.

And even if you pay for a Steam game, you still have to click the appropriate checkbox to make sure your Steam credentials are stored on the PC. If you don't do this, you cannot run Steam and play games without an Internet connection.

-HM
Reply #44 from Sins Forums Top
When Valve gives us all of their exclusive games, we'll consider doing the same. :P
Reply #45 from Sins Forums Top
WTF? What about me? No respect... Never...
End of quote


*hands Spartan an even bigger cookie* ;)
Reply #46 from Sins Forums Top
WTF? What about me? No respect... Never...*hands Spartan an even bigger cookie*
End of quote


That more like it; giving me the entire factory would be more appropriate given the legend that I am. :LOL:
Reply #47 from Sins Forums Top
No, sorry, Me > you, so I keep the factory :)
Reply #48 from Sins Forums Top
No, sorry, Me > you, so I keep the factory - Annatar11
End of quote


Hmmm.... someone that has a highly distorted self image. Surely it must be the amusement park mirror you look into every morning. :p
Reply #49 from Sins Forums Top
someone that has a highly distorted self image.
End of quote

given the legend that I am.
End of quote


*whistles innocently*  :LOL: Besides, the mirror keeps telling me I'm pretty.
Reply #50 from Sins Forums Top
Heh, right now, In my business student perspective, i'd rather be Frogboy then the owner/president of most high-fad PC games. Because i can easely bet the cost to profit ratio is much better with stardock :P