News Elite: Dangerous Steam Keys

[FuegoTigre]

Greetings Commanders

All EliteDangerous.com store players can now generate a Steam key to add it to their Steam library.

By generating a Steam key all future purchases made with your Frontier account will also be associated with your Steam account. This won't affect how much you pay for the game or for paint jobs, but sticking with the EliteDangerous.com store remains the best way to support ongoing development with 100 percent of your money on future purchases. We especially appreciate it when you buy direct from us, but we're happy for you to play how and where you like. Just enjoy the game, and fly safe Commanders!

Instructions to redeem:

Log into the Elite: Dangerous store.

Go to your account dashboard.

Click on ‘Partner Keys’

Click ‘Claim an Elite: Dangerous’ key.

You can redeem your code by selecting 'Games > Activate a Product On Steam' in the Steam UI.

Note: the key you generate will add Elite: Dangerous to any Steam library but WILL NOT grant access to the game without an existing registered Frontier account and copy of the game. For this reason, please don’t give your keys away to friends! They won’t be able to play without having already bought the game from Steam or the EliteDangerous.com store!

*mod edit*

Just a little summary of the conversations Ed's had in this post to clear up some things:

Originally Posted by SushiCW
I expect that generating steam keys is free, but by doing so any future FD store purchases become subject to the "valve tax". A bit of confirmation on that point wouldn't hurt but it makes sense to me.

Originally Posted by Edward Lewis
Yeah, that's a fair interpretation. We don't think of it as a tax though, just part of working with third party retailers.


So, from this, we can understand that generating a Steam key is absolutely free. But linking your account incurs a "Valve Tax", which Frontier is not considering a tax at all. It's part of their working with Steam.

Originally Posted by MrMogadon
Not really sure what the confusion is about the use of Steam keys, I think the above 2 quotes sum it up succinctly, but maybe I'm missing a hidden message somewhere

.

Originally Posted by Edward Lewis
I feel a bit crude talking about 'cuts' and 'percentages' but yes, once you've linked an account, any future purchases on the FD store are affected by this.

Ed also states that once you've linked your account, any future purchases on the FD store are affected by this link. He does not go into the particulars of what that means.


... that's the extent of what we know, right?

Why are we saying anything else other than this?

 

[Zetta]

I suppose we need to revisit what the actual facts are.

No.. we really don't. Court cases can be won and lost based on the interpretation of evidence.
This is not a court case.

Ed also states that once you've linked your account, any future purchases on the FD store are affected by this link.

Why are we saying anything else other than this?

Why indeed?

/yawn

 

[FuegoTigre]

No.. we really don't. Court cases can be won and lost based on the interpretation of evidence.
This is not a court case.

Yeah. It's not. It's a forum.

 

[Zetta]

Yeah. It's not. It's a forum.

At last, a fact!

 

[CaptainKremmen]

Mug sales!?!?


Instead of just saying, "my bad, I was wrong", it seems the trolling approach continues to be "double down".

Find something, anything, that hasn't been clarified to kingdom come, and run with that.


lol

 

[excalibus]

for those, who like me, are / were unable to see partner keys, I logged in via the following link

https://steam.elitedangerous.com/

Once you login and verify with the confirmation code sent to your email address, at the top left of the page is a button login via steam, click this and login to steam to link your account. I have NOT done this yet as I am waiting for an answer from FDev as weather or not merchandise purchased through the store.elitedangerous.com site is also impacted as a steam sale...

 

[Zetta]

It's more leg-work but creating a second account and purchasing your merchandise through it would work in the interim.

 

[Serpentstar]

I have NOT done this yet as I am waiting for an answer from FDev as weather or not merchandise purchased through the store.elitedangerous.com site is also impacted as a steam sale...

Actually, it was specifically answered by Edward Lewis in this thread. To quote him:
I feel a bit crude talking about 'cuts' and 'percentages' but yes, once you've linked an account, any future purchases on the FD store are affected by this.

This means that the moment you accept a steam key, ANYTHING you purchase from the FD store automatically has 30% absorbed by Valve for Frontiers association. So if you were to purchase a hoodie, coffee mug, and any of the Fiction works, a portion of that purcase will never reach the authors or Frontier and instead goes to fill the coffers of Valve.

As Edward will state later here, this is clarified later in this thread and I admit to being incorrect.

Sorry, should've been clear on this one too! This doesn't apply to physical merchandise. Valve don't touch on that, only in-game content.

 

[Jenner]

Ok, guys. Knock off the sniping. If need-be please use the forum's 'ignore' function if we can't all discuss things in a civil manner.

 

[wreckage]

I just checked steam's database and it looks like only the game has id's. So if I'm looking at it right, they only get a cut from the game sale to register the launcher as a "steam" game. Everything else would be through E D store going straight to your account.

The only exception I could foresee in the future is if they add items to steam store. Then valve would get a cut due to it being purchased through their page and only their page.

But I'll wait until the higher ups clarify before I change it from nonsteam to steam.

Until then, here is a nice graph to look at
https://steamdb.info/app/359320/graphs/

 

[Zetta]

But I'll wait until the higher ups clarify before I change it from nonsteam to steam.

There are 2 stores, steam.elitedangerous.com and store.elitedangerous.com, purchases from either are subject to Valve's "tax" if you link your accounts. Ed's clarification below.

I feel a bit crude talking about 'cuts' and 'percentages' but yes, once you've linked an account, any future purchases on the FD store are affected by this.

 

[Iori]

I just checked steam's database and it looks like only the game has id's. So if I'm looking at it right, they only get a cut from the game sale to register the launcher as a "steam" game. Everything else would be through E D store going straight to your account.

The only exception I could foresee in the future is if they add items to steam store. Then valve would get a cut due to it being purchased through their page and only their page.

But I'll wait until the higher ups clarify before I change it from nonsteam to steam.

Until then, here is a nice graph to look at
https://steamdb.info/app/359320/graphs/

It has been clarified already, if you buy in ED store and your account is linked, Steam gets a cut.

Steam does not let companies sell DLC for games on their platform without their cut, and thats why many EA games were pulled from Steam back in 2011. The agreement FDEV most likely had to reach to not run into technical problems when selling DLC, is that while they keep selling DLC on their own store, they are still giving Valve that cut for any transaction by an account that had generated a key.

 

[Antar3s]

Ah, hey there...I guess this has been asked multiple time by now, but maybe someone could tell me if there is a penalty when accessing the game through steam. I just redeemed the code and I am not sure if I should delete my regular installation. Do I still have beta access through steam? Do the updates come at the same time? Is there any difference wrt game access?

thanks!!

 

[shinkicker444]

If I redeem the key, and start/stop the DL, can I just drop my current install into the steam directory? Probably not, but it would be nice to be able to save the DL quota.

 

[MEATER]

Just dropped by to say thanks to Frontier for making this happen. I'm very happy to have the game in my Steam library now! Thanks a lot for doing this! You guys are awesome!

 

[takatalvi]

Go to your account dashboard.

Click on ‘Partner Keys’

Click ‘Claim an Elite: Dangerous’ key.

You can redeem your code by selecting 'Games > Activate a Product On Steam' in the Steam UI.

I have no "Partner Keys" option on my dashboard. (Used cmd-f to search for it, no success.)
Has this been changed? I don't have time to read all 36+ pages of posts.

 

[Jim Steinman]

Actually, it was specifically answered by Edward Lewis in this thread. To quote him:
I feel a bit crude talking about 'cuts' and 'percentages' but yes, once you've linked an account, any future purchases on the FD store are affected by this.

This means that the moment you accept a steam key, ANYTHING you purchase from the FD store automatically has 30% absorbed by Valve for Frontiers association. So if you were to purchase a hoodie, coffee mug, and any of the Fiction works, a portion of that purcase will never reach the authors or Frontier and instead goes to fill the coffers of Valve.

Yep, clarified twice by Ed. We can only hope that it serves to bring a huge amount more exposure to the game.

 

[shinkicker444]

I have no "Partner Keys" option on my dashboard. (Used cmd-f to search for it, no success.)
Has this been changed? I don't have time to read all 36+ pages of posts.

I had the same issue, turned out to be a issue with Chrome (clearing the cache showed the option, but clicking on generate key steam link didn't work). So I just used a different browser and it was there and worked fine.

 

[Ancipital]

I have no "Partner Keys" option on my dashboard. (Used cmd-f to search for it, no success.)
Has this been changed? I don't have time to read all 36+ pages of posts.

Zap your cookies and try again.

 

[Athan]

There are 2 stores, steam.elitedangerous.com and store.elitedangerous.com, purchases from either are subject to Valve's "tax" if you link your accounts. Ed's clarification below.

I really didn't want to possibly cause this whole discussion to prolong, but ...

Given steam.elitedangerous.com exists, is a 'steam' store, but also looks like it's hosted by FD then "any future purchases on the FD store are affected by this" could be interpreted as only applying to steam.elitedangerous.com and not store.elitedangerous.com. Not having fully linked my accounts (I generated the key, but have not redeemed it on Steam, and checking my profile on the latter it doesn't list ED as a game I have) I can't comment as to if trying to use store.elitedangerous.com will always redirect to steam.elitedangerous.com.

So, Ed, MB, someone, could you 100% explicitly state what happens with respect to Valve having a cut of the money for future ED-related purchases if:

1. Someone bought ED not via steam originally
2. That account holder then generated a steam key on store.elitedangerous.com
3. That account holder then registered that key with Steam.
4. That account holder than attempts to purchase something via store.elitedangerous.com, not steam.elitedangerous.com

Thankyou.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, and now I check, the two hostnames do resolve differently:

$ host store.elitedangerous.comstore.elitedangerous.com has address 79.125.111.215
store.elitedangerous.com has address 176.34.244.215
store.elitedangerous.com has address 46.51.178.194
$ host steam.elitedangerous.com
steam.elitedangerous.com is an alias for www.elitedangerous.com.
www.elitedangerous.com has address 176.34.127.47
www.elitedangerous.com has address 54.246.83.62

Both are hosted on AWS, whereas the single IP I get for steampowered.com is on Akamai.