Frontier is playing with fire regarding Steam

rich_hard1

R
Steam centralizes your games into one place, for me as I'm in the media business, I need access to games quickly and easily knowing they will always be upto date, steam has saved me on many occasions, especially if I need to finish on time to get home of an evening.

Therefore I'm heavily reliant on steam, uplay and origin etc. no matter what people say about steam, more than 65 million users can't be wrong.
 

Basexperience

Basexperience
... or, they've been busy trying to fix bugs and implement features, and something as infrequent as an upgrade to the launcher is regarded as very low priority. I wouldn't accuse them of sloppy or lazy dev work just yet... granted it needs addressing though, but it's probably at the bottom of the backlog. Their burn-down charts must look mental...
 

Chip Patton

Chip Patton
popuptoaster said:
FD didn't want to go through Steam anyway, it was only because a vocal minority kicked up a fuss on the forums about being able to see how many hours they had played and getting stupid achievement's that FD relented and gave out Steam keys and put the game on Valves store.

One of the devs even came on the forum and said they preferred that people bought through the FD store rather than Steam, because, you know, Valve take a cut of the profits that could go back to FD and maybe speed development a little.

Steam users are literally giving Valve money for nothing, there is nothing Steam are doing that you don't get through the FD store other than the auto updates, a timer, and some daft internet badges to say you did things.

FD are always going to look after the non Steam users first.
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I'm having problems with trying to figure out which part of your post is more nonsensical, the part about the vocal minority or the part about ignoring steam users.

Let me help you understand something. ED went to steam because they needed sales. Beyond the UK this game wasn't very popular and the crowd that needs to be hit to allow a indie studio grow to AAA is the largest consumer market -- the USA and the best way to target the USA? Steam. You can have a look at the steam charts my friend, ED sales has been increasing every day the game has been on steam. Steam gives (well, not give, its apart of the fee) its developers CDN services for their entire game which FD doesn't take advantage of (except for the patcher).

As far as FD putting non-steam users first, that's just ridiculous, that's like me telling my customers I'm not going to put those first that pay with with a credit card (ya know, because the merchant providers take a cut). Now, what do you think the credit card companies will say when I make this a policy? I'll give you a hint, I won't be able to use my merchant account any longer.

To sit here and tell everyone that FD made the huge choice of putting the game on steam on the whelm of a few players -- while I can tell the intent was to accost that "vocal minority" consisting of steam users, what you did, is paid the perfect insult to FD, basically accusing them of not knowing how to manage their own company.

And before you go making any fancy assumptions, yeah, I've been around the globe once or twice in service to my country, and no, I didn't buy this game on steam, nor have I registered a key through steam.
 
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Pigboy77

P
Im a big advocate of Steam, in fact about 90% of my games are on Steam.
However I launch and run ED and EDH straight from the FD launcher and make sure that Steam is not running. (As well as GOG and uPlay etc).
This means that I dont get annoyed when something tries to download in the background which happen sometimes when the games I have on these platforms release an update.
 

bigity

bigity
Kayweg said:
No offense, bigity, but that sounds like a matter of you relying solely on one source for your gaming information ?

ED wasn't being kept a secret, many gaming sites reported regularly on it's progress ever since it's kickstarter campaign.
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Why would I take offense? I play the majority of my games on Steam - where I interact with a community of folks and I can hear/see recommendations for games that are similiar to what I buy. I was merely pointing out that some people didn't and perhaps would not have purchased Elite without it being available on Steam. It's up to FDev to decide if the cut of the sale that goes to Valve is worth the extra exposure or not. I am not beholden to Steam, nor do I detest it for some reason(s). It's just convenient for me.
 

Paul Bambury

P
PIgboy77 said:
Im a big advocate of Steam, in fact about 90% of my games are on Steam.
However I launch and run ED and EDH straight from the FD launcher and make sure that Steam is not running. (As well as GOG and uPlay etc).
This means that I dont get annoyed when something tries to download in the background which happen sometimes when the games I have on these platforms release an update.
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No, Steam will only allow background downloads when you're playing a game through Steam if you allow it to. On the main menu go Steam>Settings>Downloads and clear the 'Allow downloads during gameplay' check box on that dialog
 

Cell

C
bigity said:
I am of two minds here - I prefer my games on the Steam platform, and I had never heard of Elite outside of Steam when I purchased the base game. I'm savvy enough to be able to deal with manually starting the launcher etc etc but some folks are not - and this will prompt refund requests etc - if Steam removes the game, that prevents people like me from even knowing about the game.

OTOH, I understand Valve takes a cut for games sold on their platform, and the more money FDev (or any developer) makes, hopefully the better for me as a fan of said game(s).

Which option brings in more profit ultimately, I wonder?



I hope they have something worked out very soon.
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So glad Steam is hear for people like this.....never heard of Elite...sheesh...
 

Jason S

J
ED is getting to the point where they are becoming too big a product for steam to ditch it like the OP suggests.

And anyway it is available on steam.
 
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Salem Jansen

S
I skipped a few pages, so correct me if I'm wrong, but... Has it occurred to anyone that it has been all of half a day since the announcement, and that FD is poking around Europe. Valve is a US firm, and so Steam will generally be centralized there. I don't think delays are anything but expected.

Have a little patience, okay? Just because it's not available RIGHT NOW doesn't mean it won't be in a little while. Or tomorrow. If you don't want the game installing in a different library, wait a little bit. Have a little faith in FD, and Valve. If you don't get it in a few days? THEN you can pitch a fuss.
 
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