Elite Dangerous now on Steam

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I think its great the game released on steam, more players=more sales=more new stuff developed.

Id like a steam key if possible, I just got used to steam functionality in the last few years.
 
Playing Elite from the weekend of release, but was somewhat disappointed that there is the need to create another separate account in the Frontier shop. So I was happy to hear that the game appeared on Steam, which is a great platform to keep track of all your purchased games.

But why is there no key to add to Steam? Really hope, that keys will be sent out. I would even pay a few bucks (NOT the full game price) to have my account on Steam.
 
What is it about this response:



that extremely, extremely disappoints you?

The idea behind the disappointment seems to be that Frontier should have looked into it long before release on Steam. It does seem a bit ignorant for them to fail to consider the number of players that would want this kind of continuity, and they could have had this discussion prior to this weekend if they had announced it at a more opportune time. As it stands, I'm not "extremely" disappointed, but I am a bit weary of this lack of forethought.
 
As it stands, I'm not "extremely" disappointed, but I am a bit weary of this lack of forethought.

Very sensible, and here's hoping we can get them on board with the idea of Steam keys for all through some more rational dialog like Craven's. I'm definitely one who'd like a Steam key too.

How it fits into patching, friends management and other things is less clear. The Steam library is great for having one location that manages all the games I play (as well as the ones I bought on sale which I've never played!). Thats the easy bit, relatively speaking. Deeper integration would take effort, and I'm not sure it's necessarily worth going 100% with Steam, given they'll need to have a cross-platform approach for the console ports.

Have people come across examples of shallow integration and deep integration into Steam? Is the friends/achievements stuff worth it in your opinion?
 
The idea behind the disappointment seems to be that Frontier should have looked into it long before release on Steam

Doing so would have slowed down their release on Steam. And even if they did look at this I'd imagine it would have been a cursory "we'll sort it after we release". As it should have been.

There are two outcomes: FD give everyone a key/steam access, in which case you're just having to wait for a bit and in the meantime nothing has actually changed in any way for non-Steam purchasers. Or FD doesn't give anyone a key/steam access, in which case nothing actually changes in any way for non-Steam purchasers. The huge fuss over this is just indicative of the immaturity of many posters on this forum.
 
Doing so would have slowed down their release on Steam. And even if they did look at this I'd imagine it would have been a cursory "we'll sort it after we release". As it should have been.

There are two outcomes: FD give everyone a key/steam access, in which case you're just having to wait for a bit and in the meantime nothing has actually changed in any way for non-Steam purchasers. Or FD doesn't give anyone a key/steam access, in which case nothing actually changes in any way for non-Steam purchasers. The huge fuss over this is just indicative of the immaturity of many posters on this forum.

Yes, if greed is of outmost importance and every second of cashflow counts, then sure, otherwise, no, not really.

Good planning mitigates time constraints.
 
Doing so would have slowed down their release on Steam. And even if they did look at this I'd imagine it would have been a cursory "we'll sort it after we release". As it should have been.

There are two outcomes: FD give everyone a key/steam access, in which case you're just having to wait for a bit and in the meantime nothing has actually changed in any way for non-Steam purchasers. Or FD doesn't give anyone a key/steam access, in which case nothing actually changes in any way for non-Steam purchasers. The huge fuss over this is just indicative of the immaturity of many posters on this forum.

Maybe it would have slowed them down, maybe it wouldn't. This is more of a customer service issue than it is platform integration. I would think the two issues would have been handled by different teams of people, even from the moment they first knew about a Steam release. I say that with absolutely no knowledge of the number of people that work at Frontier though, so you very well could be right.

You're certainly right about one thing though. There are plenty of folks on both sides of this discussion that need to calm down.
 
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It took me awhile to receive a Steam key for Robocraft. I did not mind waiting as I could still play the game anyway.

I had the same experience with 7 Days to Die and a few other games. It was not a big deal.

I can wait awhile. People just need to be patient.
 
Yes, if greed is of outmost importance and every second of cashflow counts, then sure, otherwise, no, not really.

Good planning mitigates time constraints.

The day before a major holiday they had a chance to gain a significant revenue source and they took it. They made a choice that benefits every player of this game, but some are just too self-centered to see it: they can't stand others having something they don't.
 
It took me awhile to receive a Steam key for Robocraft. I did not mind waiting as I could still play the game anyway.

I had the same experience with 7 Days to Die and a few other games. It was not a big deal.

I can wait awhile. People just need to be patient.

Agreed. The initial stream of requests served to poked FD into "looking into the situation", where there were no previous plans. At this point, though, additional requests and non-constructive infighting serve very little additional purpose. It's time for patience.
 
FD knew what they were doing in not giving existing players Steam keys, at least for the first few weeks of being on Steam anyway. All those extra players who've played more than 5-10 hours leaving non positive reviews and commenting on just how shallow everything really is would have given the "new" playerbase too much of an insight in to what the game is really like after the "honeymoon period".
All about the ££££££, which is why the release was rushed, why Steam wasn't originally on the cards and why its now on Steam after the sales from the website have slowed to a crawl.
Nice to see all the WK's from these forums downvoting all the criticisms on the steam forums however, don't know if they're trying to convince themselves or what but its pretty sad.
 
The day before a major holiday they had a chance to gain a significant revenue source and they took it. They made a choice that benefits every player of this game, but some are just too self-centered to see it: they can't stand others having something they don't.

But then it didn't really truly benefit every player of this game, and I'm unsure the choice to put profits in front of everything else actually gave them any financial benefits in the long run, but it'll be hard to prove either way.

Furthermore, I can't speak for everybody, but most people on this side of the fence have been pretty behaved by comparison, but the issue is not the steam key itself, more how they treated their community in regards to this issue. Self-centered would probably be one of many words that could be used to describe that behaviour.
 
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And as has been repeated many times in this thread as well, keys are not the same things as customers or software license. Keys are a functional part of the infrastructure of gaming, they don't represent a new game.

You can't get keys or renew licenses for all games in the Steam store if merely because you own hard copies of them. It depends entirely on the sort of contract the developer has made with Valve.

What are you even talking about here? A Steam key provided by Steam for the devs = a license for the game. Each key activates one license on Steam for whomever activates it. As you can see in the greenlight FAQ link above, pretty much any new game that gets added to Steam has the option of giving those keys out to their previous buyers for *no cost*.

This is not an example of 'Ow I have a hardcopy (for random game), can I activate it on Steam?', This is about a dev, who got his game on Steam, and as a result has the privilege of creating Steam keys for his own purposes, whether that be for selling on other retailers, giving away, giving to previous purchasers etc. Again, at *no cost*. The only time Valve takes a cut is when Frontiers game gets sold directly through Steam's store. And then it's 30%.

This is not some hidden thing or something. It has been like that for years. It's why those $1 Greenlight bundles with 5+ games still hand out Steam keys to their buyers after they're released on Steam, despite the game having been bought for pennies. (some greedy dev exceptions here and there).

Whether Frontier does this or not is up to them. Doing it will get brownie points, A) because people these days do kind of expect Steam keys if the game goes on Steam, partly because it's such a common practice these days. B) Because they've kept their potential buyer base completely in the dark about the fact that they were even going to be releasing on Steam until they actually did.

As this thread proves, a ton of people would have held off till the Steam release otherwise. This means it was a smart business decision for them to not release on Steam originally, since that gives them 100% cut of those initial profits, however it's going to backlash hard if they don't give those people Steam keys after those people bought it thinking it wasn't going to be on Steam, and right or wrong, that view on the state of things was very prevalent.

And since most people know the keys to give to people don't actually cost anything (apart from getting the effort to get the keys to the people), they will feel let down if such a small effort to make for their loyal fans gets waved aside. Because then people will assume that rather than giving you a practically free key, they expect you to rebuy the game just to have it on the most used platform in PC gaming. (and naturally arguments will be taken to the irrational on both sides)
 
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I think I would feel much more sympathetic to the people who want a steam key if they showed FD their preference without the damn drama. Its like looking at a load of 6 year olds in a supermarket stamping their feet at the checkout where the sweets are after mum has said no to a bag of Haribo's. Some of you have asked reasonably and stated why, others have let you down with claims of the end of the world and the biggest travesty since Srappy Doo.

To those who requested a key with respect, good luck to you I hope you get one. The others, you are no better than spoilt children and I couldn't care less if you get one . If I owned FD I'd send your cash back and close your account as I would any child of mine who behaved like that.
 
The idea behind the disappointment seems to be that Frontier should have looked into it long before release on Steam. It does seem a bit ignorant for them to fail to consider the number of players that would want this kind of continuity, and they could have had this discussion prior to this weekend if they had announced it at a more opportune time. As it stands, I'm not "extremely" disappointed, but I am a bit weary of this lack of forethought.

There's always someone wanting something. There are poor people wanting food. And there's you, wanting some artificial key for the game you already have so you can hook it into artificial DRM system.

Some perspective needed here.
 
But then it didn't really truly benefit every player of this game.

They have several hundred thousand more pounds than they had four days ago. If you honestly believe that they aren't going to pump any of that money in to further development then I don't know what to say except that you shouldn't even bother playing the game; I wouldn't if that is what I believed.

Furthermore, I can't speak for everybody, but most people on this side of the fence have been pretty behaved by comparison, but the issue is not the steam key itself, more how they treated their community in regards to this issue. Self-centered would probably be one of many words that could be used to describe that behaviour.

People go on about how they feel badly treated by the company but just like any other company it's nothing other than a bunch of people trying to do what is best with a load of conflicting requirements. Certainly if I was a developer I'd never want to visit these threads again after this latest show, and the community only has itself to blame if this happens. They're people: treat them like it.
 
It took me awhile to receive a Steam key for Robocraft. I did not mind waiting as I could still play the game anyway.

I had the same experience with 7 Days to Die and a few other games. It was not a big deal.

I can wait awhile. People just need to be patient.
Isn't ROBOCRAFT free?
 
What are you even talking about here?

He's simply sad about his copy of UT2004 didn't activate on Steam when they added it several years ago.

Despite not having anything to do with this situation he tries to use this 5+ year old story as anecdotal evidence against something that's been disproven by both current anecdotal and empirical evidence.

He also tries to explain it in a very ambiguous/nonsensical way by trying to confuse the keys/license debate, don't worry though he's just going to ignore you and move on to the next victim when he realises he can't convince you.

They have several hundred thousand more pounds than they had four days ago. If you honestly believe that they aren't going to pump any of that money in to further development then I don't know what to say except that you shouldn't even bother playing the game; I wouldn't if that is what I believed.

Sure, and as explained, a quick payday is not necessarily the best.

People go on about how they feel badly treated by the company but just like any other company it's nothing other than a bunch of people trying to do what is best with a load of conflicting requirements. Certainly if I was a developer I'd never want to visit these threads again after this latest show, and the community only has itself to blame if this happens. They're people: treat them like it.

Well I certainly have a clean conscience, can't speak for others though, but as far as Frontier is concerned maybe they could lead by example, since what comes around usually goes around.
 
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The day before a major holiday they had a chance to gain a significant revenue source and they took it. They made a choice that benefits every player of this game, but some are just too self-centered to see it: they can't stand others having something they don't.

Exactly.
 
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