Not disputing anything you've stated, but the other side of the coin is that their user retention numbers might be higher on Steam as all the people using their Steam account even after drifting away from this game will be kept more apprised of upcoming changes instead of effectively forgetting about the game. Sure, Frontier would get less per purchase, but more overall due to increased unit sales.
Elite Dangerous now on Steam
- Thread starter CmdrPSB
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Right, that's it! We're turning round and going back home.
They stated in a dev update that it wasn't their decision alone.
We would love to have a steam key. And regarding steams cut for future DLC sales; we can buy DLC from here and they(frontier) can provide a steam key for that too.
In the cases where Steam are ok with free key generation, it tends to be when a game initially launches on their platform that wasn't there before, i.e. an 'onboarding' freebie so to speak.
They do not tend to be so generous on expansions and sequels, otherwise they could be in the situation of people always buying outside their store (that takes their cut) but them still hosting all content/services for free. Valve do not insist on exclusivity for titles, but they do ask for parity, i.e. if you sell an expansion on your own store then you have to also sell that same expansion on Steam. It's part of the standard publishing agreement.
"you have to also sell that same expansion on Steam." Yes that's true but they can sell here as well and if you love frontier you will buy from here for those steam gets no penny.
True - plus the expansions might be the DLC style 'unlock' rather than extra content to download (or rather everyone gets the same download but a Frontier 'key' unlocks things like planetary landings and the like). It'll be interesting to see how the expansions work, in terms of balancing gameplay etc. I haven't read much about it..
Actually someone on the steam forums thread about this suggested adding a second package that was only the launcher without the account creation function included in the steam version, so they wouldn't even need to worry about keys, you would just download it and log in with your fdev account. Seems like the fastest, easiest, cheapest way to do it.
Personally, I think that has so much less to do with Steam being greedy than it does with the ridiculous hoops people end up having to jump through to non-Steam DLC to work properly (*looking at you Dragon Age*).
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Personally I think it's due to Frontier being inept at communicating with it's customers and believing that this "problem" will go away if they ignore it and that they're greedy because i'm sure some people bought it twice, however since they're not that smart at business and communications, they don't realize that their silence is only making them lose customers and future customers because of bad publicity and are relying on people to not know that Steam keys are free for devs, and I know this because I was banned from the forums for a week for posting proof that it costs them zero dollars to give us keys.
I don't know why Frontier and their sheepy supporters are acting like we're asking for a mansion. If some of us knew this was going to come out on Steam, we would have waited and bought it there. It costs them no money to give us Steam keys. Link it to our accounts, tada you can't sell it or you lose your account since it's tied to it.
This isn't rocket science. But they seem to continue to shoot themselves in the foot and each day their PR and reputation gets worse and they still don't realize it.
Silence from a company is the worst thing you can do to your customers. Once you lose their trust, you don't' get it back.
Sure, you'll still have some supporters that will be blissfully ignorant and eat up everything Frontier says because there always has to be foolish people in the world with money, but I assure you, you're not gaining customers in the long run by doing this.
It's common sense. And it's almost been 3 weeks. This issue isn't going away so just say yes or no and be done with it. Everyday it gets worse for your reputation, Frontier. Please trust me on this.
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But it does cost Valve for bandwidth/download/upload costs. They are a games distributor and that's something you forget. They are moving a product, and thus, it isn't free.
That's not what he said though.
Would you mind posting the proof here? You should be able to add the documents you have as attachments.
Funnily enough, I nearly bought Elite: Dangerous in January. I had the exact same decision in front of me that you did: choose the benefit of playing immediately, or choose the benefit of waiting for a Steam version.
You decided to buy it when you did. You chose the benefit of immediate play. I chose the benefit of a Steam version. It's win - win! We both got exactly what we chose.
Lucky us!It's true - I wasn't able to play in January, or February, or March. But I'm still taking responsibility for my decision. It's sad to see that you blame Frontier for your decision.
I suggest that you boycott the game until they see sense.
And the forums?
Too late. In case you haven't noticed, this is the way FD operates and I see no sign of them changing anytime soon. Who or whomever is running PR and marketing at FD has their blinders on and "damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead" mentality.
Reminds me of former president George Bush with his "stay the course" line, even though that "course" was leading straight over a cliff.
For new titles (like ED) that weren't previously on Steam then they let that dev make their own keys without charge. Their reasoning being that it helps grow Steams userbase, and has worked pretty well over the years (doubled the user number growth every year, up to 125 million actives).
They do make money on selling games in the store of course, and Elite has sold pretty well so far in terms of new purchases. For onboarding the existing users I am sure they hope that any expansion packs etc will get bought in the Steam store too.
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Which is probably why FD didn't include keys for existing users and are waiting with the "we're looking into it" lame excuse.
Would you mind posting the proof here? You should be able to add the documents you have as attachments.
Funnily enough, I nearly bought Elite: Dangerous in January. I had the exact same decision in front of me that you did: choose the benefit of playing immediately, or choose the benefit of waiting for a Steam version.
You decided to buy it when you did. You chose the benefit of immediate play. I chose the benefit of a Steam version. It's win - win! We both got exactly what we chose.
It's true - I wasn't able to play in January, or February, or March. But I'm still taking responsibility for my decision. It's sad to see that you blame Frontier for your decision.
I suggest that you boycott the game until they see sense.
The last time I posted it they banned me for a week for spamming so who knows they'll probably delete my post and ban me again if I post it but what the hell, YOLO and all that. If they delete this or ban me again (i'm only posting it once because someone asked mods, i'm not going to post it in the other threads so you can have an excuse to hide the truth err I mean ban me again), then you know the answer is "We're hoping people will forget about this if we keep ignoring them and act like a roughly 3450 post thread exists on the Steam forums and a 245 page thread about it exists here doesn't exist la la la la I can't hear you."
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Edit: I screenshotted this post so if/when they ban and delete the post I can just start emailing places like RPS, Joystiq, Gamespot, and all those sites about what Frontier is doing to put more pressure on them to just give us an answer... thats all people want at this point. It's going on a month I think now? Or 3 weeks? who knows.
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Yet again with this? You keep posting it despite Frontier stating that issuing keys is not 100% their decision. That there are ongoing costs with respect to expansions. That it will take several weeks to resolve. That information was posted on the 9th https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=135952 so not even 2 weeks ago but you claim "a month" or "3 weeks". Even you have to admit that 13 days is far short of "a few weeks"
You have also, so far, failed to provide proof that ED was submitted to Steam under Greenlight. Until you do that simply quoting the Greenlight FAQ is irrelevant.
If you want to know the source of the problems, costs and delays you'd better start looking at Steam. You are the one with your fingers in your ears saying "La la la. I can't hear you."
I've taken a screenshot of this post too.
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