Amen to that. I hope the Devs wake-up and stop STEAM at least for offline play.

Wow, the combined naivety in this thread is really telling. You think developers have a say when it comes to DRM, digital distribution or copyright systems? Yeah, thanks for the laugh. That's up to publishers and their ideas are going far beyond where Steam is right now. Publishers are the ones who artificially insert such systems in order to carve themselves a bigger and more comfy niche within the distribution process. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of beancounters in their upper echelons are having wet dreams of cloud computing, mandatory monthly fees and DLC at every corner to milk customers even more.

The only way to stop that would be not to purchase any of those products who are tied to such systems at all.

As long as the devs get more $$ for selling their product over Steam than over the counter, and let's face it once and for all: They do, you'll likely not see a change. In fact, you'll most likely see an increase in the use of Steam and such portals, since it's a both cheaper (no boxes to produce, no CD's to print up) and more lucrative than selling the product over the counter.

The primary reason as to why 1C uses Steam is because Flightsims are probably the epitome of a niche-product. We who love flightsims, and especially on this level, are a very small minority, and in order to make a profit in this market, you need every advantage you can get. And Steam, like it or not, is an advantage for the devs.

Until that changes, they'll use it.

And good luck with that, as those that see Steam as a good distribution-platform far outnumber those who don't.

True that. But then there are plenty of other publishers, and MG get's the final say about who distrubutes the game:

http://www.metacritic.com/feature/ga...-2010-releases

They should really make an effort and do some real decision making on their product and how it is handled. They shouldn't have just gone to UBI because they did the previous series. If it had to be so, give it another title - call it something else and disassociate it from Ubisoft entirely.

That's what I was hinting at. ;)

Good Lord! http://www.x-bikers.ru/editor/s/smiley-facepalm.gifOnce again, for all those with a high resistance-level to understanding.

1.) Maddox Games is a 100% subsidiary enterprise of 1C. Which makes all MG employees also employees of 1C.
2.) 1C handles the distribution stuff (that's what publishers do). 1C also provides finances and therefor calls the shots.
3.) The reason that Ubi is still in the same boat is because of ancient contracts signed years ago. Nobody went to them just before the release and asked them to join - they were already there.

Is it really that hard to understand the situation? Or is that another case of "I read what I want to read just to hold up my very personal conspiracy theories and to make myself look smart in some online board"? :roll:

I wasn't entirely clear, I said MG so as not to confuse when really they are employed by 1C - not that it matters.
And I certainly can't imagine that the contract they did sign said something along the lines of;
"Any flight simulator or flight based video game produced by 1C company and it's subsidaries must be distrubted through Ubisoft."
I was thinking that the contract may be "IL-2 Sturmovik" specific - not the genre in general, therefore changing the title may have been appropriate - but clearly I'm wrong.
Then again, who gives a flying (...). I'll just download a free copy and save myself the hassle of complaining later on about wasting my money. Try before you buy right?

well, whilst you ar downloading you free hacked version and bitching about "Steam" (meaning DRM, the need for online verification/ activation, inability to play completely offline, etc)... keep in mind that there is no-one else to blame for "Steam" than the hackers and pirates.

Not sure what you mean. Steam doesn't stop Piracy and wasn't designed to. ;)

read it again ;) ;)

Curious why my post has gone from this thread...