Retail Release of Armored Princess or Gold
 

I prefer buying games in stores, especially games like this that I know I'll come back to years later. And years later the game won't be able to be authenticated by Steam most likely (every company goes out of business eventually or stops supporting old products), so I definitely want the hard copy.

This is a game I was thinking about picking up, and now with the expansion I really want it. I know it's tough for a foreign company to release a retail version here and tempting to go with the more profitable digital approach, so I just want to know if either the Armored Princess or Gold version will be available in hard copy eventually.

Your first paragraph makes no sense. Do you mean if Steam goes under?

Well, can you guarantee that, say, in 5 years, if Knightcrawler wants to play KBTL/KBAP again he will be able to get the same support from Steam? At that time, KBTL will be over 7 years old and KBAP over 5.

In my eyes, his question is valid :)

Obviously, I can't guarantee anything but consider that Steam is one of the primary outlets for game digital distribution, an area that is predicted to become the norm for buying PC games. Even if Valve went under, they would have no problem selling off the Steam division of the company. So I can't say I am worried about Steam not being around to give support. And by support, I mean just having a system in place to authenticate me for any of the games I have purchased.

Sega will never stop making consoles either. And ASCII and Midway will be making games forever.

Come on, things change. I still go back every now and then and play my NES games.

French version will be release in march, so the english one should be in store next month i assume.

But it's really stupid to sell box version 4 month after.

Steam doesn't make games, they distribute them. Following that line of thought, you would have to be more worried about Katauri going under, which doesn't really affect access to KB down the line.

Its more likely your hardware will evolve and not be able to play the disks down the road than not having a digital version to play. All those games, including Loom, which I bought for my PC back in the early 90s that were on 5 1/4 inch disks are pretty useless at the moment. But I can still play Loom on Steam.

So, just to put it in perspective: Steam gets sued by EA for laundering some of the money EA was supposed to get for games of theirs sold on steam. Valve never recovers from the bad press or the fiscal hit, and unfortunately folds.

It is very unlikely, but at least I can understand the fear a bit. In reality they'd get bought out before they lose their customer base.

That's the same type of fear that would prevent someone from leaving their house because there is a possibility that a meteorite may hit them :)