Poll regarding Steam users

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by Revvin

I've not really seen any good reason not to have Steam. Those against it will cite problems they had years ago with the service or some mysterious unnamed friend who installed Steam which then took over their PC and turned it into a devil worshipping silicon monster that ate their hamster.

Steam has evolved, its improved as most systems do. As someone who has used it since it first came into being because you had to install it for Half-Life 2 I've seen the many changes. It has been sometimes a little annoying. I recall buying a game a few years ago on CD that required Steam but instead of installing from disc it downloaded the whole game from the Steam server - not much fun waiting. Its improved though, recent games including one I installed today - Total War: Shogun 2 installed from the disc into Steam and it was flawless.

PC's are complicated things and you could try to devise the most foolproof system in history but you will never engineer out the rank stupidity of some portions of the human race. People have issues with Windows year on year with each new version and yet here we are still using it. You could argue its forced on us. Some people will have problems just installing IL-2:CoD in the first place but that’s not to say its a bad product. Steam gets some bad press for decisions made by the publishers and developers themselves. I recall someone making a point about ARMA II (may have been another game) having to download huge patches and not incremental ones yet most games on Steam do download small incremental patches, Steam distributes whatever the publishers or developers give to them to distribute so to me that an unfair criticism.
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From the naysayers I see lots of angry bold type and caps-lock rants about having the right to this, that and the other. Read most EULA's and you'll see you only own the media the software is presented on with a non exclusive license for the software that may be revoked at any time. Steam does not ban or removed access to the system for no good reason. If it did it would not have the support of the biggest publishers in the gaming business and certainly would not have grown into the main digital distribution network it is with millions upon millions of satisfied customers.

People assume that the posters here saying they will not buy the game is already money lost to 1C. They will try to demonstrate this with maths based on figures pulled out of thin air. The reality is that Steam will draw new customers in too, perhaps even replacing the naysayers and more. Again some assume that those who say they won't buy will stick to that though even the most ardent boycotts have broken down with groups against Call of Duty and Left 4 Dead 2 saw many of its members playing those games on or after the day of release.

The benefit is quite clear. An online community under one roof. A system where you don't need to rely on support and updates to a a number of third party clients like Hyperlobby or XFire for example. Groups are already forming in the Steam community groups section to support this new game and I can see where people are playing if I want to join them. If I want privacy I simply sign out of the friends system or choose not to have it log me in when I start up Steam.

There is far too much name calling, people trotting out the tired old fanboy insult or suggesting those who like using Steam and are trying to put forward their happy experience with the system as being 'shills' and somehow being invested in the Steam service. Insults like that and calling Steam a virus really don't help give a balanced view.

While i can agree with many of your assessments up to the point i inserted the dotted line in your post above, my view starts to diverge from that point on.

First of all, a EULA is not superior to consumer law and wherever they conflict local law will take precedence. In most of the EU countries buying software is for all intents and purposes just like buying a toaster: you can tinker with it if you are prepare to lose the warranty, you can sell it to another person used or you can give it away, you just can't mass-market and distribute it under the same brand name.

With disc protection this is a non-issue, since most people can make use of their right to have a copy with bypassed copy protection as backup for every legitimate copy, they have every means possible to treat their software just like they would do with a material purchase like a house appliance. The problem with electronic distribution platforms and new forms of DRM is that it doesn't stop piracy while making the legally dubious and shaky EULAs enforceable on the legitimate customer.

As for your next point about how many people will buy or stick to their decision, you probably are more optimistic than i am or you haven't seen similar cases in the past. Two years on from its release i still haven't bought RoF. There are still people asking about its online protection system and deciding to take their money elsewhere even today. I just now looked to see if i could find some supporting reference and i didn't really have to try hard at all, see this thread on simHQ started a mere 5 days ago: http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.ph...ml#Post3232022

The hypothesis that selling on Steam might bring in enough sales to cover the ones who won't buy because of it isn't an ideal situation, it just covers the loss. I'm going to stick with this poll's approximate 20% loss as a nice middle ground because there are other forums where opinion is divided differently, some communities are more averse to steam than others. So, the assumption that steam sales might make up for that lost 20% doesn't negate the fact that it's still a lost 20%: we have -20% who won't buy due to steam +20% who would make up for it, when we could easily have 20% who buy a non-steam version and another 20% who will buy a steam version. It still constitutes lost sales and puts a dent in the long term viability of the series no matter how we try to paint it. And it's sad, because all this happens over something that's completely optional to use and definitely non-critical to the day to day operation of the sim, since it already has the necessary tools to function on its own.

Which brings us to your final point. Forcing things on people and p*ssing off roughly 1/5th of your potential customer bases is not the way to form an online community under one roof.
First of all, the game will still support integration with 3rd party server browsers and multiplayer tools according to the developers. And since steam is pretty much forced on those who would rather not have it, the people who don't like it will switch to a community custom-made solution at the first possible moment, not only out of personal preference but to also reinforce the point that for what they want to do with the sim steam is dead weight.

If by having a community under a single roof you mean flying on the same servers then i can agree, but we had that already in IL2 with 3rd party tools. If you think that the people who dislike steam are suddenly going to be joining groups left and right and growing a buddylist the size of a pirate's beard, think again.

You are perfectly entitled to your opinion of course, but you seem to miss the fact that the simulator community is not some "won't play call of duty 4" group who will buckle under the slightest pressure. I'm not saying we are superior somehow, in fact i detest elitism wherever it may appear. What i'm saying is that having a bigger average age among our members, it's easier for people who dislike something to stick to their guns and support their convictions. People who are against this decision will buy the game when it's in the bargain bin, if they even buy it at all, neither will they use steam's community features because they prefer 3rd party tools and squad/server forums. This will not only hurt sales, it will fragment the community as well which is the exact opposite of what you hope for.

And since the one person i can speak for with complete authority is my own self, let me give you an example. The modding community for IL2 show a far greater percentage of disapproval for Steam. How long do you think it will take for them, a vast group of tinkerers, to issue a work-around that bypasses Steam without touching the rest of the copy protection (because if they bypass both, then it could be classified as helping piracy)? And when such a work-around appears and CoD is supported in 3rd party server browsers, why would i keep using Steam? I'm going to be getting rid of it a.s.a.p and reverting to a modus operandi that suits me best, there's no doubt about it.

Don't get me wrong, i'm still buying this and i will never pirate a flight sim. However i have no use for Steam, its promotional offers or its social features and since i'm going to be a legitimate customer, i'm going to make use of my consumer rights to my own backup copy that law grants me and bypass something that may very well be something good for you, but it's something i don't need and as a result won't tolerate when there are alternatives around. If i need to use a crack on a game i actually bought in order for it to work in a hassle-free manner, then so be it. The law says it doesn't make me a pirate since i have bought the game, plus it won't be the first time i have used such work-arounds on games i bought in a perfectly legal manner.

I agree that certain people are way too critical of Steam and many spread inaccurate information. However, there is an equal number of pro-steam people who can't really provide a satisfactory answer on what the rest of us gain from using it, they just run around repeating the same things which more or less consists of "it works fine for me". Then they extrapolate that just because they like it, everyone else will. Well, this is not going to happen, at least not overnight.

Not to mention that the publishers have nothing to gain steam-wise from people like us. If you use steam and have a buddylist and so on then yes, steam is cheap advertising because whenever you are flying CoD your friends will see it. In my case however, what's a useful feature for you is unnecessary fluff for me.

Even with steam enabled, i won't be able to use the community features in a way that promotes the game. If i join a group it will be an IL2CoD group where people already know of the game, if i add someone to my buddylist it will be a person i met online in a DF server who's already a customer and the reason is simple: i don't play the majority of the kind of games published through Steam so i don't have anyone to advertise to.

It really baffles me that when we could have a best of both worlds scenario with two separate versions that would keep everyone happy and boost sales, both on steam and outside it, the majority of people is sitting here with horns locked on a debate consisting of "steam is the devil- no, steam is baby jesus".

Steam is a third party tool just like hyperlobby, people who like it will use it and people who don't will not, it's as simple as that. The lack of choice in the matter doesn't mean the community won't create a choice by themselves, let's not be naive about it.

In that sense maybe we're all wasting our time discussing this. I'm not interested in convincing anyone not to like Steam, not like i could if i wanted to. In a similar fashion, you can't convince me to like it either. Nobody can do anything about it if 5-6 months down the line i disable steam on my collector's edition through a 3rd party mod and start connecting to multiplayer through hyperlobby. It will be as if the game never had Steam in the first place.

So what is all the fuss about then, you will ask. Well, the fuss is that while i will take the plunge and endure this in the hopes of a community mod in the future, 1 in every 5 people apparently will not and this means lost money to the developers and possibly endangering the development of expansions for the rest of us.

The fact that all of this is totally preventable makes me consider not Steam per se as a platform but the lack of choice in using it, a completely stupid decision that is against everyone's long term interests. It's the publishers who are cutting their nose to spite their face in this, because they think they can force everyone to use this platform as a cheap advertising vehicle, when the reality is that most of the anti-steam legitimate customers will be running their legally purchased game with some form of no-steam crack within a few months.

People who can't or won't realize this think that someday we will magically come to like it and accept something that is not a matter of facts but personal taste and as such, is completely subjective. Sorry, not gonna happen anytime soon. Remember that old saying "the beatings will continue until morale improves?". Well, it seems like we're in a situation of "the matter will keep surfacing until options are included".