King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North Release Date Announced / Pre-Order Available

[Dwagginz]

Originally Posted by saroumana

You can disable auto-update on steam, so what the problem ? Also you can ask to a refund if the game don't work.

Extremely unreliable - there are reports of games forcing you to update them even if you have updates turned off. And no, not really. Aside from extreme circumstances, the only time you'll ever get a refund from Steam is when you cancel a pre-purchase before release. I've tried getting refunds for broken games, and it just isn't possible. They might do it once or twice per account, but on the whole? No, Steam don't do refunds.

Originally Posted by saroumana

The only problem with steam is the price : they're more expensible than other platform.

That depends on your location. As someone in the UK, Steam can be more expensive than Origin or GamersGate, but there are games on GOG that cost more than their Steam versions or ones on GamersGate that are more expensive than those on Steam. Prices vary between retailers.

[J.B.]

Originally Posted by saroumana

Also you can ask to a refund if the game don't work.

In addition to what Dwagginz said: What about the games you bought as Retails form other publishers than Steam and that have to updated via Steam. Do you really think that Steam will refund this? Or any other seller where you bought the game, months before?

Steam might be a good thing in a lot of cases, but can be a pain under certain circumstances (mostly when third parties (publisher, etc.) who use Steamworks) are involved).

Greetz

J.B.

[mbpopolano24]

Originally Posted by Dwagginz

Could be wrong, but can't you only start Steam's offline mode if you're online?

Correct. You can ONLY start offline if you did it while in online mode. So if you lose connection and forgot to go offline, well, you can't play.

Also, all very true about waiting time, forced updates that can ruin your game (same happened to me for Fallout NV after 50 hours playing, an update broke it for me and I was not able to play again for weeks, until a FAN-made fix came out...)

Look, I understand why some people like Steam and do not understand these problems. I sometimes can use a very fast, ALWAYS online connection and I don't even notice Steam. Everything is quick, fast, smooth.

But to play I have to use a very slow and unreliable connection most of the times, and then my life become very complicated. I play to enjoy life, not to have even more problems and frustration.

In sum, I adore this series, played them all and loved them all, and I have always pre-order and played full price to support them. But this move to Steam only is just... wrong.

Developers need to get in their head the NO DRM works. Most people are honest, and will support their game. Pirates will steal their game anyway. Look what’s happening in Kickstartert and GOG. I love GOG, I snatch every good game from there even if I have already a copy. You can save your digital copy and install it anywhere, anytime, no problems.

[jeroenf]

Hi,
I have a suggestion regarding kings's bounty armored princess with the addon crossworlds.
I have bought both games a long time ago, but what me bothered was the annoying DRM on crossworlds (a limited number of installs possible)

I know the first kings bounty game (legends) is available from gog.com
my suggestions is that 1c will after the release of warriors of the north also distribute kings bounty armored princess + crosswords, or perhaps kings bounty platinum (legends + armored princess + crossworlds) through gog.com

I know publishers dont always like to use DRM free platforms, and gog used to be called 'good old games' as distributers only wanted to use gog with their older games - but hey, next week princess+crossworlds is no longer the latest kings bounty. A good oppertunity to start using gog for this good old game.

I already own the games, but I think using gog for kings bounty platinum will be great for new fans.

[jake21]

This was a bug that they fixed some time ago; there is no need to speculate try it yourself - start a game - pull your ethernet cable and then exit the game and try to run it again. Should work fine.

Originally Posted by mbpopolano24

Correct. You can ONLY start offline if you did it while in online mode. So if you lose connection and forgot to go offline, well, you can't play.

Also, all very true about waiting time, forced updates that can ruin your game (same happened to me for Fallout NV after 50 hours playing, an update broke it for me and I was not able to play again for weeks, until a FAN-made fix came out...)

Look, I understand why some people like Steam and do not understand these problems. I sometimes can use a very fast, ALWAYS online connection and I don't even notice Steam. Everything is quick, fast, smooth.

But to play I have to use a very slow and unreliable connection most of the times, and then my life become very complicated. I play to enjoy life, not to have even more problems and frustration.

In sum, I adore this series, played them all and loved them all, and I have always pre-order and played full price to support them. But this move to Steam only is just... wrong.

Developers need to get in their head the NO DRM works. Most people are honest, and will support their game. Pirates will steal their game anyway. Look what’s happening in Kickstartert and GOG. I love GOG, I snatch every good game from there even if I have already a copy. You can save your digital copy and install it anywhere, anytime, no problems.

[jake21]

My guess is they will do this but it might take 6 months or a year. So if you don't mind the wait it is a fine way to do things. I have quite a few games via gog (including witcher 2) but I also have many games via steam and quite frankly I (personally) been happy with steam. The one thing I do like about gog is ease of running their games on linux via wine; but i prefer steam's update mechanism over gog (which can be a bit painful esp due to lack of notification of updates).

Originally Posted by jeroenf

Hi,
I have a suggestion regarding kings's bounty armored princess with the addon crossworlds.
I have bought both games a long time ago, but what me bothered was the annoying DRM on crossworlds (a limited number of installs possible)

I know the first kings bounty game (legends) is available from gog.com
my suggestions is that 1c will after the release of warriors of the north also distribute kings bounty armored princess + crosswords, or perhaps kings bounty platinum (legends + armored princess + crossworlds) through gog.com

I know publishers dont always like to use DRM free platforms, and gog used to be called 'good old games' as distributers only wanted to use gog with their older games - but hey, next week princess+crossworlds is no longer the latest kings bounty. A good oppertunity to start using gog for this good old game.

I already own the games, but I think using gog for kings bounty platinum will be great for new fans.

[Sir Whiskers]

Originally Posted by mbpopolano24

Developers need to get in their head the NO DRM works. Most people are honest, and will support their game. Pirates will steal their game anyway. Look what’s happening in Kickstartert and GOG. I love GOG, I snatch every good game from there even if I have already a copy. You can save your digital copy and install it anywhere, anytime, no problems.

Sneaksie stated that KB:WotN won't have DRM beyond the requirements for installing and patching, and I take him at his word. So I'm guessing that 1C is using SteamWorks for other reasons, perhaps to simplify the patching and support process. Clearly it has been a pain for them to support multiple versions of the previous games with different patches. It's a trade-off: save effort and cost for support, but at the expense of losing or delaying purchases from buyers who won't use Steam.

I suspect they'll review the sales numbers and that will impact what decisions are made about future releases. In the meantime, as others have said, I'll play other games while waiting for a non-Steam version of this one. Whatever happens, I hope they keep producing games in this series.

[MattCaspermeyer]

What about the Gamer's Gate version?

Does that require Steam?

I've gotten all 3 previous King's Bounty games from Gamer's Gate and didn't need Steam for any of those...

/C\/C\

[Dwagginz]

Originally Posted by MattCaspermeyer

What about the Gamer's Gate version?

Does that require Steam?

ALL versions of WotN will require Steam. The GamersGate store page also clearly states that WotN will require activation on Steam.

To go back to the above discussion; I don't mind using Steamworks, but I'm not blind to its flaws, hence my points above. It doesn't affect my purchase of WotN - the lack of a confirmed, detailed retail release is doing that - but I'm not sure why it's particularly needed. Then again, I don't know why it was needed for Fallout: New Vegas.

[Ragnin]

Originally Posted by saroumana

You can disable auto-update on steam, so what the problem ? Also you can ask to a refund if the game don't work.

I did disable the auto-updates and as Dwagginz pointed out it still forced updates on me. And there is still the problem of not being able to reinstall and choose which version i want.

And no they do not give refunds easily if at all. I bought a game from that was on sale for only $4. The game would not start at all, not on my nice computer, not on my older laptop. Both beat the min and recommend specs for the game but I could not get it to launch on either computer. I go and look at the forum's and see that a lot of people have the problem. I ask steam for a refund and they refuse, nothing I said would get me a refund. I also hate that I have to ask for everything via email with them because they don't want to have a call center. So then even simple things takes several days of email exchange to try to solve. Or if they do have a number its buried and not easy to find.

As for price I'm in the US so tend to be about the same as other places. I mostly used them for their sales.

I will point out that I generally have no problems running games with steamworks overall. If I receive a game code for steam as a gift I'll use it and play the game still. Other then the patching and refund thing most of my gripes with them are minor. I just don't feel like I should have to put up with all those things in order to play a game I paid for. I don't care about achievements, leaderboards or any of that other stuff so it's not worth it for me to have to put up with Steam just to get those things. And since this game has to compete with other games for my limited amount of money I do factor in the fact it has steamworks as a negative against it and so will end up buying something else that won't have it. Such as Torchlight 2 or Divinity 2 Directors Edition from gog (my second copy of divinity 2 because I wanted one with out a DRM).