Why on EARTH would I pre-order from UBISOFT!!!

[kingpinda]

Lol... I thought ok you know what? I will go for the digital download. I believe maddox will get more money for digital downloads. Since its just software. No need to make a nice production etc. pressing of dvd's etc.

So i travel to ubisoft. And i click on preorder. oh nice submarine thingy for free. and whats this? ADD EXTENDED DOWNLOAD SERVICE for 8 euros...

WTF? I have to pay 8 euros so my game will be downloadable for a measly 2 years??? Without it I'm screwed if i forget to backup the game to dvd and my drive chrashes????

Screw you ubisoft I'll never going to buy from you now. I'll wait for steam or d2d or something else.

[thefriskydingo]

That's why i think I'll go with steam.

[JG1_Wanderfalke]

steam is great

[Feathered_IV]

The way things have been going, even if Monsieur Ubi himself delivered a hard copy of Cliffs of Dover to my door and offered to make me a plate of bacon and eggs as it installed. I think I'd still rather get it from Steam. Just to ensure that Ubisoft see no profit from me for their piss poor handling of the game.

[Letum]

So Ubi don't get any profit from team sales?
Do we know that Ubi are not handling DD?

[CharveL]

1C gets a bigger piece of the pie from Steam.

Steam won't expire your copy.

Unless Steam is late out of the gate that's where I'll be getting it from.

[Blackdog_kt]

Developer = maddox games
Publisher = Ubi in the west, 1C in the east

The 60:40 or 70:30 deal is between steam and publisher, not the developer.

Maddox games is not self-publishing, they are using two publishing companies, so they are not the ones getting that 70%.

Conclusion?

Oleg and his team will probably not get 70% of your money if you buy it on Steam because Oleg =/= 1c.

It's the company that has the publishing rights on Steam that will and who knows, it could just as well be Ubi as it could be 1C. The Maddox games team (the actual developers) will get whatever cut of that 70% their contract with the publisher specifies.

If you do the math you'll see that in such a case it's actually better not to publish in multiple platforms in a layered manner, but in separate versions. Let's assume that Ubi and 1c are getting a 30% as well. With such a deal we'll have:

30% to Steam
30% to Ubi or 1c (whichever has the rights to publish on steam)
40% to Oleg's team

That's more than half the price of the game not going to Oleg's pockets.

If they did a completely separate version for Steam and a completely non-steam version through regular retail and digital download, it would be better. For the steam version you'd have a 70:30 in favor of Oleg's team and for the non steam versions you'd have a 50:50 or 60:30 or 70:30 between Oleg and Ubi/1c, depending on the region and agreementes. Since publishing only on retail tends to give a bigger cut to the publisher, i just went with an arbitrary number, it might be 60:40 in favor of publisher, who knows.

What i'm trying to say here is that just because 1c gets more money by selling on Steam (if it's 1c that's selling there and not Ubi), it probably doesn't mean that money is going to Oleg's pockets, so supporting the developer team is not a solid reason to buy from Steam until we know more details about their deal (if we ever will). In fact, the combined cut of Steam and Ubi/1c could be upwards of 50% of the game's price.

Depending on the financial agreements between Oleg and Ubi/1c, it might actually be better for the developers if you ordered straight from a single publisher.

For example, if Ubi and/or 1c get 50% for every order in their online shop, but they also get 30% for every Steam copy (on top of Steam's 30%), it's actually better to order directly from them depending on your region:

splitting it 50/50 is better than having
game price - (30% for steam + 30% for publisher) = 40% for Oleg's team

Until we know more about the way everyone involved gets his cut, saying that buying from Steam makes Oleg more money is just the same as saying that buying from Ubi does: both are pure guesswork.

[TheGrunch]

Haha! Great minds think alike! I just made basically the same post a few hours ago in the Poll about Steam users thread.

[kimosabi]

Can I order the English version from 1C? I like 1C better.

[The Kraken]

The only thing we know is that the publishing situation must be complicated between Ubi, 1C and Steam/Valve. Quite likely there's some complex contract involved about who is allowed to publish which version at which time - otherwise I don't see how the game wouldn't be shown at least as a "coming soon" title on Steam.

I'll gladly wait until that clears up though, I'm on vacation anyway during the release week