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Combat Mission and Steam


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i play in clan RO2 and now what we are started see too many smart ass from arma 3 and steam forums about RO2 are full of idiots hos complaining about ewerything for game and sending wrong info about game and reason to this is because its too hard to them and its not happy shootter like COD or BF . sou steam can be good marketing place it can kill games wery fast . sou this gind simulator ww2 game is tjust do spesial game to there if you are not realy think and learn real war fare. about Civ 5 good there are peoples ho complaining that " game on hardest dificult is too hard " and this guys play that game serie for a first time of them life . then they give wrong info game it self. does that make good for the game then ?

and one thing more , i newer sayed we are special but this game serie is madet more or less to adults

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"and one thing more , i newer sayed we are special but this game serie is madet more or less to adults "

So those 70 million steam users are children? The average age of a PC gamer is like 30.

I have 356 hours in Red Orchestra 2. The community isn't **** by any means. When there is a free weekend things go to hell because you have a huge influx of new players who have absolutely no experience playing the game. After those weekends are over there is about a week of craziness while people get used to it/drop out, and then everything is back to normal.

Looking at the RO2 steam forum right now there are a bunch of threads discussion technical problems people are having, one guy asking for advice, some threads in Russian, and a post by a developer. There are not people complaining about the game.

But the more important question is why does it matter that people complain? People are complaining in this forum right now. people complain all the time. CM is not an online experience. You play singleplayer or against a selected opponent. So what if Joe thinks he is buying Company of Heroes. You don't have to deal with him. Steam customer service handles any sort of refund and you can have a demo on the store page.

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same thing follow any game , multi or single and i didint newer say 70miljon children play trough steam . then when you are played 7 year RO ostfront serie and RO 2 plus been in clan hos working whit tripwire then start argue whit me about it. It seems like that you dont know what i mean adults in this subject. yes people complaining lots of any way and moust of that time they tjust dont understand how some thing work and then they think " its bug , game is brouken or unbalnce" and sou on.

anyway this game can be infoed and marked sou many other way than tjust by steam. im hundred 100 % game makers are calculate best selling rout to this game and in this case its not steam

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Can't believe no one has brought the following up.

Right now I'm streaming Close Combat from my main gaming rig in the office to my laptop connected to my 65 LED TV at 1080p via the Steam client. The gaming rig drives the game and the laptop is nothing more than a thin client in the end displaying the game on the tv.

Lets just say it looks darn nice.

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I'm betting one of the things that makes BFC stay away from Steam is its policy on upgrades. BFC have a method whereby you can upgrade or not as you choose, and retain unupgraded versions to play people who aren't on the same version as you. Making the CM2 engine autoupgrade and autopatch would be a programming task they might not want to undertake. Making it behave how Steam requests and requires is perhaps more work of the type they prefer not to do.

And then there's the perennial problem of once a game is bought on Steam, it has to be ugraded using Steam, and Steam upgrades can't upgrade a game that was bought off-Steam. Keeping the Steam and non-Steam versions interoperable might pose issues, too: BFC have a pretty idiosyncratic approach to programming, which serves them well in producing the game, but might throw up hurdles to such harmonisation.

And in the end, they're not in it to make millions of dollars, they're in it to make a living in an environment they can manage and tolerate. The sheer support load of the game going "Steamstream" might be more than they want to manage.

Edit: noticed this...

Can't believe no one has brought the following up.

Right now I'm streaming Close Combat from my main gaming rig in the office to my laptop connected to my 65 LED TV at 1080p via the Steam client. The gaming rig drives the game and the laptop is nothing more than a thin client in the end displaying the game on the tv.

Lets just say it looks darn nice.

IIRC, CMx2 will not work in any sort of virtualised environment. This might also be a reason BFC avoid the Steam thing, if Steam require that all their apps be amenable to such remote desktop shenanigans.

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I use steam.

The question for me is the price of games on it...

I mean, they sold good games for costs nearing nothing.

I 'm always curious of their price Policy.

Have you ever seen one BF game selled with 75% off ?, Wonder if the developper is asking for it or if steam only decide.

I can only imagine the hard work behind all CM, and can't imagine buy it for 5$

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I'm betting one of the things that makes BFC stay away from Steam is its policy on upgrades. BFC have a method whereby you can upgrade or not as you choose, and retain unupgraded versions to play people who aren't on the same version as you. Making the CM2 engine autoupgrade and autopatch would be a programming task they might not want to undertake. Making it behave how Steam requests and requires is perhaps more work of the type they prefer not to do.

And then there's the perennial problem of once a game is bought on Steam, it has to be ugraded using Steam, and Steam upgrades can't upgrade a game that was bought off-Steam. Keeping the Steam and non-Steam versions interoperable might pose issues, too: BFC have a pretty idiosyncratic approach to programming, which serves them well in producing the game, but might throw up hurdles to such harmonisation.

And in the end, they're not in it to make millions of dollars, they're in it to make a living in an environment they can manage and tolerate. The sheer support load of the game going "Steamstream" might be more than they want to manage.

Edit: noticed this...

IIRC, CMx2 will not work in any sort of virtualised environment. This might also be a reason BFC avoid the Steam thing, if Steam require that all their apps be amenable to such remote desktop shenanigans.

It's not remote desktop. It just streams the video to another client. Like the old days of linux where you would direct your video output to another device.

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I'm betting one of the things that makes BFC stay away from Steam is its policy on upgrades. BFC have a method whereby you can upgrade or not as you choose, and retain unupgraded versions to play people who aren't on the same version as you. Making the CM2 engine autoupgrade and autopatch would be a programming task they might not want to undertake. Making it behave how Steam requests and requires is perhaps more work of the type they prefer not to do.

And then there's the perennial problem of once a game is bought on Steam, it has to be ugraded using Steam, and Steam upgrades can't upgrade a game that was bought off-Steam. Keeping the Steam and non-Steam versions interoperable might pose issues, too: BFC have a pretty idiosyncratic approach to programming, which serves them well in producing the game, but might throw up hurdles to such harmonisation.

And in the end, they're not in it to make millions of dollars, they're in it to make a living in an environment they can manage and tolerate. The sheer support load of the game going "Steamstream" might be more than they want to manage.

Edit: noticed this...

IIRC, CMx2 will not work in any sort of virtualised environment. This might also be a reason BFC avoid the Steam thing, if Steam require that all their apps be amenable to such remote desktop shenanigans.

You do realize you can go to any of your games on the Steam client and exclude them from automatic updates. If you want to stay on a older version of a title you can no problem.

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Womble, that was true until recently. At this point I believe it is now possible to retain previous versions of a game.

Steam streaming works by sending a video codec from the main computer to the computer being streamed to. That computer then sends control commands back to the main computer. So CM is still being run on the main machine.

Kendar, game price is up to the developers/publishers. If you notice the Call of Duty games very rarely dip in price.

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BFC would be able to sell two copies of the game. From the BFC site and Steam. The Steam version would use Steam DRM and the BFC version would use the current DRM. As far as I know the DRM is only on activation so there shouldn't be any problems playing with people who have different versions.

Personally I would love to have Steam DRM. BFC's whole download system is frankly pretty terrible compared to what is regularly offered anywhere else in gaming. I mean you have a limited number of downloads and can only download the game you paid $50ish dollars for a year. There are also a whole slew of weird issues that crop up that Steam doesn't have.

As far as piracy goes I would be incredibly surprised if it was an actual problem for Combat Mission. The game simply isn't popular enough to maintain any sort of presence on torrent sites or to get cracks out fast enough to provide any sort of real damage to sales.

This might be pushing it, but as far as I can find there are no copies of CM:FI or CM:RT on any torrent sites. While there are copies of CM:BN, CM:A, and CM:SF they are several patches behind where the official copy is and there are no modules hosted anywhere.

Edit: actually I'm not sure that the current DRM would be forbidden on Steam. Many games still launch with Securom attached to it and Steam DRM.

I also want to point out again that the newest Close Combat game, Gateway to Caen, is making money hand over fist. It is currently the 3rd top seller on Steam.

Well now we go from DRM to distribution. The BFC DRM does indeed have the advantage of supporting offline play relatively smoothly for those who have a dedicated gaming computer that goes through few changes and might want to play with no connectivity. A large part of the CM player base as it hangs out on this forum supports that choice, whether I personally like it or not (so the best I can hope for is dual licensing schemes).

BFC's distribution is absolutely terrible. The base game went fine-ish with the CMRT release, except that there was no restartable download on a huge file. But the amateurish and insecure patch distribution is a real problem that I think nobody denies. At the same time they don't allow us to distribute among ourselves although the files are binary identical. That, again, is done due to fear of piracy, although from my point of view that should be the DRM's job, not control of the distribution file. If BFC was actually serious about that they should digitally sign the distribution files with the customer id so that they can be tracked, but BFC doesn't have the technology base for that.

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I use steam.

The question for me is the price of games on it...

I mean, they sold good games for costs nearing nothing.

I 'm always curious of their price Policy.

Have you ever seen one BF game selled with 75% off ?, Wonder if the developper is asking for it or if steam only decide.

I can only imagine the hard work behind all CM, and can't imagine buy it for 5$

"3. Who sets the price for my game on Steam?

Pricing is very title specific, and we've got a lot of data and experience to help you decide on what the best price is for your title. We'll work with you to figure out pricing."

You see there is no extra cost for the game owner. Reaching a customer for $5 who payed $0 so far? Why not? And if he tells his buddies who arrive after the sale is over?

I am pretty sure that Steve wouldn't look favorably at what some Steam sales dude who just pushed some bird crap last week has to tell him about CM pricing :D

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I do wonder about the comparative profit models. Most computer games appear to try get in quick, sell a gazillion copies to teenage boys (most of that $$ going to the distributor), then 8 months later the game's in the remainder bin for 5 bucks. BFC's profit model seems to be sell enough product to keep alive while keeping most of the profits for themselves, then continue to nurture the product to keep it viable for continued sales years later.

You may recall BFC had partnered-up for CMSF and a year later the game was indeed to be found in the remainder bins for 5 bucks. Plus the partner stopped supporting it. Ouch. Not exactly the BFC way.

I have to laugh at the whining about CM patch distribution. You don't like free CM patches? There's always CM:Afghanistan, hasn't been patched or supported by our Russian friends for ages. Who needs water, flamethrowers, AA guns firing at planes and tank riders? :o

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You do realize you can go to any of your games on the Steam client and exclude them from automatic updates. If you want to stay on a older version of a title you can no problem.

And if that worked, maybe Steam wouldn't irritate me quite so much.

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I do wonder about the comparative profit models. Most computer games appear to try get in quick, sell a gazillion copies to teenage boys (most of that $$ going to the distributor), then 8 months later the game's in the remainder bin for 5 bucks. BFC's profit model seems to be sell enough product to keep alive while keeping most of the profits for themselves, then continue to nurture the product to keep it viable for continued sales years later.

You may recall BFC had partnered-up for CMSF and a year later the game was indeed to be found in the remainder bins for 5 bucks. Plus the partner stopped supporting it. Ouch. Not exactly the BFC way.

I have to laugh at the whining about CM patch distribution. You don't like free CM patches? There's always CM:Afghanistan, hasn't been patched or supported by our Russian friends for ages. Who needs water, flamethrowers, AA guns firing at planes and tank riders? :o

Well, Steam appears to support holding back patches and I see no indication that they force sales on you. And support is through the original company anyway.

That makes it much better (in these respects) than any of the previous distribution partners which really ticked off a lot of players, and had delayed patches and the like.

Quite frankly, I wish BFC had operated with the current attitude back in those days.

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I do wonder about the comparative profit models. Most computer games appear to try get in quick, sell a gazillion copies to teenage boys (most of that $$ going to the distributor), then 8 months later the game's in the remainder bin for 5 bucks. BFC's profit model seems to be sell enough product to keep alive while keeping most of the profits for themselves, then continue to nurture the product to keep it viable for continued sales years later.

You may recall BFC had partnered-up for CMSF and a year later the game was indeed to be found in the remainder bins for 5 bucks. Plus the partner stopped supporting it. Ouch. Not exactly the BFC way.

I actually got into CM because I found a $5 copy of CM:SF. I then spent around $80 on modules from BFC, and went on to purchase CM:BN and CM:RT.

Anyway how pricing for games generally works, especially for bigger titles, is that you have numerous different price points that you sell at for a period of time.

So a game starts at $60.

For the first two weeks you will sell 100 copies a week at that price. After that you are reduced to selling 10 copies a week at that same price point.

You now drop the price to $30 and sell 100 copies a week for two weeks. After those two weeks you are only selling 10 copies a week. So you drop the price to $10 and you are back to selling 100 copies a week.

This is a gross simplification, but at each price point you have a sweet spot of people who are willing to buy your game. Once that sweet spot has been exhausted you drop the price

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In my opinion It would help battlefront to put the combat nission series on stean buy personally I dont think combat mission would sell very well with younger kids like call of duty fans I came to this conclusion .Since I am 16 when people see me playing combat mission they say the game looks like garbage so it cant be good from what I have seen a lot of people my age seem to prefer graphics over gameplay.

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Unfortunately that0s true Jerome, despite all debates over steam, I must say that even there there are some niche or particular games there with little communities of people who like them, but the vast majority is made up of those who play the most common games (dota etc.)

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PP, your logic is good, but please understand that BFC has considered all angles on this issue and have decided that Steam is not a good distribution method for their product at this time. No amount of argument in this thread is likely to change their minds.

We all admire your devotion to CM. Welcome to the brotherhood.

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PP, your logic is good, but please understand that BFC has considered all angles on this issue and have decided that Steam is not a good distribution method for their product at this time. No amount of argument in this thread is likely to change their minds.

I've seen this discussion come up numerous times and I realize that it won't actually go anywhere. At this point it is discussion for discussions sake.

I sometimes wonder if have a cheaper base game would increase total sales dollars. Right now to even get into CM you have to drop $50. Which is a quite a bit of cash. So you have this big impediment to play and then a number of expansions that are also very expensive. Might there be more sales if the base game was cheaper? It would make the expansion more palatable cost wise, and two modules would net $80 in sales? + whatever the base game were to cost.

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"...you have to drop $50. Which is a quite a bit of cash."

Compared to what?

Most high fidelity computer sims and cardboard wargames sell for that and a LOT more. When you consider the relatively short life of a typical computer game on one's HD and the years we have got out of the CM series, CM is incredibly inexpensive based on hours or play.

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"Most high fidelity computer sims and cardboard wargames sell for that and a LOT more. "

Which is why I don't buy them. They are really expensive for what you get.

I rarely buy any games for more than $20. A single CM game is equivalent to 3-5 other purchases. it is not a small purchase.

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"Most high fidelity computer sims and cardboard wargames sell for that and a LOT more. "

Which is why I don't buy them. They are really expensive for what you get.

That's a personal choice. You are perfectly free to spend your money or not as you like, but others have that same freedom. As someone has already mentioned, the value received in proportion to money spent simply does not work out the way you are suggesting. And whether the buying public recognizes that or not is their little red wagon. I think by far the majority of computer game players are not going to be interested in CM, it's simply not their cup of tea. And those that will are likely going to hear about the game and at least try out the demos. What happens after that is up to them. I really don't think CM's pricing policy is out of line. Could there be more efficient ways to get the word out to potential customers? Yeah, probably. But at the same time, I doubt that the increase in sales would be very dramatic. So that has to be balanced against the effort involved.

Michael

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