sell on Steam?

[SgtHatred]

So, show us this super successful game company that you created—you always seem to have a smarmy little dig to throw out there—put your money where your mouth is. Show us this ingenius ground breaking tactical wargame you've made, show us your super-awesome website, and show us your massive sales figures. You seem to be quite the authority. Show BFC how it's done.

 

 

Mord.

Are you kidding?! Have you seen how poorly game developers get paid? No thank you.

 

I am an authority on software development though, thanks for noticing.

[-Eddie-]

I wish everyday this was cm was on steam. I even launch them through steam so i can have access to the overlay.

One day maybe. But for now the master installers are a step in the right direction.

Top tip. Add a non-Steam game to library. Ta-da! Launches right from Steam and the overlay is available in game.

[von Luck]

Battlefront has been “assessing steam” for a very, very, very long time. Each time a compilation of old arguments or reaffirmed nebulous umbrella statements are used. For example the argument that

Steam would require additional backend work. We covered that earlier here Battlefront appears to be Steam compliant with its practices.

Or Steam would create a competition to the Battlefront.com sales by putting their product on sale without their permission.

Battlefront has the option supply steam with permission to put the product on sale.

Or Steam won’t increase our sales or revenue because this is such a niche game that nobody will buy it. Who actually believes this? Honestly …

Or Steam would pocket too much of the proceeds to warrant sales over its service.

The sales floor would have to stay the same and all the purchases would have to go through Steam. Steam takes what – 30% this would require that Steam then increases the sale of the game by that much to justify its use. As seen in my previous article if different sales mechanics are used this can easily increase flash sales which in turn have a respectable chance of increasing your sales floor. Not to mention that simply being on Steam is likely to increase your sales floor because again – it’s a huge community.

OK – so Steam is many things however it is first and foremost an enormous community of gamers whom log into it every day browse its store every day and purchase from it. The Steam community is certainly NOT the end all be all – however it is a huge resource that WOULD CERTAINLY increase visibility of this product. There are a great many niche games released on steam that find their way into customer library’s because of a variety of marketing techniques. Growing the base of players is a monumental task that requires a multifaceted approach. The reasons for avoiding this MASSIVLY POPULAR venue appear old and tired.

So what is it that makes going to Steam such a game losing proposition?

von Luck

[MikeyD]

I remember reading once that between your doctor's visit and your end-of-month bill in the mail there may well be twelve layers of bureaucracy between the two events, and of course each layer takes their own small cut of the action. At what point does adding additional layers of bureaucracy between you and your provider become counterproductive? I'm talking both computer games and health care services.

[SgtHatred]

I remember reading once that between your doctor's visit and your end-of-month bill in the mail there may well be twelve layers of bureaucracy between the two events, and of course each layer takes their own small cut of the action. At what point does adding additional layers of bureaucracy between you and your provider become counterproductive? I'm talking both computer games and health care services.

I don't know. At what point does someone become so deluded that they compare selling a video game on a popular digital store front with the bureaucratic nightmare that is American healthcare?

 

You didn't mean to do that right?

[sburke]

This was Steve's response last time to some of the same arguments by some of the same posters.

http://community.battlefront.com/topic/114499-combat-mission-and-steam/?p=1525279

I dunno what to tell you guys. It isn't the forum you need to convince. Start a signature campaign, do a poll, send a marketing guru over to Steve's house (make sure he brings some nice Belgian ales). Otherwise we are all just talking in the wind.

[SgtHatred]

This was Steve's response last time to some of the same arguments by some of the same posters.

http://community.battlefront.com/topic/114499-combat-mission-and-steam/?p=1525279

I dunno what to tell you guys. It isn't the forum you need to convince. Start a signature campaign, do a poll, send a marketing guru over to Steve's house (make sure he brings some nice Belgian ales). Otherwise we are all just talking in the wind.

 

Yeah, I've seen variations of his argument several times, but in a world where Slitherine, Matrix, DCS, Paradox, and those crazy Train Simulator people can all overcome those same issues with their grognard-y simulation-spaz excel trainers, I remain unswayed. 

 

I'd be content with a fix to the activation system so that I won't have to beg for access to something I've paid for after a couple years though.

Edited January 5, 2015 by SgtHatred

[Mord]

Are you kidding?! Have you seen how poorly game developers get paid? No thank you.

 

I am an authority on software development though, thanks for noticing.

 

I noticed 'cause you are always telling us. But anyway I don't have a dog in this fight. If BFC stays away from Steam I am fine. If they join up with Steam, I am fine. It has no bearing on my existence or gaming.

 

So, ok software genius type guy...see if you can figure out how to fix the blood bug in Shogun II. You do that and I'll join the Steam scream team.

 

 

Mord.

[Doug Williams]

This thread has gone the way of all the previous Steam threads.....poorly. The common theme is new forum members, who may or may not actually play Combat Mission, come on here and try to convince BFC that they are fools for not having Combat Mission on Steam. Forum members who have been buying the Combat Mission series for many years understandably respond in a negative fashion (whether or not they actually use Steam) to these know-it-all new forum members. The new forum members are offended that anyone dares to question them, and arguments fly. On occasion, BFC (in the form of Steve) will make a post or two describing why they aren't interested in participating in Steam at this time. Eventually, the thread gets locked. In the meantime, the thread gets many views, in the same way that a roadside traffic accident gets gawked at by rubberneckers.

 

 

As for me, as I stated earlier, I really don't care if Combat Mission is on Steam or not. I buy games on Steam, and I buy games that aren't on Steam. If I want to buy and play a game, it makes little difference to me if it is on Steam.

[sburke]

Question for quantifying this subject.  One big item that is the core of a Steam argument for BF is the size of the Steam community. I have not really seen a large number of people coming here saying I heard about this game from another discussion group on Steam, wondered why that might be considering we are comparing CM to other games a fair amount here.  I tried to find a way to see if there was some type of quantifiable numbers we could at least agree to.

 

So far this is all I have. Can someone who is more familiar with data collecting at Steam maybe fill in some?

 

Battlefront forum membership as of today 36,253 - Granted that is more than just CM folks, but everyone here sees all the same forums so they'd at least have CM exposure.

CMBS Thread count as some kind of indication of activity - now this is a game announced last year but not yet released. 139 topics  Red thunder 1,675, CMFI 2013, CMBN 10.920

 

On Steam

Steam- Close Combat - this is a released game on steam looks to be about June of last year, thread count 209.

Slitherine group which covers all their games - 959 members it is a new group started only November last year.

 

 

Matrix games forum 8,834 active members (not sure what defines active)

I don't think this is representative, but not sure where I might find something showing a better perspective.

 

What am I missing?

 

What I am trying to do is show some quantifiable way of making this not just another argument that goes no where and recurs every 6 months with no real progress to it.  Steve states his reasons for not wanting to go to steam, other folks say those are old tired arguments and that there is this huge potential in steam, but no ones seems to really be able to prove anything one way or the other.  The numbers above at face value say, sorry this community is already larger and more active than a comparable community on steam.  Maybe that is true, maybe it isn't.  Can a Steam aficionado point me in the right direction for better numbers?

Edited January 5, 2015 by sburke

[borg]

now let's get an Abrams to deal with this $  

[SgtHatred]

 

 

What am I missing?

 

 

The fact that Matrix and Slitherine aren't engaged in a secret plot to lose money by continuing to release games on Steam? 

 

I don't know about others, but I'll always seek out a game's community site over Steam's community forums. The community stuff is certainly not a strong point of Steam.

 

If you are curious about numbers, look at the 5+ million people who are logged in at any given time.

[Rinaldi]

Question for quantifying this subject.  One big item that is the core of a Steam argument for BF is the size of the Steam community. I have not really seen a large number of people coming here saying I heard about this game from another discussion group on Steam, wondered why that might be considering we are comparing CM to other games a fair amount here.  I tried to find a way to see if there was some type of quantifiable numbers we could at least agree to.

 

 

 

For what its worth, I heard about this through Steam. A friend was playing it with his overlay on, I saw there was no store page, the name of the game immediately piqued my interest however. 

 

I'm a firm believer that Steam would expand the game's playerbase - but whether its enough to offset the trickle-down payment is not something I'm comfortable commenting on; Battlefront clearly doesn't feel so. In terms of simplicity of product distribution, I think it could only benefit from a switch to Steam; but the customer service so far is on top of handling any problems (like which I had recently trying to upgrade to 3.0).

[Doug Williams]

I don't know about others, but I'll always seek out a game's community site over Steam's community forums. The community stuff is certainly not a strong point of Steam.

 

Good point there. If you want to get the pulse of a game community go to the developer's forums, not some third party distributor.

[m0317624]

This thread has gone the way of all the previous Steam threads.....poorly. The common theme is new forum members, who may or may not actually play Combat Mission, come on here and try to convince BFC that they are fools for not having Combat Mission on Steam. Forum members who have been buying the Combat Mission series for many years understandably respond in a negative fashion (whether or not they actually use Steam) to these know-it-all new forum members. The new forum members are offended that anyone dares to question them, and arguments fly. On occasion, BFC (in the form of Steve) will make a post or two describing why they aren't interested in participating in Steam at this time. Eventually, the thread gets locked. In the meantime, the thread gets many views, in the same way that a roadside traffic accident gets gawked at by rubberneckers.

 

 

As for me, as I stated earlier, I really don't care if Combat Mission is on Steam or not. I buy games on Steam, and I buy games that aren't on Steam. If I want to buy and play a game, it makes little difference to me if it is on Steam.

 

Just because some of us haven't wasted entire days of our lives posting thousands of comments on these messageboards does not mean we can't be long-time Battlefront customers. I've played every single CM title (except Afghanistan) since the year they were released. Yet on every forum where the Steam topic rears its head, there is at least one guy like you who dismisses the facts he doesn't like based on nothing more than the post count of those who post them. If anything, you should wonder why so many people who play these games want little interaction with these forums. They don't exactly have a reputation to be proud of on many of the more general gaming sites (at least those few who have even heard of Battlefront).

 

I don't care about where I buy my games either. My last non-Steam purchase was Elite: Dangerous, and I happily bought it from the developer's own store. My next purchase will be Black Sea, and I'll happily buy it from Battlefront. What I do care about is exposure. A game like Elite: Dangerous doesn't need Steam, it's got plenty of attention in the press and media, even tv ads, and as a result of all that good PR it sells like hotcakes and is guaranteed a future filled with good expansions and enjoyable content for me to buy. Nobody knows Combat Mission. It gets no press, it gets no attention and as a result it gets only a tiny fraction of the sales it could have. Less money means less content, longer waits between new releases, less value for my time and money. A simple Steam launch handled well means exposure, exposure means thousands of new customers, new customers means more money and more money means more Combat Mission for us all to enjoy. As was claimed as a dismissal of Steam by one of the anti-Steam crowd earlier, 99.9% of gamers supposedly aren't even interested in these games. Well, Steam has over 65 million customers: 0.1% of 65 million is still 65.000 customers. Has any Combat Mission title ever even sold that many copies?

Edited January 5, 2015 by m0317624

[Malakie]

For me, the one thing I do not like about the way Battlefront operates is the key system having limits and we customers being forced to rely on Battlefront to use a product we bought and paid for.

 

I recently had to replace a hard drive.   Except when I went to unlicense my copies, it would not work.  I tried contacting Battlefront only to have my emails rejected..  I could not wait and ended up taking care of things on my end.   Now for the last 3 weeks I have been trying to get a response out of Battlefront even here on the forums because every email I send them is being rejected by their servers.. and the weird part is the rejection is not happening right away rather days later when I suddenly get an email stating as much.

 

I have so far not heard from anyone at Battlefront regarding my request for help even though I also posted over a week ago here on the forums as well requesting it and why.

 

I am not a happy customer because I own a number of their products.. and cannot use any of them because I cannot reach Battlefront to fix the issues with the elicense system.   

 

If Battlefront were to close up, every single one of us would own hundreds if not thousands of dollars of Battlefront products that we would eventually be unable to use at all because of the way the system locks us out after a few activations.   IF the un-license system were flawless then perhaps it might not be such an issue.. but it is not.

 

And THIS is why I think a Steam move would be a good thing for Battlefront, in my opinion.

[Rambler]

If BFC put CM on Steam, it doesn't mean they'd have to stop selling it on their own site. See Eagle Dynamics. For those who don't know who they are, they're only one of the best flight sim devs out there today. You can get their product either on Steam or on their website. Imagine that.

 

As starter of the first CM on Steam thread way back when, I used to think it was a good idea. Not sure about it now, considering what BFC has been putting out is borderline half-baked shovelware with problems that don't get fixed for months and months and months. Not to mention their retarded mess of an upgrade system. BFC would get pilloried by the Steam users, and rightly so. Although, maybe a good kick in the pants is what BFC needs to get their QC back in gear.

Edited January 5, 2015 by Rambler

[AttorneyAtWar]

If BFC put CM on Steam, it doesn't mean they'd have to stop selling it on their own site. See Eagle Dynamics. For those who don't know who they are, they're only one of the best flight sim devs out there today. You can get their product either on Steam or on their website. Imagine that.

 

As starter of the first CM on Steam thread way back when, I used to think it was a good idea. Not sure about it now, considering what BFC has been putting out is borderline half-baked shovelware with problems that don't get fixed for months and months and months. Not to mention their retarded mess of an upgrade system. BFC would get pilloried by the Steam users, and rightly so. Although, maybe a good kick in the pants is what BFC needs to get their QC back in gear.

 

Please don't turn this into a rant topic.

[frez13]

Please don't turn this into a rant topic.

 

Agreed, please keep this civil. Steam would boost up this game company a lot.

Edited January 5, 2015 by frez13

[sburke]

The fact that Matrix and Slitherine aren't engaged in a secret plot to lose money by continuing to release games on Steam?

I don't know about others, but I'll always seek out a game's community site over Steam's community forums. The community stuff is certainly not a strong point of Steam.

If you are curious about numbers, look at the 5+ million people who are logged in at any given time.

So you don't actually know if steam is gonna work out for the long term for slitherine or matrix, that they are now is all that counts?

That wasn't particularly helpful. Millions of people get on the nyc subway everyday so BF should buy advertising there? Of those millions on steam how many give a rat's a** about tactical war games. I am trying to be helpful here, if the only argument for steam is going to be hyperbole, Steve is never gonna hear ya cause he hates that.

Edited January 6, 2015 by sburke

[Baneman]

For me, the one thing I do not like about the way Battlefront operates is the key system having limits and we customers being forced to rely on Battlefront to use a product we bought and paid for.

 

I recently had to replace a hard drive.   Except when I went to unlicense my copies, it would not work.  

 

You do not have to un-license your copies ( of Combat Mission - I can't speak about any of their other games ).

 

Just reinstall, and activate. If you have used up all your activations ( something I've never managed to do, so I don't know exactly how many you get, but it's at least 3 ), BFC will happily give you another - just open a helpdesk ticket.

 

Hope that helps

 

 

See also here - this link has additional links in the 2nd post which contain more information - http://community.battlefront.com/topic/116797-cmbn-unlicenseuninstall/?hl=unlicense

Edited January 6, 2015 by Baneman

[frez13]

You do not have to un-license your copies ( of Combat Mission - I can't speak about any of their other games ).

 

Just reinstall, and activate. If you have used up all your activations ( something I've never managed to do, so I don't know exactly how many you get, but it's at least 3 ), BFC will happily give you another - just open a helpdesk ticket.

 

Hope that helps

 

 

See also here - this link has additional links in the 2nd post which contain more information - http://community.battlefront.com/topic/116797-cmbn-unlicenseuninstall/?hl=unlicensed

 

On the contrary, for Shock Force, I got 2 licenses on purchase, and yes I had to unlicensed it before completely uninstalling, or the license is gone. I used to reformat my computer a lot, so the license system does always make me uncomfortable. I don't like emailing the help desk because there will be a point where they stop giving you licenses, even though I've never had to reach that point yet, I don't like the idea of finite re-installs.

Edited January 6, 2015 by frez13

[sburke]

On the contrary, for Shock Force, I got 2 licenses on purchase, and yes I had to unlicensed it before completely uninstalling, or the license is gone. I used to reformat my computer a lot, so the license system does always make me uncomfortable. I don't like emailing the help desk because there will be a point where they stop giving you licenses, even though I've never had to reach that point yet, I don't like the idea of finite licenses.

Shock force is a very old license version.  None of the games since have an un-license option.  The helpdesk is not going to stop helping you.  Not sure where you got that impression.  I have had CMSF for a very very long time and have reinstalled more than a few times in that period.  I have never had to ask for a new license so I am not even sure why you are doing that.

[SgtHatred]

So you don't actually know if steam is gonna work out for the long term for slitherine or matrix, that they are now is all that counts?

That wasn't particularly helpful. Millions of people get on the nyc subway everyday so BF should buy advertising there? Of those millions on steam how many give a rat's a** about tactical war games. I am trying to be helpful here, if the only argument for steam is going to be hyperbole, Steve is never gonna hear ya cause he hates that.

 

Is it Bad Analogy Day or something? First someone compares Steam to an HMO, now someone is comparing selling a PC Game on a PC Game Market to a subway. Seriously, I didn't get a card.

 

And no, I don't have a crystal ball that will tell me the future, but the fact that Slitherine and Matrix (amongst many, many others) keep publishing niche titles to steam tells me it's not a losing proposition for them, because they keep doing it...

[Guest]

I have so far not heard from anyone at Battlefront regarding my request for help even though I also posted over a week ago here on the forums as well requesting it and why.

 

Please contact help desk about licensing issues.  There are hundreds and hundreds of posts in these forums in any given week.  There is no way we can reliably track requests like that on the forums... which is why we have a special system for people to ask for help directly!  So, to reiterate: please contact help desk about licensing issues.

 

As starter of the first CM on Steam thread way back when, I used to think it was a good idea. Not sure about it now, considering what BFC has been putting out is borderline half-baked shovelware with problems that don't get fixed for months and months and months. Not to mention their retarded mess of an upgrade system. BFC would get pilloried by the Steam users, and rightly so. Although, maybe a good kick in the pants is what BFC needs to get their QC back in gear.

 

About the bugs: yes, they were hard to solve.  It took time to track them down and fix them properly.  That's got less to do with QC, and more to do with... difficult things being difficult.  I'm sorry it took as long as it did.  I don't know if you've ever solved a pervasive and CPU/GPU-specific compiler bug, but it's something like trying to fix a space station with a fork, remotely.

 

The upgrade system... I don't know about you, but I own a ton of Steam games.  Roughly zero of them (maybe 2 or 3 out of several hundred?) take older titles and revamp them with new engines, when new engine versions are released.  As someone who enjoys all of the CM titles, I'm happy we keep them up to date.  CMBN with the 3.0 engine is great fun.  If we were any other game company, CMBN would be back in 1.x land, and CMFI would be 2.x, and you wouldn't be able to enjoy those games as much as you can now.