CM:N on Steam?

[Rambler]

I saw where the ToW series is now on Steam, which is awesome. Will CM:N be available on Steam as well?

[born2lose]

I think the stock answer will be no, TOW has more than one publisher and is on Steam under a differant name i think.

But BFC have always said in the past that they don't benefit from selling there game's on Steam or any other download platform other than there own, due to the cost's involved i.e the % that steam take from every sale.

[MeatEtr]

ToW has the same name in Steam, no change there.

If that's true about why BF doesn't use Steam because of the fee's. Well that's just nuts. Steam is huge, it's the biggest digital distributor of games in the market. Also the buddy system available for all games is very popular. The amount of sales from the exposure of CMx2 would far outweigh any fees from Valve. But Valve is known to be pretty lenient with the cost of releasing there. Since there is a large amount of Indie devs with their games on Steam.

Heck was just reading about this today: http://www.bluesnews.com/s/113478/how-steam-saved-introversion

Also recall reading about the RO devs Tripwire Interactive(formerly just a mod team) attributing Steam for the success of their game.

[bodkin]

As long as they don't make it exclusive to Steam so that you can only get patches from Steam and all the associated problems for people with poor net service.

There's also plenty of other ethical issues with Steam that I won't go into.

[~Viajero]

There's also plenty of other ethical issues with Steam that I won't go into.

Please do!

[Moon]

Actually the cost is only one of the (many) reasons why we do not intend to be selling CMN on Steam anytime soon.

[Scipio]

Actually the cost is only one of the (many) reasons why we do not intend to be selling CMN on Steam anytime soon.

Big thank you from Germany!

[ERISS]

Steam is huge, it's the biggest digital distributor of games in the market. The amount of sales from the exposure of CMx2 would far outweigh any fees from Valve.

Heck was just reading about this today: http://www.bluesnews.com/s/113478/how-steam-saved-introversion

The problem is too many players don't care about DRMs nor monopolies.

As the Steam lovers don't want to buy non-Steam games, the independant games have to go to Steam and become dependant from Steam.

[Moon]

I seriously doubt that there are too many "Steam-lovers" who are interested in the games we make. Steam has a lot of FPS lovers (not surprisingly based on their Half-Life background) and a lot of casual gamers, but not too much for our target audience. The numbers we see from Steam so far support this theory.

Steam is great for a specific type of player. Granted, there are many of these (and always were). As it grows bigger, it is in fact becoming less and less interesting for the little guys like us, as the big titles and promotions are overshadowing everything else (again, nothing new there).

For us, Steam is offering very little that we can't (eventually) make ourselves.

And if you ask me personally, I think it's just an overglorified "Facebook for gamers".

[MeatEtr]

I seriously doubt that there are too many "Steam-lovers" who are interested in the games we make. Steam has a lot of FPS lovers (not surprisingly based on their Half-Life background) and a lot of casual gamers, but not too much for our target audience. The numbers we see from Steam so far support this theory.

Steam is great for a specific type of player. Granted, there are many of these (and always were). As it grows bigger, it is in fact becoming less and less interesting for the little guys like us, as the big titles and promotions are overshadowing everything else (again, nothing new there).

For us, Steam is offering very little that we can't (eventually) make ourselves.

And if you ask me personally, I think it's just an overglorified "Facebook for gamers".

I agree with most everything you said. You guys do deliver digital copies of your games and do it just as well. But it's the huge exposure of releasing on Steam is my point. Grant it, like you said, this is a different crowd than your target. But there's far more crossover gamers rather than just only FPSers or casual. Since Steam now covers almost all genres.

Just think, whenever CMx2 releases a patch or module, hundreds of thousands of gamers can see this. This alone would generate alot of attention or curiosity to the BF site. Sure only a tiny fraction of Steam players would be interested. Then on top of that only a fraction would actually make a purchase. But even then this would probably translate to thousands of sales.

I'm not even really a Steam lover, maybe log-on a few times a week for their really cheap sales. I just think business wise, BF would benefit greatly from the exposure.

[Field Marshal Blücher]

I'm not even really a Steam lover, maybe log-on a few times a week for their really cheap sales. I just think business wise, BF would benefit greatly from the exposure.

If they could advertise their updates or something like that on Steam, yes. If they're being a Steam game, I'm not really sure it would be worth it. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that most of the money made on a Steam sale goes to Valve and not to BFC. I highly doubt many Steam users would look at it, say, "oh hey, that looks cool," and then go to BFC's website instead of just conducting all of their business through Steam itself, which does not benefit BFC nearly as much.

[Battlefront.com]

From our perspective, Steam is not something that would be beneficial. We've looked into it several times now and the basic mechanisms of the business arrangement are not considered likely to produce good results for us.

Steve

[Shadow Stalker]

I personally am happy with this decison. Moon is right Steam is some sort of massive facebook fan club for gamers. I mean seriously their whole attitude of you cant play with your toys unless you use our sandbox smacks of discrimination on its purest form. I thought game publishers were all about helping people buy games not putting up one DRM hurdle after another to you the consumers (the one who pays their salaries). Sadly people see Steam as some sort of Messiah in gaming world and worse still try to emulate them (any one been to Big fish games lately).

Battlefront (God Bless them) are one the few games companys/publishers around that still value there customer base, and I for one am thankfull for that.

[C'Rogers]

I love Steam (and in contrast to the above post, do kind of see it as a messiah of gaming) but see where BFC is coming from. If BFC had no digital distribution or was suffering from massive piracy of their products it would make sense. However, they already have their own setup to do what Steam does, why incur the outside costs? Audience scope would be the one thing which it could offer; however I think that Meater and others are making the understandable mistake that there is a huge, huge market out there for wargames just waiting to be tapped. BFC has been pretty clear that they don't think there products will ever have mass market appeal, not because of the quality of the game but the genre they are working in.

[MeatEtr]

Audience scope would be the one thing which it could offer; however I think that Meater and others are making the understandable mistake that there is a huge' date=' huge market out there for wargames just waiting to be tapped. [/quote']

No I never said there was a huge untapped market out there. Re-read my posts if your gonna single me out please. I'm simply saying a Steam release would greatly help "get the word out". I look at from a advertising & marketing perspective and not world domination.

[Michael Emrys]

I'm simply saying a Steam release would greatly help "get the word out". I look at from a advertising & marketing perspective and not world domination.

I don't know. I recall that when the CMx1 games came out BFC advertised in magazines like Military History and World War II, which IMO were much more likely to reach an audience that would actually want to buy and play the games.

Michael

[noxnoctum]

Putting the game on steam could get you significantly more sales and would DEFINITELY be good for advertising the game...... just throwing that out there.

Everyone assumes here that all the evil "steam FPS gamers" are a bunch of inbred unintelligent dumbasses with the attention span of a gnat. That's not steam gamers, that's Xbox360 gamers. Get it right. And get off your high horses please.

I'm an FPS fanatic, and guess what, I play Combat Mission! WOW! I also play the "clickfest" Starcraft 2. (which is definitely a clickfest, but is also a game of strategy just like CM, just from an ENTIRELY different approach---more about reaction time, reacting to your opponents moves with counter moves, performing quick flanks on your opponent and surprise attacks, except all of it at the pace of a cheetah running at 70 mph across the desert... basically chess on crack).

For instance, Red Orchestra, my favorite FPS of all time (well... tied with Operation Flashpoint I suppose), has quite a few people who also play CM or the CC series.

Don't forget that the VERY "mainstream" sites Gamespot, IGN, and Gamespy gave CM:BB a 9.1, 9, and 94% respectively.

You're not in as small a "niche" genre as you think you are. Your advertising just sucks. Remember Crysis and the hype that generated? Well now pretty much everyone hates the game and views it as nothing more than a tool to see how powerful your computer is. But that hype brought in a LOT of sales, and that hype was from advertising in the right way.

And Moon you couldn't be more wrong about it being just a "glorified facebook for gamers". It lets you have ALL your games in one spot, no CDs, no having to even click on icons on your desktop, it lets you uninstall a game with a simple right click, or reinstall with a simple double click the game title in the game "library", it lets you see who else is online, which would also make finding opponents about a billion times easier because everyone could add each other and see when they're playing CM and start up a game (which would be quite nice seeing as there will be no multiplayer lobby in CM:N). On top of that, and the most significant thing for you guys is, you will be listed in the Steam store, which is viewed by millions of gamers worldwide. Pretty decent advertising no?

[Guest]

From what I've seen, apart from genre issues, if you're not a AAA mainstream title (or at least from a AAA mainstream studio, which are two slightly different animals) or an indie willing to dip below $10 a pop on special sales you get basically no face time with users except on release. Those two categories are well-served. For everybody else it's just another DD platform with fairly high costs, additional DRM, and a promotional focus on their two main draws.

This is just what I've noticed as an interested observer and gamer. I'm sure once you dig into the details and contracts it gets even hairier.

Edit: I should note that I've got something like 100 games on Steam... I've been an avid customer for a while. I use it so heavily because it is easy to use and has great tools... but mostly because they offer amazing sales. I wouldn't own games there if they didn't occasionally offer games for $2. And if your game hasn't been heavily discounted in the past two years, I haven't even considered it.

As for "Facebook for Gamers"... well, I don't necessarily see that as a negative or untrue appellation.

[C'Rogers]

No I never said there was a huge untapped market out there. Re-read my posts if your gonna single me out please. I'm simply saying a Steam release would greatly help "get the word out". I look at from a advertising & marketing perspective and not world domination.

I'm looking at this from an advertising perspective as well which is why your comment confuses me. If there isn't an untapped market what's the point of advertising? Is there merit to BFC spending money to inform uninterested parties about the existence of the game?

If I'd waited for noxnoctum to post I would've used him as the example on the argument of whether CM is niche or can have mass appeal.

[Secondbrooks]

Putting the game on steam could get you significantly more sales and would DEFINITELY be good for advertising the game...... just throwing that out there.

Everyone assumes here that all the evil "steam FPS gamers" are a bunch of inbred unintelligent dumbasses with the attention span of a gnat. That's not steam gamers, that's Xbox360 gamers. Get it right. And get off your high horses please.

Not all are, but most are (say hi to my Xbox360, FPSs and Combat Missions) Seriously thou i think the reason is that BFC doesn't get much more PR and visibility in Steam than it gets currently. In Steam their games are just small marginal of all games. No name, no fame, nothing to build upon and next to them there's tons of games which are widely known and which more probably gets bought. Phillip Culliton nailed it well. BFC's products probably costs too much to be sold ridiculously cheap to attract customers. Hitting somesort of grey area.

I do think that wargames are one of those niche gametypes which just can't get lots of sales because of the game-type... Could be that i'm just elitist arsehole.

[noxnoctum]

Not all are, but most are (say hi to my Xbox360, FPSs and Combat Missions) Seriously thou i think the reason is that BFC doesn't get much more PR and visibility in Steam than it gets currently. In Steam their games are just small marginal of all games. No name, no fame, nothing to build upon and next to them there's tons of games which are widely known and which more probably gets bought. Phillip Culliton nailed it well. BFC's products probably costs too much to be sold ridiculously cheap to attract customers. Hitting somesort of grey area.

I do think that wargames are one of those niche gametypes which just can't get lots of sales because of the game-type... Could be that i'm just elitist arsehole.

But if it's a pretty game (and CM:N is fairly pretty... I mean, SC2 is breaking sales records and it's hardly "Crysis"), and has an intuitive interface, unlike what CMSF had at release (still has some issues like the inability to move waypoints as in CMx1) you could attract a lot of new customers. Think about how many WW2 game fanatics there are out there.

[Secondbrooks]

But if it's a pretty game (and CM:N is fairly pretty... I mean, SC2 is breaking sales records and it's hardly "Crysis"), and has an intuitive interface, unlike what CMSF had at release (still has some issues like the inability to move waypoints as in CMx1) you could attract a lot of new customers. Think about how many WW2 game fanatics there are out there.

All i can say is that i do think that genre is limiting factor in sales. However i can't rationalize it so it's basically load of BS.

I do hope i'm wrong.

[Guest]

I suppose they could get some curiosity sales from Company of Heroes, Day of Defeat, and Red Orchestra fans. But it's nothing like anything being offered on there at the moment, and I think it would end up being a morass.

A good example would be Derek Smart's products... yes, as far as I know he had healthy sales through Steam (his most recent stuff is sold through there exclusively if I recall correctly), but the forum is basically awash with people saying, essentially, "what did I just buy?" and demanding refunds. And his game was even more recognizable for the average audience, it was just more serious and hardcore than what they were used to. I spent a few weeks there while writing a review of his game and it seemed like a PR hell. It was basically an internet riot... and the game was really GOOD, too.

An aside on SC2: Activision / Blizzard has spent more than the combined GDP of several small countries to produce SC2, and quite a lot of that was art and marketing. They also had nearly a decade in which to develop and polish it. It was designed and positioned to break sales records. I don't think pretty had much to do with it, nor do I (sadly) think there are any parallels there for nearly any other product on the market. If only every game had a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars behind it...

[noxnoctum]

An aside on SC2: Activision / Blizzard has spent more than the combined GDP of several small countries to produce SC2, and quite a lot of that was art and marketing. They also had nearly a decade in which to develop and polish it. It was designed and positioned to break sales records. I don't think pretty had much to do with it, nor do I (sadly) think there are any parallels there for nearly any other product on the market. If only every game had a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars behind it...

The point is, graphics don't mean everything to the "public". Gameplay and polishness do. BFC have got the first part mostly right now with all the patches, but still quite lacking on the second point.

And yes I know they're a tiny development team if you can even call it that... so I say let them take as long as they need to make it polished and refined.

[Paper Tiger]

CM:N on Steam? Eat lots of cabbage prior to playing the game and you'll be fine.