Spitzenhund

It wouldn't be 10000 a month. More in the 100's/1000's depending on how close it is to the initial release of the game.

Yea, I was basing that off of if they released CMBS on steam. But i'm also comparing that to DARTUS game which isn't as fleshed out as a BF game. His game has a odd community because the average person playing has not many hours into the game but a great deal of people own it. Which is the opposite of what I imagine BF products being (Low sales but those sales log a great deal of hours)

Good guess! 

This argument can't go anywhere unfortunately because the only people that know BF business status in terms of profit margin and expenses is BF themselves. And the only people who understand how Steam works is people like me who helped a friend launch their game which I don't think I can mention but I will if questioned. I should note that my friend was a modder for Total War and this was his first release of a game and that due to Steam he was able to release a niche game and have it sell extremely well and get a huge amount of publicity.

You know you really are such a nice guy to interact with. It gives me such a wonderful impression of the kind of folks I will meet as BF moves to Steam. Steve can we do this right away so I can interact more with overly arrogant disdainful elitist people who seem to have a hobby of rebuilding their systems continually and then somehow think they can argue for the mainstream? Pretty please? I was gonna squeeze my n**s in a vice, but this seems like a much simpler alternative.

Dude maybe you need steam cause you spend far too much fricken time re downloading games after rebuilding a system rather than playing them. Nice handle by the way, it really fits you.

Yeah, so I keep getting the impression from you that you guys never seriously looked into it! Why not do some serious research and figure out what exactly the pros and cons are? You might change your mind!
 
   
Either more people will buy it than they would've using your store and you will make a profit, or you won't make a profit and you'll pull the game from the store.

When is the last last time you used steam buddy? I've got thousands of hours logged into steam games and I don't think I have had a problem with steam logging me out for 4 years. And when I think of intrusive DRM I think of ubisoft and Silent Hunter V which would kick you out of game if you lost connection to the ubisoft platform for a split second. Not steam where you just have to be logged in for 10 seconds to activate your game. Then from there you can unplug your modem if you really wanted to.

Saying a company survived for 15 years proves nothing to future success if they aren't willing to adapt to the change. I haven't been around BF for all too long so I am not sure how they have changed their marketing or image over the past 15 years (if at all). But you have to follow the change if you want your company to continue its success. Sure BF could survive by being a really small company that makes you pay for patches and makes their games very expensive to adapt to the low demand because of the games obscurity. But that wouldn't really be thriving from what I see the new technology from CMSF to now is very limited compared to say Civilization from Civ IV Beyond the Sword to now.

I don't believe you understand just how large and diverse the steam community is. You have people playing stuff from Europa Universalis 3 to Tabletop Simulator to Eurotruck Simulator. The steam community has changed a great deal from the early days of Half Life, Counter Strike and TF. It's a huge mistake to think that a community for Combat Mission could not be found on Steam.


Other than that I'm really confused to the other complaints on this thread other than the business model. "Invasive DRM"? What? It's 2015, by now you should have stable internet for at least the 10 seconds it takes to log into steam. After that it doesn't matter what happens to your internet. It can go out and you just switch to Offline mode. And yes Offline mode does work and your very foolish or not receptive to new technology if you think it doesn't work.

When is the last last time you used steam buddy? I've got thousands of hours logged into steam games and I don't think I have had a problem with steam logging me out for 4 years. And when I think of intrusive DRM I think of ubisoft and Silent Hunter V which would kick you out of game if you lost connection to the ubisoft platform for a split second. Not steam where you just have to be logged in for 10 seconds to activate your game. Then from there you can unplug your modem if you really wanted to.

Exactly, there is some really weird **** on steam that is very successful because of how diverse steam is. And with how popular a game like Ultimate General: Gettysburg I can't possibly see how a fully fleshed out tactical wargame wouldn't be successful on Steam. That's the kind of **** a great deal of people probably want. And your right about the elitism talking, I find Starcraft 2 has a much bigger learning curve than Combat Mission and Starcraft 2 is a bloody e-sport (although phasing out until Legacy of the Swarm saves it).

I don't like circlejerking but you made a good point.

I don't believe you understand just how large and diverse the steam community is. You have people playing stuff from Europa Universalis 3 to Tabletop Simulator to Eurotruck Simulator. The steam community has changed a great deal from the early days of Half Life, Counter Strike and TF. It's a huge mistake to think that a community for Combat Mission could not be found on Steam.


Other than that I'm really confused to the other complaints on this thread other than the business model. "Invasive DRM"? What? It's 2015, by now you should have stable internet for at least the 10 seconds it takes to log into steam. After that it doesn't matter what happens to your internet. It can go out and you just switch to Offline mode. And yes Offline mode does work and your very foolish or not receptive to new technology if you think it doesn't work.

Saying a company survived for 15 years proves nothing to future success if they aren't willing to adapt to the change. I haven't been around BF for all too long so I am not sure how they have changed their marketing or image over the past 15 years (if at all). But you have to follow the change if you want your company to continue its success. Sure BF could survive by being a really small company that makes you pay for patches and makes their games very expensive to adapt to the low demand because of the games obscurity. But that wouldn't really be thriving from what I see the new technology from CMSF to now is very limited compared to say Civilization from Civ IV Beyond the Sword to now.

I think you are pushing it quite a bit there. There are definitely CM players who do care if it is on Steam or not.
 
Anyway, I would find it but the search function appears to be not working for stuff posted on the old forum. Anyway, in the before time there was a post in this post this was detalied: BFC contacted Valve about putting CM on Steam. They got to look at the contract and found that what was being offered wasn't better than what they had now. They decided to continue with the current system. AFAIK that situation has never changed.
 
There are also considerable risks to putting CM games on Steam. Some of these include:
 
#1: Coding time to hook the games into Steam. This requires that projects that are sure to make money are put off.
 
#2: Cannibalizing current customers at a lower price point. Right now 100% of money paid to BFC goes to BFC (not their own backend costs to support the store front). With Steam somewhere around 70% of the money paid in makes it to BFC. They need to make sufficient new customers to cover the loss of revenue from current customers going to Steam.
 
#3: The team at BFC is probably pretty old. The first game was announced in like 1999. So lets be generous and say that they were all 25 at the time. That would make them something like 40 years old.  Financial they individually probably cannot afford a setback at this point.
 
There are solid financial reasons for BFC to maintain it's own store front.
 
Personally I think a few of y'all can afford to calm down and stop throwing vast generalizations around.

If you don't have new people coming onto the forums arguing ideas then all you do is stagnant the series because with such a small community the ideas start to incestualize because people who are die hard fans are content with anything the series does as long as it sticks to the canon that they enjoy.

Saying a company survived for 15 years proves nothing to future success if they aren't willing to adapt to the change. I haven't been around BF for all too long so I am not sure how they have changed their marketing or image over the past 15 years (if at all). But you have to follow the change if you want your company to continue its success. Sure BF could survive by being a really small company that makes you pay for patches and makes their games very expensive to adapt to the low demand because of the games obscurity. But that wouldn't really be thriving from what I see the new technology from CMSF to now is very limited compared to say Civilization from Civ IV Beyond the Sword to now.

I don't believe you understand just how large and diverse the steam community is. You have people playing stuff from Europa Universalis 3 to Tabletop Simulator to Eurotruck Simulator. The steam community has changed a great deal from the early days of Half Life, Counter Strike and TF. It's a huge mistake to think that a community for Combat Mission could not be found on Steam.


Other than that I'm really confused to the other complaints on this thread other than the business model. "Invasive DRM"? What? It's 2015, by now you should have stable internet for at least the 10 seconds it takes to log into steam. After that it doesn't matter what happens to your internet. It can go out and you just switch to Offline mode. And yes Offline mode does work and your very foolish or not receptive to new technology if you think it doesn't work.

Am I supposed to be impressed now? I started on 8" ones, so get off my lawn you young whippersnapper.
 
The marketplace in 2000 was entirely different than the marketplace in 2015. Back then, PC games were still sold in actual physical stores. Nowadays only the very big ones or the ancient relics like Battlefront even bother with printing physical discs. What worked well in 2000 is a recipe for disaster in 2015. Battlefront has survived so far, but they're hardly thriving these days. After all, a company that has to price a small piece of vehicle DLC at $20 in order to even make a profit (and then still drops hints that they likely won't do it again because it wasn't really worth it) isn't exactly screaming "massive success story" to anyone with a bit of business sense.
 
Over 99.99% of gamers have never even heard of these titles. Thousands of potential customers who'll merrily spend their money elsewhere. There is only one single mainstream gaming source even mentioning the name Battlefront, and that's because they've got an author on staff (Tim Stone) who is a huge fan of the wargaming genre and who, just like many posters here, is constantly urging these antiquated business models to adapt and thrive in the modern gaming market. There is a joke game where you quite literally play a goat that is raking in profits Battlefront can only dream about. Train and farming simulators sell more in a single week on sale than Black Sea will in its entire lifetime. And all thanks to the massive exposure Steam brings. I'd also be quite interested in knowing how much Strategic Command 3 will outsell its predecessors now that it's most likely going to Steam.
 
Again, I've had this exact same discussion half a dozen times before. I've heard all these arguments before, I've been ignored for it, I've been insulted for it. And every single time I've been proven correct in the end. Paradox, Matrix Games/Slitherine, Illwinter, Longbow Games, ... They all strongly opposed Steam, they all predicted for years that going on Steam would ruin their company, they're all eagerly selling their games on Steam today. This time will be no different, so I really can't be bothered to be drawn into yet another endless debate about it. Either Battlefront will join the modern market in the next few years and we'll merrily enjoy many new Combat Mission games for decades to come, or they will stubbornly and scaredly vanish into obscurity and be replaced by someone else. Those Graviteam guys for example are going to be a really interesting competitor in a few years time, at the rate they are improving and innovating.

If you don't have new people coming onto the forums arguing ideas then all you do is stagnant the series because with such a small community the ideas start to incestualize because people who are die hard fans are content with anything the series does as long as it sticks to the canon that they enjoy.

I don't remember a time there was a Steam outage in the past two years or so,  what you experienced was scheduled maintenance that happens around a certain time that I am sure you can look up. During that maintenance time if you are not logged in you can not login to Steam, however if you are online you will automatically be switched to offline mode.

Make no mistake, going on to Steam entails some risk, just as continuing the same business model.  Combat Mission is niche, but not so niche as "99.90%" won't understand it.  That's just elitism talking.  Personally, I would hire more staff and try Steam.  But it's their company, and they can run it the way they want.
 
And God, do I wish was 18-25 years old!

Bottom line, boys. BFC knows it's customer base, and WE DON'T CARE if CM is on Steam or not.

Without the intent of fueling a hot topic I just want to add that it would definitely be convenient for BF games to be on Steam, at least to me as a costumer
 
I recently bought Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations in their last sale, a very niche game/simulator, and it´s definitely a plus not to be hunting patches/fixes, I hope it soon gets Steam Workshop support
 
Paradox Interactive is another big success story about their transition to Steam, and so AGEOD it seems, since they are in the same group as Matrix and Slitherine
 
I won´t argue about it with BF, I don´t have the numbers nor data nor the entitlement feeling to tell them what to do, just my experience with other small/medium strategy focused companies that made that move, and it´s being positive so far, again, as a costumer
 
And I´ll keep buying BF games I like one way or the other