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sell on Steam?


frez13

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Face it Steve, you just don't know what you are talking about.

 

Wind. Spit. Repeat.

 

Steamie-Kirishna! Steamie-Krishna!

 

Mord.

Yup, but it's kinda fun (for a while) to kick the dead horse.

And you are correct that this is not a discussion. This is a demonstration of futility. I've heard these exact same arguments for years, or in some cases decades. There's nothing new being brought to the table on the pro-Steam side. Nothing. Likewise, I'm providing nothing new to counter their arguments because nothing has changed from the business side of things. So the status quo remains the same. I'm fine with that because I think it's a good thing, but the pro-Steam people don't and so they won't let it drop.

But it is somewhat entertaining in a perverse way :D

Steve

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Yup, but it's kinda fun (for a while) to kick the dead horse.

And you are correct that this is not a discussion. This is a demonstration of futility. I've heard these exact same arguments for years, or in some cases decades. There's nothing new being brought to the table on the pro-Steam side. Nothing. Likewise, I'm providing nothing new to counter their arguments because nothing has changed from the business side of things. So the status quo remains the same. I'm fine with that because I think it's a good thing, but the pro-Steam people don't and so they won't let it drop.

But it is somewhat entertaining in a perverse way :D

Steve

 

 

Yeah...I guess it is because I don't even care one way or the other about the topic but I keep responding. I guess this is how we blow off STEAM waiting on a new release.

 

Yep...I went there.

 

Mord.

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Yeah...I guess it is because I don't even care one way or the other about the topic but I keep responding. I guess this is how we blow off STEAM waiting on a new release.

 

Yep...I went there.

 

Mord.

 

Well, you also seem pretty desperate for acknowledgement from certain individuals.

 

It's terrifying how similar grognards and hipsters are. We are not mainstream. We are special.

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Well, you also seem pretty desperate for acknowledgement from certain individuals.

 

It's terrifying how similar grognards and hipsters are. We are not mainstream. We are special.

 

You are the only one I was hoping would acknowledge me...and now I do feel hip.

 

Well, we can't all be super cool, insider programers with our fingers on the pulse of the software industry making snide remarks about BFC and how little they know, in every post...but if we get a guy like you to talk to us we can sure feel like we are. It's that "I spent the night at a Holiday Inn" osmosis.

 

 

Mord.

Edited by Mord
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We have let some others sell our older products. Granted, nobody as big as Steam, but we definitely do have partnerships with others when we think the conditions are good. The sales from those sources tend to be OK to start with and then dwindle down to nothing fairly quickly. We expect the same from Steam, except with a much bigger headache to get it setup and a vastly lower chance of getting any money back from it to justify our expenses.

I have learned never to say never, but I don't foresee us diverting any resources to publishing on Steam in the near future.

Steve

 

Well to bring a possible new idea to the table, this may be a bit sneaky. If you have just one game on Steam, others there who plays or checks out the game on Steam will find your BF website and thus find the rest of your games which aren't on Steam.

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How about this. You are challenging the position of a 22 year industry veteran who believes this yet still makes wargaming his life. How about you provide proof that I'm wrong? To paraphrase you, I've had many people claim the position I stated is wrong and yet nobody ever seems cable of providing even the tiniest scrap of proof to back it up.

 

Not a scrap? Really? You must have missed the list of developers and publishers I posted on page 1: Matrix Games, Illwinter, Paradox,...  All of them started out with the exact same lame excuses as you give: "We are industry veterans with decades of experience, we sell niche games that have no mainstream appeal, therefore our opinion to dismiss Steam is right and you are wrong." And yet all of them are now happily selling on Steam, because as soon as they actually tried it (thanks to customers like me who kept pushing them to), it turned out they had to admit all their decades of "industry experience" were quite simply wrong. The industry has changed radically the past decade, most of your experience is quite simply outdated.

 

I've already posted my proof. I'm still waiting on your proof that wargames can and will never succeed on Steam.

 

 

No, it's real life. Your position, on the other hand, is ludicrous if you think that everybody is a blank slate and can be equally attracted to whatever is thrust in front of them.

 

Please quote the part where I made this claim, or stop putting ridiculous strawmen into my mouth.

 

 

Wargaming has ALWAYS been a niche and ALWAYS will be. Why? For the same reasons the most intelligent news media will always play second fiddle (by a LONG shot) to tabloids. It is why you will never see a chain of restaurants that serves decent, healthy food overtake McDonalds.

 

Citation required. You are still merely passing your opinion off as fact, without any factual evidence to back it up.

 

 

As a businessman I have to work with reality, not wishful thinking. Well, if I want to stay in business anyway.

 

Any businessman who doesn't think increased exposure will lead to increased revenue is a very poor businessman indeed. As far as the gaming industry is concerned, Steam is reality. And a businessman can either work with reality, or hide from it.

 

 

You can have the best opera production in the world available for free, with no dress code, and I bet you'd see the upper crust not go and hardly anybody else would show up. Why? Because opera appeals only to those who like it.

 

And which opera will sell more tickets to opera lovers, the one that plays in the world's most famous venue with a lot of advertising or the one that's performed in the spare room above a bowling alley in some backwater town?

 

 

So catering a very expensive and lavish production for "my benefit" is a STUPID idea.

 

But the production is getting made anyway, so what's so scary about trying to maximize ticket sales?

 

 

People like what they like, they don't like what they don't like. It takes a heck of a lot more than exposure to change the equation. That is not elitism... it's self evident.

 

To know if you like something, you first have to try it. And step one in that process is knowing about its existence. Right now, very few people even know that games like these even exist, so how can they know whether they will like them?

 

 

Again, you don't have the same appreciation for the realities of Steam's business model from our perspective as the developer. You certainly don't have even remotely the same realistic, sound view of the market as we do.

 

No, but then again I merely pick the side the vast majority of people who do have a sound view of the market have chosen. And unless you think you are perfect and all-knowing and everyone else is just stupid, you should spend a very long time thinking very hard why all those people who know as much or even more about the market as you do are all deciding to do the exact opposite of what you're doing.

 

 

But as I've said over and over again... you have NO skin in the game, so it's a very safe thing for you to conclude when you have absolutely nothing to lose. Well, except Battlefront's products since if we go out of business I'm not sure when, or even if, someone will pick up our torch. There are few as resourceful AND stupid as us to make wargames of this quality.

 

So tell me, what exactly will going to Steam cost you? How exactly will expanding your markets cause you to go out of business? Nobody is asking for you to make different games or cut your prices, the additional cost of making the games Steam-compliant is negligable (and don't try to argue otherwise, there are plenty of developers actually selling on Steam who have disclosed the process) and you can even keep your current online store and its outdated DRM system. So what exactly is the massive risk you'd be taking here?

 

And if you're wary of throwing your newest title out there, try it out on the older ones first. How much revenue is Shock Force for example still bringing in? Put the entire Shock Force collection on Steam, try it out. Strip out the DRM, price it at $50 or whatever it's in your own store right now, ask Steam to make it a "Daily Deal" or "Weekly Deal" once at 20-50% off for exposure and see how much your revenue skyrockets. If it doesn't work, it's unfortunate and you'll have lost a few days programming work and some money, but it will hardly bankrupt your company and you'll finally have actual proof to support your position the next time this discussion inevitably rears its head. If it works, your company benefits immensely and you can expand your Steam catalogue, your profits and your company. All it takes is for you to abandon your fear and prejudices and take a calculated risk. It's what real and successful businessmen do, and it's what all your competitors are doing.

 

 

We have let some others sell our older products. Granted, nobody as big as Steam, but we definitely do have partnerships with others when we think the conditions are good. The sales from those sources tend to be OK to start with and then dwindle down to nothing fairly quickly. We expect the same from Steam, except with a much bigger headache to get it setup and a vastly lower chance of getting any money back from it to justify our expenses.

 

Ah, so here is where your fear and prejudice comes from. Gamersgate and the Paradox store could barely compete with Steam back in 2007-2008 when you tried this. And Steam has grown massively since then, and made the entry process a lot more convenient for new partners. The idea that your experience on Steam today would be similar to the ones you had on two fringe stores with poor service towards both customer and partner, one of which went bust in favour of Steam soon after, is rather ridiculous. If one-man indie operations can easily handle the Steam acceptance process, so can you.

 

You're also admitting here that you don't actually know the current Steam acceptance process, and thus your claim that it would be too much work and effort is nothing more than an uneducated guess. Again, not the conduct of a businessman.

Edited by m0317624
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 The industry has changed radically the past decade, most of your experience is quite simply outdated.

BLAHBLAHBLAHBLAHBLAHBLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH....etc.

 

 

LOL. Man, what is wrong with you?

 

 

 

 

Mord.

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Citation required. You are still merely passing your opinion off as fact, without any factual evidence to back it up.

 

Well, here's a fact ( on a very minor scale ).

 

I have about 12-15 friends who are gamers. Roughly 8-10 of those are wargamers. I'd regard 2 of them as hardcore wargamers ( like me ).

 

I've introduced CM2 to all of them.

Only 1 of the hardcore wargamers took to it. He loves it, the others were all "meh" or "too hard". And that was with me explaining and guiding, doing my best to flatten the learning curve.

Face it - hardcore wargames are a niche within a niche.

 

PS : the one who liked it - he lives where the internet is ****ty. He would not like it on Steam :P

Edited by Baneman
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Well, here's a fact ( on a very minor scale ).

 

I have about 12-15 friends who are gamers. Roughly 8-10 of those are wargamers. I'd regard 2 of them as hardcore wargamers ( like me ).

 

I've introduced CM2 to all of them.

Only 1 of the hardcore wargamers took to it. He loves it, the others were all "meh" or "too hard". And that was with me explaining and guiding, doing my best to flatten the learning curve.

Face it - hardcore wargames are a niche within a niche.

 

PS : the one who liked it - he lives where the internet is ****ty. He would not like it on Steam :P

 

And would he have known he liked the game if you hadn't introduced it to him? Because that's what Steam does: it introduces new things to gamers who otherwise would never know those things existed. 1/15 times 65 million is still a hell of a lot of sales.

 

And having it on Steam wouldn't make any difference to him. With Battlefront, he has to download the game and be online once to activate. With Steam offline mode, he has to download the game and be online once to enable offline mode. Same amount of internet traffic required. And nobody here is asking Battlefront to become Steam exclusive either, so your friend could still simply buy the Battlefront version and be done with it.

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You're missing the point, guys. Steam is not just about the developers. Steam is about players. Ease of access. How many of you know someone who's got problems accessing BFC main site? I personally know at least 5 guys, including (frequently) myself. And when talking about download speeds, I'm pretty sure there's even no need to compare Steam Cloud speed capabilities to smaller providers. So those who primarily benefit from having a certain game in Steam are players. Developer's gains from using Steam is a completely different story.

 

Coming to Steam is a great risk. Anyone can write reviews about your game, which most certainly will impact your sales. At the same time, it's a good opportunity for indie developers. Including very small ones. Like, this game over here, which is being made by only one person if I recall correctly: http://store.steampowered.com/app/250520/And there are many many other examples like that.

 

I, personally, would've welcomed CM arrival to Steam. But trying to convince them about going there? You can't force love :)

 

ps: FYI, there are non-DRM Steam games out there. KSP is an example.

Edited by L0ckAndL0ad
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Do you occasionally actually add anything to discussions, or do you just always troll?

 

 

Are you always this arrogant or only when you get answers that you don't like? Show us your game company seeing that you are the authority telling a guy who has made his living for the last twenty years making games how he should run HIS business. You're coming off as a snide, petulant broken record that got his answers but refuses to accept that BFC doesn't agree. Do you work for Steam or something? You get paid in referrals? You sound like some kinda goose-stepping fanatic. A Steam-Trooper LOL.

 

So, yeah, I am gonna keep wondering what is wrong with you.

 

 

Mord.

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I have the impression that there is some steam marketing nerd pushing an agenda in this forum.

When I discovered the first combat mission demo, back in the year 2000. I did work for a game publisher, and from the forty + staff, there was nobody except me who played the game.

14 years later BF still make outstanding pieces of software, and the company I did work for is long forgotten... Try to google Montecristo games.com and see how a company without soul and heavily funded exploded in mid air.

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Just for the sake of the discussion just a little story why i think BF going steam would not be a bad thing!

 

I bought Achtung Panzer eg. Graviteam Tactics and several modules a second time when they published the game on steam!

 

....and i just upgraded CMBN to 3.0 and purchased the Market Garden modul but the download took almost 5 hours and i have a 200 mbit/sec internet connection.

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Are you always this arrogant or only when you get answers that you don't like? Show us your game company seeing that you are the authority telling a guy who has made his living for the last twenty years making games how he should run HIS business. You're coming off as a snide, petulant broken record that got his answers but refuses to accept that BFC doesn't agree. Do you work for Steam or something? You get paid in referrals? You sound like some kinda goose-stepping fanatic. A Steam-Trooper LOL.

 

So, yeah, I am gonna keep wondering what is wrong with you.

 

 

Mord.

 

Yeah he pretty much is, uh...my previous statements apply to the gentleman merely stating there interest in CM being brought to Steam not telling Steve he doesn't know how to do his job after all these years...

 

State your points without the arrogance guys and this all goes much better, evidence doesn't hurt much either!

 

:rolleyes:

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Yeah he much is, uh...my previous statements apply to the gentleman merely stating there interest in CM being brought to Steam not telling Steve he doesn't know how to do his job after all these years...

State your points without the arrogance guys and this all goes much better, evidence doesn't hurt much either!

:rolleyes:

The evidence had been posted several times already, but it gets conveniently ignored by the fanboys in favour of such high quality discussion as "lol, what is wrong with you" and "ignore him, he's just soms marketing nerd". Edited by m0317624
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The evidence had been posted several times already, but it gets conveniently ignored by the fanboys in favour of such high quality discussion as "lol, what is wrong with you" and "ignore him, he's just soms marketing nerd".

 

They have a point though, Steve's got 20 years under his belt, and while most of Mord's post's are a little over the top he is absolutely right about the arrogance. Don't let the rest of his post bother you and instead just focus on making a clear argument without the high and mighty part to it. Tragically this is actually how most of these posts go, person comes in wanting Steam, lists reasons, gets into arguments with everyone and begins with the attitude. Its annoying being out-numbered I get it, especially with some snarky comments thrown in, however you won't get anywhere with telling the owner of the company he has no idea what hes doing!

Edited by Raptorx7
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They have a point though, Steve's got 20 years under his belt, and while most of Mord's post's are a little over the top he is absolutely right about the arrogance. Don't let the rest of his post bother you and instead just focus on making a clear argument without the high and mighty part to it. Tragically this is actually how most of these posts go, person comes in wanting Steam, lists reasons, gets into arguments with everyone and begins with the attitude. Its annoying being out-numbered I get it, especially with some snarky comments thrown in, however you won't get anywhere with telling the owner of the company he has no idea what hes doing!

Being outnumbered isn't a problem. Having one's argument constantly ignored in favour of stupid insults is. The arrogance you perceive in my posts is nothing more than a mirror of the arrogance every unpopular opinion is treated to on these forums, as the behaviour of the forum regulars in this thread so aptly demonstrates. At least Steve is willing to engage in actual debate in between his dismissive posts.

And just because Steve's company has survived for a few decades does not make his opinions infallible or correct today. The market has changed too much too quickly, and every other gaming developer or publisher that I've seen using the same "decades of experience" argument against Steam has been forced to admit they were wrong once they actually tried it. Battlefront does not appear to be growing despite the general gaming market and indie developers seeing record sales, their games no longer get mentioned in the gaming press, the last third party developer they sold on their store has left them for a more successful competitor (with upcoming Steam release of SC3). They survive, and that is good, but they could be thriving if only they took the same minor risk thousands of other small development studios have taken in the past 5 years.

Edited by m0317624
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The evidence had been posted several times already, but it gets conveniently ignored by the fanboys in favour of such high quality discussion as "lol, what is wrong with you" and "ignore him, he's just soms marketing nerd".

I don't know if this is the case or not, but your posts come across as having an agenda of some kind.  It's all nice to talk about Steam and everything, but seriously ..... perhaps you could step away from the computer for a while and take a few deep breaths before continuing.  Making assumptions that Steve doesn't know what he is doing in terms of contracts and agreements between parties is a pretty big stretch considering the ample evidence of what BFC has done in the past.  You may have an opinion as to whether such an agreement would be to the benefit of BFC or not, but I think it would probably be a safe assumption to make that Steve, at a minimum, actually understands the details of any agreement that may be struck with Steam.  To assume that he hasn't even looked into it at all is probably a misguided and erroneous starting point for this sort of discussion.

 

As far as wargaming being a niche market goes, perhaps there is some evidence out there that might be publicly available.  How well do non fiction books about military history sell as opposed to any other books of any kind?  I'm sure Amazon has some sales data available.  It isn't a perfect match, but I think it would be indicative of how popular wargames might be as compared to other activities.

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The evidence had been posted several times already, but it gets conveniently ignored ...

 

Well, speculative numbers have been posted.

 

The actual real numbers and actual real business models have been seen by BFC and deemed "not good enough for them". You surely don't believe they would make decisions based on some sort of thumbsuck ?

They keep saying they've decided not to go with Steam for cogent business reasons. I don't see how that translates to "they wont consider it"

 

And would he have known he liked the game if you hadn't introduced it to him?

 

Well, he certainly wouldn't have found out about it on Steam even if it was there ;)  ( little joke, some humour for the thread )

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I don't know if this is the case or not, but your posts come across as having an agenda of some kind. It's all nice to talk about Steam and everything, but seriously ..... perhaps you could step away from the computer for a while and take a few deep breaths before continuing. Making assumptions that Steve doesn't know what he is doing in terms of contracts and agreements between parties is a pretty big stretch considering the ample evidence of what BFC has done in the past. You may have an opinion as to whether such an agreement would be to the benefit of BFC or not, but I think it would probably be a safe assumption to make that Steve, at a minimum, actually understands the details of any agreement that may be struck with Steam. To assume that he hasn't even looked into it at all is probably a misguided and erroneous starting point for this sort of discussion

Steve has earlier in this very thread pretty much admitted that he does not know the terms or requirements for a current-day Steam partnership, and that their reluctance to partner with Steam is based primarily on their past experiences with Gamersgate and Paradox, dating back to 2007 and earlier. So I would say my assumption is pretty much correct.

My agenda is merely twofold: primarily I would like to see this company prosper, since that means more and better games for me to enjoy. Secondly I'm bored and like a good discussion now and then, and some of the people here actually offer that.

Edited by m0317624
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Steve has earlier in this very thread pretty much admitted that he does not know the terms or requirements for a current-day Steam partnership, and that their reluctance to partner with Steam is based primarily on their past experiences with Gamersgate and Paradox, dating back to 2007 and earlier. So I would say my assumption is pretty much correct.

 

Um, no, actually you said this.

What Steve said was

There's nothing new being brought to the table on the pro-Steam side. Nothing. Likewise, I'm providing nothing new to counter their arguments because nothing has changed from the business side of things.

 

Since he posted that today, it's a much safer assumption that he knows what the Steam situation is currently.

 

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