Exciting news about Battlefront and Slitherine

[Probus]

2 minutes ago, IICptMillerII said:

I hope this move benefits CM as a whole. I am however braced for the impact of an influx of the usual steam player base. It’s certainly going to be interesting. 

Now we'll have cannon fodder for the cannon fodder (me).

[Combatintman]

Joyous news, no more 'why isn't his game on Steam' threads.

[db_zero]

Hope everything works out. Hopefully it means more goodies for us. Going to be interesting to see the comments is Steam. Haven't played Close Combat in years and don't know of the hatred of CM by some CC players as I haven't followed both. As some of you already know Microsoft is coming out with FS2020 this month and some of the comments on Steam in the XPlane11 section are defensive.

 

[A Canadian Cat]

24 minutes ago, IICptMillerII said:

I am however braced for the impact of an influx of the usual steam player base. It’s certainly going to be interesting. 

I wonder thought - will they come here or will they just use the Steam forum or even the Slytherine forum to comment. It will be interesting.

[IICptMillerII]

Just now, IanL said:

I wonder thought - will they come here or will they just use the Steam forum or even the Slytherine forum to comment. It will be interesting.

It will be.

I think though, that the best thing for everyone to do is to completely ignore all the comments on Steam. Its going to be a cesspool.

Not the point of putting CM on steam though. Still hoping that this will be a net positive for BFC. 

[MikeyD]

If they find CMSF2 interesting that may drive them to the CM site to check out our other products. If only 1% take a peek at the BFC products page that alone will be a huge jump in traffic.

[Bulletpoint]

28 minutes ago, IICptMillerII said:

I think though, that the best thing for everyone to do is to completely ignore all the comments on Steam. Its going to be a cesspool.

Hmmmm I sometimes read the steam comments about games I like, and I find that most are pretty sensible. Also the ones mentioning the game's weaker points. Maybe because Steam has a comment rating system, which weeds out the worst crap.

Also, I'm fine with people having different opinions.

Edited August 4, 2020 by Bulletpoint

[Bufo]

26 minutes ago, IanL said:

I wonder thought - will they come here or will they just use the Steam forum or even the Slytherine forum to comment. It will be interesting.

The same like always: comments everywhere.

 

There are already on steam: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1369370/discussions/

[Placebo]

Very interesting news, lets hope it ends well as a win win win all round.

[Battlefront.com]

The Steam angle is a whole new thing for us, obviously

We've survived as long as we have because we avoid situations where the known risks are high and yet the payoff is unknown.  The risks of Steam can only be mitigated by a huge investment of time and experience, which Battlefront completely lacked.  Carving out a big chunk of money to get more time and expertise didn't seem likely to put us in a better spot in the end.  That is why going it alone on Steam simply didn't make sense for us then or now.

Our partnership with Steam addresses the bulk of the risk of going onto Steam.  Slitherine has both the time and the experience to make CM products work on Steam, which reduced the risk side of the equation.  Because Slitherine has a well established customer base on Steam we knew more about the realistic potential payoff (we've seen their sales numbers).  This allowed us to make an informed decision that required nothing up front except faith in Slitherine.  The years we've worked with them has given us that faith, so it was kinda a no brainer by the end of the discussions.

That said, in the unlikely event that things go in an unexpectedly negative direction we do have the ability to call off the experiment and avoid Steam in the future.  Slitherine gave us that option.  I don't even think we had to demand it from them, which was really nice!

Steve

[Lethaface]

Interesting (and 'mildly' unexpected ) news, wish it will be a 'great success'!

 

[ASL Veteran]

1 hour ago, Combatintman said:

Joyous news, no more 'why isn't his game on Steam' threads.

That alone makes the move worthwhile 

[sttp]

This is great news. I think Steam is a good idea for many reasons, and hope Battlefront finds lots of success there. The influx of new players will be most welcomed.

[Probus]

How big is the battlefront team?

[JM Stuff]

Hi all,  exiting about Steam for BFC, yes, I am very happy that BFC take the decision cos codes and keys are sometime a problems, in case of I have to reinstall a new windows for exemple.

For the time I see only on Steam via Sitlerine the way and the case that we want to buy something about cmf2, I hope very well in the future that SteamBFC and Sitlerine adopte a system for peoples that have already the other modules like CMBN CMFI…with all different codes and keys and can reinstalling so easy in the same way…

Personly  I appreciated from steam the way to find automatically all my old games that I buy to them or NOT, ONLY, when I enter the correct profile name and password, with a confirmation with e mail, I have only to wait to couples of longs minutes to receive all keeping games that I buy since years ago, that probably I have to searching where I put them from the cupboard… without to searching why this code doen t work and why this one yes…

What I don’t like of Steam is the long publicity and all submenus and it content…but here I am not to make a plus minus for Steam but to approve or disapprove the decision of the three big editors.

So I am happy with the decision

 JM

Edited August 4, 2020 by 3j2m7

[MeatEtr]

Great to hear and will make for much bigger exposure, especially on Steam. Most of the Slitherine fans already know about CM/BF.

[Zveroboy1]

Nice, this is bound to bring an influx of new customers for CM products. This can only be good for business and bodes well for the future of the franchise. I see no reason to be particularly afraid of steam reviews or haters there or elsewhere for that matter. Just look at CMANO for instance which is even more of a niche game than CM and with a much higher learning curve and the review section on steam is not filled with angry trolls last time I checked.

[bomberburn]

Congrats! Sounds like great news.

Are there plans to move the other Combat Mission games over to steam such as Fortress Italy , Normandy, Red Thunder ect.?

[Bradley]

Congrats guys! This first test pilot goes well may allow for another and so on. Best wishes for both parties involved. Time to add some DLC's.

[JSj]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

That said, in the unlikely event that things go in an unexpectedly negative direction we do have the ability to call off the experiment and avoid Steam in the future.  Slitherine gave us that option.

bomberburn, they already answered that. This is obviously a test to se how it will be received. So if it goes well and there will be good sales numbers and many new players, the other games will surely be added to Steam too.

[grunt_GI]

Congrats...I know you probably can't share much, but would love to hear more about your work with the military...I think the CM games would make excellent training tools.

In any event, sounds like a good arrangement as you head into the next generation of games.

HOPEFULLY still on the Mac as well as PC.

[aleader]

So will this new arrangement be similar to DCS World in regards to sales (on here and on Steam), etc or has that much been worked out yet? 

I think getting CM on Steam is long overdue.  More exposure to a much larger (and likely much younger) audience, access to the 'impulse' buying behaviour of Steam sales (I have 140 games on Steam...most of which I don't play), and better pricing for those of us not in the US, which has stopped me from buying anything past CMSF 2, CMBS, and CMBN...$90 CDN for a single game is very steep.  Hopefully it results in more cash for BF which can go into modernizing the game engine.

[sttp]

2 hours ago, aleader said:

Hopefully it results in more cash for BF which can go into modernizing the game engine.

This is my single biggest wish. It really is time for the next iteration of the CM engine, in my opinion, but the extra Steam sales and the new, wider audience could buy BFC the time to make CMx3 more robust and reliable than it might have otherwise been. I will trade wait time for engine quality any day.

Edited August 5, 2020 by sttp

[Placebo]

There they are on my Steam page!

[rocketman]

Will the release date of Aug 25th mean that we will have the updated British campaign before that?

I think BFC should make a cool video like the one before GL release. On Steam, the first thing shown on a product page is usually a video and first impressions are really important. If it is immersive and appealing, maybe more people are prepared to learn the complexity of the game as they understand the nuances of gameplay.