ArmA 3 on Steamworks?

[metalcraze 290]

Celery, your arguments are basically that Valve is trying to screw every one of its customers. It's simply not true.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.284132-Valve-Discusses-Charging-Customers-Based-on-Popularity

Say again?

And for the record, Steamworks makes for a much better DRM than typical dedicated DRM solutions that just restrict your installations.

You mean like BIS disc solution where only the disc is needed to play and after 3 patches (or the 1st beta) it isn't needed anymore?

You like Steamworks that's fine. Doesn't mean everyone else likes achievements, avatars and other completely unneeded stuff plus DRM plus Valve's boss being a moron who wants to make Steam's EULA even worse

If someone is your friend shouldn't you know on which servers he plays anyway?

Edited May 23, 2011 by metalcraze

[sethos 2]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.284132-Valve-Discusses-Charging-Customers-Based-on-Popularity

Say again?

It isn't even in effect and purely a wishful thought and you use it as 'evidence'? Valve, one of the most generous developers this generation when it comes to FREE content and support their fanbase need to catch shit over a simple idea that has yet to solidify and is just a thought?

Fucking hell.

[metalcraze 290]

It isn't even in effect and purely a wishful thought and you use it as 'evidence'?

It's a "wishful thought" voiced by Valve's boss. In fact he says there it needs to happen.

I'm sorry I don't have any confidence in a man who openly says he's thinking on how to screw his customers over.

Valve, one of the most generous developers this generation when it comes to FREE content and support their fanbase need to catch shit over a simple idea that has yet to solidify and is just a thought?

Eh what free content are you talking about?

Hats for $5?

[Daniel 0]

I'd rather not have Steam, mainly because BIS already benefit from the increased sales without users like me having to install it.

But I do like what they did with the hats. If you're dumb enough to pay good money for a virtual hat, Valve deserves your money.

[sailindawg 0]

I truly hope BIS stays with Steam. Lots of benefits for BIS, excellent distribution container for ARMA & other BIS content. What I find refreshing about BIS. is that they are using every avenue possible to get their material out. Steam, Sprocket and plain old discs. I'm in the US & Steam works great for me. I don't think BIS will change anything regarding their distribution. They have fully utilized all marketing avenues. Please don't change anything. As consumers, BIS is giving you choice unlike so many others

[sethos 2]

It's a "wishful thought" voiced by Valve's boss. In fact he says there it needs to happen.

I'm sorry I don't have any confidence in a man who openly says he's thinking on how to screw his customers over.

Eh what free content are you talking about?

Hats for $5?

Yeah, you're right, TF2 hasn't had so many free content updates it's insane :rolleyes:

Only among narrow-minded people would you find Valve hatred. Valve is one of the most praised companies for their effort on the gaming scene, their great free support

and business models. They are one of the reasons the PC gaming market didn't crash completely.

Stop being a blind hater.

[SpyderPB6 10]

Steam doesn't make adding mods difficult, updating is easier, I am all for steamworks integration. That would be wonderful.

[jonneymendoza 10]

yea i would love steamwork integration. make it soo easier to see your mates online and invite them to a game of arma 3 :)

[Zipper5 74]

What will BIS do with Sprocket if they started integrating Steamworks? Why would you choose Sprocket over Steam if when you bought their game off Sprocket, you still had to install and use it via Steam to get it to work?

That's one of the biggest reasons I really don't see this happening. I'm sure Sprocket brings in a fair amount of revenue for BIS to simply give up in favor of Steam.

[ryguy 10]

This would mean the multiplayer community would be split in half. I couldn't see any games that were solely on the steam network. Honestly, the MP scene is barren enough as it is!

[jonneymendoza 10]

What will BIS do with Sprocket if they started integrating Steamworks? Why would you choose Sprocket over Steam if when you bought their game off Sprocket, you still had to install and use it via Steam to get it to work?

That's one of the biggest reasons I really don't see this happening. I'm sure Sprocket brings in a fair amount of revenue for BIS to simply give up in favor of Steam.

Steams bigger and they would bring in more £££ then Sprocket.

Advertisement would do wonders. Steam can promote this game as a kind of Battlefield game(yes i know its not!) and watch the player base grow.

[Zipper5 74]

Steams bigger and they would bring in more £££ then Sprocket.

BIS has total control over Sprocket, and they are guaranteed to receive the majority of what you pay for your product over there.

[jonneymendoza 10]

ahh i see. well teh reason why i like steam is because its friends intigration.

If Arma 3 had its own built in friends list then no need for steam

[enad 11]

BIS has total control over Sprocket, and they are guaranteed to receive the majority of what you pay for your product over there.

Steam still provides ALOT of the funds to the developers. I remember reading somewhere it's a 75-25% split. Devs getting 75%, Valve getting 25%.

I can see the problem with Sprocket and I don't really expect BIS to implement Steamworks, but the thing is you don't HAVE to buy it through Steam, you can still buy it through Sprocket, Retail, D2D, anywhere...It will just need Steam to install, that's it. Then you get all the good features of it being a Steamworks title.

Plus steamworks titles seem to get advertised longer on the Steam homepage so It could definitely affect BIS in a good way, getting more attention to their game.

But like Jonney said, if ArmA 3 did come with a more user friendly multiplayer with a simple friend system then I honestly wouldn't see a need for Steamworks, though it is nice because I could buy the game retail for less money and still have all my stats tracked and hours logged.

[gabe_ruckus 5]

I couldn't play ANY of my games I've bought on steam for most of the year I spent in Iraq. It's great, as long as you have broadband internet that's not at risk of getting shut down. Not so great when you've only got slow satellite internet that shuts down multiple times a day, and often has outages for days on end.

And yes, I know about starting offline, but you can't install a game that uses steam without the internet, even if you have the physical boxed copy. And if steam decides it wants to break and try and autoupdate something while you've got no connection or a shitty connection, well, good luck ever getting it to start again until you happen to fly through Balad for a day, or go back home.

No Steam, please. It's great, and most of the time I love it, but if I'm in Afghanistan and Arma3 comes out (And uses Steam), I'm going to be one sad soldier.

[Gruman 123]

Make it available on Steam for those who like Steam and also make it available over all the other distrubition chanels like Sprocket (love it) and the rest.

No need to piss of a huge part of the community for some chat, friend, server and achievments features.

There is MSN / ICQ for Chat and Friend features and I never had a problem finding the Server I wanted in the Ingame Server Browser...

Steam is a great programm to grab all those cheap weekend sales to play on a rainy sunday... but for a game like Arma I'm prefer the good old way.

Thats just my personal opinion of a guy who only plays inside a Squad on a single server. Wasnt on a public server in years... Maybe thats the reason I see no points in any of those Steamworks Features...

[Splintert 10]

Though I use steam and love it, I am entirely against forcing players to get the game through steam/run through steam. Playing offline is a bugger, and the 76MB of RAM it uses in the background is a big waste on low end machines that barely run the game as is.

[jonneymendoza 10]

I couldn't play ANY of my games I've bought on steam for most of the year I spent in Iraq. It's great, as long as you have broadband internet that's not at risk of getting shut down. Not so great when you've only got slow satellite internet that shuts down multiple times a day, and often has outages for days on end.

And yes, I know about starting offline, but you can't install a game that uses steam without the internet, even if you have the physical boxed copy. And if steam decides it wants to break and try and autoupdate something while you've got no connection or a shitty connection, well, good luck ever getting it to start again until you happen to fly through Balad for a day, or go back home.

No Steam, please. It's great, and most of the time I love it, but if I'm in Afghanistan and Arma3 comes out (And uses Steam), I'm going to be one sad soldier.

Why not install your steam game before you head off away from home?

And Sprocket is the same sort of. you still got to download the files and install them?

And what if Arma 3 has some bog standard DRM where you have to be online to authenticate your game? then what?

i get what your saying though and i think the best solution is to have a built in online friends list.

That is one of the main reasons why some of us want steamworks. because of its online friends list .

So you a soldier for real? man i hope the war ends soon! best of luck mate.

---------- Post added at 08:45 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:43 AM ----------

Make it available on Steam for those who like Steam and also make it available over all the other distrubition chanels like Sprocket (love it) and the rest.

No need to piss of a huge part of the community for some chat, friend, server and achievments features.

There is MSN / ICQ for Chat and Friend features and I never had a problem finding the Server I wanted in the Ingame Server Browser...

Steam is a great programm to grab all those cheap weekend sales to play on a rainy sunday... but for a game like Arma I'm prefer the good old way.

Thats just my personal opinion of a guy who only plays inside a Squad on a single server. Wasnt on a public server in years... Maybe thats the reason I see no points in any of those Steamworks Features...

That is one of the reasons why Arma 2 is not that popular. hard to buddy up with mates online as there is no system to do so! A game thats heavily focused on online play should have a system of such

[metalcraze 290]

Only among narrow-minded people would you find Valve hatred. Valve is one of the most praised companies for their effort on the gaming scene, their great free support

and business models. They are one of the reasons the PC gaming market didn't crash completely.

Stop being a blind hater.

I don't see how existence of Valve helpc PC market exist. Steam is just a game shop that also sells a lot of console ports. And they have an annoying DRM.

I also think TF2 is a game for kids - a merely my opinion.

I don't like DRM. I don't like to be forced to use uncomfortable tools without any alternative. I don't like huge patches. Can you understand this?

BIS also has "great free support". And look they don't use Steam exclusively.

If you like Steam - fine, buy your Steam version.

I don't like Steam. I want to have a choice. I don't want to repeat this over and over again. That is all.

Edited May 24, 2011 by metalcraze

[Big Dawg KS 6]

You mean like BIS disc solution where only the disc is needed to play and after 3 patches (or the 1st beta) it isn't needed anymore?

I never needed a disc in the first place with Steam. The BIS solution is still admirable, but if they were ever forced to implement a more secure DRM I'd prefer it be Steamworks and not something very restrictive (like limited installations) or intrusive.

You like Steamworks that's fine. Doesn't mean everyone else likes achievements, avatars and other completely unneeded stuff plus DRM plus Valve's boss being a moron who wants to make Steam's EULA even worse

You seem to think that that's all Steamworks does don't you? I could care less about achievements and stats tracking and all that "impress your friends" crap. Not to mention it's still the developers who chose which parts to implement, so really you are only insulting BIS by making these ridiculous stereotypical statements.

And once again (this obviously cannot be said enough here), people are still confusing Steam distribution and Steamworks. If you don't understand the difference, please don't bother posting here.

[almanzo 144]

Oh snap.

I have a huge list of games on steam, I think it's around 130 titles so far. For most of the time, steam is very good. There are a few problems with it though. Servers are usually quick, and with a good broadband connection it's brilliant. Pricing though, is simply stupid. It's commonly way cheaper to go to the store and buy the game, and then register it on steam. Just doesn't make sense. Why pay more to simply download a game, when you can buy the game as a hard copy, and then have it on steam for redownloads in the future?

The second thing, wich is a big issue, is the lack of freedom to decide where to put your games. This is especially true for people with SSDs. I want arma on my SSD, but I don't have room for all my games on my SSD. There are workarounds, but it's still stupid.

And as others have pointed out, it sounds like a bad idea to force something like this, when such a huge portion of it's fan base are against it. It just doesn't seem like a good idea to deliberatly piss off your prime costumers. Celery, for instance, have contributed a whole damn lot to this game, and I can guarantee that the amount of work and love he has put into this game has resulted in revenue for BIS. Loosing costumers like that, doesn't really seem to be the best idea in the world.

And that is also what makes BIS better than so many other studios. Where other studios are afraid that mod makers might make better content than them, so that they don't earn money from their DLCs, BIS understands that mods may encourage others to buy their games. I mean, imagine how ARMA would have ended up without the modding community. The wast majority of us never play vanilla ARMA.

[dunedain 48]

@aLmAnZo

Steam isn't the place to buy a recently released game. But as far as the pricing goes they are among the best when it comes to sales. I don't buy my games outside those, and I have around 250 games most bought on the Steam Store, barely any indie, for little money through the years. The €/$/£ conversion is retarded though, and the reason why I have a lot of games I bought on amazon.com with a fake US address.

As for the second issue, the current beta of Steam allows your to choose your installation path for each game. So soon enough those "stupid workarounds" as you call them will be obsolete.

I myself do agree that this community is pretty conservative and dislike DRMs even when they can be pretty convenient like Steam. However as far as what is best for BIS, I can't help but think that for instance the Workshop is typically a feature from Steam ArmaIII would benefit a great deal as it serves as a great display of your game and its community to millions of potential customers using Steam.

@Sailindawg&swissMAG

ArmaIII is gonna be on Steam anyway. The debate here, is wether BIS should make ArmaIII Steamworks which would link your game to your Steam account regardless of where you bought it.

@Zipper5

Well the thing is that right now, most customers who don't feel like owing anything to BIS may not buy on Sprocket because it's not Steam. They either buy retail like I did so far with all my BIS games or buy it on Steam. I'ld be curious to see a pie chart of ArmaIICO sales cut into retail, Steam, Sprocket and others...

Anyway as long as you offer the game for a better or equivalent price to Steam, thanks to Steamworks, your customers will have the possibility to buy on Sprocket and redeam their key on Steam. In such scenario Sprocket could actually increase its sales figures. This is also why Steamworks is great, as it doesn't cut off the competition in the digital distribution segment while giving you access to excellent services such as the Workshop.

@ryguy

Not at all... You would see the same servers as anyone, I don't even see how you could come to such conclusion. Moreover by using Steamworks nothing is forcing BIS or anyone to use Valve's server browser anyway, although it is way ahead of ArmaII's...

@metalcraze

Funnily I read your post before the quote, and the word narrow-minded came to my mind as well.

Edited November 2, 2012 by dunedain

[NeuroFunker 11]

i'll get it from amazon this time, steam causes only probs, i did cut the game from steam anyway, using it without it, so i don't care.

[maddogx 13]

Btw. on this topic:

Bohemia Interactive is looking for a Gameplay Programmer to join the Arma 3 development team.

Job description

A gameplay programmer works together with designers and artists on the implementation of game mechanics. The programmer creates a feature analysis, implements it and works with QA on polishing it.

Requirements

• Routine C++ knowledge
  
• Strong OO design understanding
  
• Math and linear algebra skills
  
• Teamwork and communication skills
  
• Good spoken and written English
  
• Willing to work in Mnisek (near Prague), Czech Republic (but Brno not impossible)
  

Welcomed skills

• Experience of working in large engines / projects
  
• Ability to adapt to and work with a large codebase
  
• Experience with Steamworks SDK
  
• Experience with game development
  
• Passion for video games
  

Offer

• Opportunity to work on a popular game franchise
  
• Nice atmosphere in a smaller team
  
• Possibilities for skill-development and growth
  
• Flexible working hours
  
• Competitive salary & benefits
  

Note: Please attach examples of your work (including source code)

Emphasis mine.

[Kamov 1]

Btw. on this topic:

:(

Emphasis mine.

Thats sad, they should have made a independent social platform. Steam is pretty ugh I hardly ever use any of its social features since they go for a one-size-fits all approach instead of tailoring things specifically for the game. Steam is dumb overall, you don't own the game you lease it, its like that because they fail to comply with law of land in many countries. Which is why I did not buy ArmA on steam.