ArmA 3 on Steamworks?

[kualus 1]

That is absolutely ridiculous. Go home, your drunk.

Not really, name calling little child.

You completely forget that in forums there are always a lot of lurkers around, who maybe never even post anything or very seldom, but still like to participate in a voting, just like myself.

And if you check my registration date you'll see that it's quite unlikely that I'm an alt account :rolleyes:

Point taken. Did you take into account that the majority of the visitors here are guests and not registered? No accusation, just curious. :)

[Kerc Kasha 102]

I've said I suspect (and have said "probably") that the poll has been tampered with. I'll spell out my reply to Placebo: if tampering with the poll were going on by adding "yes" votes which would be supporting ArmA 3 being Steam-exclusive and thus lining up with the developers' plans, it would be in your interest to deny it to us and you would have the only means of verification regarding said tampering. My belief in this matter is: Based on the more even numbers of people who pro and anti-Steam exclusive, and the lopsidedness of the poll results, it's very, very likely that the poll has been hit by an alt account army to give an overwhelming pro-Steam outcome. So forgive me if I don't believe a single word you say regarding this poll.

Man you're really grasping now.

You know there is such thing a vocal minority right? Most people voting yes don't really care about the discussion at hand because well, everything in their favour. While those opposed to it have a lot to say, hence a vocal minority. To cry foul play when something doesn't go your way (especially at something as insignificant as a forum poll) is really immature

[T.S.C.Plage 0]

The whole poll is irrelevant. A decision has been taken so what purpose does it have to vote for this poll? No purpose at all.

Resistance is useless. You have the choice to not use Steam and to not play ArmA 3 or to accept the whole Steam thingy.

BR

It's not irrelevant by itself at least if it didn't got tampered. The decision may stand but it's still interesting (at least for me) to see the result.

Resistance is never useless even if it's just to make clear what position you've but of course there're always people who will be quiet or even backpaddle for their own personal gain. Besides that some 70 years ago quite a lot of the people in my country said the same and we all know the outcome. Maybe some more resistance (especially in the beginning) could have changed how things ran but it seems like most of these people were the same lazy, uninvolved, uninterested and coward persons like you and all the others who think it's ok the accept such business practices without even voicing their concerns even if a decision was already made. WWII is something else than a Steam only game you say? Right, I'll give you that but for me Steam is the SS of the gaming industry and that's why I made that comparison.

Edited February 25, 2013 by T.S.C.Plage
Quote inserted...

[jefferspang 2]

And where did you get that Arma 3 would feature achievements? I'm pretty sure they said why they made the Steam decision.

@JeffersPang, as I said before, this thread right now is going nowhere. You are fighting against a poll that may or may not be accurate, and one that certainly does not reflect, EITHER WAY, the views of the community. Arguing whether or not the poll is skewed is pointless. Just ignore it. Same to pro-Steam guys on here. The poll is irrelevant. There's no point trying to argue whether the majority of the community is for Steam-exclusiveness or against it. And I can tell you, neither of you guys, nor myself, are in a position to accurately state what the majority of forum users, or the ArmA community at large, support or don't support. So there's no point to argue that. Asking questions is fine, but sitting here arguing with each other on the evils of Steam and how you're pissed that Armaholic will be useless and how you're going to have to use Steam Workshop (not confirmed) and how all mods will ONLY go through the Workshop (not confirmed) and how you stuff isn't protected (the methods for cracking the binarized p3d and stealing addons won't change with the distribution method) does absolutely nothing for this forum. It won't change BIS' decision. It won't do anything to get you answers.

One more time, this thread is going nowhere, and the reason it was locked yesterday is the same reason it should be locked again. Lock this thread, cease this discussion, reopen it after there's been time for all this rage to cool off and after we've received more information.

I see where you're coming from (Steam be inevitable). The question now is, is it possible for BI to disable the SteamWorks feature but still use Steam as a platform?

[Sniperwolf572 758]

Please inform yourself how polls for example related to elections work. Let's say 2k people get questioned and answer what party they'll vote for the results in the vast mayority of the cases will at best have a 10% deviation from the final result. While infact 10% is already quite high and I just used it as a "buffer". Normally it's more like 3-5% or even less. So I'd consider the 12% in this case here as quite significant. You can make it 10% if you want but that's still a lot of customers and there's the big question if they'll gain the lost 10% via the Steam consumer base. Besides that you've to consider that quite a lot of these 10% are actually people who really were a plus for the community as they were actually contributing something.

I see where you are coming from, but the problem there is that we're not talking about the 10% of the entire customer base randomly polled without any kind of bias. It's like CNN saying "X guy will win" 3 minutes into their election coverage. As DM said, the community we have here is strongly biased. This is not "take results of 400 random ArmA2 purchasers", this is "take 400 of the people who give a damn about the product so much that they have long standing accounts on the developers forums" poll. I assume that the bias goes towards "Yes" because I'd rather believe there are people who hate steam, but will buy the game anyway. DM believes that the bias goes in the other direction, and thinking of it, he probably is right. Someone else might believe otherwise.

Even if you might consider me "pro-steam" (while I genuinely don't care if it's tied to Steam or not) and you might say that the results are in "my sides favor", my conclusion is that the poll, on the global scale, can not give you any kind of proof or argument for anything. The only kind of data that will matter is the one BIS will have after they've been selling the game for a reasonable amount of time.

And stop accusing each other of cheating, W0lle, the resident steam hater moderator can confirm what we're saying if you unreasonably think me and Placebo are not telling the truth.

[rehtus777 10]

No, I am not saying you are lying. I'm saying it is very likely.

The Poll isn't skewed. We all realize that the game is going to be "Great" and we are going to buy it (no brainer), so Steam is not a big deal at this time. Again, I've said before, you shouldn't be worried about Steam - but "BIS". I love BIS and all they've done for us - ArmA 2 is incredible and ArmA 3 is going to epic. But, we must stay vigilant and make sure they stay on the 'straight and narrow' with what got them here. The Editor and Mod's are the key - they must ALWAYS stay in game.

Do I think BIS will remove the Editor / modding in the future? No. But, I said the same thing about DICE 3 years ago...and look at them now (of course EA own's them now, so what did I expect....EA ruined the game :p) BIS is NOT EA, so I know we are 'Okay'. BIS is a Great Company, you need to have faith in them, big man.

Cheers :beeeers:

[Kerc Kasha 102]

I see where you're coming from (Steam be inevitable). The question now is, is it possible for BI to disable the SteamWorks feature but still use Steam as a platform?

I don't think you understand what steam works is if you want to disable it. All it is is stat tracking and other in-game implementations of steam.

[kualus 1]

Man you're really grasping now.

You know there is such thing a vocal minority right? Most people voting yes don't really care about the discussion at hand because well, everything in their favour. While those opposed to it have a lot to say, hence a vocal minority. To cry foul play when something doesn't go your way (especially at something as insignificant as a forum poll) is really immature

You know there is such a thing as not baselessly calling people immature when they disagree with you, right? The only thing you have to support your claims of vocal minority is a very suspicious poll which does not reflect the numbers of people who have weighed in on the issue. What evidence do you have that most people who voted "Yes" don't really care?

[Placebo 29]

No, I am not saying you are lying. I'm saying it is very likely.

Then you are accusing me of lying, lay out your proof else the accusation is inexcusable, I have been involved in this community for 12 years, with this company for 9 years, how long have you been here? Two months?

[Sniperwolf572 758]

I see where you're coming from (Steam be inevitable). The question now is, is it possible for BI to disable the SteamWorks feature but still use Steam as a platform?

That's the whole point of going Steam exclusive, if it was just down to the distribution platform, they would have used their own. There obviously are features that Steam offers which they can't dedicate time to replicate and other services aren't offering them.

With this decision BI is refusing to reinvent the wheel at this point. Can't say I blame them, I don't write my own libraries for things I do at work either and I'm sure my libs wouldn't be polished and have had thousands of eyes looking for bugs and holes in them as the already established solutions that I'm free to use.

[W0lle 1050]

I agree that the poll options are not perfect. This is because I transferred the poll from the other thread with his options and results.

Maybe it would be best to remove it altogether and start a new one with more options than only yes and no, at least a 3rd option:

Yes, no matter what

Yes, but not Steam exclusive

No, not at all

But this the guy two posts above me must do. :)

[tekgun2 0]

You know there is such a thing as not baselessly calling people immature when they disagree with you, right? The only thing you have to support your claims of vocal minority is a very suspicious poll which does not reflect the numbers of people who have weighed in on the issue. What evidence do you have that most people who voted "Yes" don't really care?

Yet calling someone a liar with no evidence is fine, seriously :a:

[Kerc Kasha 102]

You know there is such a thing as not baselessly calling people immature when they disagree with you, right? The only thing you have to support your claims of vocal minority is a very suspicious poll which does not reflect the numbers of people who have weighed in on the issue. What evidence do you have that most people who voted "Yes" don't really care?

It's not baseless to call you immature if you're calling staff out over a forum poll. Yes it'd be in their best interest to sway the poll (other than the fact of it getting out) but why the hell would they? It's not going to change anything, if thousands upon thousands of people hate steam and the poll says 'nope it's 20 angry dudes' how is that going to affect the actual sales? It won't, because the the thousands upon thousands of guys will still not buy the game regardless of the polls result.

I voted yes, I care. But seeing as there's probably a handful of people defending the move while a whole bunch bashing it it's easy to say a lot of people just voted and moved on.

[Leon86 13]

I agree that the poll options are not perfect. This is because I transferred the poll from the other thread with his options and results.

Maybe it would be best to remove it altogether and start a new one with more options than only yes and no, at least a 3rd option:

Yes, no matter what

Yes, but not Steam exclusive

No, not at all

But this the guy two posts above me must do. :)

Please add a "yes, but from the bargain bin" option.

[kualus 1]

Then you are accusing me of lying, lay out your proof else the accusation is inexcusable, I have been involved in this community for 12 years, with this company for 9 years, how long have you been here? Two months?

Try reading what I said again. If I had accused you of lying, I would have said "forgive me when I don't believe you", not "forgive me if I don't believe you". "When" implies accusation, "if" does not. "If" still leaves me the option to believe you, even though I believe the odds of you telling the truth are not good. Drop the baseless ad hominem of how long we've both been here, it speaks badly for you.

Yet calling someone a liar with no evidence is fine, seriously

See above.

[OChristie 0]

Master of the newly invented martial arts, keyboarditsu.

[Sniperwolf572 758]

I agree that the poll options are not perfect. This is because I transferred the poll from the other thread with his options and results.

Maybe it would be best to remove it altogether and start a new one with more options than only yes and no, at least a 3rd option:

Yes, no matter what

Yes, but not Steam exclusive

No, not at all

But this the guy two posts above me must do. :)

Why would it matter and what would it accomplish? Enough with polls I say. It's not like the current ones are relevant, and it's not going to sway BI's opinion whatever the results. They told us what they're going to do, the only thing left to do for them now is to address the concerns that have not been answered and have risen up afterwards.

[antoineflemming 14]

I see where you're coming from (Steam be inevitable). The question now is, is it possible for BI to disable the SteamWorks feature but still use Steam as a platform?

Well Steamworks and Steam Workshop aren't the same thing. Steam Workshop requires Steamworks, but Steamworks is there primarily for the servers. Gamespy is shutting down, so Steamworks will probably be the basis for the MP servers. I bet it won't be possible to disable Steamworks. However, only MP would use it. The thing is, I hope BIS doesn't use Steam Workshop as it isn't needed. And, if devs are reading this and take my suggestion to make separate SP and MP executable files, then you wouldn't need Steamworks for SP. The only real advantages to BIS for using Steamworks, as I see it, are:

1) Multiplayer servers (taking the place of Gamespy servers)

2) DLC, and being able to download DLC in-game

3) Maybe Beta patch management (like BIS's current beta program, but only this time with Steam's opt-in feature)

4) Maybe, with the new gear customization system, BIS might use Steamworks and the in-game DLC to deliver new customization items as they are made. I'd hope they don't made them microtransactions though.

But, either way, none of these features (which are probably the most useful to BIS and ArmA 3) should infringe upon addon makers's rights. Hopefully some of these features are ready when the Alpha is released so that we can test them and provide ample feedback.

---------- Post added at 12:20 ---------- Previous post was at 12:16 ----------

Try reading what I said again. If I had accused you of lying, I would have said "forgive me when I don't believe you", not "forgive me if I don't believe you". "When" implies accusation, "if" does not. "If" still leaves me the option to believe you, even though I believe the odds of you telling the truth are not good. Drop the baseless ad hominem of how long we've both been here, it speaks badly for you.

See above.

By saying he is "very likely" lying, you are saying that you suspect that he is lying, meaning that you believe he is a liar, and that he's lying in this instance. That's what you are saying. That's what that means. You can't say "I think you are lying, but I'm not actually saying that you are lying". If you think he's lying, then you're saying that he's lying. And I'm pretty sure that's way out of line.

[Kerc Kasha 102]

I'm curious has there been any serious instances of people stealing addons on the steam workshop? I haven't paid much attention to it but I figured a lot of people migrated over from things like nexus and would down vote or w/e the frauds.

[kualus 1]

By saying he is "very likely" lying, you are saying that you suspect that he is lying, meaning that you believe he is a liar, and that he's lying in this instance.

Yes, which is why I said "if", not "when". See my previous post.

If you think he's lying, then you're saying that he's lying. And I'm pretty sure that's way out of line.

Thinking and saying are two different things. You said that I said I suspect he's lying, now you're saying that I'm saying he's lying. Which is it?

[Raptor 10]

Then you are accusing me of lying, lay out your proof else the accusation is inexcusable, I have been involved in this community for 12 years, with this company for 9 years, how long have you been here? Two months?

That makes someone solid for what?

The joining date is solid for the qualities and the knowlegde of people? Even the age?

It's the proof of be above it all, isn't it?

It's more the habitus of certain people and the communication failari which leads to these, more or less, relationship and PR-desaster.

But I mention it (lack of quality and clear communication) several times and as you could read in the dev-blog BIS is more exicted within struggle about their attitude of the "correct" developmentprocess as they forget to make a clear/real announcement about steam on the one hand and the development of the other hand. But the real developmentmanagement/communication attitute of BIS (Maruk) gets mentioned so often, it's idle to talk about it anymore.

I'm seeing many analogies here, just saying.

Edited February 25, 2013 by Raptor

[W0lle 1050]

That's the whole point of going Steam exclusive, if it was just down to the distribution platform, they would have used their own. There obviously are features that Steam offers which they can't dedicate time to replicate and other services aren't offering them.

With this decision BI is refusing to reinvent the wheel at this point. Can't say I blame them, I don't write my own libraries for things I do at work either and I'm sure my libs wouldn't be polished and have had thousands of eyes looking for bugs and holes in them as the already established solutions that I'm free to use.

What features would that be? Taking screenshots and sharing them as mentioned in the blog?

Must be, because I have not seen them mentioning any more features from which Arma3 can benefit when Steam only.

Oh wait... there are achievements. Make 100 headshots and get a free sniper rifle DLC.

Really, what they have done to game I love since 12 years... :mad:

[jefferspang 2]

Well Steamworks and Steam Workshop aren't the same thing. Steam Workshop requires Steamworks, but Steamworks is there primarily for the servers. Gamespy is shutting down, so Steamworks will probably be the basis for the MP servers. I bet it won't be possible to disable Steamworks. However, only MP would use it. The thing is, I hope BIS doesn't use Steam Workshop as it isn't needed. And, if devs are reading this and take my suggestion to make separate SP and MP executable files, then you wouldn't need Steamworks for SP. The only real advantages to BIS for using Steamworks, as I see it, are:

1) Multiplayer servers (taking the place of Gamespy servers)

2) DLC, and being able to download DLC in-game

3) Maybe Beta patch management (like BIS's current beta program, but only this time with Steam's opt-in feature)

4) Maybe, with the new gear customization system, BIS might use Steamworks and the in-game DLC to deliver new customization items as they are made. I'd hope they don't made them microtransactions though.

But, either way, none of these features (which are probably the most useful to BIS and ArmA 3) should infringe upon addon makers's rights. Hopefully some of these features are ready when the Alpha is released so that we can test them and provide ample feedback.

first off, thank you for explaining very clearly :) Secondly, examples like this is all I see on these Steam Workshops. It doesn't look like the moderators care very much about the creator's rights. I want to know who will be moderating the Steam Workshop for ArmAIII? Is it a Valve employee? Or will be it be Foxhound/Max Powers? If not, is it possible for BI to disable the workshop itself?

[KewlArc 1]

I'm curious has there been any serious instances of people stealing addons on the steam workshop? I haven't paid much attention to it but I figured a lot of people migrated over from things like nexus and would down vote or w/e the frauds.

I think people took mods from Nexus and reuploaded them on Steam Workshop without permission from the mod creator. That is the case with Garry's Mod and Steam Workshop and I wouldn't be surprised if that's the same thing happens to other games and mods.

[nettrucker 142]

It's not irrelevant by itself at least if it didn't got tampered. The decision may stand but it's still interesting (at least for me) to see the result.

Resistance is never useless even if it's just to make clear what position you've but of course there're always people who will be quiet or even backpaddle for their own personal gain. Besides that some 70 years ago quite a lot of the people in my country said the same and we all know the outcome. Maybe some more resistance (especially in the beginning) could have changed how things ran but it seems like most of these people were the same lazy, uninvolved, uninterested and coward persons like you and all the others who think it's ok the accept such business practices without even voicing their concerns even if a decision was already made. WWII is something else than a Steam only game you say? Right, I'll give you that but for me Steam is the SS of the gaming industry and that's why I made that comparison.

Look I'm in the same boat as you. I had never any issues with Steam or Valve because never before was it forced down my throat. Second I'm German as well so I know exactly what you are talking about. I didn't even vote on this poll because it is useless and irrelevant at this stage. The decision has been made if we like it or not. The loss of old-timer customers who firmly reject Valve, Steam Steamworks is irrelevant as well. BIS has the chance to score big time and increase customer base. Speaking strictly in terms of business customers are not even entities but sales figures that's it.

So the best advice that I can give to a fellow community member is try to get it over with, accept the inevitable. In any case you have 2 choices . . . accept Valve and Steam and play ArmA 3 or don't accept it and you don't gonna play ArmA 3. It's as simple as that. And yes 80 percent of the people who said no . . . will give in and purchase the game in any case maybe even more.

Since our community manager himself has described out concerns as "pathetic crap" so what do you expect. The current mindset is clear. So just leave by that we don't gonna change anything by complaining or trying to change something.

I will most probably get an infraction for saying this because I'm violating a forum rule or even get banned . . . but it's ok.