My Recommendation

[PlainSight]

I'll always go for the non-steam version of any kind of game, because steam is just another bugger between me and the game with the updating, fail to update, lost connections, forgotten passwords,... i had nothing but issues and lost time with it. I see no advantage whatsoever.

[mpgeist]

We have reached out to Steam multiple times about this. The response... Silence.

You don't need Steam. Just go visit the guys at Giant Bomb and do a live look at the stuff. Good word of mouth there.

[sobek]

Oh no, not again. I couldn't stand watching their first vid... :) It was just too much awesome.

[cichlidfan]

Giant Bomb is entertaining but I am not sure I would want to count on them over Steam to help build my customer base.

[kokoweems]

Steam's silence might get broken once it is out of beta and makes more press.

 

EDIT: Just to make clear that was a guess :) ...I am no steam dude!

 

Squeaky wheel gets the grease :)

[Teriander]

Ah well, screw steam then. Who needs them. We don't want hordes of MW3 teenagers flooding our servers anyway.

 

I find this statement interesting. Considering Eagle Dynamic's A-10 is on STEAM for over a year now and "hordes of MW3 teenagers" aren't flooding A-10's servers. Probably because they are playing MW3.

 

Besides, the DCS World is far too realistic and professional for them. I personally know adults who are on STEAM who have never heard of DSC World, but would probably be impressed and interested if they found it on STEAM. Or they could wait for months/years till they hear about it word of mouth.

 

They nor I are interested in venturing out in the search world for the latest and greatest. Way too many sites to search or keep up with. We'll just stick with one company that has a huge gaming library and user base thats all tied to your user name and password. Convenience is why I use STEAM and is why I even heard of great games such as Eagle Dynamic's A-10.

[BHawthorne]

I am disappointed with the reasoning for much of the Steam bashing in this thread. Some don't want it because they want DCS to be some tight knit fringe platform. Others don't like it because they associate Steam with hyperactive children. The core of the matter is why put DCS World on Steam? To sell products for it. It's a value added prospect. ED can continue to do direct sales and pick up further sales on Steam. Steam and Origin are the most viable ways to get to the mass PC gaming audience via digital distribution revenue models. Many of you would spite the nose off of your face just to have DCS remain in it's own little corner of the gaming world. You have to take the good with the bad with sales and popularity. Part of that is just locking your server down so no public access if you're one of those elitist types. Don't ruin it for the rest of the potential customers out there simply because you don't want to fly with them. There are plenty of ways to handle that without marginalizing ED's sales in the process.

 

I know some of you would just as soon have the same dozen people own DCS World and noone else know about it. Think about how destructive that mindset is and how it has effected serious flight sims in the last decade. That mentality has hurt the genre and made it a niche of people who flaunt their snobbery. Perish the thought that the unwashed masses might know DCS exists and might even be curious enough to want to use it.

 

If any of this offends you it might of hit a little too close to home. Take an introspective look at yourself and why it would offend you at all? ED is a software company, they're not a charity organization.

Edited July 4, 2012 by BHawthorne

[Sabre-TLA]

I agree that Steam is troublesome. I recently installed Call Of Duty MW3 and it was going to take 8 hours to download (when I had the dvd). Thankfully someone had figured out a way to bypass Steam on the install so it only took about 20 minutes.

 

I always have it set to offline mode too so I don't have to wait to play any games.

[Pikey]

Steam and Origin are the most viable ways to get the the mass PC gaming audience via digital distribution revenue models

That's open to debate, personally. My own findings are that I've run an MMO gaming organisation where Steam users made up a minority of the player base. I've played in separate groups with BF3 (Origin), they were mostly also steam users, I'm guessing Flight sim users have their own distinct personalities ... not one of either the MMO players or FPS players were interested in Flight sims.

 

I'd go as far as saying that you could generalise simulator enthusiasts as folks that study and research and armed with that they will be actively looking for the latest games online, rather than sitting back and relying on a Steam sale popup.

 

And i'm a Steam user and enjoy nothing more than a zombie fest with my 9 year old son!

 

It might be a shame that Steam won't discuss things with Eagle Dynamics, but I found ED without Steam and they've done nothing but develop fantastic things i'm interested in since then. Whether Steam could attract a significant amount of second sales only ED would know but development has not slowed and the decision in allowing licensed community addons is of a far more significant development than any Steam distribution could do.

[BHawthorne]

That's open to debate, personally. My own findings are that I've run an MMO gaming organisation where Steam users made up a minority of the player base. I've played in separate groups with BF3 (Origin), they were mostly also steam users, I'm guessing Flight sim users have their own distinct personalities ... not one of either the MMO players or FPS players were interested in Flight sims.

 

I'd go as far as saying that you could generalise simulator enthusiasts as folks that study and research and armed with that they will be actively looking for the latest games online, rather than sitting back and relying on a Steam sale popup.

 

And i'm a Steam user and enjoy nothing more than a zombie fest with my 9 year old son!

 

It might be a shame that Steam won't discuss things with Eagle Dynamics, but I found ED without Steam and they've done nothing but develop fantastic things i'm interested in since then. Whether Steam could attract a significant amount of second sales only ED would know but development has not slowed and the decision in allowing licensed community addons is of a far more significant development than any Steam distribution could do.

 

The thing is, it's not an either/or situation, it's value added. The more venues to make DCS World available the more people will know about it. For many people Steam or Origin is their limit of searching for games. If it's not on there, they don't know about it. While it might be debatable what that says about the gamer themselves, that is largely irrelevant in a value added setting. It doesn't make sound logical sense to omit a potential income resource. Then again people love to think and debate ad nausium about what ED is and isn't for them on the forums. It's one thing I've experienced on this forums that truly confuses me. People seem to know what ED is and isn't and what DCS should and shouldn't be better than the developers themselves? :doh: