Messages

 I think a 6 month break to gather thoughts, then new content.

The game's a cash cow already, neither now nor the near future is the time to stop development. Development should stop when the cow falls over or the udders run dry, then you release 1.0

Blast.

But is there anyone left to buy Starbound that doesn't already own it?

Pokemon trainers probably don't even know what Steam is because it doesn't have a cellphone platform.

6 people currently playing with an all time peak of 9 , doesn't seem like a whole lot of steam testers.

Starbound just updated its unstable branch with what feels like a fairly polished 1.0 beta.

You can manually add Rimworld to Steam you know, you can even do it now.

And have none of Steam's benefits other than a shortcut. Steam integration is the strength of Steam.

Just gonna bump/post this for relavancy. The summer sale just happened, and is running until the 4th. If anyone didn't notice.

This might be the first Steam sale that doesn't get any of my money. Just nothing jumping out at me in this one.

The Steam sales are not nearly as popular since steam started their refund policy. It used to be fun to watch for daily and hourly deals, but that stopped because of the possibility for people to refund because of buyers remorse when a game's price drops far below what they paid. Impulse buying has been greatly reduced, for me anyway.

OK, fair enough, and at first I figured it would be something like that (convenience, basically).
Then I read somewhere that it's possible to add other games to a Steam account.

I don't know how it's done, but I've seen a few people mention this, so it seems credible.
If true, we're back to my original question: why is a Steam key such a big deal?  Just buy RW normally, then add it to your Steam account.

I understand it's an extra step, but surely that doesn't explain why so many people complain about it.  [And some get pretty upset, too.]

Adding a non-steam game to steam is basically just creating a shortcut to launch the game from within the steam interface, none of steams integration features will be available. No stat tracking, workshop, achievements, leader boards, friend stats, auto-updates, etc.

If you have to format your system, your hard drive dies, or you buy a new computer, all you need to do is install steam and pick out the games you want to install from your steam games list and wait for them to download. Those games not natively integrated won't be in the list, even if you previously manually added them. You'll have to hunt down all your non-steam games through websites and sift through piles of optical disks. Steam's convenience is priceless to me just for that.

Okay can both of you end it. There's zero reason to fight over why to use steam or not, if you personally need/want to use it okay, if you don't okay. There's many pointless posts in this now that are just fighting over if steam is useful or not.

Sorry, but when people jump in here just to take a crap on steam, it's not pointless to respond. I got the feeling early on in development that the dev was not a fan of steam and all the fanboys immediately jumped aboard blocking its impending release. RimWorld is a decent enough game that it could have easily weathered the typical steam early access criticism and may have ended up a better game because of it.

Why he wants it on Steam is in his post.

"All of my games I own are in my steam Library, partially because its "easy", but mostly because i have a horrendous track record of loosing or forgetting info associated with accounts."

I agree with him, it can't be on Steam soon enough for me. If all of the approximate 400 games I own were not on Steam and had their own "dev" or "publisher" website accounts for access, I'd have to make a spreadsheet of names, sites and passwords. Most would end up eventually being lost.

so easy to save the link to the download from the developer on your own flash drive. And 400 games, how often do you actually play all those games? Steam adds just another layer of garbage to navigate, and their DRM locks.... I much prefer to purchase without those internet access required locks.

Steam DRM is not an issue for me, I can download any or all onto any number of computers, PC or Mac, that I own. I can see at a glance all the games I own, and delete or install any of them. I can stream my games from my gaming PC to my HTPC and play on the living room big screen. Many of those 400 games get reinstalled and played again after several years of inactivity, they get rediscovered rather than lost BECAUSE I CAN SEE EVERYTHING THAT I OWN. I play many of my multiplayer games with Steam friends, I can see when they're online and send an invite link to a game I've started. If my internet goes down, I can just put steam in offline mode and still play single player games until the internet returns. I could go on, but I've already given far more reason to use it than not use it.

Or I can save 400 odd web links to a flash drive and not have access to all that.

Why he wants it on Steam is in his post.

"All of my games I own are in my steam Library, partially because its "easy", but mostly because i have a horrendous track record of loosing or forgetting info associated with accounts."

I agree with him, it can't be on Steam soon enough for me. If all of the approximate 400 games I own were not on Steam and had their own "dev" or "publisher" website accounts for access, I'd have to make a spreadsheet of names, sites and passwords. Most would end up eventually being lost.

So I hope I'm still getting a steam key, I bought the game from the website a long time ago, I think it said that the purchase included a steam key.

How do all these other early access games on desura manage to give out steam keys to everyone who bought the game months before it shows up on steam? I bought The Spatials almost a year ago, and just went to humble bundle, and got a steam key.

I have some free time to test.

Other than for mod compatibility, why would you want to play older alternative versions of an alpha game, though?

So you can play your saved games that the new version is no longer compatible with.