SendOwl and Steam both?

BlackSmokeDMax · July 15, 2016, 01:19:42 PM

Has there ever been an official announcement anywhere as to whether we will still have SendOwl access if we use the system to get a Steam key?

milon · July 15, 2016, 01:24:24 PM

I'm pretty sure the answer is Yes there was, and Yes we will. But I can't locate it right now.

BlackSmokeDMax · July 15, 2016, 01:42:20 PM

Quote from: milon on July 15, 2016, 01:24:24 PM
I'm pretty sure the answer is Yes there was, and Yes we will. But I can't locate it right now.

Understandable. The forums seems a bit... unstable

Nareese · July 15, 2016, 04:20:09 PM

Any chance we can get a positive confirmation on this? The latest sendowl email talks about moving the installation into Steam, which sounds kinda one way. Since this issue is kinda important to me, I am holding off on activating my game on Steam if doing so would mean I would lose future access to the DRM-free version (which I already have gotten for A14). I have no problem playing the standalone for now, and don't want to do something irreversible.

Thanks.

milon · July 15, 2016, 04:48:01 PM

I downloaded from SendOwl as usual, and THEN linked it to my Steam account. So I can't give a hard confirmation. The best I can find is this quote from Tynan, saying that both options are supported (but doesn't explicitly say both will be supported simultaneously for each user).

Quote from: Tynan on May 24, 2016, 11:08:17 PM
Don't worry, we'll still support non-Steam after Steam release.

And welcome

Tynan · July 15, 2016, 04:51:40 PM

Yes, you can keep getting DRM-free after getting the Steam key.

However, this may end in the future, if it turns out a substantial number of people are abusing it.

I really need to watch what happens to know if abuse is bad enough to force us to end this. Sorry I can't be more sure.

milon · July 15, 2016, 05:18:12 PM

Thanks Tynan!!

Nareese · July 15, 2016, 05:51:41 PM

Indeed, thanks very much for the response. I'll unlock my steam later tonight, once some of the initial load has died off.

OpalMonkey · July 15, 2016, 06:15:51 PM

Thanks for clarification on this, Tynan!

One related question though. Can the Steam version be launched sans Steam? I know (at least at one time, it may have changed) some games could be downloaded through Steam, then if launched directly from the EXE they act as DRM/Steam free versions. Steam didn't even mark them as running or record time played.

Just wondering if RimWorld works this way since I often leave it running in the background for a long time (thanks for making it not use much for resources when minimized!) and it bugs me if it's running through Steam all the time.

BlackSmokeDMax · July 15, 2016, 06:54:16 PM

Thanks for the post Tynan.

GhostBlade · July 16, 2016, 12:18:27 AM

Quote from: Tynan on July 15, 2016, 04:51:40 PM
Yes, you can keep getting DRM-free after getting the Steam key.

However, this may end in the future, if it turns out a substantial number of people are abusing it.

I really need to watch what happens to know if abuse is bad enough to force us to end this. Sorry I can't be more sure.

Wait, I hope you didn't just say that you'll end this system as soon as pirated copies start to spread. Because as a game's popularity rises, the number of pirated copies rise exponentially. And there's bound to be at least one dude who "benevolently shares" his drm-free copy with the interwebs. But that's no reason to take away drm-free from all your legitimate customers. Steam games are dead-easy to pirate these days anyways thanks to Steam emulation cracks, so you'd be taking away a good thing from paying people only to put a very minor roadbump in the way of pirates.

makkenhoff · July 16, 2016, 05:43:39 PM

Quote from: Tynan on July 15, 2016, 04:51:40 PM
Yes, you can keep getting DRM-free after getting the Steam key.

However, this may end in the future, if it turns out a substantial number of people are abusing it.

I really need to watch what happens to know if abuse is bad enough to force us to end this. Sorry I can't be more sure.

I understand your concern with piracy hurting your bottom line, I will be retaining my drm-free option via sendowl based on the fact that you cannot say for certain I won't lose my drm free access at some future time, largely based on something that I cannot do anything about.

I've always considered piracy to be somewhat of a joke, because in my mind the people who are going to pirate a product, are not your customers anyhow. I've seen some pretty bad piracy destroy certain independent game developers before though, so I can certainly respect and understand where you come from on this topic.

One guy I was a alpha tester for, for an unnamed product (game), had about 8 sales before either his product was hacked off his secure server or one of those 8 people turned around and distributed it on a piracy website. The short of it was, his main game server suddenly had a little over 100 people on it. Needless to say, this was soul-crushing for the developer, because it cost him more to have the server than he made off the people who actually bought it. And those of us who had paid, well, we got shafted by the same developer when he turned off the server and effectively made the product worthless for the ones who had paid. It was a very negative experience for me as a whole, but I still back and support independents regardless of one my one real bad experience.

However, the end result of this is it'll be one less positive steam review for you; I understand you wanting to keep your options open - I appreciate the honesty. This is yet another reason to give the game and more importantly your company, more positive words.