I'm rather late to the conversation, but I think you should do whatever is easiest for you guys! From the sound of the OP, I'd guess that's Steam. I'm perfectly fine with option 3, 100% Steam, or whatever you guys decide works best for a quick beta cycle. The last thing you want is to deal with overhead while trying to get the game finished. Whatever you guys choose, you have my support.
I really don't mind how you distribute it as long as Steam gets a key. I'm so excited but I have a question. Will everyone who pre-ordered get to be in the beta as we were promised? How will we know if we are selected? By email?
Well, to have heard of Steam or even this game you need internet. So yeah, once you install this on Steam, you can just smash your internet and play.
I wonder if new races will be implemented in future. I would lose my freakin' mind if there was a race like my avatar.
My vote is for 3, a lot of people as well as myself mostly use steam. Plus I can't wait to get my hands on the Beta!
Pleasing everyone is always difficult. In my personal opinion, I believe that development wise, option 3 is the most viable. Not only does it get a large amount of testers right away (I believe the amount of people that uses steam outweighs those that prefer DRM-free or do not at all), but it also allows you guys (the starbound team) to shave off time that would be used having to rifle out updates for other versions of the game. From a steam users perspective as well, I don't believe that people having to use steam will really be that much of an issue. If they dislike it - that's fine. I as a user dislike certain aspects. But for early beta and bug testing purposes, it seems like the prime direction to go in.
Why don't you guys focus on stabilizing the beta and actually giving people something to play instead of focusing your resources on a Metroid like animation. -.- This is some sever time management issues...
Dude, look at the Roadmap on the website. You'll see that different members of the team are working on different parts of the game. It is being stabilized, and they are also adding to the game in the process, otherwise the game wouldn't be making very much progress.
i like steam and option 3 is the best. But just we need a few DRM-free for the player who don"t use steam and help find bugs,we don"t need update oftenly for DRM-free virsion
