Regarding Steam (POLL)

If option 3 is meant the way Molly apparently meant it in the news post, then I wouldn't mind that, but the poll option doesn't really make it clear.

My take on what Molly's post meant as far as option 3 is concerned is that no DRM-free download would be available in stage one of the beta, but would start with stage 2. Possibly keeping track with the steam version, since the updates from stage 2 onwards would be less frequent and so less of a hindrance to development.

 

I'm fine with 2 or 3. I lean towards 3.

Honestly I don't understand why people care so much about Steam's DRM anyway. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I understand it, Steam's only DRM just keeps games from being shared. When you buy that game its yours, no one else's, ti cant be traded, sold, etc.

Basically, you buy Starbound. Its $15. Its not that much. If its given to you non-steam that gives you the option to distribute the game to anyone who wants it. For free. That's money the developers do not see. Granted Steam takes a cut of that, but the only reason I see DRM-Free versions being out there is for people who don't want to buy the game, which I think is unfair.

I figure there's some other argument out there and I can see the desire for it to be your game to do what you want with, especially a Steam-free version for development and modification, but its unsecured and open for free distribution.

 

Yeah, basically the only problem people have with steam seems to be either technical (because it doesn't work for them for whatever reason) or ideological (because they want to truly own their games, not have their ownership in the hands on a company). Honestly, Steam is pretty much the best DRM there is, and most companies do DRM really, really terribly. Steam does prevent you from sending the game to your friends, but it's got a ton of features (cloud saves, easy access to a store, quick and easy updating, community stuff, etc...) and it has an offline mode where you can still play without a connection.

For the purposes of the early beta, it's pretty clear that Steam is the way to go. As long as the game does get a DRM-free version at release, as promised.

 

Number 3, is my choice.

 

The third option is the way to go.

Those who don't want to use Steam (like .. seriously, guys?) or simply can't (you, I understand.) should consider accepting the delay rather than slow progress down for the rest of us aka the majority.

 

As I've put in other posts in the past. If anyone has issues getting Steam to work on their machine. I'll happily sit down with you, eithier on the phone or on some voice chat program and help you work out the kinks, before I personally feel Steam is a powerful program, that gives us alot of options with our games, modding for it is pretty easy (I've never had issue at least) it builds in a Shift function to bring up friend's list etc, has built in voice chat with your friends, so on and so forth. It cuts out alot of middle men in getting a server up with friends, joining them and having voice coms (Cause who wants to type these days.)

To the second part, people who don't play Steam because they want to "truely own" their games, sorry but I always have to laugh at statments like this, and I feel bad doing so. Most games sell you the right to play it, you basicially have a life-time rent bought out on any game you buy. At any time if the company goes under, or doesn't want you in the game anymore they can usually revoke said right, or it's revoked automatically. Then you have to wait for another game dev to buy out the title and make it work again ( Think Good Ol Games) or, you wait for an indie person to grab the game and try to make the source code work themselves, then they re-release it, in some cases this works fine and you can "acquire" it through illicit means, but most of the time you re-buy it anyway (War for the Overworld.) I have never understood this arguement. ESPECIALLY when you are forced to own the game Digitally regardless, with a hard-copy I can understand it a bit more. Moved to a new house, don't have internet, pop in your CDs and install game X then play, it's a good tide-over till you have internet again. That said, past that no reasons make alot of sense to avoid steam, except "personal" reasons, which I've never gotten a good explanation to from anyone.

tl;dr I voted Option 3, if anyone has issues making Steam work for technical reasons, not because you secretly believe they are stealing all your information and selling it etc, PM me here and we'll get started in trying to get Steam to work for you.

 

They actually are gathering personal data off of you, so they can advertise just released games that might interest you.
Also they have this claim "You don't own the games you have on your list, therefore you don't have the right to sell your account. You're only permitted to play the game."

Still, I have never cared that much really. I've never had problems with Steam and I've used it for like, what, 6 years now? I also happen own own about 50 games on Steam, and I still haven't been robbed.
Steam is good at what it does, but I understand why some people don't like it.

 

Option 3 since they'd spend more time giving out updates than developing.

 

A.

Some people won't have access to steam for one reason or another, this option allows for those people to have a copy of their own with current updates so we can all play online together.

 

C
I never had problems with steam, and it is easier for the devs.

 

As for the whole "You don't really own your games" the policy of steam is that if for any reason Steam as a service goes out of business they would cut dvd copies of all the games and mail them to you...

I don't see this ever happening mind you, but it's good to know

 

I like the steam option because I feel Like the other two prolong the first stage of the beta. And personally the faster we get past the stage 1 the better. I do understand that that the difference may not be all that great because there are whole features that aren't there but still I feel like getting to stage two with the fewist delays possible is a good thing.

 

option 3 is the more sensible, we can have the drm-free after the amount of updates per month drops to 1 or 2...

 

For the sake of getting the game done quicker it should be steam only until later on just so the devs don't have to waste time getting multiple updates out when they can be doing something that will progress the game.

 

I voted third, it means that the devs don't have to maintain 2 codebases at the same time and thus can fix bugs/features/get to release quicker to do more before release. They've already stated that steam's updating system is much easier for them, so whatever works is best. I understand steam-free people want an option, but steam is the least-problematic DRM imo. Plus the non-steam version will still require a key and online verification for multiplayer.

I wish we could keep the non-steam camp happy too, but it's just SO much extra work, just keep keep that minority happy during a period of already heavy work. Especially for bug-reporting. Non-steam will have to mean manual updating and you can be sure that those people will be reporting bugs while not on the latest version. Because it's designed for steam, I very much doubt it'll have an built-in updater. Steam provides that functionality automatically.

The needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few.

 

Cast my vote, good call on a poll.

 

Number 2 is going to happen
Tiy said on his twitter that with steam they'd be able to update the game a lot more frequently but with a DRM-free version updates would take a longer time to get out

 

Yeah they have pretty much said they don't want to do option one, but I would say they favor 3 (postpone the drm-free till stage 3) since they cited not likeing the fact that 2 make it where steam and drm-free players can not MP since drm-free goes out of date much faster.

 

i don't see why they couldn't put a download on the main site for the current patch so people with DRM-free could self patch the game like place it in a folder and when you launch the game it detects an update and updates it like that i can remember having to do that to some games from way back in the day when other options didn't work

 

I personally dislike Steam because it is a major nuisance when I'm using the internet and its downloading some update for a game every hour, and that I have to use Steam to play games that don't need it. Its like there are two roads; they both go to the same destination, only one takes a bit longer to traverse, the shorter one just has a lot of hills and slopes.