Empire using Steam; Gamespot interview/preview

[Akka]

It served as an example of how developers are being, in some cases, completely cut out of the picture. It's happening on a bigger scale than you're willing to admit, and that is one example of it.

I'm perfectly willing to admit it's on a large scale.
I'm unwilling to admit it's on a proportionnally largeR scale than before.

Bob wants to buy a game, Bob decides from what he reads online the game sounds bad, but he decides to get it anyway. He doesn't buy it so he pirates it. Goods are acquired without the exchange of anything at all, under any other method the definition is stealing. You can go ones tep further anda ssume that Bob will continue to pirate games now that he's done it already.

You're mixing the ethical point of view ("is copying a theft ?") with the practical one ("did the publisher lost a sale ?").
The first point is for another thread. The second is clear : in your example, Bob wouldn't have bought the game anyway. So there is no loss for the publisher. You can think "it's bad, it's stealing", but it's not a sale lost anyway.
But you can be sure that the guys in the industry will count it among the pirated games, and say "we lost fifty bucks here !". Which is an outright lie.

You can only "lose a sale" if it was about being made in the first place. You can't lose a sale from someone who would have not bought the game if he couldn't pirate it.

Now you can be quite pissed off to see someone playing your game without having paid for it, but that's another matter.

You'd be surprised with how little "know-how" is required to actually pirate a game. It's not like it's a rubix cube and only a select few know where to go and what to do to get what they want. Google can find you pretty much anything, and a stumbling search with terms that don't completely apply would get you to a site that will let you do a lot.

I perfectly know how easy it is to get a pirated game.
But I can also tell you how many casual users won't touch it, easy as it may be, because it's still feel like some technical/illegal/nerd stuff.

I've read a few articles in the past year (and one in 07 that was predicting it) that state PC game sales are actually slowing. I can't sit here and tell you piracy is cause number one concretely, but its my opinion that it has a big part in it.

Actually, I did point in my first message that it was the only real danger of piracy : driving publisher from PC to console. That's my main worry.
Of course, that's not the only thing. Console games are harder to pirate, but also have only ONE hardware configuration, which make developping games infinitely more streamlined. They also have a much more easily-pleased public, with much more basic requirements.

And as there is close to no piracy, you can also see that funnily, prices for the exact same games are 20 to 30 bucks higher, while market logics would tend to make the prices LOWER, right ?
(perhaps a hint that piracy isn't only killing business, but also acting as a safeguard against ripping consumers off ?)

[Monk]

You make some good points, Akka, but I think we need to respect Martok's wishes and stop dragging this thread OT.

We've gotten away off point.

[Martok]

I'll admit to some curiosity as to how online play works, especially as regards Steam's matchmaking abilities. Can anyone shed any light on this?

[Praxil]

I'll admit to some curiosity as to how online play works, especially as regards Steam's matchmaking abilities. Can anyone shed any light on this?

Ahmm...

I don't think that there are that many PC games out there using "matchmaking" to find the "right" opponents for you. Anyway, Valves own games have their in built server searching options, quite poor like in any other games. As far as it goes for server browsers The All-Seeing Eye was something unique, now Qtracker does the job fairly.

[Polemists]

Much like spore. Many of us without internet, or a solid internect connection ( I live in Saudi Arabia, try getting a solid connection not at work, I dare you.) will do what we did with spore

[No discussion of game cracks please. -- Martok]

It's not pirating, but if I pay 60$ for a game, I'm not going to be forced online to activate it. Several games in past have required such, as usual in 3 hours after release, someone figures a way around it. I'm not going to download it but nor am I playing the I'm paying 60$ to only install it 10 times game.

[edyzmedieval]

I love Steam. My Steam account has around 15 games, but to be honest im not too happy that we have to go on Steam to play ETW.

[Polemists]

Steering,

Obviously this could go on and on about piracy versus non priacy. However back to Empire, which is the point of this conversation.


I don't like steam, mainly because it pops up and checks things and updates itself without notifying me, and others have had a similar problem. I don't care if I start steam and it checks and then i can uninstall the steam program, however I don't want to have to keep the steam program on my pc. I don't care if I don't get multiplayer I just dont want steam to stay on my pc.

[SpencerH]

Steering,

Obviously this could go on and on about piracy versus non priacy. However back to Empire, which is the point of this conversation.


I don't like steam, mainly because it pops up and checks things and updates itself without notifying me, and others have had a similar problem. I don't care if I start steam and it checks and then i can uninstall the steam program, however I don't want to have to keep the steam program on my pc. I don't care if I don't get multiplayer I just dont want steam to stay on my pc.

You must be able to turn steam on and off from the system tray?

[Polemists]

I can however it still at times will pop up for no reason to do a update. It's highly annoying.

[pevergreen]

Steering,

Obviously this could go on and on about piracy versus non priacy. However back to Empire, which is the point of this conversation.


I don't like steam, mainly because it pops up and checks things and updates itself without notifying me, and others have had a similar problem. I don't care if I start steam and it checks and then i can uninstall the steam program, however I don't want to have to keep the steam program on my pc. I don't care if I don't get multiplayer I just dont want steam to stay on my pc.

It sounds as though you can do just that. Steam will authenticate, afterwhich you can play single player.

There will be a way to play it. Never fear.

[Sheogorath]

I was never a big fan of steam. Mostly because I was first exposed to it back in the 'MUST BE ONLINE TO PLAY YOUR GAMES, EVEN IN SINGLEPLAYER' days. And I didn't do my research before I bought Half Life 2, so I didn't know it required online activation to play, back in the day when we were on 56k, and my gaming computer wasn't on the internet at all.
And the forced updates, over 56k, sometimes meant that if I wasn't careful I ended up waiting for a week while the download went on ._.

Fortunatly we have DSL now, so its all better.

[DisruptorX]

I was never a big fan of steam. Mostly because I was first exposed to it back in the 'MUST BE ONLINE TO PLAY YOUR GAMES, EVEN IN SINGLEPLAYER' days. And I didn't do my research before I bought Half Life 2, so I didn't know it required online activation to play, back in the day when we were on 56k, and my gaming computer wasn't on the internet at all.
And the forced updates, over 56k, sometimes meant that if I wasn't careful I ended up waiting for a week while the download went on ._.

Fortunatly we have DSL now, so its all better.

HL 2 always required activation, but its always had offline mode. I first beat it only playing it when my net connection was down.

[katar]

i`m going to have think a while about this one and look deeper into Steam to see what it`s like from people who use it a lot.

on the plus side i am heartily glad that securom has been rejected as a choice for the game... it was always far too invasive a program for my liking.

[SpencerH]

I can however it still at times will pop up for no reason to do a update. It's highly annoying.

Thats not a good sign since it means that steam is always running once installed ie it continues to run despite removal from the taskbar.

[CBR]

That is odd. I have been using Steam with Red Orchestra and I only run it when I need to play. I have never seen an update popup.


CBR

[AussieGiant]

Question:

If I buy the actual physical game and install it, do I need to install the Steam Client to have it register?

I do not like third party software running on my machine (in the back ground) and I keep the number of "Services" down to an abolsute bare minimum as a matter of choice. This ensures a nice clean thin OS and therefore I'm a happy camper.

[Martok]

Question:

If I buy the actual physical game and install it, do I need to install the Steam Client to have it register?

Yes. Steam will need to be installed, regardless of whether you get the boxed copy or the download version.

I do not like third party software running on my machine (in the back ground) and I keep the number of "Services" down to an abolsute bare minimum as a matter of choice. This ensures a nice clean thin OS and therefore I'm a happy camper.

While I can understand where you're coming from, I'll admit that personally I'm not overly bothered by it. I already use Stardock's Impulse -- a program somewhat similar to Steam -- for my copy of Galactic Civilizations 2, and have yet to encounter any major problems with it. So long as Steam remains similarly non-intrusive and doesn't have a deleterious effect on my computer's performance, it'll be a heck of a lot better than ETW including SecuROM or other nasty DRM.

[AussieGiant]

Thanks for the response Martok.

I've also got GCII and the same set up. If that is all it is then fine, that is going to be acceptable.

[Celtic_Punk]

If it requires steam, im never buying this game. steam. Its like the view some people have about securom, its absolute rubbish. It will completely destroy totalwar, and bring in total idiots into the franchise. The annoying 12 yearold kids who play CS will branch of into TW. Then where will we be? we have a nice community as is. *nods* Steam brutally destroy's games it touches.

EDIT: Martok, i have steam, it intrusive. you feel like your playing a STEAM game and not the developers game. You are required to connect to steam inorder to play your game and that is absolutely ridiculous. I bought halflife, id like to play halflife, not steam halflife. Steam is like an even more insufferable version of "House" - without the classic cracks and stabs at people. just brutal insufferablility.

[Martok]

If it requires steam, im never buying this game. steam. Its like the view some people have about securom, its absolute rubbish. It will completely destroy totalwar, and bring in total idiots into the franchise. The annoying 12 yearold kids who play CS will branch of into TW. Then where will we be? we have a nice community as is. *nods* Steam brutally destroy's games it touches.

While I sympathize with where you're coming from, I also have to be honest when I say that I believe you're being overly pessimistic in your assessment....if for no other reason than that I believe that ship already sailed four years ago.

With the release of Rome, we saw a large influx of younger, more casual players, and a similar influx when Medieval 2 came out. While some of these newcomers did admittedly have a "l33t/noobz" mentality, most of them either eventually left or -- wonder of wonders! -- adjusted and integrated themselves with the rest of the community here. Regardless of Steam's potential impact, I'm quite confident that the same thing will happen again when ETW is released.

The Org has a long history of attracting more thoughtful, mature participants (and I'm not referring to one's chronological age). Those who do not yet possess either of these qualities usually end up at either the official forums or TWC....or more likely, never come here at all.* It will very likely be the same with Empire.


*That's not to say that the other two sites don't also have thoughtful & mature members -- because they do -- but both places do seem to have a much higher percentage of folks who clearly still have some growing up to do (regardless of how old/young they actually are).

EDIT: Martok, i have steam, it intrusive. you feel like your playing a STEAM game and not the developers game. You are required to connect to steam inorder to play your game and that is absolutely ridiculous. I bought halflife, id like to play halflife, not steam halflife. Steam is like an even more insufferable version of "House" - without the classic cracks and stabs at people. just brutal insufferablility.

Have you had any experience with the setup Empire is going to be using (where if you're playing singleplayer, you only need to fire up Steam once to register the game and don't need to run it again), or something similar? That's what I'm mostly concerned about, since I'll almost certainly never bother with MP.

[Sir Beane]

If it requires steam, im never buying this game. steam. Its like the view some people have about securom, its absolute rubbish. It will completely destroy totalwar, and bring in total idiots into the franchise. The annoying 12 yearold kids who play CS will branch of into TW. Then where will we be? we have a nice community as is. *nods* Steam brutally destroy's games it touches.

I don't think that the average 12 year old CS 'l33t' FPS fans will see much appeal in a Total War game to be honest. In general combat in Counter Strike is fast, loud and needs twitchy reflexes to be good.

Combat in a Total War game is much more slowly paced, strategic, and doesn't provide the instant thrill that ADHD kids look for in a game. Even if the 'l33t' gamers make it into mulitplayer I doubt they will stick around after they keep getting thrashed by Org members. For twitch gamers Total War just requires too much effort for its payoff. The kids who do make the effort and adapt to using strategy are welcome, at least by me.

Personally I think the more people familiar with the franchise the better, so long as CA don't dumb the game down. A bigger playerbase means more money for CA, and it means a larger pool of modding talent for us.

To be totally honest though I mostly only play Singleplayer so I will probably never encounter any of the idiot players anyway.

[Martok]

Well said, Sir Beane. That was actually the point I was trying to make, but you worded it better than I did.

Of all the concerns regarding Empire using Steam, I think its potential impact on the Org community is the one I'm least worried about.

[Celtic_Punk]

Hmmm perhaps.... I speak from experience from games like Operation Flashpoint, which is the thinking man's shooter, very realistic and very tactful, 80% of the players are over 30, or are veterans of some conflict in someplace in the world(mostly South Eastern Europe...) then you get some tard kids who jump on the server, get in your tank and go John Rambo into the enemy base and butcher your ambush.

Your post enlightened me a bit, But the matter still remains... If the steam is intrusive, and if i need to keep steam up to play online, I'm not going to be a happy camper.

Hopefully we wont get the poor batch with this new game.. There will definitely be a surge for a time, like any new game, and hopefully as time passes they'll adjust or take a hike.

As for other concerns, more processes, ESPECIALLY ONE LIKE STEAM! plus Xfire, plus ETW? = recipe for core melt down lol

Steam burns...

[Dreadking]

I don't want to sound like an idiot, but what is Steam feature? and what is it supposed to do?

[Intrepid Sidekick]

Hi Dreadking

For more information go to the Steam website here:

General stuff and an idea of what the app looks like

http://store.steampowered.com/about/

and here

For more frequently asked/answered questions and known issues

https://support.steampowered.com/

As an immediate response. You do not have to have steam connected to the internet while playing the game in single player mode. You can chose to play offline. A one time connection to the Steam server for authentication is all that is required to play the game.

[Dreadking]

Thank You Intrepid. I've never heard of this feature before, just wanted to know what all the commotion was about, so thanks!

[HopAlongBunny]

Steam doesn't sound too bad.

I am worried about stuff that jumps up from time to time to "call home"; I don't want a program to do anything unless I tell it to_apparently not an issue (Yay!) I am concerned about portability but that also sounds like it is not an issue.

On the thread derailment, I completely agree with Akka. My first exposure to a TW game came thanks to a person who never bought a game in her life; handed me a disc and a piece of paper and said, "I think you'll like this"; it was MTW (full version)_ I installed, played it for a cpl hours and bought the game the next day. People who game w/o paying will always find a way to do so; people who buy their games will do so whether they need to or not. The absolute numbers may change but I doubt the ratio differs much over time.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

As an immediate response. You do not have to have steam connected to the internet while playing the game in single player mode. You can chose to play offline. A one time connection to the Steam server for authentication is all that is required to play the game.

Are you sure?

• During authentication will it insist to download the latest version of steam?
• Will I need to authenticate if I do a reformat? For many this being a regular occurance and sadly the nature of windows.
• Will I need to download patches via steam and can I keep a backup copy for future use rather than re-downoad every time?
• Will the makers of steam never change their terms of use so that this game authentication requirements don't change whether now or in the future?
• Will I need to authenticate everytime I re-install the game?
• Some clarification regarding mods would also be very welcome.

[Mikhal]

Thats not a good sign since it means that steam is always running once installed ie it continues to run despite removal from the taskbar.

No, I know that I can turn off the steam on my PC and have no processes whatsoever running in the background. It will only start when I start it or launch a Steam game and it will only connect to download updates when started by the user. (I'm a tweaker though so you may have to change some settings in the steam options to get this kind of behaviour though, else it will start on computer startup).

[Polemists]

else it will start on computer startup

Again, i know it's minor but can't they make things easier not harder? Surely they know most of us don't want to have to dig into god knows what preferences and edit this and change that.

I'm not big into multiplayer. Yet this is a necessary evil of MP these days. No one wants to actually handle multiplayer anymore (pay for/manage servers) so they all outsource it Gamespy, Steam, take your pick.

I don't like the idea of having to authenticate the game online, I don't know why I can't just punch in the xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx code like I used to on most games, and they can just say okay.

What was so wrong with that code?

I mean I don't see steam as a improvement over the code. If your argument is, well we can't stop piracy but we have to make a effort, weather you make a effort everyone hates and stops 1.5 % of hackers or a effort no one cares about and stops 1.0% of hackers, is it really a difference?

I mean it's a mute point, cause it is steam.

It's just, I mean i love GC III, why can't more people do the stardock thing.