TDM on Steam Greenlight!

[New Horizon]

...and to repeat what has said many times over about 'paying' the team...."no money".

[chakkman]

nvmd

Edited January 1, 2014 by chk772

[dbailey]

Nobody is paying the team. People are raising a paltry hundred bucks to get the game hosted on Steam, where it can be downloaded by new audiences for free.

[taaaki]

We may want to wait to see how this pans out before taking anything further: http://www.kitguru.net/channel/jon-martindale/valve-may-kill-off-greenlight/

[MacD11]

We may want to wait to see how this pans out before taking anything further: http://www.kitguru.n...off-greenlight/

 

True, it could possibly lead to other, alternative (possibly even free) ways of publishing things onto steam aside from Greenlight, judging from what I'm reading in the article, which is a good thing.

 

I dont know about anyone else but I'm completely fine with waiting awhile before we get TDM on steam, I would still like to see it get on steam at some point, however.

[chakkman]

Dunno if it was mentioned already, but The Dark Mod works fine with the Steam in-game overlay. I added it to Steam via the point "Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library" on the "Games" menu in Steam. It's a cool thing for me, because now i can chat in-game with mates, or, i can check for some english words i don't understand via the built-in Steam web browser. Very helpful.

[demagogue]

If we want TDM on Steam, someone will need to volunteer to do the work. Baddcog had originally volunteered, but then he disappeared. Presumably we'd want somebody that has already done work for TDM or demonstrated in some way their commitment to the game, so we know it's someone we can trust. Anyone want to put in an application for the job? I believe we've already worked out we can get the fee from donations over PayPal, because it's a special one-time expense for a specific thing for the mod as a whole, and not "payment".

[chakkman]

Just out of interest: What would have to be done to get TDM on Steam?

[Deadlove]

I think it costed $100 to submit the game and get it in Steam. Probably fill out a form too. It's pretty simple from what I can gather.

[Dunedain]

I'd kick in to help get it on Steam so tons of new players could easily get to play The Dark Mod. The more Thief fans, the better.

[wesp5]

If you move TDM to Steam, you will keep a Steam free version too, right? Because not everyone want's a corporate client always running in the background to play a free game. If TDM ends up Steam-only, it would be less free for me! Also I doubt that Steam alone will get more players. I for one never monitor Steam, but other sites like Blues News who report a much broader scope. In my opinion you'll get more audience if you'd manage to get new versions announced there or maybe major campaigns releases too!

Edited April 30, 2014 by wesp5

[MacD11]

If you move TDM to Steam, you will keep a Steam free version too, right? Because not everyone want's a corporate client always running in the background to play a free game. If TDM ends up Steam-only, it would be less free for me!

 

There are plenty of Free Games on steam, and a few of them have come from greenlight too. Yes, If TDM ever does go up on steam it will remain 100% free. And No, just because TDM has the possibility of being on steam it does not mean the game would have to be steam only.

[demagogue]

I think there's a consensus that we wouldn't do it if it required it to be Steam only.

We already have a distribution method that's served us just fine up to now, and I'm sure it would continue.

 

I think there's also at least a majority opinion (just my rough estimation) that adding it to Steam would bring positive attention and is worth it.

 

Right now we really don't have much way to announce the mod's presence outside of a small circle of people that are already in our world anyway, except for the occasional fickle media attention that may be hit or miss. Steam gives a route for interested people to do a search at any time for this kind of game and come up with a hit, so they can come to us, since we can't otherwise get to them. Also, there's instant trust. If it passed Greenlight, it can't be just some random homebrew but has to be at least well made.

[Lux]

There's also the Steam install path to deal with. Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/thedarkmod. Of course the user can decide to put it somewhere else more logical, and that will work with DR better, but that would be the default path.

 

I can imagine a stream of new users questions asking about spaces in the path name and why this doesn't work/frustration/uninstall/bad comments/etc.

Also, the stream of comments on why the updater won't run from that location, requiring the no-no admin privs.

 

Obviously a solution for this would have to be put in to place.

[wesp5]

Steam gives a route for interested people to do a search at any time for this kind of game and come up with a hit, so they can come to us, since we can't otherwise get to them.

 

This is possible on Moddb too, and this is where I would go looking for cool mods and free indie games. In fact I think this is where I found out that TDM went finally standalone !

 

Also, there's instant trust. If it passed Greenlight, it can't be just some random homebrew but has to be at least well made.

 

Really? To me Greenlight looks like a quick shot from Valve to take part in the whole Indie and Kickstarter hype which they overlooked completely before. They Greenlighted hundreds of games now and I don't think most of them even exist. Maybe this is why they want to close it down again. Or probably because having them on their servers for only a few downloads isn't profitable for them...

Edited April 30, 2014 by wesp5

[wesp5]

I can imagine a stream of new users questions asking about spaces in the path name and why this doesn't work/frustration/uninstall/bad comments/etc.

Also, the stream of comments on why the updater won't run from that location, requiring the no-no admin privs.

 

Oh yeah, I can attest to that! Once in a while, like very recently, there is a sale of Bloodlines on Steam, which does not run on modern computers without my patch because of a memory bug. Every time there is an uproar and a lot of hate against Steam because Steam doesn't mention the fact or the patch, and people expect a game on Steam to work out of the box. Then when they install my patch they don't notice that the default path is not the Steam path and there is a lot of frustration again. I'll change the default path to the Steam one in the next version because people there are so dumb! TDM should be fail-proof because people expect Steam to handle everything...

Edited April 30, 2014 by wesp5

[lost_soul]

I think it would be cool to have TDM on Steam, but how will you solve the permissions thing? You can always run the game as admin, but that's not really a good idea these days. If it gets installed into Program Files and then run as a limited user, the changes/missions will go into that user's personal folder. I explained this a wile back, but here's more info. http://www.ni.com/white-paper/5538/en/

Edited May 1, 2014 by lost_soul

[Xarg]

It's been a while since I've read these threads, but what about GoG? Do they distribute always free games?

[MurcDusen]

It's been a while since I've read these threads, but what about GoG? Do they distribute always free games?

 

Yeah they do, that's how I originally found out about Tyrian 2000.

[Xarg]

Any idea what the criteria is? If Steam is costly/too much hassle, maybe GoG? I don't see any need for alternative versions or anything, provided the default GoG installer is set to say, c:\games instead of program files.

[chakkman]

Don't want to bash the idea, but i'm not sure about the benefit of having TDM on GOG. The mod is not commercial, so i doubt they would advertise it much anyway. Plus, as it is freely available, and downloadable, why have it on GOG anyway? Steam is another thing, it has many, many player, and when it gets listed there, people will see it and might try it, and you have the advantage of having the Steam overlay, so you can use Steam while playing. Also, if it gets implemented, you have the ability to auto update your game on Steam.

[Airship Ballet]

you have the advantage of having the Steam overlay, so you can use Steam while playing

 

Got that already!

 

[Xarg]

Don't want to bash the idea, but i'm not sure about the benefit of having TDM on GOG. ... why have it on GOG anyway?

 

More exposure is good, right? It's not like Steam or GoG is an either/or thing, you could have both. While the Steam autoupdate thing is nice, it's hardly difficult to update TDM as it is, about all I could think of to make the process easier is have a launcher that runs the updater, upon completing an update check it launches the game.

[chakkman]

Got that already!

Yep, i'm also making use of that frequently.

 

@ Xarg: You're right, no need to see it as an either/or thing, every kind of distribution is positive. Also there should be a lot of old games fans on GOG, which probably remember the classic Thief games.