Darwinia To Be Distributed via Steam

Nuskrad writes "Independent developers Introversion Software, creators of cult hacking sim Uplink have announced a deal with Valve that will see their highly acclaimed title, Darwinia distributed on the Steam platform from December 15th. It is hoped that the deal will help boost sales of Darwinia, and the profile of Introversion Software, which has been struggling against the 'big boys' of the industry."

Comments

Re:Steam blows.

[rishistar]

I bought Darwinia as a download.....I *WOULD NOT* have bought it if it had been a distibuted via Steam. Before I play Half Life 2 I end up disconnecting from the internet to play the game (which takes ages to boot up on my PC anyway) to stop it doing what it does. On the plus side Introversion may get more people buying the game (and kudos to them for writing something great and different), but the gaming community it seems only put up with Steam because Half-Life 2 was such a great game, but for an unknown indie game there's gonna have to be some *great* word of mouth stuff going on.

Re:Well, it's clear I screwed up.

[Godeke]

For some reason you have a score of zero and I missed your prior replies in the tree view. Now that I have read them, it appears possible. However, the guy assuming I wanted to play two copies of the same game and the same time remains wrong. Is it true that the requirement for doing this is to keep the machine "offline" during the game session?

I guess the key question is: what is Valve's understanding of an account. If the intent is one account per player, I don't see it as given that the current offline playability will remain as it is. My goal in life is not to deprive developers of income: far from it, I make my living off software and am sensitive to the needs for fair compensation.

On the other hand, I could easily see the method you propose (one account per everybody you trust enough) being highly *unfair* to Valve. In that scenario, I could set up an account and buy one of everything. As long as people with my account don't go online at the same time, they can all play single player? If anything, that seems to be going too far in the other direction.

My personal feelings are that if my son wants to play a game I purchase at a different time than I am using it; that is fair use of a purchased CD/DVD game. If my son wants to play at the same time (say, as we do in multiplayer Dungeon Siege), then we each needs a copy. Again, I don't have a problem with this, although I preferred the old Blizzard "spawned copy" model which allowed a LAN game with a single disk. I have purchased multiple copies of quite a few games for this exact purpose.

Now taking this to the realm of steam: I have no problem with allowing family members access to different games at the same time, or the same game at different times. This does nothing more than replicate what I would do with disks anyway. On the other hand, it sounds like it would be possible to sequentially download the account's "library" of games and everyone could play offline mode all of those games. That's pushing it if I simply kept it to my immediate family, but what exactly is keeping people from doing this for an entire dorm floor?

It would seem that such an excessive abuse would be easy to detect on Valve's side. What do the terms of use say about such a situation? If such an abuse were to happen multiple times, would that affect Valve's allowance of the offline mode?

As much as I hate shuffling disks in and out of the drives, it seems to me they are a very acceptable method of regulating use. Of course, this all is supposing that neither disks nor Steam has been cracked, and we all know that both have been. Which brings me to Stardock: they seem to sell a decent number of download units without involving DRM at all. Sometimes I wonder if all this complexity does any good.

Re:Well, it's clear I screwed up.

[VarsityUK]

"Is it true that the requirement for doing this is to keep the machine "offline" during the game session?"

You can have a connection to Steam itself, but not more than one internet game. It only works for single-player.

"As long as people with my account don't go online at the same time, they can all play single player? If anything, that seems to be going too far in the other direction."

The catch is that to play on an account you need full access to it, including the ability to change e-mail and password or have the account disabled or VAC banned (for cheating). It only takes one person to screw it up, which even you must admit is a brilliant way of sensibly limiting access (and avoiding the situation you describr) without bothering anybody. This also extends to offline mode, not least because you can't simply transfer an offline installation to another computer. The offline details would be invalidated.

I don't know what would happen in cases of abuse because I've never seen anyone talking about it happening. You technically aren't allowed to have more than copy running at a time (and technically must never give out your account details as you've stated) but Valve turn a blind eye to this unless there is definite fraud going on, for both practical and moral reasons. If the worse did happen, you'd probably be able to get Support to give your account back with sufficient proof of your innocence.

I can guarantee you that if Stardock were selling anything like Counter-Strike online with no DRM, they'd be out of buisiness like a shot. ;-) They only survive because of their smaller and more mature userbase.

Hope it all makes a bit more sense now. Steam might be DRM, but it's DRM used as a means to an end, and not an end in itself.