Comments on: Valve on Steamworks (And Magick Obscura)

By: liposuction surgery

liposuction surgery — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 16:37:17 +0000

Looking forward to the rest.

By: Circuitous

Circuitous — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 23:31:06 +0000

Can I just say, great title?

By: Kadayi

Kadayi — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 23:28:40 +0000

“I’m not sure if it’s a bad thing or a good thing…. they definitely need to work on their customer support though.”

Vs which other publisher doing a better job exactly? I think their Customer Service is pretty good tbh, esp given they’ve more people using the Steam service than playing WoW.

By: Duoae

Duoae — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:57:49 +0000

Looks like i was right when i called Valve the Microsoft of the gaming world a couple of years ago when steam was announced…

I’m not sure if it’s a bad thing or a good thing…. they definitely need to work on their customer support though.

By: atrpunk08

atrpunk08 — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 14:46:29 +0000

I think Linux is supported via Wine….

But with SteamWorks, you can make a mod and publish it with SteamWorks? And for free?

If for example a mod team made a very popular mod and they want to make it trough SteamWorks, they could release it for free?

P.S. I’m curious about this :D

By: AbyssUK

AbyssUK — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 07:14:39 +0000

Have I mentioned I hate this?

But on a side note, is Linux supported? anybody know?

By: EMPty=IRL=

EMPty=IRL= — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 06:18:38 +0000

Yea it certainly seems that way.
Hopefully this will be the start of a larger change in the gaming industry that will see even more developers moving over to digital distribution and therefore getting a larger percentage of the RRP of the games they develop.
I know the retail shops will always exist and that’s not a bad thing but I’m all for developers getting a larger percentage of the profits and cutting out the distributors.
(I know that valve is in one sense a distributor but they take a smaller percentage that retail distributors)

By: Tim!

Tim! — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 06:15:48 +0000

DAMMIT! For a moment I thought that hidden behind the Steamworks announcement they were actually releasing Arcanum which was exciting because no one seems to want to sell it to me for a reasonable price.

Curse you, RPS!
Curse you, my own idiocy!

By: Tim!

Tim! — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 06:15:13 +0000

(I seem to have double posted)

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 05:42:46 +0000

I can’t get out of my head that this is Valve doing what microsoft said they were going to do with Game For Windows (but never got around to doing it properly).

I hate to harp on about microsoft, but I guess microsoft just left PC gaming out in the cold, and Valve thought, no problem we’ll do it ourselves.

By: EMPty=IRL=

EMPty=IRL= — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 04:42:42 +0000

This is obviously Valve’s reply to Microsoft’s Live services.
So what I want to know from you RPS sleuths is how do Steamworks services compare to Live services and is Live free for developers as well?
(I know all the basics but I want to know which service is more attractive for developers, in your opinion.)

By: markcocjin

markcocjin — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 03:27:59 +0000

Imagine if they actually used the Source Engine and added a few more proprietary modes and functionality without flooding your hard disc with too many game engines for every other game.

Think of this…. What if you can play first person shooter and then.. jump into a full RTS mode.. commmanding.. and then later on… jump into a flight simulator…. and then into a driving game…. all within Source.

Source is modular. This means that you can in theory have modules enabling it to run in different ways on the fly. How about switching on the fly to three to four different modes of an FPS? Action shooter to tactical to squad tactical with an RPG overlay.

The reason why games don’t do this is because it takes a lot of time and data for an engine to be developed into something this versatile. The Unreal Engine is widely used for games for even more gametypes than Source but without the modularity, a newer version essentially renders older games obsolete.

I’m surprised that they haven’t even thought of making Steam communities like a Source engine powered FPS virtual meeting place with group pages resembling rooms in a huge building with people walking around with their avatars as their heads.. walking around and chatting with friends before jumping into a real game.