We’ve had a few people contact us regarding World of Goo’s sudden unavailability on Steam for European customers, so this is just a quick post to explain what we know. The game, which yesterday went straight to the top of Steam’s top sellers chart, has different publishers in the US and UK for the boxed versions. The US boxed game is available now, while the EU box won’t be appearing until around February 2009. There appears to have been some confusion regarding the contracts here, which 2D BOY are looking into. In the meantime, European customers can buy the game directly from 2D BOY with no problems whatsoever (and then just mount it in Steam, for goodness sakes).
EU customers who previously successfully bought the game from Steam will not have any problems.
Intrepid investigator Chris “Evo” Evans got hold of 2D’s Kyle Gabler, who told him the following:
“As part of our European agreement, we are restricted from selling the game on Steam in Europe. I’m thinking this was a clause that was accidentally left in, since I can’t imagine this kind of restriction is good for anyone. We’re going to try to reverse it. We live in the future. We shouldn’t even have countries and regions. Just one big Internet where everyone is equal.”
A beautiful a utopian future we’d all like to live in.
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@roryok:
I think you have misunderstood sir. I bought Orange Box on DVD, took it home, installed, activated and played many happy hours. It wasn’t ’til later when I moved (making sure Steam said the games were ready for Offline mode) and was without internet for a long period that I could no longer play my own games. I realise these are problems that could happen for a boxed copy or a downloaded copy, the problem lies with Steam’s Offline mode.
Another note about installing steam games on computers without internet: It can’t be done.
You need to Install and start steam, then log into your account. It goes wrong with step one, as Steam won’t install without internet.
Can’t be done, sadly. I’ve been pretty pissed off about this the past few months, as there is no way for me to get my pc online, and I haven’t been able to play my Halflife 2 episodes.
I know steam has problems, but it has advanced PC gaming an awful lot in my opinion. I hated it at first, when I had dialup, but once I got HL2 authenticated after 2 hours of progress bars and untold phone bills, I was placated by City17.
It’s a bloody good thing that Valve gave us HL2 when they gave us steam or it would have been a total failure. Can you imagine sitting through all authentication in order to play Doom 3?
“@x25killa: your idea of utopia appears to involve more man-fucking than mine.”
@cam: Meh, what I meant to say was: I hope sometime in the future, there won’t be a such thing called “Region locked” then we can live in peace.
Man-fucking on the other hand erm… I’m not sure how that is related to games, I just “Fucking A man” due to watching too much Office Space.
Is it just me that is having problems with installing TF2 on steam? “Busy Server” my backside… (nothing to do with man-fucking)
In all fairness, they originally gave us Steam with some Counter Strike release… The world shrugged collectively.
Valve then had to work like rabbits to get it up to scratch for HL2’s release.
hmmm… you’re right of course.
I don’t think it diminishes my point though. Halflife was the sugar coating people required to swallow steam. (ouch)
And I’m glad we got it, because it was that or more securerom / starforce. I’m also very glad Far Cry 2 is on steam, because that only gives people more reason to use steam, and it also allows me to deftly side-step the SecureRom bullshit parade.
@roryok
I’ve read EA is still putting SecureRom on games even if they’re on Steam. If someone can confirm this either way, I’d like to hear it.
Crysis and Crysis Jr. both have the install limit on Steam.
So if you try to install Crysis through Steam on more than 3 machines (or whatever the machine limit is) it fails?
Hey guys, thanks for all your responses. I’m glad I asked.
I do tend to lose game CDs as well… and I have two kids, a toddler and a pre-adolescent, both of whom (intentionally and unintentionally, respectively) destroy my game media with terrible regularity, which is why I’ve switched to direct downloads in the past couple years.
I don’t really lose installers, though — and if I do, the services I get them from don’t usually have problems with re-grabbing them.
Also, I often install on machines on which I won’t have an internet connection — I have a number of laptops, some of them older and hard to get connected, and I occasionally find myself on the road wanting to game with one of them. I’ll give Steam a try, but it sounds like my needs might be better met with traditional installers.
We’ll see!
Argh, I thought it was something like that; I tried to buy last night. This is disappointing, so 2DBoy here I come.
As regards to Steam, I am now with internet the vast majority of the time. Also I play TF2 mostly now. So really internet is not a problem.
And my final shot, about EA and Crysis and nonsense: what tits. Steam, as far as I can tell, is very secure. I want to buy and play Crysis (admittedly not immediately) and probably will get it on Steam for simplicity. Thing is, if I were to build my own computer, something I plan to do and would need to do for Crysis, I’d install Ubuntu first before forking out for Vista (God knows I’ll be very upset when that day comes). If I decide to try to play it via Wine first does that count as an install, even though it is the same computer? I have a feeling it would do. This makes me want to mash my keyboard in annoyance, frustration and sheer anger but I am more sensible than that and realise that mindless keyboard spam does not endear oneself to the RPS Blogmasters.
Also, it isn’t half one, assuming you’re not in a different timezone as you bring us disappointing news.
And to keep on track, I will purchase World of Goo this evening I think. See if I can’t get it Steamed.
Excuse my stupidity about the time. Clearly I should buy a badge that says fail.
Well at least you Europeans qualify for the compos here.
http://2dboy.com/2008/10/18/pre-orders-steam/
As of this post, the “Magic Key” is now working with steam.
It appears to be unavailable on the European WiiWare site, too :(
I spotted that Justin, so I just got it directly from 2D Boy’s site. :)
thank you for sharing
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