VtM-Bloodlines - Released on Steam

[Dhruin]

News from Asbjoern that Vampire: Bloodlines has been released on Steam (http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=game&AppId=2600&cc=AU) at $19.95
More information. (http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?newsbit=4352)

[mogwins]

It's not a perfect game (i.e., twitch combat), but it's got some depth and is well worth $20 of anybody's money. With the current dearth of quality RPGs, doubly so!

[Asbjoern]

But my thoughts were what about all the bugs. Will the Steam release make use of the unofficial patches or is that unlikely?

But I was really amazed to see it on Steam (though it uses the Source engine so perhaps it's not that surprising again).

[Ammon777]

Its a really good game, and its a shame that its developer went out of business.

[txa1265]

One of my faves ... I really need to find the time for another run ...

[KasperFauerby]

Really great game! I'm surely going to buy the steam version. I think Steam is really starting to shape up.. more and more games are being added, and they often do bundles of multiple games for a favorable price. Also with the current speed of internet connections it is really becomming very convenient to own games online and download then when you want to play. Lately many of my old CDs are starting to become unreadable and I've experienced on several occasions to try and install an old game only to have to give up because of bad medias. This will not happen with online storage of your games...

[Surlent]

I'm actually surprised this game hasn't been available on Steam earlier. The other Source based games have come up on Steam IIRC.

[fatBastard()]

... This will not happen with online storage of your games...
Well, not until Valve goes out of business due to some "Sony'an" mistake. Then ALL your Steam games will be unplayable.

[KasperFauerby]

Well, not until Valve goes out of business due to some "Sony'an" mistake. Then ALL your Steam games will be unplayable.

Hmm, I'll have to admit that I haven't thought of it that way ;) Well, lets hope that doesn't happen..

[txa1265]

Well, not until Valve goes out of business due to some "Sony'an" mistake. Then ALL your Steam games will be unplayable.

That IS the #1` concern with digital distro ...

[gargar]

Well, not until Valve goes out of business due to some "Sony'an" mistake. Then ALL your Steam games will be unplayable.

excuse me, if your cd breaks down or scratched beyond normal nothing will help you. it's kind of the same situation only valve chances of going bankrupt are lower then the chances of a meteor hitting your house due to the fact that each of their game sells millions copies.

many people (like you) are only seeing the negative sides in steam. there are positive sides too.

your game is available to play everywhere. want to loan the game to your friend but keep playing while he doesn't? no problem. install steam on his computer and download the game. according to valve it's perfectly fine. want to play another steam game while he play another? no problem. it's fine. it's much better then the crap nwn2 copy protection forcing you to have the cd to play so you can't loan it to someone if you want to continue playing.

your house burnt down and every phyzical object in the house turned into ash? steam games will be right there for you to escape reality in your new home.

don't like copy protection? hate switching cds? steam doesn't have any. nothing. nadda, exit one game go into another.

hate patching? steam does it for you.

sucks at installing games? it's ok, it's the same way in every single steam game. next, next, install shortcut on desktop (if wanted) and that's it. even a retard 4 years old can do it.

i can give you more if you want. do you?

[Gorath]

excuse me, if your cd breaks down or scratched beyond normal nothing will help you.
Not 100% true. (I think) every publisher replaces CDs for a small fee within a reasonable period of time after release. In Europe it´s 24 months minimum, because that´s EU law regarding warranty and they want to be safe, and then until they run out of copies. I´m not sure how long the period is in other territories.

[bjon045]

You can easily make a backup copy of your CD as well.

However even if valve did go out of business it is likely the service would just be picked up by someone else. Digital distribution is certainly the future.

[gargar]

You can easily make a backup copy of your CD as well.

However even if valve did go out of business it is likely the service would just be picked up by someone else. Digital distribution is certainly the future.

try to backup nwn2 and play with it. you can't. so does in most games.

[Guhndahb]

Replacing CDs isn't really relevant because we are discussing a scenario where the publisher goes out of business. The key, however, is to just take good care of your CDs/DVDs. At least with optical media the control is (mostly) mine. Are there sometimes manufacturing defects that will cause it to fail 5, 10 or 15 years from now? Yes. And the life of optical media is hardly the promised 100 years. But flaws are uncommon and there are other recourses should the media fail.

However with any form of digital distribution that requires contacting a server to use, there is, in my mind at least, a significantly higher risk of me being unable to replay a game 5, 10 or 15 years later. This is the primary reason I avoid digital distribution even though I agree its ubiquity is inevitable and it's all the more essential to niche genres that I tend to enjoy. Some very small publishers have designed systems where the protection expires after a certain number of years, which would be acceptable to me, but I don't know if this is a viable solution as I expect it can be abused.

If Steam were to promise (and perhaps they do...I don't know) that should conditions occur where people will no longer be able to verify their Steam products online (such as Steam going out of business) that all protections would be disabled, I'd make less of a fuss about this.

My secondary reason has to do with modding. I am passionate about modding games, whether the authors intended it or not. Systems like Steam limit the modability of games that aren't originally developed to work with Steam. There are significant problems with this with X3: Reunion, for example, even though that game was designed to be modded. Fortunately, I bought the DVD version.

Therefore, I boycott Steam as much as I am able, despite the fact that I don't know what a better solution will be. For as long as I'm able, I'll keep buying CDs and DVDs and support that form of distribution, flawed as it is.

[Moriendor]

try to backup nwn2 and play with it. you can't. so does in most games.

Yes, you can :) . If you can't do it yourself, then all you need to do is download an image of the CD or DVD via your favorite torrent client. Actually, this is exactly what Steam is, too. At the core of it, it's just another torrent client. The difference to other torrent clients is that Steam has a shopping/billing system built into it and it's also got an auto-patcher tagged on. That's all there is to it, really. Nothing more, nothing less.

I have nothing against Steam but so far I have with one exception (when my DVD drive couldn't read the HL2 DVD which was actually not the fault of my drive but my bad/incompatible memory but I'll spare you the details ;) ) not seen a use for it personally.

I think it's great for people who live in countries (like Australia, NZ, entire APAC region etc) where games often get released months after the US/European launch but as an American or European gamer, there's mighty little need for Steam IMHO. For example, Vampire 2: Bloodlines can be bought from German online retailers for half the price of the Steam version (~EUR 10). Every single other Steam release has so far been more expensive than the game at retail, too.

The only two advantages of Steam that I can see are that you don't need to get out of your chair to buy a game (which can be advantageous if you live in remote areas) and the built-in no-CD/DVD "crack" (DRM)... which is not quite exclusive to Steam though as cracks exist for most retail games as well. The difference is that with Steam you have a guarantee that the game will always work with no CD/DVD whereas you need to rely on the various release groups to care enough to hack up a new crack for a game when a patch is released which does not always happen.
On the other hand, you have retail games like Oblivion with no protection that work with just the image on your HD so it wouldn't be quite correct to claim that Steam has a general, overall advantage in this area.

So in summary, I see the biggest advantage of Steam in its ability to bring the Steam games to more people, i.e. those people who do not get timely retail releases or maybe even no retail releases at all.

[Arhu]

For example, Vampire 2: Bloodlines can be bought from German online retailers for half the price of the Steam version (~EUR 10). Every single other Steam release has so far been more expensive than the game at retail, too.

Yeah, I had a quick look at some Steam titles a couple weeks ago and was amazed how expensive they were. I would have expected them to be cheaper than retail versions due to a reduced production cost (no cases, no printed manuals), but apparently that's not really the case. On the contrary.

On the other hand, I saw a box of Diablo for € 30,- (!) in a store recently.. First I gasped, then laughed, then shook my head in disbelief.

Anyway, I do wonder how much the developers get out of it compared to classic releases in boxed form. Does anyone know?

[guenthar]

Steam is a ripoff since it is a lot more expensive to put a game in a store. Costs of dvd/cd, duplicator costs, the stores cut of the profit, the box, shipping, labor costs, ect.

[txa1265]

Steam is a ripoff since it is a lot more expensive to put a game in a store. Costs of dvd/cd, duplicator costs, the stores cut of the profit, the box, shipping, labor costs, ect.

I don't disagree, but I know that for many games there is a need to send it to retail and to Steam, and retailers won't carry it if they are to be undersold.

[Arhu]

Steam is a ripoff since it is a lot more expensive to put a game in a store. Costs of dvd/cd, duplicator costs, the stores cut of the profit, the box, shipping, labor costs, ect.

Maybe, but if the extra cash gets directly to the developers I wouldn't mind. If it goes to the publisher, I'd not be amused.

[Unregistered1]

Why not just release the SDK for this game already? What's holding back the SDK? Clearly, this game has a fanbase that has gone well out of its way to support the game with virtually no official support.

Odds are, though, that the SDK won't ever be released which is too bad - This had a Thief-like devotion from its fanbase which is quite uncommon nowadays.

[KasperFauerby]

The company who made this game has gone out of business, so who should release the SDK? I don't think you should expect to ever get one ;)

[gargar]

Maybe, but if the extra cash gets directly to the developers I wouldn't mind. If it goes to the publisher, I'd not be amused.

it doesn't matter who get the cash. if a publisher get more money from a single player rpg sold in steam he'll be more inclined to invest his money in this genre. meaning more rpgs for everyone/

look, i have biliion and one cd/dvd games. so does everyone else here. but if a new game will released in both steam and dvd i'll get the steam version without a single blink. this is, by far, the easiest and safest way to get your games. 3 clicks and the game is in your computer and ready to play.

[doctor_kaz]

Any benefit that Steam has is more than offset by the fact that they are complete dicks about transferring or selling your games to somebody else. Right now I'm stuck with Episode 1 of Half-Life 2, which lasted about three and a half hours, and I can't sell it. This is a big problem for PC games, since there also is no rental market for them. Give me a physical media over virtual any day so I can sell my game when I'm finished with it.

Either that, or let me "rent" the game on-line for a fraction of the price, like you can do with console games. That'll be something worth getting excited about.

Also, for all of the hype that Steam got for being the "distribution method of the future", it supposedly isn't moving that many games.

[txa1265]

Right now I'm stuck with Episode 1 of Half-Life 2, which lasted about three and a half hours, and I can't sell it. This is a big problem for PC games, since there also is no rental market for them. Give me a physical media over virtual any day so I can sell my game when I'm finished with it.

Hmmm ... decent point that I hadn't thought about. I've pretty heavily pimped the Goozex service here for trading games and I make broad use of it - recently I nabbed Betrayal at Krondor, Fallout 1 & 2 (only had Mac versions before that) and Outcast, all PC games ... where would I be in the virtual world?

However, the virtual game world is expanding with the Wii VS, XBLA and whatever crap the PS3 has.

[curious]

...5 minutes later and i have a gift for!

http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o44/mjfossum/goozexpimp.jpg

[txa1265]

...5 minutes later and i have a gift for!

http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o44/mjfossum/goozexpimp.jpg

Better yet ... http://www.redbrick.dcu.ie/~osama/images/sucka-back-2.jpg

[curious]

is that bootsy collins or scott weiland?

[Dhruin]

I don't see it as a physical product I am buying - I see it as a gaming experience. In that sense, I have no desire to sell my games. I'm not "stuck" with HL2 EP2; I payed $XX and received the equivalent of that in entertainment - it doesn't owe me anything.

[txa1265]

is that bootsy collins or scott weiland?

Antonio Fargas, played FlyGuy in 'Im Gonna Git You Sucka'

[curious]

i almost put that on my top 10 along with 'the last boyscout'...those crazy wayans.

[txa1265]

i almost put that on my top 10 along with 'the last boyscout'...those crazy wayans.

Yep - that almost mode my list as well ... still love it when I can catch In Living Color on BET :)

[Asbjoern]

I've just bought it on Steam yesterday, so I'm looking forward to playing it this evening.