The PA Report - Ditch Steam and Buy Direct

The convenience of having your digital library all in one place can't be overstated. That being said, I'll gladly buy direct if the developer provides a Steam key.

Yep, exactly my opinion. I'd like to have everything in one place.
While I like to dig into information about upcoming games and pledge on kickstarter, I don't like to Download all games and burn them on DVD or make some notebook and list all the online dealers where I bought something. Even with kickstarter I find it annoying if it's not clear whether it's a steam game. If it's steam, great, I just copy/paste the key and I am done. Otherwise...did they have a homepage? Did I already register some months ago? Did they already send me some key or invitation before? Running behind the projects sucks.

And one big platform is enough for me. Don't want to spread out and buy games on Desura or Origin. If EA doesn't release their games on steam, they don't get any money from me (if they released good games recently).
GoG is a little exception, but only because they are doing such a good job in releasing old games. But if I have the choice between GoG Only (without steam key) or Steam, I'd chose steam.
 
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I do try to buy from GoG whenever that is an option over steam, in order to support another platform apart from steam as well.
Yep, me too. I ALWAYS choose GOG over Steam.

Steam may have its advantages but one thing that IMO is very bad is the fact that Steam can impose regional policies on consumers.
 
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And then there's the majority of developers who can't get on Steam even if they wanted to… :p

Yes. Many forget this.

Greenlight is just an beginning - nothing more.
 
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Yep, me too. I ALWAYS choose GOG over Steam.

Steam may have its advantages but one thing that IMO is very bad is the fact that Steam can impose regional policies on consumers.

Well, the question is in this case if GOG has this obligation as well and just doesn't care. In addition it is probably only the case for a couple of countries for example Germany. But on the other hand these are mostly games which are not sold on GoG to anyone at all. The only issue I had so far with this was in the case of Fallout New Vegas where I made the mistake of ordering the German CE, which had a region locked steam key. No way to circumvent that (besides of ordering the english CE version which wasn't available on Amazon in Europe or not buying it at all).

That said, that was already a huge improvement to Fallout 3 which went over Games for Windows. I had the German Version from my brother and I would have bought the DLCs in english or german. But M$ didn't allow me so due to my IP from a foreign country. Only had two options to play them in a language I understand: Use a proxy to buy them or just pirate them. Sometimes people just don't want your money.
 
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Yes. Many forget this.

Greenlight is just an beginning - nothing more.

Are there really that many anymore?
Probably depends on how "indie" you go, but I have the impression that almost all games which reach the minimum requirements for me, also either directly come to steam or pass green light.
Or to express it the other way: Games which don't reach steam I probably would not want to play anyways.
 
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Well it's gotten better with Greenlight, but Eschalon book 3, Rampant's Frayed Knights, and Soldaks Drox Operative, are examples of quality games that have not (yet) been taken up by steam.
 
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Yep, I guess that's right the borderline.
To be honest I am not sure if Frayed Knights meets the minimum "requirements". To me this game does not look like a professional product at all.
Drox Operative is actually a game I bought at the Devs site. Was following the game for months but couldn't play more than an hour or so. Had a borderline professional look and just didnt catch me.
And Eschalon 3 was not yet released. I guess they have pretty good chances to get it on steam.

I think both Soldak and Basilisk should both soon be at a point where they can bring games to steam without green light due to previous releases on steam, shouldn't they?
 
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That's very subjective. Frayed Knights maybe didn't look great, but it was rock stable, very fun, had excellent RPG mechanics, good writing, etc., etc.. Most importantly though, there are far simpler, crappier looking games on steam.

Eschalon II I think didn't come on Steam for the longest time although I was, etc.

The gatekeeping of Steam was very random in the past, and Valve was increasingly aware of that, that is why Greenlight came into being. That has it's own set of issues, but its better than what they had before.
 
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Well, in this case I do think they are referring to indie devs, who don't really have a publisher.

Is the 30/70 split also there for boxed games? Because of the way this article reads it seems not every steam key has the 30/70 split. (Obviously with buying boxed in retail a percentage goes to the store).

only if you buy from steam there's that 30/70
 
I love Steam, and the reason is that it's easy and will keep all games up to date automatically. I don't have to worry about downloading/registering for a gazillion proprietary game developer websites just to download a game I bought. I also then don't have to worry about my personal info which is often sold to 3rd parties or when that company is hacked.

Does Steam sell personal info and get hacked? Sure. But one door is safer than 50.

So if you're a game producer and you want me to buy direct-- make it so I can just download the game and be done with it. Don't make me sign up for "Widget-level forum assassin with super gold access". Don't make me store my credit card info for future use. Don't make me register to your site. Don't make me sign up for your email spam. Don't make me download some other program to download the game I just bought. Don't make me download zipped files just to patch my game.

Just let me download the game I bought, via direct link, and then leave me the f alone.
 
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I always buy at the cheapest prices, and Steam has been by far the cheapest prices on their special sales. Occasionally GG may beat it, but GG is much less reliable than Steam, so I rarely buy from them anymore. Gog has a somewhat different selection than Steam, but occasionally beats prices on Steam when they overlap. But not often. I like downloading once, and keeping the download rather than messing with the Steam app though.
 
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