VtM-Bloodlines - Released on Steam

News from Asbjoern that Vampire: Bloodlines has been released on Steam at $19.95
More information.

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!

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).

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

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

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…

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

Originally Posted by KasperFauerby
… 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.

Originally Posted by fatBastard()
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..

Originally Posted by fatBastard()
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 …

Originally Posted by fatBastard()
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?

Originally Posted by gargar
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 itīs 24 months minimum, because thatīs EU law regarding warranty and they want to be safe, and then until they run out of copies. Iīm not sure how long the period is in other territories.

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.

Originally Posted by 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.

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

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.

Originally Posted by gargar
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.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
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?

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.

Originally Posted by 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.

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.

Originally Posted by 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.

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.