Raven's Cry - Publisher Replies on Steam

Forum member Morrandir noticed a publisher of Raven's Cry named Raidor answered a bunch of questions bout the game. He talks about new DRM, and a game demo.

One post of interest is the games DRM.

Some Remarks:

- it seems that no one really understands our intensions. Handling these activations is a lot of work for us. It would be much easier to wave it.
- the DRM is not a copy protection. First of all - 10 minutes after release of a game - everyone can find a hacked Version in the net. Beside this, who does not pay for games can find a cracked copy anyway.
- Steam is great, alone the fact that Eath 2160 (Steam ID 72) was one of the first games from an external Company should proof that we always have been friends of Valve. BUT, as much as we like Steam, we do not know if it will stay, as it is now, forever. Company policy may Change, ownership may Change … and what happens with your purchased games in such a case? - just imagine one or more of the following "slightly" changes of policy: 1. subscription will cost a montly fee 2. Steam retail activations will have a Charge 3. only Premium Users (who pay a monthly subscription) have full Access to all Steam Features OR … immagine: Steam is sold to EA, Amazon or someone else who you like even more. (this hopefully will all not happen - but … nobody knows! - who is the new CEO of Unity? who acquired Oculus VR?)
- over the Holidays I was doing customer Support. You cannot immagine how many users want to revive an old game. If they can proove somehow they bought it, they all got a new download, or whatever else they needed.
- a Steam Publisher has limited possibilities to help a Steam customer. We e.g. cannot give any refunds. We can not identify a user. We have only Information about the customers who activated or registered their games with our DRM.

I do not want to defend our DRM, but once we realease a game without it, we do not know who bought it. And if anything happens all your games are gone.

btw: the remarks regarding Raven's Cry will never come out are not very productive. We do our best to release a great game. We have here to withstand the beating - but we have to pay more Money to the dev Studio the longer the development takes and have no earnings from the game in the meantime at all. So basically we are sitting between all chairs, but have to decide if the game is ready to release or not.

More information.

Thanks for the post, Couch and Morrandir. Is this guy a dev or is he from the publisher? The penultimate line in the excerpt makes me think he's from the publisher. I didn't vote for this as one of my most anticipated, but I'm definitely going to be playing it when it comes out.

I thought he was a developer at first but the more I read he sounds like he works for the publisher. Which should be TopWare Interactive if I'm not mistaken.

I'm worried about this game after the constant delays, and different developers.

"just imagine one or more of the following "slightly" changes of policy: 1. subscription will cost a montly fee 2. Steam retail activations will have a Charge 3. only Premium Users (who pay a monthly subscription) have full Access to all Steam Features OR … "

I have been thinking about this and it is scary - becoming like these PS4 subscriptions!

The thing is that everything they said about steam applies to topware; and to be honest I think topware has a greater change of going belly up (activation server shutdown) than Valve. My biggest concern with Valve is how the company will change when Gabe steps down.

No concern needed.
It'll get sold instantly to EA and then we'll all move on uPlay.

To be honest I rather it got sold to EA than UBI.

Well dunno which is worse.
EA's $20 DLCization and MMO in every title or Ubi's season pass must for every game and dumb down to repetitiveness openworlds.

Ah, the old "debate" about DRM:

customer: but DRM only inconveniences customers, it does nothing to stop piracy.
developer: we can't release a game without DRM! otherwise the pirates are just going to copy it!

DRM is a waste of time and money for devs and publishers. Pirates will pirate and honest players will buy. Always have; always will. It's human nature.

Originally Posted by screeg
Ah, the old "debate" about DRM:

customer: but DRM only inconveniences customers, it does nothing to stop piracy.
developer: we can't release a game without DRM! otherwise the pirates are just going to copy it!

the DRM is not a copy protection

So they're arguing differently.

They're shooting themselves in the foot if they don't make the game available in Steam. Like it or not, it's the platform for games. Not only does it provide protection, but also a whole lot of extra benefits. Right now I have a hard time justifying buying any game outside Steam.
The possibility that Steam changes its policies when a meteor falls on its GM exists, but if that happens, and if whoever comes after is so stupid as to change a winning formula, who cares? I already paid for those games so I won't have any qualms about downloading them again via torrent or whatever else exists in that improbable future.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this game being developed by Reality Pump? You know, the studio behind the mediocre Two Worlds series..

Can't say that I'm expecting anything remotely compelling from them, and the limited activation nonsense means that I'll wait until it's available on GOG before even considering it.

Originally Posted by Charlemagne3.0
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this game being developed by Reality Pump? You know, the studio behind the mediocre Two Worlds series..

The game was originally developed by a developer called Nitro Games, but after a few development problems the game was handed to Reality Pump.