I think it's a quite reasonable request don't you?

Who says that? Because obviously they've NEVER met Kotick. Kotick, as any well-informed PC gamer knows, is THE UTTER ABOMINATION OF VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY. Kotick HIMSELF has stated that his ENTIRE GOAL in the video game industry is to effectively exploit every IP that Activision can get it's greasy, slimey, grubby mits on by milking it for cash as quickly and as long as is humanly possible.

That is the fallacious argument 'False Choice' -- it presents only 2 choices:

-the choice you favor

-a ridiculous choice that it total failure

...and presents the situation as an either/or, ignoring that there's a whole lot of other, reasonable options.

Shame on you Sir for presenting such a biased and false argument.

What about other DD services then, such as GamersGate, D2D and the like?

I've already preordered and thus bought via Impulse (ditto with Sins and GalCiv2+DA before that) so I don't really care from a user stand point. Just curious though if those with a lesser market share and not so much in the way of shady practices might be used to extend the reach of the game, even if by only a little?

First -- SD is competing with Steam, in the way SD thinks best.

Second -- what you're saying is the if SD doesn't compete in the way you think best they're:

-Unilaterally surrendering

-giving up without even trying

You're presenting 2 options:

either...

1- SD competes not as they're currently doing but as you think they should

or...

2- SD is unilaterally surrendering and giving up without even trying

There are other options, including the one SD is currently pursuing -- competing as they think best which doesn't include what you think they should be doing.

It's as if you think SD isn't competing unless they're doing what you suggest -- which is obviously untrue.

I accept that you don't intend your post to have been as such, but as written that's the result.  Your rewriting of your initial post didn't seem to change this basic fact, just presented it in another way.

I think a better presentation of your idea would be to drop the hyperbolic 'unilaterally surrendering and not giving up without even trying' stuff in preference to something along the lines of 'I think SD would better compete if it <insert your idea>'.

In politics we see hyperbole and false choices (vote against heath care changes or "death panels" will kill your grandma) all the time.  I think we here can do better than the politicians 

Quoting Sareln,

reply 36

I'm not contending the hyperbolic, I'll do better on that, but hyperbole is fun so I make no promises

First, your original post included "If Stardock thinks they have a winner in Reactor/Impulse, they stand to gain much more by competing with steam for DD share."  SD is currently competing with steam for DD share, and since you're arguing for SD to do something different, and given the topic of this thread, I did take you to be saying SD should put Elemental on steam or something similar.  Your original post doesn't make sense to me otherwise (and still doesn't -- SD should compete "...with steam for DD share." by "not put[ing] Elemental on the steam market..."?  What are you arguing SD should do differently than what it's currently doing?)

Nonetheless I accept I was wrong and am sorry for misrepresenting your position.

Second, you still presented your argument as an either/or choice (either do whatever you're arguing they should be and are not currently, or they're unilaterally surrendering without even trying).  That's a hyperbolic False Choice.

1. I was arguing for more of the same, or at least, that's what I was aiming to say.  Clearly I needed to work on it a little more before hitting post.
2. Sure, it's a false choice.  I could try to argue that it's not by saying that any solution which doesn't keep Elemental an Impulse exclusive collapses eventually to a "Steam Wins" end game and is therefore functionally equivalent, but that's a lot of work to go through to stubbornly hold to an initial position which was not completely thought through.

Also: , because that was fun.

You are aware that bitching about the lack of a patch to support is an essential element in being a good consumer advocate, right?

I spent weeks going back and forth with Direct 2 Drive over their delay in patching up Children of the Nile -- Impulse had gotten it done almost immediately after Tilted Mill put the patch out. Eventually they paid me in store credit to stop bothering them, but, more importantly, they got the patch out a few days after. Was it because I was whining and moaning and kicking up a ruckus? Or was it just coincidence? 

Who knows!

The takeaway point is that if you want companies to improve their performance, you have to give their support team constant, specific and negative feedback, not just whine about them in forum posts.

So get back to the Steam website, hit the technical help tab, and write them a polite email that makes it very clear that they need to hurry the hell up with the patching of Indie Games A, B and C because their competitors are doing a better job, and your delicious customer dollars think that that is hot. Chances are you'll get a form letter. Tell them they're wrong, and provide links! And then they'll escalate you! And you escalate right back! And when they offer money you say that's nice and I'll take it BUT WE AREN'T DONE YET. And eventually, change happens because the company sees faster patching as a means of reducing the money they're having to spend on technical support. 

Do what's right and FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!

Well, I'm definitely warming up to the Elemental Army concept now. 

Normally I wouldn't participate in a thread like this but  Zam, imo, has certainly earned the right to an official response.

The first key concept here is "Fungible".  It's an ongoing issue in digital distribution.  How many NET new sales would being on Steam provide? That is, how many sales of Elemental would occur that wouldn't occur otherwise.

Starcraft 2, for instance, is not on Steam and I don't think anyone worries about its sales.  Sins wasn't on Steam and it sold a gazillion copies. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a TBS (other than the Civ series) that has outsold Galactic Civilizations II (and I'm privy to the numbers on most of them).

When a game is sold on Steam, you lose about 30% to Steam. That's their cut.  So just to break even, you'd first have to demonstrate that being on Steam would generate 30% more sales than we would otherwise get and that would be a very tough case to make. 

Consumers on the Internet tend to vastly over-estimate the popularity of digital distribution (Steam, Impulse, GG, GOG, D2D, Real, etc.).  We often can't imagine why people would go to a store and buy a box.  But they do.  Depending on the publisher, anywhere between 70% to 90% of their revenue comes from brick and mortar retail stores.

None of these DD services do huge numbers yet.  They will, in time. But they don't yet. 

But for the sake of argument, let's say that it would be more profitable in the short-term to put Elemental on Steam and the others.  I'd even argue that that would probably be the case when you add in GamersGate (which sells well to our demographic) and D2D.

Then the question is, how much are you guys willing to sacrifice for that?  Do any of you remember how many updates we do to our games when they're new? GalCiv had like 5 updates in the first month. Not bug fixes mind you but new stuff.  Sins of a Solar Empire had several in its first few months.  I can tell you right now, Elemental will likely get at least a DOZEN updates in its first 6 months out.  You guys have great ideas and frankly, I want them in there. If not now, then asap.

Do you seriously think that kind of rapid updating is possible if you're using a third party DD source?

But let's say that even that's not an issue, then there's the long term issue - a virtual monopoly.  Valve is a good company. They're honest. They're hard working. They produce great games.  So is Microsoft, incidentally.  But once someone establishes total domination, it's very very hard to undo it.  

Steam's cut is ~30% today.  Maybe they'll need to raise it to 40%.  Right now, they can't because there's an alternative - Impulse.   Maybe they should start requiring games to include "Steam Achievements" if they want to be on Steam.  Of course, that means everyone would have to have Steam running.  But right now, they can't require that because publishers can still choose Impulse and the upcoming Impulse::Reactor as an alternative.

Take a few steps back and look at your games. Seriously. Consider this: When was the last time you saw a major NEW title come out.  Not a sequel. Not a remake of a classic game as a FPS. I mean a brand new, IP with a big budget. FOR THE PC.  It's increasingly rare. It still happens of course but not often.  Don't you wonder why that is?  Because it's hard to make a profit doing that.

IF Elemental had to give up 30% of its revenue to anyone on digital distribution, there'd be no Elemental in the first place.  A turn based fantasy strategy game in 2010 with no roman numeral after its name? Are you insane?  But WE can try crazy stuff (see The Political Machine) because we have that 30% "bonus" on our titles. Take that away and we're stuck pitching Atari to do Star Control V as a GTA in space -- for the PS3/Xbox.

So this implies that anyone with a high rank in the Elemental Army will get a personal answer from Frogboy himself, right?

They probably do, but as Frogboy said, they are responsible for most of the sales of a game. 70-90% is not a small amount. If you don't put your game on Steam, you'd only be loosing 7-21% (70% of 10 and 30, respectively) of your total sales. Cut out retailers and you lose pretty much everything.

Elemental has a bigger budget, maybe? I don't know, that's my best quess.

Stardock isn't a franchise, though. A franchise would be something like Halo, Civilization, GalCiv, etc. Brand name is not the same as a franchise.

They take a cut, and there's an extra cut for things like making boxes and shipping them to retail. But the numbers make sense. Walmart sells a lot of copies (IIRC they were the top single source for sales of Sins, overall). Take it out of there, and you lose a lot of sales that you won't get back any other way.

Comparatively, how many people will buy it if you put it on Steam that won't be buying now... as compared to how many people who would have bought it on Impulse would go buy it on Steam instead? Since every sale that you take from Impulse and put on Steam is lost revenue, you need to gain a couple of sales to make up for that and have the math make sense. It doesn't seem likely.

No, hopefully he's just implying that this post...while controversial...was well versed in a manner that is not negative and trying to be supportive of a great game.  Its facts, while someone of a perception, have merit and lead to a good conversation.

BUT to let ya'll know, I did NOT GET POINTS for this forum topic!   Nor do I send "forum participation" for everything I do.  Actually, I rarely do.   I like a good discussion and debate as long as its not meanacing and has good facts/truth behind them. I saw this as "it would make sense to me" from a immidiate-financial aspect, but I did understand the long-term game plan. So was just curious to everyone else's thoughts.