Steam has actually made me miss the days of my youth when just getting a PC game to run was a barrier to entry. Yeah, it was a pain to edit CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files for every game you bought. But it kept the riff raff out of the community and forced people to actually understand the magic box they were playing the game on. I am officially old. Now get off my lawn!
Release on Steam? I think not! Steam is asinine. With BG originally you installed it which took about 15 minutes (back in the day) then you started it up and began playing. With Steam it would take about an hour because you don't INSTALL the game anymore.....you DOWNLOAD it, and because of the size of games nowadays like Starcraft 2 which is 11GB installations times skyrocket into hours when they used be done no longer than it would take me to take the Browns to the Superbowl.
@TehCerealKiller : (awesome username btw) I know exactly what you mean, especially because my connection sucks. Then again after uploading a 73 minutes long HD video on youtube, a 2 or 3 hours download seems like nothing to me. That thing required 25 hours for me to upload. CURSE YOU 1 megabit per second upload, CUUUURSE YOU!!!
@Cheesebelly Thanks. Yeah I DL at 160kb per second so downloading full games is something I'd rather avoid though for BG I'd download it even I had to do it at 1kbps
What's up with all the hate? It's his good right not to buy it if it's not on steam. I will not buy it either if it's not on steam because of the points listed before. It might be all nice and good for a casual player to keep track of their games, but once you have hundrets of games and have to uninstall and re-install them it becomes a nightmare to try to remember which no-name service (and I consider BGEE just that) you bought them from in first place. I don't want to dig through emails to find the original purchase confirmation either. On steam all have all my loads of games right there nicely compiled in one list with all my account history for all my games. And i bought most of them for 75% off on top of that.
You can hate steam all you want, but you have to admit that that is convenient. And no use whining about DRM either, because like it or not.. most games you won't get without nowadays.
Anyways, no one is trying to take away your non-steam download, all we ask for is to release it on steam as well. And once again, like steam or not, it's a fact that that would be instantly thousands of sales. In fact, the only reason i hear about this project is because i checked out overhaul games after seeing MDK2 on steam.
As for why I love steam, the two things I love about it are the way it handles patches and dlc. The auto-patch function is something that I love and the seamless integration of dlc, minus those few games that use GFWL for whatever ungodly reason.
Well then you're in luck! The BG:EE launcher auto updates the game to the latest patch when you run it. Plus there is no 3rd party utility, like Steam, running in the background. So realistically it's a superior platform than Steam. Plus, by buying directly from Beamdog, they earn more revenue from the sale which means games like BG 3 and other Enhanced Edition titles could be released. Also, having the account to download and patch the game is no different than having an account on this very forum, so any inconvenience you may feel there is is negligible since you are demonstrating by being here the willingness to create a new account for something you're interested in.
That said, I do understand that some people enjoy seeing their list of games in one place, but understand that Steam will never have 100% of PC titles. It's quite futile not buying this game due to lack of Steam support since there will be many more titles by many other developers in the years to come that are not on Steam.
A stand alone patching launcher is superior IMO. My only concern is that several years down the road will the download and update services still be available?
People like Steam because a large chunk of their games are in the same place and they can chat to their friends while playing. I would certainly buy it on Steam if it were offered, but if they're not going to offer it on Steam I won't throw a fit about it. The BG series is special to me, and I'm just happy that it's even being re-released to work better on modern systems, and the enhancements/bug fixes are icing on the cake.
Those people should get Teamspeak or skype then. It'll save them a whole lot of time. I won't have a psychotic break if it's put on steam I'll just be slightly irritated. I will always miss inserting a disc into the cd rom drive and just installing the game simple as that
In 1999 i bought the game on a pc game market(actual irl market) in Latvia, Riga and i was happy as hell with my purchase.Today i preordered the game from beamdog and though i love Steam i don't understand people who b*tch about how they're going to pirate the game if it won't be on steam.I also love downloading games from tpb, but i always but the game i actually like after playing it.In the case of BGEE & BG2EE i think it is totally normal to support the game devs with buying the game, because i want them to become a new breath in the game development world, because recent Bioware games are utter rubbish.
I must agree with Narvallus. I also don't buy games without steam. It very helpfull and easy to handle all the games. I lose everything and steam helps me to keep all the stuff together. But I can wait and i will wait.
So are you fans of Steam or Baldur's Gate? People would honestly not buy a game, which I'm assuming they love, due to how it is being distributed? Then I'm clearly assuming wrong.
MDK2 HD was released yesterday, but no pre-order, no bonus, It was almost invisible. I thought it would go to the top20 at least, well it will.. on the first sale I bet. BG on steam would probably get into top10 easily though.
This "only-buying-from-Steam" arguments are pretty pathetic. I can understand why someone would -prefer- to have it on Steam but making buy-or-not-to-buy decision based on that? Because you will not have game in some favorite application's list? Really? Because otherwise you will forget where you bought it from? Seriously?
If you place convenience over the game itself, you probably don't like it much anyway - not that it's inconvenient as it is in the first place.
You either wait till it eventually appears on Steam (if it will) or accept the reality.
I think it's obvious devs want it to sell as much as possible, but you do not see all behind-the-scene issues which need to be resolved first.
It is apparent there are some economic considerations in this and I would say that everyone who really want to support what Beamdog is doing (for BG:EE and possibly some other classics in the future) will support them and buy from developer directly.
A stand alone patching launcher is superior IMO. My only concern is that several years down the road will the download and update services still be available?
To me this is the only cause for concern.
I have no doubt that the patches will always be easy to find online, so to avoid these issues it would be nice if you could apply them without the updater (or if you could tell the updater where the file is).
As for if the game will always be available for download, its true that Steam, being as big as it is, offers more assurances that it'll still be around years from.
So I just saw MDK2 HD on Steam this morning. Developed by Overhaul Games. Hmmmmm..... The website http://overhaulgames.com/mdk2hd/ still states it's only available on Beamdog, but we know now that's not true. Hey, if it worked for MDK2, it can work for BGEE.
Comments
To be fair, at the moment BGEE will be download only too.
It's his good right not to buy it if it's not on steam. I will not buy it either if it's not on steam because of the points listed before.
It might be all nice and good for a casual player to keep track of their games, but once you have hundrets of games and have to uninstall and re-install them it becomes a nightmare to try to remember which no-name service (and I consider BGEE just that) you bought them from in first place.
I don't want to dig through emails to find the original purchase confirmation either. On steam all have all my loads of games right there nicely compiled in one list with all my account history for all my games. And i bought most of them for 75% off on top of that.
You can hate steam all you want, but you have to admit that that is convenient. And no use whining about DRM either, because like it or not.. most games you won't get without nowadays.
Anyways, no one is trying to take away your non-steam download, all we ask for is to release it on steam as well.
And once again, like steam or not, it's a fact that that would be instantly thousands of sales. In fact, the only reason i hear about this project is because i checked out overhaul games after seeing MDK2 on steam.
That said, I do understand that some people enjoy seeing their list of games in one place, but understand that Steam will never have 100% of PC titles. It's quite futile not buying this game due to lack of Steam support since there will be many more titles by many other developers in the years to come that are not on Steam.
Only their lose.
If you place convenience over the game itself, you probably don't like it much anyway - not that it's inconvenient as it is in the first place.
You either wait till it eventually appears on Steam (if it will) or accept the reality.
I think it's obvious devs want it to sell as much as possible, but you do not see all behind-the-scene issues which need to be resolved first.
It is apparent there are some economic considerations in this and I would say that everyone who really want to support what Beamdog is doing (for BG:EE and possibly some other classics in the future) will support them and buy from developer directly.
I have no doubt that the patches will always be easy to find online, so to avoid these issues it would be nice if you could apply them without the updater (or if you could tell the updater where the file is).
As for if the game will always be available for download, its true that Steam, being as big as it is, offers more assurances that it'll still be around years from.
The website http://overhaulgames.com/mdk2hd/ still states it's only available on Beamdog, but we know now that's not true. Hey, if it worked for MDK2, it can work for BGEE.