Some things that Steam COULD bring to the table
 

Seems that there are a few people that are a little unfamiliar with Steam and it's features other than it's DRM so I thought I'd make a couple of points about some of the features that may (or may not) be included in CloD as a result of Steam integration.

The following list is merely to illustrate what is possible.

Steam Region Censorship

In a few games there are slightly different versions for players in different territories.

The German version of Counter-Strike: Source and Team Fortress 2 are two games that usie region locking to censor the violence.

In Counter-Strike: Source instead of dead bodies covered in blood you see submissive avatars covered in paint.

In Team Fortress 2 instead of flying body parts you see flying robot pieces to mask the (cartoon) violence.

German players can play with players from other regions, they don't see the violence whereas those in other regions see the uncensored content.

Perhaps in IL2: Cliffs of Dover the German players (and any players in other territories where it's banned) may not see the Hakenkreuz but in other territories it is displayed.

Steam Cloud Synchronising
Perhaps in IL2: Cliffs of Dover our joystick settings, our preferred skin choices, our avatar selections will all be synchronised with the Steam Cloud.

This feature is optional, users can always choose NOT to synchronise with the Steam Cloud for any of the games that support it.

Steam Achievements

For those that care about such things, a great many Steampowered games offer gamers the chance to collect Achievements.

In a game like CloD you might receive an achievement for your first landing, for your first confirmed kill, for flying a certain number of campaign missions etc. etc.



So maybe, just maybe there are a couple of other reasons that this game is coming to Steam.

I'm not expecting those of you that are unhappy that Steam is being utilised to suddenly change heart, but I'm merely informing people of the things that Steampowered games can offer.

Disclaimer: There are plenty of games that are sold through Steam that contain none of the above features.


ps. Steam is now on MAC and coming soon to PS3 with the release of Portal 2.

There are now several games where if you own the game you can play it on MAC or PC with the same Steam account.

I don't really ever post on these forums, just lurk really. Loved the ubi boards back in the IL2/IL2 FB days but anyway...

Just wanted to comment a bit on steam -- when I bought CoD MW2 I complained incessantly about having to install steam to play it. Well, as it turns out, MW2 introduced me to steam, and now I truly believe it's an outstanding tool. Hopefully others will agree with time.

Also:
Automatic updates.
No mods which is a good thing, keeps everyone on the same version, and a bad thing e.g. stuck with poor development decisions e.g. the bar in the FW 190 forward view.

You kidding me?? I'm supposed to get excited about steam because I might get an achievement award for landing or getting a kill?? That's not a big enough deal to convince me to get steam. There's really no advantage to steam, despite what people say. Don't need it for a community. IL2 had plenty of "community" in many online forums and you could "match make" with friends you met on those forums. Don't need it to play online. Don't need it get auto updates, I can install patches and such manually, thank you. Nor does COD need steam for "exposure" or to attract newcomers. IL2 certainly didn't, it got plenty of players and exposure well before Steam ever existed. Don't need Steam for making easy backups. I have made backup copies of IL2 for years and it's not that difficult!! So no advantage there either. Steam or it's DRM will not prevent anyone from cracking or hacking it, never has for any other Steam game so far, as I have researched about this. So no advantage there either.

So what you DO have with Steam is a impediment bad enough for many of us to refuse to buy the game at all. So it would be far better for 1C to offer it no steam. Even for those that love steam, if it were to be offered with without steam they would still buy the game. There simply would be nobody refusing to buy it because it was NOT on steam!

But offering it steam only apparently will stop about 25% of the people otherwise interested in the game from buying it at all. And a stubborn lot we are. Don't expect many of us to cave and later buy the sim unless the steam thing is dropped or a way comes up later to thwart the steam.

Fearfactor, if you want to rant about Steam, use another thread. Your post is off-topic here. We are speculating about possible features CoD may use in conjunction with Steam, not whether CoD should use Steam at all.

You're trolling...?? A steam fan thread - dig your own grave then :grin:

Seriously? Really?

Steam brings a ton of features and advantages that have nothing to do with challenges, including- but not limited to the Cloud Service, the fact that you are not dependant on your disc (IF you loose it you simply download the game through Steam), ease of patching and version compatibility, Steam infrastructure & Support, and much much more.

You don't actually have any counterpoints in your post, just a lot of "Steam doesn't need to do this for us because we could already do it ourselves.."

-which is actually a load of nonsense, seeing as some of the things you're listing are about 100x bigger nuisance than doing it via Steam. Manually patching? It's 2011 for fucks sake.

The level of ignorance in your post seriously boggles the mind.

Indeed. Perhaps the only point i would agree on. Good day.

First of all Steam makes it easy to release small updates frequently. If they did it the old fashioned way they have to wait for bug fixes and add-ons to accumulate till they release them. Bugs can be around for months, even though they've been fixed but not released yet. Imagine doing it the old way with frequent updates, people would go nuts and lose track which patch they need.

Also you might update manually, but there are quite a few gamers who don't regularly check the official website to see if there are updates, and if there are it can be days before they decide to patch. This way it's more likely that the community is all up to date. We've seen how updates have split the community before in online lobbies. Our game is in a niche market, the more players per server the better.

I can't understand why people are so anti steam. Is it because their bittorrent version of the game won't work? If that's the case that's great! :grin:

This is also a problem for those with not that high connection speeds. My squad plays both Il-2 and Red Orchestra/Darkest Hour, and the updates to maps and other stuff are downloaded when you join a server. Great, except the moment I've redownloaded the 40-50mb map and possibly another 20mb of textures the round is over, and I have to do this again until theres a map with no updates for the current week. Approx 60mb of updates a week... Not that much of a problem, but if CoD will, as Oleg has said, allow limited modification, I can imagine it to become one, when servers start having custom mods of their own to maps and aircraft. As it is, I dont have the time nor will to download an Ultrapack's worth of stuff a month in small pieces before I'm let in a server. I would imagine many people to be in the same situation. 1mb in is little enough to ruin a good evening if your game happens to have some updates you hadnt had the time to download.

Steam's autoupdates that cant be stopped are another thing. It doesnt even tell about them. If you exit Steam, it runs in the background until the download is finished, or I terminate the process. :grin:

If you have such poor connection speeds then I don't see why it would be enjoyable to play online in the first place. And seeing as CoD will be much more complex, I would imagine that it will require more bandwidth than 1946 does (but don't quote me on this). Surely it won't take up much more (awesome programming :)) but might not let some people enjoy the online aspects of the game. Thankfully decent quality internet is available most places in the world now so I doubt it will be a bad problem.

As for Steam and it's constant updating, I have absolutely no problem with it. Windows is always updating, so why should it be such a nuisance for Steam to do the same. And I don't really care if it doesn't tell me, that's just less crap that pops up on my desktop. If i have to wait 5 minutes, or even 15 minutes for an update to install it's not going to ruin my game experience. No, I'll simply get up, make a cup of coffee or something, come back and it'll be done. Besides... a match on CoD is going to last MUCH MUCH longer than any other game matches do, so joining a match in time shouldn't be a problem. And, it's not like it'll do it every time you get online... Surely they're not going to load us up with big updates all the time. But this is all speculation, much like everything else at this stage. Can't wait to finally see it all in action.

Perfectly fine connection, 1mb in and max 80-ish ms latencies to everywhere in Europe. Just the actual bitrates are a tad low. :grin:

Windows updates I can choose to download whenever I want. :)

I have it preordered and we'll see like you said.

Hi, I've got a question for those more knowlegable about steam.

How does steam handle it when you plan to buy multiple copies of the sim.

I want to buy and play CoD on my lan, I want to have it installed on two computers and running in multiplayer at the same time.

Does this operate through a single steam account or do you need 2 accounts, one for each copy?

Anyone had experience of a similar setup in other games?

Cheers!

Offline mode... Il2:COD will most likely still have the ability to search for LAN games or join directly an IP.

I think it's the level of expecting everyone to conform to your personal standards that boggles the mind. You want auto updates and a cloud service? Go ahead and use it, no problem. Just tell me why i am forced to use something that serves your needs instead of mine :rolleyes:

Granted, fearfactor didn't provide any choice in the matter (he seemed to imply that there shouldn't even be a steam version) so i can't agree with him either.

What i want is the title to have a steam version and the exposure that brings, i just don't want it to be the only version because i prefer not to use one and i can provide no benefits to the title through word of mouth advertising (i don't have or plan to get any other steam games, don't have buddylists or join groups, etc). There should be two versions, or at least a choice during the installation. But since we're so close to release now the best we can hope for is a patch at a later date or a community work-around to provide the mission options.

It seems this board is full of people who expect to tell others how to use their software and what they should be liking, instead of focusing their energy on providing options to satisfy as many people as possible.



This is a perfect case of why manual updating can be a better choice under certain circumstances. If i have a couple of hours to spare i don't want to spend them downloading an update right friggin' now neither do i want some client updating, i want to spend them flying the sim and update when it's convenient. Like you know, set it to download the patch when i go to bed instead of wasting two perfectly good hours of gaming time.

I don't know if auto-client updates can be disabled. Games can however.

In Steam:
1. Right click title.
2. Properties.
3. UPDATES
4. "Do not automatically update this game". Text beneath changes to "Content for this game will not be automatically acquired."
5. CLOSE

The mods and other stuff that updates very frequently is a royal pain. ArmA 2 with "ACE" and "ACRE" etc is the worst I know of. IL-2 with those big packs was also annoying. This is not Steam related however. Steam is mostly the opposite - it can auto patch my stuff (I have 100mbit) and it happens very infrequently. Only once every few months for most titles.

I'm asking if it's like ROF was where you could only register one copy of the game to an email address.

Does anyone know how does Steam handles this?

Cheers!

Just like that. However nothing stops you from opening Steam on the other comp, downloading and installing the game, and running it in offline mode. i suppose.

I just went on to the Steam FAQ and found this Q/A

According to the wording it is against the policy to allow anyone other than the account holder to play the game!

"Sorry I got this great game but I'ld be violating the conditions of use If I let you have a go!"

Now that is disturbing!

I've got a Collectors edition on order through EBGames, with no devivery date, If I couldn't hold out any longer I was going to get the download version, but it looks like theres going to be issues!

Cheers!

WTF of course they have to have a one person login limit otherwise one person could buy the game and 50 people could play it....

Clearly you have misunderstood what they are saying, a friend can try the game by logging in with your account if you trust them but only one person can use the account at any one time.... I'm pretty sure no developer would use steam if they didn't have this limit lol

No I want to buy two copies of the game and have two people playing that game on seperate computers.

I think it is you that missunderstand, what do you think "Steam account are licensed for the sole use of the account holder." means?

According to that statement, what you suggest would violate the terms of the account and they could ban the account.

This is their wording not mine.

Cheers!

I should hope letting a friend play the game in your own home would constitute "fair use", but then again I'm constrained by logic and software EULA's are not. I'd ask Steam themselves, if they have a mechanism for doing so. You might want to have a lawyer handy to interpret their answer. ;)

LoL ! I'm sure your right!

I know in practice that they probably wouldn't do anything unless the system was abused, but I don't particularly want to have to create another email address and steam account just to get a second copy of the game up and running for use in my own home. It's hard enough for me to remember one set of private email details as it is!

I guess obsessed flight simmers don't fit the useage patterns of the 'average' gamer. Steam needs to get with the times!

Do you think my 6 year old son is old enough for his own steam account? COD could be his birthday present!


Cheers!

More easy for the dev to release small / large DLC packs.

Steam is a brilliant solution.

It's primarily about having multiple people logging into the same account. With the capability to play steam games offline it is possible for multiple people to share an account by playing mostly offline, and only going online to download updates and games. If it wasn't against the EULA to share log-ins between people, you could theoretically have an unlimited number of people sharing the same account, only having to pay for a single copy of each game the mob wanted to play.

Hot-seating is less of a big deal, as I understand it. That said, if someone is using your account with your knowledge, and they do something that gets your account banned, you are still held liable for it.

Yup, i know that you can turn off game updates and the client pauses downloads when you go full screen, but i still wouldn't like it being hit with a 300MB update between DF server sessions. Imagine the chaos when half the people auto-update, possibly even some servers, without the ability to roll back a patch: suddenly you can't join the server because you either disabled automatic updates and the server didn't, or vice versa, resulting in a different version being used.

Also, most flight sims usually feature large update packages over longer intervals and sometimes, due to the complexity of the product unwanted "features" can creep in.

Eventually everyone switches to the most recent version, but the way it was done in IL2 allowed everyone (from offliners to server admins) some time to actually test it and gradually make the switch to the new patch. For example, most DF servers don't upgrade to a new patch without the admins first announcing something on the respective forums, eg "the server will switch to 4.101 next monday at 16:00 GMT", which gives everyone ample time to prepare for the changes.

On the other hand Steam's system is fine if you have games with frequent but smaller patches.

In the end, this is what this whole steam debate is about. It's a good platform for certain kinds of games, but the lack of information makes many question if and how much it's properly geared towards the needs of a flight sim. I don't mind automatic updates just like i don't mind any other feature, as long as there is an option to turn it on/off.

TRUST ME you really need to read it again....

Its about stopping multiple users accessing one account that is it period, finito...

@ Skoshi Tiger:

Even if your initial question was basically answered already, I'd still like to give you another, full answer myself.

What people told you so far is correct. If you're going through with things the way you have planned, you need to buy 2 copies of the game and register them on 2 different Steam accounts to play them simultaneously. The Steam license agreement ties one copy of a game to a single Steam account that is not supposed to be shared and forbidden to be sold to other people. Even if some smartasses create a new account for every new game they buy on Steam, just to be able to hand it to others...

If you're going to run both computers over the same internet connection, you may encounter connection problems due to a hardware/software conflict. In the past there have been similar problems with other online games via Steam, where people could only play online with only one account at a time, since there was a conflict while running two similar games via Steam over one router at a time. This can be solved with a change of the right port settings on your router. I'm no expert on this myself, but if you should encounter this problem, there definitely is a solution on the official Steam forums for this.

To the topic itself:

I'm a major fan of Valve's online destribution service. I'm using Steam for many years now and it changed over time to the better, alot. Yes, it was unstable in the very beginning and the integrated Friends system was pretty unstable until late 2007, things run smoothly now and grant players like me many advantages. Yes, there are some negative points about the whole deal, too.

For some people the offline mode simply refuses to work properly. A mate of me has this problem, he couldn't find a solution for this so far and I couldn't help him out, either. I can understand people disliking Steam if this happens to them.

The other thing is the fact that you can't (or at least you're not allowed...) resell games that make use of Steam. Definitely bad for players who buy alot of games to play through once and then sell them again. For people like me who buy only a few games and play them for years Steam however is simply perfect.

Many complaints I've read on these forums however seem to be utter, excuse me please, bullshit. Don't get me started with "Steam is viruz!!" talking...

Well, thanks for your input Fritz X, it seems like you are making a balanced assessment of it.

You are one of the few people who use and like this service that actually went to the trouble to admit there are also drawbacks (as in anything else) and provide examples of them.

Or, you know, we actually trust the developers for once that a patch is good?

Simply letting Steam patch your game is infinitely more useful than having to google for patches, getting the correct patch order, and finally installing the damn thing.
The patch actually being terrible and breaking the game is the fault of the developer, not the content distribution method.

..and there is no such game on Steam that requires 40-50mb patches between each round of gaming, or whatever some other poster was referring to.

Even the buggiest games do not get more than one patch per week, and that is for about a month after release, then it dies down.
Stop spewing redicilous accusations.

@Skoshi Tiger;
You simply aquire two seperate Steam accounts and buy it on both. Alternatively, you buy two copies on your main account, and then send one of them as a gift to the other account (Easy to do.)

my 2 cents
 

Well i am not sure if this is the rite place for this post or not but i figured i would give it a go. I must say that at first i too was very put off at having to use steam to play a game that i have purchased. Although my anger has subsided after using it with no real issues yet, My biggest problem with this is not that steam does not work but that i have purchased a piece of software but still don't actually own the whole piece of software. What i mean by this is it still bothers me that the program is not installed on my computer and there seems to be no option to do this. I would much rather have the game that i paid for installed completely on my computer and be able to take my computer any where i go and be able to play the game i purchased without needing to connect to the internet to do so. Keep in mind I an not a huge multiplayer of games although i do dabble, but for me this is not why i buy the game. I have owned IL2 for 3 years now and play it constantly and have not once used the multiplayer. But that's just me i really enjoy the flight sim as a stand alone. I know these days it is not such a big deal as most of the places that one might travel on business or pleasure have internet access but it bothers me that only a piece of what i have purchased is actually in my possession. I guess i think of it like if i bought a car that i had always wanted and i was so excited to use it everyday and all day when ever i wanted to and when i got to the dealer i noticed a cord hanging out of the trunk that connected me to the dealer and they told me that even though i was purchasing the car for cash i could only use it while it was plugged into one of there dealers and that if i ever wanted to take it somewhere where the cord didn't reach one of there dealers it would not work i would feel just the same about it. i would still buy the car i think but would feel like i still didn't really own it and it wasn't really mine so why am i paying the same price as someone that can buy the exact same type of thing with no cord attached? i know bad analogy but i hope the principle makes sense lol. This said i recently bought dawn of war II from direct to drive and had to go through steam to install and use it. it has been working fine and i have been able to play my game every time that i have wanted to so far, but again it just gives me a funky feeling paying for something that i don't really own and when it comes rite down to it, even if it happens just once that i cant (internet problems, moving no service, bad hotel internet connection, or any other reason then i will probably be a bit angry about it again :) :P Hope no one takes this as a flame just my personal feeling on this subject.

Huh? :confused:

The game you purchased is on your computer. We're not yet gaming 'in the cloud'

Your game will be installed somewhere like (depending on your operating system)

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\

or


C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common

Check it out and you'll find your game files are installed locally on your PC.

This will be the reason when you bought the game you had to spend some time downloading it before it was available to play.
If you try and play a game that you have purchased through Steam but you haven't yet downloaded fully you will get a "This game is currently unavailable" error message.

You might (depending on the game you purchased) find that some of your settings are stored on Steam servers so that if ever you were to reinstall Steam or perhaps you decide to install Steam on another PC (or MAC! Again, depending on the game) you can use the same game settings you used last time you played the game.

I hope that allays your fears.

BTW a little tip; if you press the Enter key occasionally it makes it far easier for us to read your posts.

The game is installed on your computer, within a folder called 'common', which is itself within your Steam installation. I'm not sure what the default path is at the start, as I chose where Steam installed itself on my own computer, but on yours it's probably - Local Disk ( C: )/Program Files/Steam/steamapps/common/ il-2 Sturmovik 1946.

To play offline, start up Steam itself, instead of clicking the quick-launch icon for the game you want to play. Then when Steam starts up, left click on the button in the top left corner that says 'Steam'. A drop-down menu will appear and in it will be an option 'Go Offline'. Click it and a window will pop up asking you if you want to go offline, click yes and Steam will shut down and then restart in offline mode. You will be able to tell if it's in online or offline mode as it will say so at the bottom of the Steam application window when it restarts. When you press the button to start your game now, a Steam window will pop up reminding you you're in offline mode and ask if you want to continue that way. Clicking 'Start In Offline Mode', your game will start up and you will be able to play as normal, if playing as normal means not using any of the online Steam features.

That might all sound complicated, but it's not really, it just seems that way when trying to describe the process step by step. Yes it's extra buttons to push, but that's just the way it is. You don't get the nag screens if you leave Steam running in offline mode in the background.

Edit - I write too slow, what he said.

Reading what you describe about how Steam works. Well it makes my blood boil. I don't know why. I guess it's my nature. Fq Steam.:evil: CoD is going to have to deliver in a big way for me to coexist with this piece of krap.:!:

Does Steam offer a custom install path?

It will install a game in a folder that is a sub folder of STEAM. You can install STEAM wherever you want though, and then you can move that folder around. Whether or not it works once in a non-steam folder seems to be dependent on the game. I assume this is more or less a developer choice.

I'm not spewing anything, you make up accusations so you can have something to rattle yourself about. I said something which to my knowledge is accurate: you can't roll back a patch.

It's not steam's fault if the patch is bad, it's their fault completely if you can't do it manually to stop patching at a previous version. And since i don't want to make assumptions just so you can have something to complain about, i'm going to ask you, obviously a steam user, about it:

1) Let's say i want to rollback a patch, so i reinstall the game and start patching. Can i tell steam to stop at a certain patch/version or does it automatically apply the latest one?
2) If i have the patch package files already on my disk, can i point steam to them or will it ignore their existence and download the whole thing again?

Very valid questions imho and i expect an honest answer. Anyone?

How many times across how many threads will you ask these questions?

I have explained that the only way to not eventually end up with the latest patches is to a) back up the game (just copy it to another location from the steam location), or b) go into offline mode and stay there.

It, as I have admitted, the biggest short fall of the STEAM platform, but all in all it generally makes for a smoother MP experience with games that use Steamworks as it ensures that everyone (even the server) is up to date.

1. When you re-install it will patch you up to the latest version in one hit, so you won't be able to stop it at a certain patch version. It may be adding the patches one by one but you won't know where it's up to at any given point during the process and it won't let you interrupt the process anyway.

And when I say re-install, I mean one of three things - a) re-installing off a retail disk. b) re-installing a prior version of the game that you have previously copied elsewhere using Steams built-in back-up facility. c) re-installing by re-downloading the game directly from Steam. As a side point, Steam has an automated procedure for installing using a copy of the game you've saved using it's game back-up feature, you don't have to manually re-insert the files you've copied back into the Steam program's folder structure.

2. Yes, if you've backed up a previous version of the game (it's not a separate patch package as such but a complete version of the game), you can uninstall the current version and re-install the previous version, and no it won't get automatically updated if you don't want it to.

You make sure it doesn't get updated by selecting 'Do not automatically update' in one of the drop down menus in the 'Properties' section of your game. If you always run Steam in off-line mode, you don't have to (and can't) select 'Do not automatically update' as it's not going to do it anyway.

I apologize, the spewing comment was about another poster, not you.

Failed to quote properly.

Thanks, that explains it in just the amount of detail i was looking for ;)



Happens to all of us. Don't worry, no offence taken :grin:

Thank you for the tips:P
 

Sorry for the previous long post i will try and remember to hit enter more

Thanks for telling me that there is an offline mode for all the steam games that does make me feel a little better but i guess it still does bother me a bit that even when i found the game files the executable's only error without first running the third party program. Just seems like an extra step considering I have already activated the game:)

I do have a question about offline mode.

Once the game is unlocked the first time and then put in to offline mode do you then have to ever put it back into online mode to play the game again? Or can i just leave it in off line mode forever until either a new patch is needed or i want to buy a new game? or does it default to online mode every time i try and start the game and then i have to turn it off each time? i wouldn't do this any way but just curious.

I have been leaving mine online all the time and it doesn't seem to make a difference.

hmm I guess this also fixes my other concern that if for some reason Steam goes down or out of business or just disappears off the face of the earth (it could happen) :) then i can still play the games i bought i would just have to make sure my installation of steam was in offline mode and they would all run just fine correct?

Once you've put Steam into offline mode, it will always start up in offline mode until you manually restart it in online mode.

If Steam ever does just disappear, then yes, you'll still be able to play all your games offline. The only way I can think of for them to prevent that, would be for them to actually delete content off your computer, and if anyone thinks that's really likely, well, whatever.

2. Yes, if you've backed up a previous version of the game (it's not a separate patch package as such but a complete version of the game), you can uninstall the current version and re-install the previous version, and no it won't get automatically updated if you don't want it to.

Les, thanks for the above info. I'm beginning to understand STEAM more fully now. Particularly that I can create a backup copy of each "version" if I want to. This helps to counter the "big brother" initial thoughts I had. Also, it seems prudent to me to always keep a copy of versions on hand if you want to play offline with a previous version for example - particularly if you don't like one of the upgrade features or should STEAM go T*ts up for example.

Cheers,

Yeah, it's a good idea to back up your Steam games at least once, just to save yourself having to download them again should you have to for any reason. The only downside is the size of the file you can end up with. Some games are getting up around 16GB nowadays, that's about four DVD's worth. Depending on how often a game gets patched and it's overall size, if you're backing up every version you could easily end up with 50+GB worth of backups that you have to store on a hard-drive or other media somewhere. At least it's an option.