Should 1C/UBI make Steam optional?

[Thee_oddball]

Originally Posted by TheGrunch

...but by creating a biased poll you have proved nothing because the people who don't want Steam to be optional won't vote and there's no way for anyone to estimate the numbers of these people as a proportion of the people who'd vote on the forum without messing about. If you'd just added another option it would actually show something.

but why would steam people care whether it is optional? how would it affect them? they can still buy it through steam install it through steam join servers through steam....a non steam version would have no affect on a steam version...as with the case of Arma II that some one else pointed out .

I have been doing some poking around over at steam and have been hard pressed to find many WW2 flight sims (save 1946 of course).
the one i did find is called wings of prey and i am not really sure it is a full fledged sim as all i saw in the preview was external mode and there forum is only 8 total pages spanning a year and it is rife with complaints...mostly about the DRM which i will discuss in more length at the end of this post because it affects us.

The other flight Sims i found were:

DCS black shark Meta score 82
IL2 1946 Meta score 86
top gun Meta score 0
F22 lighting 3 Meta score 0
F16 multi role fighter Meta score 0
MiG-29 fulcrum Meta score 0
Combat wings : battle of Britain Meta score 0

Almost half of them did not have there own forum on top of the 0 metascore that alone does not tell the whole story...the number 2 most played game (as of this post) Counter-Strike: Source and there forum has 14 total pages from the last month alone...1946 has 4 pages over the last YEAR! and add the fact that the top 100 games (2 million players )being played right now on steam there is not 1 ww 2 flight sim in the group.
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

What this tells me is there really is no interest in flight sims by the majority of Steam user's especially ww2 flight sims and unfortunately the flight sim market is not what it used tobe.

Why did the flight-sim disappear? Most likely because the development costs were not being balanced by revenue, a basic economic model that spells doom for anything, not just flight-simulators. More importantly, the taste of gamers went through a dramatic change in the late 90s with a heavy focus on First Person Shooters like Quake, Half-Life and Counter-Strike. Add the rise of console domination and PC players were soon marginalized, unable to deliver the a sizable amount of consumers required to turn a profit on a flight-sim.

http://www.infoaddict.com/the-curren...s-2010-edition

I dont see steam as a way to save the flight sim genre or CoD but a way to distribute it and maybe give oleg a few more dollars...but what might become a problem is the propsed DRM...in that Wings of Prey forum the biggest complaint was the type of DRM they were using...its the same one oleg is planing on using
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=1673848

now maybe 224 posts and9000 views does not mean alot but how many people did not bother to post but just decided not to buy the game....How many will do that with CoD if they are not given the option to not use steam if they choose.

[Kikuchiyo]

Originally Posted by Thee_oddball

but why would steam people care whether it is optional? how would it affect them? they can still buy it through steam install it through steam join servers through steam....a non steam version would have no affect on a steam version...as with the case of Arma II that some one else pointed out .

A game has to use Steamworks for a STEAM user to join a server with it. I've never in all my days seen a MP platform that makes finding and joining a server easier than the Steamworks platform.

Originally Posted by Thee_oddball

and add the fact that the top 100 games (2 million players )being played right now on steam there is not 1 ww 2 flight sim in the group.

I know for a fact that there is at least 1 as I part of it.

The no metacrictic score is not the same as a 0 metacritic score. I never claimed that flight sims were popular. I said that it being available on STEAM gives it a wider audience. I am sure flight sims in general don't have near the audience of fpses. I also think that the reemergence of flight sims is coming. It was a genre that died off, but we have seen a number of recent flight sims do well, and not just with old die hard simmers either. My group as recruited, trained, and helped several new people (mind you there are only about 20 of us) discover the genre. I personally have brought a few people in myself to the genre. You haven't invalidated my arguments.