First off, I just want to say that I think GSB looks absolutely amazing. The concept is so blindingly obvious (take the best part, those often all too short capital-ship fight scenes, from your favorite sci-fi movies) that I can’t believe it has been executed in game form so rarely. The graphics are, of course, wonderfully gratuitous and a joy to behold. And best of all, the creator seems to be highly motivated to not only continue improving and working on the game, but to actually work with and listen to the community for input on HOW to make it better. So DEFINITELY keep up the awesome work!
Moving on to my subject line, I took a quick look through both the Positech Games forums as well as the development blogs and have not been able to find any recent information about whether there has been any progress towards getting GSB (if not all Positech games) onto Steam. From what I have seen, the newest info regarding this topic dates back to http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=121 in October of 2008 and http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=170 from January of 2009. Additionally, there have been a few recent comments in the latest GSB development postings about getting the game(s) on Impulse.
Now, I have absolutely nothing against Impulse and/or Direct2Drive (mentioned in the second URL I posted) - I have an Impulse account myself and use it fairly regularly. That being said, for a number of reasons, often simply the sheer variety of titles, Steam has become my DL-game platform of choice and, if at all possible, I try to consolidate my purchases there for ease of access, as well as being more or less assured that Steam will still be there to serve up my games for the foreseeable future. This is, in fact, the only reason I have not already purchased (pre-ordered) GSB.
So, if there is any new information regarding this area, I’d love to hear it. Thanks again!
I did get an email expressing interest from steam, but then I replied and they never went any further. I suspect they are just very busy. Emailing them as a customer and mentioning GSB would definitely be a good thing, and I’d appreciate it. I’d be very happy to sell GSB through steam.
Is there any update on this? I am in the same boat, I nearly exclusively buy on Steam and would already own GSB if it where available on steam. Let us know.
There is a chance GSB may end up on steam, but this isn’t certain. If you use steam, emailing them, or asking them on their forums about GSB would certainly help!
I’m definitely pretty keen.
Though steam would get your game more exposure, they have been criticized for taking too much of a cut, so keep that in mind. That being said I saw that it was on impulse, how is that going? I wanted to hook it up with impulse (I bought it direct from your site) but it doesn’t recognize the serial.
iirc, their cut is MUCH less than physical-media publishers, but possibly more than competitor online services. On the other hand, many of them (apart from impulse) limit the number of times you can download
Valve also has an SDK that allows you to build in steam features to your game quickly and easily. Features like steam chat, scoreboards and achievements can add significant value to your game in terms of marketing and perceived value by the player. Steam will also bring you a lot of sales because their marketplace encourages spontaneous purchases, especially low price games.
It doesn’t actually, you can start steam in offline mode and your games are just fine. You can’t play the games without steam launching… but it doesn’t actually have to connect once it’s installed.
