It seems to be up to the developer. I do not think this has ever happened automatically for me. I have bought quite a few games from non-steam sources and eventually gotten a Steam key. Id love to get one for Drox. I hope the developer will give them out if you purchased it from them directly.
Many developers have stated Steam Keys are free. Steam’s profit for putting a game on is just the cut of the sales on Steam. The only way it costs money is if folks give the keys away to folks who would buy the product otherwise.
We’re hoping to get the expansion on Steam within a couple weeks.
Giving a previous customer a Steam key doesn’t cost us anything except a bit of time and I suppose a lost sale if that person would have bought the game on Steam also.
Congrats at getting the game on steam, Steven! Steam keys are great, but I wish I could extricate my copies of Depths of Peril and Kivi’s underworld from GameStop. Stupid impulse buyout.
Ah well, they are awesome enough games to put up with their store app.
I’m rebuying it on Steam (and I’ll rebuy the expansion) because I’ve easily gotten 2 games worth of time and enjoyment out of Drox. :)
I have issues with Steam, like how they weren’t willing to work with me in restoring my purchased copy of Civ 5 to a new account when I was hacked out of my old account (I bought it as an online DLC from GamersGate and thus could not show them the STEAM receipt or a picture of a physical box, their only 2 allowed methods of verification). I even forwarded them my Gamergate receipt/email as well as a letter from one if Gamersgate officials verifying this purchase but Steam just stonewalled me.
All that being said, when setting up on a new system it is so handy to only need to log into one central location to regain access to ALMOST all of your games.
Oh, as Steven showed us in the Steam forums, in only a few steps you can easily play WITH the IotA expansion (purchased from Soldak or elsewhere) even on your Steam version.
So steam waives their publishing fee for you? That’s awesome! They must make this decision on a per game basis? There’s several games where the developer specifically said they’d be paying Valve for every Steam Key they gave out to existing customers so this wasn’t possible. If a game dev sold 100,000 copies on their own, then they moved to Steam and gave out 100,000 Steam keys, Valve would be paying for all the bandwidth and hosting with potentially zero return.
It’s not exactly zero return because it is an opportunity to entrench users on a platform. The more games you have on Steam the more of a mindshare Valve has on you, and an opportunity to sell you something every time you log in.
The no-cost is a Valve policy, not game-by-game, though not all devs wish it and can refuse it.
One of friends who was doing work for a disreputable publisher , caught all sorts of flak/death threats due to their decision not to do this. (to top it off- said publisher ended up not paying her for work and is trying to intimidate her out of taking a paying job)
Interesting sidebar. I did wonder if Steam’s vested interest in entrenching users trumped their desire for revenue on every key released (and the associated cost of providing service to, technically, a non-paying customer). Nice to have that demystified.
Which developers? I’ve never heard of Valve charging for this. The benefit to Valve is it gets you on their ecosystem and in their store, which is something that businesses are willing to pay for (come to our store and win a chance for a new car/cruise/whatever). When DLC, expansions, or the next title comes out, Steam is more likely to get the purchase. If you’re playing the game on Steam you’re seeing the sales, new releases, are notified of what your friends are playing, etc.
Bandwidth costs for adding some keys I don’t think are really going to factor much, on the scale Valve operates at.
Early on I think there was a lot of confusion about this. When Humble Bundle blew up, as well as the whole indie scene, coupled with the sell-off of Impulse to Gamestop, there was a lot of drama about keys going to Steam from one platform or another. I think the independent costs of generating and sending keys was misunderstood by customers to be a fee that Valve charges.
Version 1.042 is out: patches and changes. Since the last official patch, the patch makes the 3 monster races power more inline with the other races, makes sure Drox Guild quests are more doable, and fixes a few other minor issues.
This deserves a bump in case people missed this update last month (as I did). Love Soldak’s dynamic world take on these games, and I find the space setting more interesting since it’s a less saturated setting compared to fantasy/swords & sorcery action-RPGs.
I’m guessing that was developers assuming the keys would cost them, before they got approave din Steam. That, or they wanted an excuse notto give free keys in case they could get extra sales.
Arise!
Since this game is now wicked cheap on steam, and it is getting some chatter on the space game thread, I thought folks that are new to the game might want to talk about it here.
I bought it yesterday and am just getting started and I can say that while I don’t know what the hell I am doing, I am having a lot of fun figuring it out.
I can fly around and blow stuff up, upgrade my ship to make it go faster and take more of a punch, and have completed a couple quests but I haven’t the faintest idea yet about winning a sector and forming a strategy to do so. Heck, things seem so chaotic that even just stopping and looking at my inventory puts me at risk of having some joker sneak up and start shooting at me.
There are some guides that I’m reading that are helpful.
One question I have is when a message pops up one of the races is offering me what I think is a trade. Something like they have a certain amount of credits, I have a lesser amount and possibly do I want to go to war with someone else. What does this all mean, and is there a pause button so I can read these messages and think about them before just choosing an action?
All in all I’m glad I got this and am hoping I’ll get some advice in this revived thread.
Cheers.
I won my first sector completely by accident. :)
Can anyone comment on whether the DLC is worth it at 2.5 Trump bucks?
Depends, what else were you budgeting your two dollars for?
A packet of cheese and onion crisps, preferably Golden Wonder.