AGEOD Forums

Hello!

It has been a long time I have not been in your forums but I am still a fan of your games and I convert every month people to your games

So my question is simple : do you consider selling your games by steam?
Because I think that you did so I would be inclined to buy many more of your games as Steam is very simple to use and with a very good garanty. Also, Steam could give you an even larger public.

I have done a search so sorry if the question has already been set. Also sorry for my english

If I am not mistaken, the only AGEOD game that you can buy through Steam is Birth of America...
Birth of America

So, yes, it will surelly be great to be able to buy the other games through that platform... specially the new ones that will come this year.

I agree it would be even simplier for those who are yet on steam.
I hope that the cooperation with the Paradox studios will touch to that point as they had promised to help Ageod to earn a larger public and celebrity

Can't wait until VGN!

I don't understand the obsession some gamers have for Steam. I don't want a gaming service, I want to play a game. Steam is a DRM. Why on earth would I want to add more intrusive software to my PC than I am already forced to do with Microsoft and other companies I won't mention here?

Greybriar wrote:I don't understand the obsession some gamers have for Steam. I don't want a gaming service, I want to play a game. Steam is a DRM. Why on earth would I want to add more intrusive software to my PC than I am already forced to do with Microsoft and other companies I won't mention here?

My experiences with Steam have involved spending entire evenings waiting for them to activate a DVD loaded game. Their only talent seems to be wasting game player's time. The system that AGEOD uses at present for installing, activating and updating their excellent games works just fine. The only thing which could convert me from being an ardent fan would be their misguided employment of Steam's cold dead hand.

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I disagree : Steam has changed a lot since its beginning. Steam is now less slow and with a better customer service. But buying on steam would afterall be only an option, as you like it. Buying an ageod game on steam would let you having all the patches without checking every week them, and would give you the opportunity to play to your ageod game everywhere you want even if you havenot the cd with you. Having a game on steam it is having it for life

And there are more and more people on steam and a lot from the new total war game which is a strategy one : AGEOD could benefit from these customers.

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I really prefer the simple AGEOD or Matrix games system of download, which not forces you to install another program to download, activate and play a game.

But as long as Steam would be just one of the ways of getting the game (and not THE ONLY way) it would be OK for me.
Certainly it will help AGEOD games to be more known.

Still, i will definitely get them in the current simpler way so i have in my possession all i need to play the games when and where i like to, even if i have no Internet connection, the Steam servers are down or Steam has folded up in, lets say, 2021

Cheers

tibo22 wrote:I disagree : Steam has changed a lot since its beginning. Steam is now less slow and with a better customer service. But buying on steam would afterall be only an option, as you like it. Buying an ageod game on steam would let you having all the patches without checking every week them, and would give you the opportunity to play to your ageod game everywhere you want [color="Red"]even if you havenot the cd with you. [/color]Having a game on steam it is having it for life

And there are more and more people on steam and a lot from the new total war game which is a strategy one : AGEOD could benefit from these customers.

You do not need the CD with you when you play AGEOD games.
I have enough 'call home' stuff running now. I'll do the 'old fashoned way'
Is it really that hard to check for patches?
It's good to check forums for news and gameplay clarifications anyway.

arsan wrote:But as long as Steam would be just one of the ways of getting the game (and not THE ONLY way) it would be OK for me.
Certainly it will help AGEOD games to be more known.

Agree.

I don't believe the originator of this thread posed this as an either/or but as an additional way that people new to AGEOD would be exposed to their games and could obtain them.

Let's hope that we could have a choice if Steam becomes an option.

tibo22 wrote:I disagree : Steam has changed a lot since its beginning. Steam is now less slow and with a better customer service. But buying on steam would afterall be only an option, as you like it. Buying an ageod game on steam would let you having all the patches without checking every week them, and would give you the opportunity to play to your ageod game everywhere you want even if you havenot the cd with you. Having a game on steam it is having it for life

And there are more and more people on steam and a lot from the new total war game which is a strategy one : AGEOD could benefit from these customers.

About AGEOD games:
- you have auto updater built in-game
- you can download your purchased game from AGEOD server if you ask the developers nicely and you can burn them on a CD/DVD/USB
- having AGEOD support is having fun of your life

Steam is evil, pure and simple, as you never know what they will install on your system

I only meant an aditionnal way. Everyone could make his choice.
The problem with downloading on the AGEOD website is that you have the possibility do download the game until 1 year, if you pay the option. On steam you can do it forever.

That is to say that if you change your pc (everyone change its pc) you may lose your game, while with steam you won't. For exemple I now live far from my family house and as I change my pc I can't play anymore at ACW as I didn't take it with me.

Maybe the option for AGEOD would be to sell their games a little bit more expensive on steam in order to protect their own website.

tibo22 wrote:I only meant an aditionnal way. Everyone could make his choice.
The problem with downloading on the AGEOD website is that you have the possibility do download the game until 1 year, if you pay the option. On steam you can do it forever.

That is to say that if you change your pc (everyone change its pc) you may lose your game, while with steam you won't. For exemple I now live far from my family house and as I change my pc I can't play anymore at ACW as I didn't take it with me.

Maybe the option for AGEOD would be to sell their games a little bit more expensive on steam in order to protect their own website.

Many people have sent messages that their PC crashed, lost the install file, got new PC etc.

AFAIK, these people simply sent email to support line, were asked some simple 'proof of purchase' questions, and got a new link.
No "lost after 1 year" issues that I;ve heard of...

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I think i have risen something I didn't want to in this topic so maybe the discussion is over But I have learnt that even 1 year after my purshase I still could download my game if I had lost it, what is a good news. But if I do so, I must have bought the 1 year option before, mustn't I?

I would eventually be interessed on buying montjoie or Great invasions but are they in french in your webstore?

Thanks

The one year download option is provided by the e-shop, handled by the company Nexway (they who have the infrastructures to allow sells and downloads). The good of this paid service (one year download) is that it is automated I believe. A robot will identify you in the database and immediately give you a link if you are a customer.

The other way to get back a download is to write to [email="support@ageod.com"]support@ageod.com[/email] and provide a proof of purchase. You'll get a link then. It is a free service without specific end date.

About Steam: On our side there is a drawback to Steam (unless this changed). You have to give them specifically a new patched setup so they can update the games of their customers. What is for example the version of BOA1 you can play at Steam? Can you patch it on your own or must you play with the version they provide? What about modding? Can you mod the game? What will happen when you log to Steam, will the system see your copy is changed and download the one from their servers?
That said, more avenues of income is always nice...

arsan wrote:I really prefer the simple AGEOD or Matrix games system of download, which not forces you to install another program to download, activate and play a game.

But as long as Steam would be just one of the ways of getting the game (and not THE ONLY way) it would be OK for me.
Certainly it will help AGEOD games to be more known.

Well, you can buy Hearts of Iron in a store near you inside a box, in Gamersgate, in Steam... or in any place you want....
Why we should supose that Steam will be the "exclusive" way to buy any AGEOD title?

arsan wrote:Still, i will definitely get them in the current simpler way so i have in my possession all i need to play the games when and where i like to, even if i have no Internet connection, the Steam servers are down or Steam has folded up in, lets say, 2021

You do not need an internet connection to play your games... that's a false assumption that people make with Steam.
You need an internet connection the first time you want to activate the game. After you have activated your game, you can play in "disconnected" mode all the time you want... you can even leave Steam disconnected all the time.

Pocus wrote:About Steam: On our side there is a drawback to Steam (unless this changed). You have to give them specifically a new patched setup so they can update the games of their customers. What is for example the version of BOA1 you can play at Steam? Can you patch it on your own or must you play with the version they provide? What about modding? Can you mod the game? What will happen when you log to Steam, will the system see your copy is changed and download the one from their servers?
That said, more avenues of income is always nice...

Well, being a customer of Steam myself I think I can answer part of this...

Yes, AGEOD will have to provide a patch for their customers surelly, because when you buy the game you never need to update your game, they will update it automatically for you.
But, what the customer can do is copy & paste the game into another directory if he wants to keep the game in X patch. Just like with any other game. I know people that have done that with the IL2 Sturmovik game.

Since you do not need to apply patches, you do not need to worry about them. So, you will probably never want to install a beta patch on a Steam version of the game. Just like I said before, you will probably want to create a second version of the game to install a beta patch in that second copy of your game.

About modding, it is exactly the same... I recently bought like many other people Medieval Total War 2 + Kingdoms. A lot of these people in the Paradox forum are now playing the Lord of the Rings mod that is offered through the official forum for that game... and even I am thinking about installing it.

About instant updates... well, I recently had a bad "experience" with Tropico 3, but it is not exactly a problem with Steam.
I bought the game for Christams during the Holiday Sale, the game was downloaded and updated to the "suposed" last version 1.10.
But when I started the game, a pop up told me that I should update to 1.11... obviously, this was part of the game engine telling me that... not Steam.
I said no.. I will try the 1.10 first with the Steam files... and wait for Steam to update my game (yeah, that lazy ).
Sadly, the game is so buggy that it crashes after 10 minutes of playing... so it is almost imposible to play.
I went back and installed the 1.11 version on my own... tried again... with no luck, the game keeps crashing.
So, I went to Steam, selected the option to "verify cache of the game", Steam detects that some files are different from "their" version and updates the game back to the 1.10 status.
Obviously, I have complained about the buggy status to the developers of the game... not to Steam...

For someone like me, that lives in the far away extreme of the world, sites like Gamersgate or Steam are just a gold mine. There is no other way I can get the new games for that price.

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Gray_Lensman wrote:Between Pocus post above and yours (Generalisimo), I can see that my thoughts on patching via Steam and non-steam venues are pretty much confirmed as incompatible as I suspected.

This means that for every patch that AGEod puts out for any of their games, they would have the additional overhead of producing 2 separate patch versions each time a new patch is released.

I do not know exactly how Steam "produces" the patches for the games bought through their client.
If AGEOD just sends the new patch to Steam, Steam "does some stuff on it", and the patch is released for their customers to be downloaded... then there is no extra work for Pocus
Or if it will be Pocus the one that has to do the extra work on the patch.

Well, to answer this... we already have Birth of America on Steam... what happened with that? did they requested something "special"?

Gray_Lensman wrote:Other than a possible increase in sales or tighter DRM management, I don't see any additional advantage for any game that is already designed as a downloadable game and I have never had any problem downloading anything directly from the AGEod site. So, other than maybe a price difference, why would I want to download an AGEod game thru Steam rather than directly from the AGEod site? This seems to me to be putting an additional middleman between me and the games I might want to purchase.

Well, if you are already a Steam customer, you have all your games in the same place.
Obviously, if you are not already a Steam customer, you will probably buy it through another channel... that's why Steam should be an OPTION, not THE channel to buy the game.

The truth is, I have just connected to Steam and I can see this numbers on their page:
324,747 Playing
1,972,827 Connected

Gray_Lensman wrote:edit> A middleman that if for some reason it closed it's site would mean the loss of all the games that you had purchased thru it.

No, again, that's a myth... you just need to make a copy of your Steam directory and you have all your games in a backup.

As a final note about prices... well, I will make you a small comparison.
From my invoice on Steam:
$4.99 - Medieval II: Total War
$14.99 - Medieval II: Total War Kingdoms
The same pack in GamersGate:
$29.95 - Medieval 2 Total War Gold Edition

From my invoice on Steam:
$19.99 - Tropico 3 Special Edition with extra content
The same game in Gamersgate:
$39.95 - Tropico 3

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Gray_Lensman wrote:Slightly OT thought: Having just recovered from a 2nd Malware attack in the last 8 months (the 2nd one just this weekend). I wonder how long it will be before the Steam site is hacked to distribute one of these attacks. The number of people immediately affected would be staggering.

Yes, that will be one of the "attacks of the decade" IMHO ...
Automatically attacking millions of computers, many of them usually controlled by kids... the ammount of damage you will be able to do would be hilarious.

Gray_Lensman wrote:Incidentally, the 2nd time, I was using AVG software that was supposed to filter/block such attacks... It didn't work obviously and resulted in the loss of all my work since the October v1.15 AACW patch.

That's sad news...

Personally I would avoid Steam...it is a very frustrating system that inhibits Mods and fails to support users when there are system problems...

rwenstrup wrote:Personally I would avoid Steam...it is a very frustrating system that inhibits Mods and fails to support users when there are system problems...

Yes, if Steam is just another option, you can easilly avoid it if you don't like it...