To Steam or not to Steam

[Ratbelly]

Steam serves its purpose. It is a marketplace which affords OOTP Developments opportunities for their product to be discovered by new customers that are not diehards and familiar with the series.

[tonnage]

Originally Posted by Ratbelly

Steam serves its purpose. It is a marketplace which affords OOTP Developments opportunities for their product to be discovered by new customers that are not diehards and familiar with the series.

Which is exactly how I found it in 2020. I've purchased every one since...

[AESP_pres]

[QUOTE=snepp;5079075]I think what he's saying is that you could launch OOTP without an active Steam connection if you wanted/needed to.QUOTE]
Yeah this is what I meant... you don't have to be online to use Steam.

[Matt Arnold]

Originally Posted by Sweed

Your welcome.

There is no wrong answer on how to get the game, just get it and enjoy.

Whether you prefer on Steam or not, we appreciate the support for whatever platform you purchase from.

[uruguru]

Originally Posted by OutS|der

Ah, the ignorance of not having to worry about updates being the thing you should be worried about.

Maybe it's just me, but auto updates that could potentially contain a nuke for my league isn't so convenient. You're welcome to blindly trust and ignore they have done it before, so there's nothing stopping them from doing it again.

The reasons why may be justified but how they went about it was shady as hell.

You know, I know they didn't want to do that but there were legal reasons for it.

But it underscores a very important point. In some hypothetical world in which OOTP lost its MLB license, could they be legally required to push out a patch that nuked all of the MLB player and teams in existing saves?

Losing the license would be the end of the game, obviously, but would pushing out another nuke patch be the end result? Scary to think about, lol.

I still have my OOTP install executable from before the nuke.

[TheChief]

IF you dont have dozen and/or hundreds of games it kinda doesnt matter to each individual.

By far Steam is my biggest marketplace for pc gaming. GoG is second but I only use it for retro gaming and I dont have any new releases on there. Epic Games I actually only have 1 single title Red Dead Redemption 2. And it was only because of the huge savings. But lots of people just load of Epic usually during their marketing blitzes they will give out FREE games. I tend to usually already have them purchased or dont want them.

Epic does like 14 days of Christmas or something along those lines of free games. This year the big titles were Fallout 3 and Outer Worlds, both being the complete or ultimate directors edition or however they were named. After that Epic does 1 free game every single week.

Steam has it's big seasonal sales where sometimes games are 75% off. The 4 seasons plus some other promotions like back to school etc.

You can even run non steam purchased games through the Steam front end. Example Epic Games has awful Xbox controller interface. So for Red Dead I launch through steam to get better controller support.


If you arent gaming though it doesnt really matter much. Get it where ever you want.

[NoOne]

Steam is still the devil...

[drummerJ99]

Originally Posted by NoOne

Steam is the devil!

Originally Posted by NoOne

Steam is still the devil...

We heard you the first time.

[Ktulu]

Being anit-Steam in 2024 is just bizarre. PC gaming would not be anywhere near it's current state if it wasn't for the Steam platform. OOTP likely wouldn't be where it's at without the exposure and convenience of Steam.

It's certainly not perfect, but it is ubiquitous.

[rudel.dietrich]

Originally Posted by Ktulu

Being anit-Steam in 2024 is just bizarre. PC gaming would not be anywhere near it's current state if it wasn't for the Steam platform. OOTP likely wouldn't be where it's at without the exposure and convenience of Steam.

It's certainly not perfect, but it is ubiquitous.

And of all the larger big time game stores, Steam is the most user friendly and the least ****

EA's Origin is no longer Origin and was pretty clunky.

Ubisoft's store may of been the worst. The storefront I think is gone now and they have caved and allow their games to be sold elsewhere.

The Activision/Blizzard store is out there, and it is awful as well.
But they to allow their titles to be sold elsewhere.

The Epic store is pretty average, but I dislike them throwing cash at developers to secure exclusive deals.
I use them just to get the free games they give out pretty often.
They use their Fortnite money to get exclusive deals and give out free games in an attempt to try and build a business away from Steam.
I can respect that, but the store is not nearly as user friendly as Steam and lacks a lot of features.

Valve is by no means perfect, but they have been trending towards being more consumer friendly with things like refunds and products like the Steam Deck.
They are also looking to build a viable alternative to Windows via Linux Proton.
The Windows Store I believe will be Microsoft's attempt at trying to control the very lucrative gaming space.
A build of Linux that actually works for most games out of the box would be a good alternative.
Valve has that in place on the Steam Deck and looks like they may one day release that for general download and use on other systems.

But enough about that.
I realize the crowd here tends to skew on the older side, and many only play a handful of games a year. Maybe they only play OOTP.
And that is okay

Buy the game how you wish, enjoy it.

I just find that Steam is so much more convenient for me, since I do not have to search for the download and then the license key.
I also do not have to worry about unlicensing or how many systems I have the game on.

As long as I have Steam on my system, I have access to every OOTP I have purchased on the platform (and every other game)

I find that to be very convenient since I often using several systems at a time any give day or any given week.

When and if we get true cloud saves, that would be a game changer for me.

May that day come soon!

[uruguru]

One thing I have learned is that Steam has built up a tremendous brand loyalty so any criticism of Steam is always going to get pushback. I mean, my game was free on itch and there were people who openly refused to play it simply because it wasn't available on Steam. /shrug

However, if you are a security or privacy advocate, then playing a game without Steam is always preferable to running the same game with it. Just because it's one less piece of software on your PC that is calling out to remote servers. Some people want to retain control of what their PC is doing, which is fine. Other people are less concerned so the convenience of Steam is worth it.

There are valid reasons to use it or to not use it. As a dev and someone who is comfortable not using Steam, I straight up want as much of my purchase price to go to the OOTP devs.

[TheChief]

Originally Posted by rudel.dietrich

And of all the larger big time game stores, Steam is the most user friendly and the least ****

EA's Origin is no longer Origin and was pretty clunky.

Ubisoft's store may of been the worst. The storefront I think is gone now and they have caved and allow their games to be sold elsewhere.

The Activision/Blizzard store is out there, and it is awful as well.
But they to allow their titles to be sold elsewhere.

The Epic store is pretty average, but I dislike them throwing cash at developers to secure exclusive deals.
I use them just to get the free games they give out pretty often.
They use their Fortnite money to get exclusive deals and give out free games in an attempt to try and build a business away from Steam.
I can respect that, but the store is not nearly as user friendly as Steam and lacks a lot of features.

Valve is by no means perfect, but they have been trending towards being more consumer friendly with things like refunds and products like the Steam Deck.
They are also looking to build a viable alternative to Windows via Linux Proton.
The Windows Store I believe will be Microsoft's attempt at trying to control the very lucrative gaming space.
A build of Linux that actually works for most games out of the box would be a good alternative.
Valve has that in place on the Steam Deck and looks like they may one day release that for general download and use on other systems.

But enough about that.
I realize the crowd here tends to skew on the older side, and many only play a handful of games a year. Maybe they only play OOTP.
And that is okay

Buy the game how you wish, enjoy it.

I just find that Steam is so much more convenient for me, since I do not have to search for the download and then the license key.
I also do not have to worry about unlicensing or how many systems I have the game on.

As long as I have Steam on my system, I have access to every OOTP I have purchased on the platform (and every other game)

I find that to be very convenient since I often using several systems at a time any give day or any given week.

When and if we get true cloud saves, that would be a game changer for me.

May that day come soon!

You can install Sunshine on your main ootp rig and then moonlight on any devices to stream. I've gotten 120 fps with red dead 2 so ootp you will have no problem.

You can stream to any handheld, iphone, ipad, laptop, windows or android or Linux or Mac.

I've even bought a Bluetooth trackpad/scroll wheel/remote/keyboards/controller for when I'm gaming mostly mouse and keyboard with my ipad.

I picked up a rii i4 I believe the name is. Around 20ish on Amazon.

Full versions of PC games streamed to ipad is a game changer. You can even by the worst specced 17 inch 2k laptop and stream any game to it with Moonlight/sunshine.

If you want to stream from your house to wherever you just need to forward a port on router but in house you just run both installers and good to go.

Cloud saves are good. But games with mods or that use extra document folders for settings etc don't get backed up in cloud saves. So sunshy streaming is way more convenient

[Mike D]

Steam when it's 50% off

[tcblcommish]

I get the game from steam now because I can use it on my 3 PCs. I have one at home, one in my gaming room and a laptop I take with me. If I buy from ootp directly, I have to buy it twice or keep unlicensing over and over.

Sent from my SM-G998W using Tapatalk

[WSR]

One other question about Steam, if my Surface Pro is a little older, would OOTP run quicker outside of Steam? I presume so but would appreciate some feedback. Thank you.

[TheChief]

Originally Posted by WSR

One other question about Steam, if my Surface Pro is a little older, would OOTP run quicker outside of Steam? I presume so but would appreciate some feedback. Thank you.

No what store you buy from has no effect on performance

[WSR]

Awesome. Thank you!

[zg39]

Will Steam Cloud saves be available if we bought via Formspring and added the game to the Steam library? I pre-ordered before I saw that announced and when I went to add it to the Steam library, I got a notification saying that this is a non-Steam game.

[TheChief]

Originally Posted by zg39

Will Steam Cloud saves be available if we bought via Formspring and added the game to the Steam library? I pre-ordered before I saw that announced and when I went to add it to the Steam library, I got a notification saying that this is a non-Steam game.

Can't use steam cloud if you bought the game on another store

[Sashindor]

I've had the game both ways in the past and prefer Steam.

This could be a user error thing, but on the direct Windows save it does odd things with the save files, throws generated pictures of players into my OneDrive without me asking, and just does lot of wonky things. Steam seems to keep the save files clean and in one place. Again, could be a user error thing. I'm no techie.