Option To Play/Purchase Outside of Steam?

[Kifyi]

Congratulations on the Steam launch of Project Gorgon! I'm sure the game has seen a large influx of players recently and here's hoping they love the game as much as myself and the rest of the Gorgon community!

However, I am curious if there will be a way to purchase the game outside of steam for the same $40 price. The reason I ask this is complicated as I do have steam and used to like steam a lot. Yes, as a tool for managing your titles it's great, but as a storefront, a business, a community, I hate it. I have long wanted to purchase Gorgon, however the $75 option is a little high for me personally, and as far as I can tell, it only gives you a Steam key. I'm wondering if we will see an option to purchase a key without the Steam requirement.

Like I said at the start, I love Project Gorgon, but I don't entirely love Steam, or supporting its practices.

[Niph]

I've seen several posts on this topic. I have installed a brand new Steam, and I use a shortcut to start the game (Windows), so I barely see any Steam content. In fact, all I see is the Steam icon, and I could change it locally if I wanted to, for a seamless launch. So what's your issue exactly?

[Silvonis]

Steam will be the official platform to play Project: Gorgon up and through launch. We have said previously that there may be an alternative, standalone launcher, sometime post-launch. Until then, we would encourage you to play through Steam. As Niph mentioned, there are ways to minimize your interaction with the Steam platform and go quickly into Project: Gorgon.

[3lfk1ng]

Hello Silvonis,

I'm sure your aware of this but if not, I figured I would mention it.

For MMORPG titles that exist on Steam, a lot of players on the Steam platform judge the success of an MMO by the number of reviews and the size of the playerbase in Steamstats (http://steamcharts.com/app/342940). If that misguided audience doesn't see a large playerbase, they won't even bother to purchase it. They are already calling "300" players a dead game (because it doesn't include Alpha launcher player figures) and in my countless attempts to defend the game, that mindset has proven difficult to argue and it's hurting the image of Project Gorgon already.

My worry is that if a launcher were to exist outside of the Steam platform, it would further reduce those numbers and in turn hurt your chances of sales on the Steam platform. These 'false playerbase figures' are something that has hurt Wildstar (among other things) since it's launch on Steam. If it can be avoided, I would recommend sticking with the Steam launcher.

Also, on Reddit a vast majority of the jaded MMORPG audience has stated that they are unwilling to pay $40 for a title in Early Access. Have you considered offering a 'DEMO' on Steam that would allow players to log in an play JUST the tutorial island? I know that they all had the opportunity to try it for free for the last 3 years but the launch of Early Access seems to have players more interested in trying out a product that's finally entered BETA.

Anyway, if you cannot tell already I really want to see Project: Gorgon succeed. I hope that good fortune helps to find you a larger dev team and all the platform improvements the team has ever dreamed of. Keep up the good work!

[Tagamogi]

I've seen several posts on this topic. I have installed a brand new Steam, and I use a shortcut to start the game (Windows), so I barely see any Steam content. In fact, all I see is the Steam icon, and I could change it locally if I wanted to, for a seamless launch. So what's your issue exactly?

I'm not the OP, but since you asked I'm happy to share my own list of Steam complaints:

Even if you start the game directly, Steam still launches itself in the background and remains running. At best, it's just a few seconds delay before the game launches, at worst I get to wait for several minutes for Steam to update itself (like I care) before I can play my game. Steam also sometimes seems to randomly update itself while I'm doing other stuff, and then suddenly I get an excited message that Steam has updated itself and do I want to restart it now. (Again, like I care.)

For me, shutting down my computer takes almost twice as long when Steam is running since Steam needs to shut itself down first. That's a significant improvement from a month or so ago, when I always had to select shut down twice since the first shut down attempt got completed interrupted by Steam.

In the past, Steam did not allow me to play two different games I own on two different computers at the same time. I haven't tried it more recently, so I can't confirm if that's still the case.

Steam tries to install its games into a weird-ish subfolder, so I'll have to hunt down my PG directory to make a link to the screenshots directory in a more accessible location.

When creating a new Steam account, I ended up in a small Recaptcha death loop when trying enter the right letters to prove I wasn't a bot. Given how often I flunk tests like that, the available evidence indicates that I am indeed a bot, but I found the black/blue image Steam used a bit harder to read than some others. Also, when installing the game, I managed to pick an invalid folder and that seemed to freeze up Steam completely and I had to kill it and start over.

PG is really sensitive to network traffic, so if there are multiple Steam installs running on my home network and one of them decides to run some updates, PG may have problems since Steam is stealing its bandwidth. I had a weird 1k lag spike to the server last night that I am totally ( and possibly incorrectly ) going to blame on Steam.

If I run Steam itself, I get annoying popups like game ads and frequent reminders to confirm my email with them again because the first 5 times weren't enough.

None of the above is all that terrible and there are workarounds to some, but I'd just rather not deal with it.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I do think it's a good decision for Project: Gorgon to be Steam-only for now. Maintaining two different launch/login systems is going to eat up dev time that can be better spent elsewhere, and if there is only one system, Steam will allow the game to reach the biggest audience, so it's a better choice.

I will also concede that I'm pretty happy with the way the game has worked under Steam for me so far, and I'm quite excited about PG having its own pretty Steam page.

I will still keep hoping for a Steam alternative in the distant future, though. :D



Also, on Reddit a vast majority of the jaded MMORPG audience has stated that they are unwilling to pay $40 for a title in Early Access. Have you considered offering a 'DEMO' on Steam that would allow players to log in an play JUST the tutorial island? I know that they all had the opportunity to try it for free for the last 3 years but the launch of Early Access seems to have players more interested in trying out a product that's finally entered BETA.


That sounds like a great idea to me if possible. My usual line when trying to get people to play the game has been "just try the tutorial island for a couple hours" with the firm conviction that this should be enough to get anyone hooked on the game. (And if it isn't, well, they are a weirdo and I wouldn't want to play with them anyway. ;) )

( I have to admit that my line has been pretty unsuccessful though - most of my friends just say "I don't have time for another MMO" and the couple that actually tried it couldn't get over the graphics. Yeah. Weirdoes. )

[Niph]

I'm not the OP, but since you asked I'm happy to share my own list of Steam complaints:

Even if you start the game directly, Steam still launches itself in the background and remains running. At best, it's just a few seconds delay before the game launches, at worst I get to wait for several minutes for Steam to update itself (like I care) before I can play my game. Steam also sometimes seems to randomly update itself while I'm doing other stuff, and then suddenly I get an excited message that Steam has updated itself and do I want to restart it now. (Again, like I care.)

For me, shutting down my computer takes almost twice as long when Steam is running since Steam needs to shut itself down first. That's a significant improvement from a month or so ago, when I always had to select shut down twice since the first shut down attempt got completed interrupted by Steam.

In the past, Steam did not allow me to play two different games I own on two different computers at the same time. I haven't tried it more recently, so I can't confirm if that's still the case.

Steam tries to install its games into a weird-ish subfolder, so I'll have to hunt down my PG directory to make a link to the screenshots directory in a more accessible location.

When creating a new Steam account, I ended up in a small Recaptcha death loop when trying enter the right letters to prove I wasn't a bot. Given how often I flunk tests like that, the available evidence indicates that I am indeed a bot, but I found the black/blue image Steam used a bit harder to read than some others. Also, when installing the game, I managed to pick an invalid folder and that seemed to freeze up Steam completely and I had to kill it and start over.

PG is really sensitive to network traffic, so if there are multiple Steam installs running on my home network and one of them decides to run some updates, PG may have problems since Steam is stealing its bandwidth. I had a weird 1k lag spike to the server last night that I am totally ( and possibly incorrectly ) going to blame on Steam.

If I run Steam itself, I get annoying popups like game ads and frequent reminders to confirm my email with them again because the first 5 times weren't enough.

None of the above is all that terrible and there are workarounds to some, but I'd just rather not deal with it.


These are legitimate concerns. I proceeded with customizing Steam settings and I think I've addressed them all, or they are a one-time issue (such as installing and creating an account). With the exception of the slow shutdown, for which I can create a small program that insta-kills Steam automatically at shutdown to speed things up. It's not a concern on my PC, I only loose a couple seconds, but maybe it is for a lot of people.

[INXS]

My steam opens up to library, i see the game option to click and play the game , i click it i'm in, goes to the sign in page in 15-30 sec tops, don't see anything else from steam.

[Crissa]

I would thumbs up the starter island free-to-play (as long as they don't get access to General channel, ala WoW)

But on Steam you cn play and return a game pretty easily, too.

[Puppetan]

Hello Silvonis,

I'm sure your aware of this but if not, I figured I would mention it.

For MMORPG titles that exist on Steam, a lot of players on the Steam platform judge the success of an MMO by the number of reviews and the size of the playerbase in Steamstats (http://steamcharts.com/app/342940). If that misguided audience doesn't see a large playerbase, they won't even bother to purchase it. They are already calling "300" players a dead game (because it doesn't include Alpha launcher player figures) and in my countless attempts to defend the game, that mindset has proven difficult to argue and it's hurting the image of Project Gorgon already.

My worry is that if a launcher were to exist outside of the Steam platform, it would further reduce those numbers and in turn hurt your chances of sales on the Steam platform. These 'false playerbase figures' are something that has hurt Wildstar (among other things) since it's launch on Steam. If it can be avoided, I would recommend sticking with the Steam launcher.

Also, on Reddit a vast majority of the jaded MMORPG audience has stated that they are unwilling to pay $40 for a title in Early Access. Have you considered offering a 'DEMO' on Steam that would allow players to log in an play JUST the tutorial island? I know that they all had the opportunity to try it for free for the last 3 years but the launch of Early Access seems to have players more interested in trying out a product that's finally entered BETA.

Anyway, if you cannot tell already I really want to see Project: Gorgon succeed. I hope that good fortune helps to find you a larger dev team and all the platform improvements the team has ever dreamed of. Keep up the good work!



As one of the people who are not interested in gaming on Steam because I don't want to (and that should be enough) and would rather have a stand-alone or browser-based client I do agree with you that people look at Steamcharts but can I offer as a counterpoint the reason that they do so is that people don't offer an alternative? On the Project Gorgon website there is complete control over what is displayed - you can't control what displays in side avenues like that but would it be incredibly difficult to report players on the home website? I'm sure they have an idea of how many people are connected and could gather this information and if they can't figure out who is steam and who is not steam, someone could do the math themselves or they could scrape the steamcharts page daily and find it themselves.

I think there are methods to displaying how many are logged in on several places and it could be something discussed on steam by people who do enjoy defending the game. Seeing a stat come directly from the game website would be believable to hunter-shoppers.

The approach of making it Steam only isn't maybe a modern concept - I'm thinking now about competition (are you ever going to have super high numbers or even be 10% highest - why bother then using that as a metric to avow - you will never impress) (the competition on steam is high) (itch.io and GOG exist too, steam isn't the only source with amalgamations and competition is decreased) (steam takes about 30% of all games sold through them - selling a stand-alone isn't forced to give up that percentage).

What is one of the things people said on Reddit - it's too expensive - wah wah. Doesn't Steam have something to do with that or do you think they price themselves based on what Steam charges them to participate. I think most games would price themselves based on their expenses (Steam inclusion being one).

What if removing the game from Steam made the price of it reduce 30% - would that appeal to those folks? That wasn't considered but could be approached when you have a stand-alone client (not Steam related).

There are reasons not using Steam during different phases of a game could be beneficial, IMO.

[Crissa]

Supporting multiple verification servers during beta and splitting stores is just a complexity they want to avoid right now. These are fairly complex things which take additional personnel time, and small companies and teams have the least time to spare.

It's a cost to consider, which is why having additional avenues aren't seen as a price reduction.