Gearbox on Steam/GFWL

Calneon · 11 Oct 2010 at 14:25

Any plans to put it on the Steam platform or is it going to be boxed?

SG: We wanted to have as many ways that people could get to it as possible. What we think is also going on is, we want people to be able to play together and right now if a guy buys a game on Games for Windows and a guy buys a game on Steam - they can't play together. If another guy bought it in a retail store, he can't play with the first two guys.

Right now we're like "Please, work together" Our big concern right now is that these silos are being built. Everybody's separating out and it's really... as a developer who just wants gamers to be able to play games together, it's frustrating right now. Things like that are hurting the PC industry for gamers. This is frustrating for everybody right now. Call out to the gamers. Hey gamers? Tell these guys to play nice!

Source

Stuff · 11 Oct 2010 at 14:26

Games for Windows sucks. Steam all the way!

Fortyseven · 11 Oct 2010 at 14:27

I have bought games in store and played with steam users (Borderlands) and vice versa (Op Flash: Dragon Rising)

Is there actually games out there that don't work like this? If a game uses GFWL, it uses it on Steam copies too (F1 2010).

Calneon · 11 Oct 2010 at 14:29

Fortyseven said:
I have bought games in store and played with steam users (Borderlands) and vice versa (Op Flash: Dragon Rising)

Is there actually games out there that don't work like this? If a game uses GFWL, it uses it on Steam copies too (F1 2010).

No, the point is that this guy being interviewed doesn't know what he's talking about

. If a game uses Steamworks for multiplayer, the game has that no matter where you buy it. If it uses GFWL, it has that, even if you buy it from Steam.

Memphis · 11 Oct 2010 at 14:38

Calneon said:
No, the point is that this guy being interviewed doesn't know what he's talking about . If a game uses Steamworks for multiplayer, the game has that no matter where you buy it. If it uses GFWL, it has that, even if you buy it from Steam.

I'm glad that's the point you were going for. I was getting worried for a moment.

What I am now though is worried for the dude being interviewed. How on earth does he work for such a developer and yet be so completely incorrect? :confused:

Fortyseven · 11 Oct 2010 at 14:40

Calneon said:
No, the point is that this guy being interviewed doesn't know what he's talking about . If a game uses Steamworks for multiplayer, the game has that no matter where you buy it. If it uses GFWL, it has that, even if you buy it from Steam.

Ah ok. The joke is that Borderlands, a Gearbox game, was insanely difficult to connect to MP games initially due to port issues on routers.

neoboy · 11 Oct 2010 at 14:44

Well he's awfully wrong there heh, saying that Gearbox have never been biggest fans of Steam.

Gimpymoo · 11 Oct 2010 at 14:45

Calneon said:
No, the point is that this guy being interviewed doesn't know what he's talking about . If a game uses Steamworks for multiplayer, the game has that no matter where you buy it. If it uses GFWL, it has that, even if you buy it from Steam.

That guy is totally stupid.

Obviously some dumb console gamer who has never touched Steam or GFWL.

Either that, or they have allready signed a deal to use GFWL and are tying to "prime" the users for it.

neoboy · 11 Oct 2010 at 14:56

Gimpymoo said:
That guy is totally stupid.

Obviously some dumb console gamer who has never touched Steam or GFWL.

Either that, or they have allready signed a deal to use GFWL and are tying to "prime" the users for it.

Really wouldn't put it past them actually particularly taking Pitchford's record on speaking against Steam.

Gimpymoo · 11 Oct 2010 at 14:59

neoboy said:
Really wouldn't put it past them actually particularly taking Pitchford's record on speaking against Steam.

Just came back into the thread to post that.

Randy Pitchford has been vocal about the "evil" of Valve/Steam for a while.

Here he is:

A picture says a thousand words

Saying all this, it is the publisher who have the final say and 2K are pretty Steam friendly so I suspect that game will at least be sold on Steam and Steamworks is a possibility looking at their last 2 major releases being Mafia 2 and Civ 5 so they obviously see some financial benefit of Steamworks.

Calneon · 11 Oct 2010 at 20:24

Fortyseven said:
Ah ok. The joke is that Borderlands, a Gearbox game, was insanely difficult to connect to MP games initially due to port issues on routers.

Yes true, gameranger worked fine though

. Shame you have to resort to 3rd party programs though.

AWPC · 11 Oct 2010 at 20:35

Gearbox are obviously shopping around for the PC MP component as they do not have it in place yet.

I would expect GFWL has more chance than Steam as Randy Pitchford has openly slated Valve/Steam several times so they are not exactly going out of their way to offer a good deal on this game are they

Gearbox also did the Halo2 PC conversion using GFWL......

Evilsod · 11 Oct 2010 at 20:46

I recall Pitchford being openly hostile against steam without any real basis for it.

And yeah the OP says is basically completely wrong.

Borderlands MP was diabolical. A gamespy ID... who the **** uses that? I signed up for 1 a millenia ago for something and forgot my username and password so i had to use my uni 1 which has now expired and again, i'm not sure i remember what it was.

barmyllama · 11 Oct 2010 at 23:50

AWPC said:
Gearbox are obviously shopping around for the PC MP component as they do not have it in place yet.

I would expect GFWL has more chance than Steam as Randy Pitchford has openly slated Valve/Steam several times so they are not exactly going out of their way to offer a good deal on this game are they

Gearbox also did the Halo2 PC conversion using GFWL......

Adding Steamworks to any game is free as far as I am aware.

orderoftheflame · 11 Oct 2010 at 23:58

AWPC said:
Gearbox also did the Halo2 PC conversion using GFWL......

They did Halo 1 for the PC but didnt have anything to do with the second one (or GFWL). They also did the expansions for Half-Life.

orderoftheflame · 12 Oct 2010 at 00:04

barmyllama said:
Adding Steamworks to any game is free as far as I am aware.

Got a source? I doubt it is tbh. Valve just only tell the price to people they think are actually likely to use it rather than giving it away.

I know for a fact they dont let anyone use it, and you've got to prove the quality of your game to them before they'll even concider it.

Calneon · 12 Oct 2010 at 00:47

orderoftheflame said:
Got a source? I doubt it is tbh. Valve just only tell the price to people they think are actually likely to use it rather than giving it away.

I know for a fact they dont let anyone use it, and you've got to prove the quality of your game to them before they'll even concider it.

I don't think they'd have a problem with Duke Nukem Forever. Though I do think it's cheap, there are some indie games that have Steamworks, I think Plain Sight does and so does Worms Reloaded.

Evilsod · 12 Oct 2010 at 07:36

Calneon said:
I don't think they'd have a problem with Duke Nukem Forever. Though I do think it's cheap, there are some indie games that have Steamworks, I think Plain Sight does and so does Worms Reloaded.

Yes but with indie games its a VERY different thing to a mainstream game. Not only is the file size usually considerably smaller, but theres usually nowhere near as many people playing them. That said Valve still don't give it away and unless the dev really tries to show there game is something special then chances are Valve won't listen. Its a fair policy. I doubt they'd just throw it away at big name companies if they aren't sure it'll flop or not...

It doesn't matter who you go to, they'll have some sort of standard demands. GFWL or Steamworks.

Oizu · 12 Oct 2010 at 08:20

I'm pretty damn sure that Valve do give the use of steamworks away for free, certainly it is integrated into UE3 and Source, so any game made in those engines can use it.

Gimpymoo · 12 Oct 2010 at 09:05

orderoftheflame said:
Got a source? I doubt it is tbh.

It is:

http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/

Steamworks gives you access to a connected community of 25 million gamers and a robust world-wide network – and it's entirely free.

http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/SteamworksBrochure2010.pdf

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$0 paid by partners for bandwidth.
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$0 paid by partners for cloud storage.
$0 paid by partners for Steamworks features.
$0 paid by partners for retail activation and authentication.
$0 paid by partners for technical support.
$0 charged to users for account and features.

Steamworks Games

Take advantage of the platform that supports over 1100 game titles on Steam.
Steamworks gives you access to a connected community of 25 million gamers and a
robust world-wide network. Steamworks is entirely free. There are no licensing fees and
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