The game is unnanounced on Steam at the moment. If it arrives, it will be later.
We are used to Steam and both TrackMania Nations and United have been well distributed over the year on it. I also use Steam as a consumer and find it great. It has good services and it is confortable for many aspects. But we are now launching Maniaplanet, and there are two main reasons for waiting before a potential integration in Steam.
First, this is like a game operating system and it is very complexe for a lot of topics. Some of you already tested the automatic updater, know that we are synchronizing profile on our side that all the titles will be in one executable etc. I am not sure Steam would fit in Steam, like I am not sure an internet browser would fit in an internet browser. it is a distant comparison and we may even look after supporting Steam in addition to the stand alone platform, but we concentrate on the game at the moment.
Second, Maniaplanet is a collection of titles. It has it's own reasons to be together and to provide to the users an inner circle of thrust and also of products, off course. In Maniaplanet, all the titles will share the capacities of a user powered platform, you will have only one account and a single layer of software, you will have one support system, one taste, one standard of quality and one level of thrust. This is a strength for Steam and other succesful companies, and we would like it to be a strength of us in the eyes of our clients. We would like people to think that any title on Maniaplanet is a fun, beautiful, working well on their PC and with quality support. I don't say we will succeed and players can be doubtful at the beginning and we even may lose sells because of this. And we may also adapt depending on the results we are capable to reach.
Only one thing annoys me a here. If, finally, we spend the work required to overcome the first point and decide that it is better for consumer, finally, to go with the second ones, it means that we may try to put Maniaplanet on Steam. At this moment, if you bought the title outside but would like it to be included in your library, you would have to buy it again. We know people do this, especially when prices are low. We could say it is good for us, but I don't really like it. The right solution would be for Steam to "sell" only the integration in the library, corresponding to the effective revenu they would like from it. They are able to sell lot of games at very low price, so it may means that it could be a reasonnable price, even if it is always a balance of everything that defines a price policy.
So, if you really want it on Steam, I can suggest to wait of either see a change in their policy, so you can feel secure to buy it outside of it today or to wait to see if we go on it and all I can say to help is that if it happens, it is very likely to be next year.
I appreciate Valve a lot and their approach on many topics, from the way they work inside the studio to the way they promote indies. Sometimes I make joke about fighting against Valve, but that's more because we see them as great competitors. And rest assured that I don't think they see us like that ^_^
Finally, to make the answer even more complete, and so you can understand why I took time to explain this, I can say that the real question for me was to go 100% on Steam or 0%, at least at the beginning. Going 100%, we would have used their tools and the players would have had the same environment for all. The first point would have been compensated by the time gained by using their tools. But while it presented good advantages, it is always a risk linked to an unknown future of the company, on a technical aspect of things or a business one. Our team stayed on PC instead of consoles because we are somehow independant of many things, and this is also like a dependancy I wanted to avoid. I wish it is the right decision and that the Maniaplanet players will think this in the future as well.
PS: I have read your article and appreciated it. I have read the last sentence as well, but this morning, while I was coming back to work, I was thinking about "I was seeing a genesis" And I walked just a little faster
