FM12 without steam: my humble proposal

[0gris]

Tell that to Microprose, Sierra Entertainment, Midway Games and Westwood Studios, closed doors one way or the other. Even Spectrum and Amiga were leaders of market during their golden years and where are they now? Sega needed to be restructured. What does it tell us? Nothing is guarantee to last forever.

None of those studios really compare. Microprose was bought out, albeit multiple times.

Sierra owns BOTH ACTIVISION AND BLIZZARD(i don't think i can stress this enough), at this point i'm seriously wondering what are you smoking, they make so much money they couldn't go bust in 10 years if they TRIED, they rented out staples centre for cripes sake.

Midway was great... in the 90's, they didn't keep up with the times and once arcade style games were phased out they went out the door along the way, probably the only valid company on your list.

Westwood was bought out by EA who closed it, the people who ran westwood created petroglyph which seems to be doing surprisingly fine.

I know people on here aren't exactly gamers for the most part but how about doing some research before you start claiming random things and spouting around blatant lies?

As for the chance of a non-steam version. That is highly unlikely, probably due to contractual obligations and security concerns

[Xasdf]

I wonder: is this a possibility? would it make sense for SI? is this something SI can consider?

It doesn't really make sense for SI because you are talking about maintaining two different versions, and maintaining two different methods of patching/updating. Not only that, for the DVD version, they would have to license some other sort of anti-piracy library, or ship without any sort of DRM software in it.

The only way I think a business would consider such a thing is if a significant portion of the player base doesn't have an internet connection, not because a group doesn't like Steam. All distribution options will end up ticking off a group of people anyway, except the no DRM option. Securom/TAGES/... all have their share of haters. So they picked the one with the best options for them.

[grade]

None of those studios really compare. Microprose was bought out, albeit multiple times.

Sierra owns BOTH ACTIVISION AND BLIZZARD(i don't think i can stress this enough), at this point i'm seriously wondering what are you smoking, they make so much money they couldn't go bust in 10 years if they TRIED, they rented out staples centre for cripes sake.

Midway was great... in the 90's, they didn't keep up with the times and once arcade style games were phased out they went out the door along the way, probably the only valid company on your list.

Westwood was bought out by EA who closed it, the people who ran westwood created petroglyph which seems to be doing surprisingly fine.

I know people on here aren't exactly gamers for the most part but how about doing some research before you start claiming random things and spouting around blatant lies?

As for the chance of a non-steam version. That is highly unlikely, probably due to contractual obligations and security concerns

First of all do some research yourself.

Despite Microprose and Sierra were bought by different gaming companies, their studios were shutdown. It means they don't exist any more, despite its workers now work for the parent company or were layoff and work now for other companies.

Westwood is different company from Petroglyph and like you said, EA bought Westwood and closed its studios and we saw how brilliant they were with the crappy C&C4, which resulted the end of those series, for ever.

I see how you avoided the other examples.

However despite not agreeing this sole steam activation system, in this game there won't be any other solution, but I hope that SI see their mistake and return to have both options available returned.

[0gris]

The thing is, studios got shut down yes, the PUBLISHING part never was and all the IP's and everything the studio owned was transferred to the new owner(staff was dependent on the buyer, in most cases it was the most important staff were offered jobs at the new parent studio while the rest were let go).

Now i realise that STEAM and Valve are massively linked, but they're still two completely different things, if valve goes under or gets bought out, then STEAM going down as well is very unlikely as it's a completely different things. It would likely just get bought out by another company, and as STEAM is a service that sells games, it's very unlikely for it to go under(as unlike stores, the profit margins are much much MUCH bigger). The studio getting shut down is completely irrelevant. If a part of it(be it intellectual property, be it the staff) is fused into the parent company, it makes exactly zero difference to the consumer.

If say EA were to buy steam(hypothetically) and closed down Valve and STEAM. Steam wouldn't go away, it would get fused into EA's own origin service. Do you see what i'm getting at here? Names are names, however the property remains unless the company goes bankrupt(midway). And even then the property gets bought up by bigger studios.

Point being, STEAM/Valve filing for bankruptcy is about 10 times less likely as Emile Heskey scoring a goal, worst case scenario it gets bought up and absolutely nothing changes apart from perhaps the name.

[pigfacemonkeyman]

The thing is, studios got shut down yes, the PUBLISHING part never was and all the IP's and everything the studio owned was transferred to the new owner(staff was dependent on the buyer, in most cases it was the most important staff were offered jobs at the new parent studio while the rest were let go).

Now i realise that STEAM and Valve are massively linked, but they're still two completely different things, if valve goes under or gets bought out, then STEAM going down as well is very unlikely as it's a completely different things. It would likely just get bought out by another company, and as STEAM is a service that sells games, it's very unlikely for it to go under(as unlike stores, the profit margins are much much MUCH bigger). The studio getting shut down is completely irrelevant. If a part of it(be it intellectual property, be it the staff) is fused into the parent company, it makes exactly zero difference to the consumer.

If say EA were to buy steam(hypothetically) and closed down Valve and STEAM. Steam wouldn't go away, it would get fused into EA's own origin service. Do you see what i'm getting at here? Names are names, however the property remains unless the company goes bankrupt(midway). And even then the property gets bought up by bigger studios.

Point being, STEAM/Valve filing for bankruptcy is about 10 times less likely as Emile Heskey scoring a goal, worst case scenario it gets bought up and absolutely nothing changes apart from perhaps the name.

Are you sure about that?

Steam Subscriber Agreement;

"I hereby agree to be bound by the Agreement. I also acknowledge and agree that this Agreement (including the Subscription Terms, Steam Online Conduct rules and other Rules of Use, and Privacy Policy) is the complete and exclusive statement of the agreement between Valve and me, and that the Agreement supersedes any prior or contemporaneous agreement, or other communications, whether oral or written, between Valve and myself"

[Loversleaper]

None of these went bust but this is just an example of how the technology industry is notoriously fickle and unpredictable. Ratings agencies have been bashed a lot recently but only Microsoft has got an AAA rating (and that is in question).

Didn't some of the big corps argue in court that AAA rating was a "matter of oppinion". The thing about the big corps were that they were supposedly too big to fail, and what happened with that? They potentially held the whole world 'ransom' because the economy was basically in their hands, similar to what Steam could do to the gamming industry and their own 35mil customers. Sometimes these things don't need more than a small crack to bring the whole house of cards down, and when this does happen then the last thing on their minds is the customer - if history has taught us anything. To think that they will act humane in a situation of a meltdown would be a first, usually it's saving their own skin that is top of the menu...

I like your perspectives!

P.S. In a bizarre way, this whole thread is just an extension of the activation through Steam thread, though...

[BabyfaceAssassin]

So I'm guessing it means theres dno point pre ordering in the hope of an early capture as like with 11, I got mine a day early, but coulnd't put it through Steam as it wasn't released till the day later.

So who ever does get it a day early will be sat their with an unusable game for 24 hours...

[Kriss]

P.S. In a bizarre way, this whole thread is just an extension of the activation through Steam thread, though...

Yup, I let it go in the hope that people would "honour" the OP's wish, didn't really believe it would and so it proves.

Therefore it's now closed, although if I can get any official SI response to the OP's question I'll pass it to him direct.