I wonder how this is going to work? Still a F2P download and you log in or will this new version be tied to an account locked to your steam account?

Does this mean the Channel Map is included but NOT the other maps? Having the 3 stock campaigns implies it does, but the rest of it implies it does not.

I really hope those special missions somehow become available for the original version if you own the Channel Map.



The Jedi Master

There is no way they are just going to make special missions for the steam version but not make them available for everyone else..
There are people who have devoted years and hundreds of dollars to the game, and I'm sure they don't want to p*ss all of them off...
Having said that... lol, anything is possible

@Trooper,
Of course they can and will. 777 have got all your money and you are no longer a cash cow., LOOOK new shiny steam users. and
in the end it will be Steam only, because that's the way the money works. The mods that are made to the map/physics/sim engine for steam/BoS will not transfer from a Steam version to the non Steam version. Finally there will be a BRAND NEW WW1 sim, and our updates will quietly be abandoned, and you will have to rejoin/repurchase on Steam, maybe not this year, but my bet is next year after BoS release. This is 1c money talking

Going on Steam does NOTHING at all for current owners and users

Are you feeling lucky?

No, I'm afraid Jason has explained it all, just pop over to the RoF forums and you will see that there is no smoke and mirrors going on, its all straight forward.. no one is being put at a disadvantage at all.
The main positive thing is regardless of what you think of steam, it will raise awareness of Rof, that means more sales, more sales means more output and the game and genre get to go forward.

So will the steam version be a free download with the channel version being a DLC? So I could download it and launch it through steam instead of the RoF launcher using my existing account?

No. There is no "free" Steam version.

Steam is just a sales portal for us, we are not using their DRM system. Nothing will change for non-Steam users and all Steam users will activate and access ROF almost the exact same way you do. Sort of a hybrid system.

And I have explained it all on the ROF forums. Don't listen to people trolling to stir up #%&*$#.

Jason

Well, at least you got something correct in your post. The rest looked like pure speculation, and that very negatively biased to boot. I'm guessing you don't really like ROF's business model?

777's track record speaks for itself. Everything they've ever said in writing ( as far as I am aware ) has been made good by them. The question that needs to be answered is, " Are they going to start lying now? "

I think not.

Loyal customers are still valued by most businesses, at least; Changing things up now would only hurt business in the long run. I'll take Jason at his word.

+1, mature reasoning. Approve and concur.

You got any proof of this or are you just pulling opinion out of your arse?

Steam is just another method for the ROF team to market their sim. Jason has said it will do nothing to hurt prior owners of the game. There has been nothing that Jason or 777 has done in the past to warrent this thread. If you are just going to slag on the game using unsubstantiated and completely bogus speculation then please do it someplace else.

I just hope they don't make BoS only available through Steam. I didn't buy CloD because of that, and I won't buy anything else through Steam. Steam is a bloated piece of crap. Tried it once and won't do it again.

@WkLink,Consider the following,
1) 1c have modified and written code for the channel version to be available on Steam. Jason said it took a lot longer than expected, thus the Steam version would appear to be substantially modified from the current download

2) There are missions available for the Steam map that are not available to current members. The Steam version is divergent at this point. A question is are those missions compatible with the currently available map on 777?

3) The ships, subs and barges are not working in our current map. See Aussie Pilots thread in the Missions section of the RoF forum. It will be interesting to see if they work in the Steam version

4) We cannot join Steam and take our aircraft with us (from an answer Jason gave in the RoF Forums), so it would appear that we are either on Steam game servers or 777

5) At this point from the information given, it would appear that the Western Front map is not currently on offer in Steam. If this is so then it would be a deduction that the Steam version is divergent from the current version as not all content appears to be available.

6) When Jason published one of his videos a question was raised as to why the 1c logo appeared alongside the 777 logo. In part of Jasons' reply he indicated that 1c brought expertise and money. As a manager my experience has always been that the golden rule applies " he who has the gold makes the rules"

7) 1c do not currently have a good history. Cliffs of Dover as a project staggered from tech issue to tech issue, and just as it became playable, they joined with 777 and it was closed down. I have noticed that history tends to wash rinse repeat

8) Referring back to point 4, 777 has had a considerably bad run with server availability and issues. I am making the assumption that the Steam accounts and service will not be part of the 777 server complex and that is a reason for not being able to transfer our current accounts to Steam (as per Jasons' reply in forum)NB I admit this is a major assumption on my part

9) Has anyone read the whole of the steam EULA. I may be paranoid, but unless I want to fire up a Steam only game I make certain it is closed. Whist the Steam monitor running in the background may be benign, I cannot prove it, and why would it be there anyway until I want to do something. At least with the current version of RoF I can use a lot of RoF off line. Steam is taking up significant resources, and what is the situation about the Steam version offline

My projections of what will happen is my own paranoia showing through, for which I apologise now, as I should have made it clear it was my own opinion, and should I be proved wrong (and I sincerely wish that I am. RoF is fabulous), I will be happy to apologise again, but the above is in the public domain, and my projections are based on experiences interacting with large computer marketing and financial projects.

My hat is off to you Jason, for trying to manage in this murky realm and for your sucess so far. All i can say is I hope it works, but forgive me my doubts.

Let me respond to that, especially your speculation that ROF will 'abandon' the current game and make buyers only use the Steam version.

First off, I view this Steam thing as a more positive thing than you. One thing that will kill a game and end its life cycle is if there is no revenue stream to support the game. All games run through a life cycle, I don't have to tell you this. Unlike many games 777 has been able to continue support of the game by selling different maps, campaigns and aircraft. This has extended the life cycle of the game considerably but lets be honest with ourselves, eventually support for the game will end. We can whine and complain and blame Jason or 1C or 777 or whatever but these guys are not making games simply for the joy of the simulation community. That is a partial reason why they are making these games but the joy of the simulation community doesn't pay the bills.

If having the game on Steam, even if it isn't the exact same game as what we paid for originally means money into the company to support both RoF and the upcoming BoS then I am all for it. It is important to realize that a company that doesn't bring in revenue is a company that folds. We all should realize this and understand that 777 is one of the few studios out there that is dedicated almost exclusively to creating flight simulations. This is not a big cash market and they need to exercise all available means of making money or they won't be here. If Steam brings in revenue, then that is great.

As for cross compatablity, I could give two snits about that either. It doesn't affect me one way or another. I will still have my verison of the game, it will still work and as far as server issues, yes they are there but they haven't been nearly as bad as you seem to make it. The in game issues are there, just like all games but some of the complaints are, to me, relatively minor and at its core this is still the best prop simulation ever made. If the game did transfer to Steam I am willing to bet there would be a hue and cry about how 777 is trying to force RoF players to migrate to Steam so they can shut their servers down.

As for the 1c/777 connection, I also saw this as a plus, not as potential minus like you do. I think bringing in 777 to help work on BoS is a huge positive, it means that there is a studio that knows how to make and produce a top flight game involved in the creation of 1c's next game. To be honest, 1c cut bait with CloD knowing that it was essentially a lost cause revenue wise. It was too bad, the game had potential to be brilliant but just like games like Gunship, Falcon 4 and SHV the bugs in the game overwhelmed what looked to be potentially top tier games.

1C took a major hit in their reputation when they released CloD in it's unfinished form. How much of that was due to Ubisoft's pressure to release the game is not known to me and I am engaing in speculation but the fact that 1C went to 777 to help with the game should indicate that they don't want to repeat that mistake again. You have to remember that IL2 Sturmovik was not originally funded by Ubisoft but by a small company called Bluebyte and that the rights to IL2 went to Ubi when they bought Bluebyte. 1c has a history of working with smaller studios to produce their games. Bluebyte and Battlefront come to mind. No offense to Jason by calling 777 small but compared to EA or Ubisoft they are. Personally, I like that. Big studios kill 'fringe' projects. EA didn't kill off their simulation division because they produced bad games, they killed it because it didn't make enough money for them. Why spend the money making Longbow 2 when you can spend 1/2 the cost making some stupid Sims add on and make 10X the profits. Ubi has developed the same philosphy. 777 doesn't have that mentality.

I hope the Steam sales are successful. I hope the game reaches a whole new group of players and increases interest in the genre. I hope the revenue helps 777 not only fix the problems that are still around with RoF but also help to create the next generation of games from 777 and 1c. Both stand to gain nothing from releasing crap. A great game from both will do nothing but improve both companies, both financially and from the PR standpoint.

Everything you say here is wrong and you know it.

1. Nothing is modified in the game. 1C only provided access to the ability to access Steam store to list game. 1C has not written ANY code for us. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what we are doing with Steam and how it operates.

2. They are simple custom SP missions like every other mission in ROF that reside in the mission folder. Steam users can simply copy and send such missions to their friends if they want. Wow pretty divergent. I've already stated these missions will be made available at a later date. They will also be included in future retail versions of ROF in NA and Europe.

3. I've already addressed this on the ROF forum. Ships work in the ocean. There is a known bug in the rivers and close to shore. Will be fixed in all versions.

4. Completely wrong. Steam rules dictate that if a game is bought on Steam all add-on content for that customer must be bought on Steam. Therefore we separate Steam users from non-Steam to keep inside their rules. We have a simple way of knowing who is Steam or not to prevent cross purchases. MANY games already deal with this issue. Google EA vs. Steam to know more about this simple issue. All players Steam and non-Steam will use the exact same user account system as you see now in ROF and all players can play in ROF MP servers. There are no Steam operated servers for ROF MP.

5. Again, completely wrong. Channel Map and Felixstowe are simply added to what everyone knows as ICE with all maps along with the cool mission-set mentioned.

6. Apparently as manager you have never heard of a joint-venture. I suggest you read our press release again. The entire project is run by 777 Studios management working on our code. We are business partners and I respect our partners so I show their logo since they also have the rights to ROF now in certain territories. And yes, they are paying for IL-2 development. What is your problem with that?

7. We have nothing to do with anything Dover except we made sure the last patch for Dover was a solid one for Dover user's benefit. No one ever thanks our people at 777 who helped with that. We certainly didn't have to do it. And sorry this is still a business and if a title doesn't make money, the developer/publisher has every right to stop working on it.

8. I'm sorry is 99%+ uptime not your cup of tea? You have no idea what you are talking about here.

9. For a guy who does not have a Steam version you sure are worried about Steam. Valve has shown for years now that what they do only helps gamers and their software has no ill-effects on gamer's systems. I fly ROF with the Steam app running in the background all the time. It's not a problem. All the same online connectivity requirements for ROF will remain the same. Whether or not you need Steam running in the background is a Steam issue and not ours.

I have corrected your erroneous statements on two different forums now. I suggest you knock it off.

Now please excuse me, I have a tradeshow to attend in the morning and need my sleep.

Jason

I just have to LOL at "Steam takes up significant resources." I suppose if you're running on a netbook w/1GB RAM and a 1GHz CPU and a 20GB HD it might...


I have Steam running right now. It has 2 processes, using 0 CPU time (since nothing is going on). Those 2 processes use 125MB of RAM total, since I'm running Win 7 x64. If I had x32 still, that number would drop some. However, out of any amount of RAM 2GB or greater, that is nothing.

What exactly is the big hog here? If I forget to close an internet browser, like Firefox, before I start a game, that takes roughly 2x as much RAM out (roughly 250MB) of my system, plus dynamic ads on the page might result in some CPU and network usage...and I STILL never notice until I exit and see it on the taskbar...oops, forgot to close it.

There is nothing Steam is gathering from your PC that MS doesn't already have, and I'd bet MS sells it freely. Valve OTOH does the occasional voluntary hardware/software poll, which you can decline, and it shows you what it collects first anyway. If you think that's anywhere close to what PRISM is doing, guess again. Besides, Valve just wants to make a buck. They're not going to put you on a no-fly list because you're flying a Russian-made simulator...the US gov't just might.




The Jedi Master

Thank you for the clarification Jason

There appear to be two promises that were not obvious at the time of the announcement
1) that the missions will (eventually) be made available to all
2) that the ships will be fixed.

This is good news, thank you.

As to "knocking it off" <shrugs>, I have said my piece and I await the development of your business model with interest

I wish you well
Katsai

How is steam a bloated piece of crap? You are missing out on lots of great sales and games by not using it.

I don't live in an area with a high-rate internet connection like a lot of you do. I have one and ONLY one internet provider available here. There is no other choice. I tried Steam once. At times it would take the better part of an hour just for Steam to update. Friends I was on-line with could update and be playing in a few minutes, but it wasn't possible for me. I don't need it and I don't want it. This should be something that a person has a choice over, not forced into. If you like Steam, that's fine. I don't. I never got CloD because of the Steam requirement. If it gets to the point that I can't run my favorite sims without Steam, I'll just find something else to do. That's how serious I am about it.

That's not unique to Steam. In a few years you will be faced with the fact that if you don't have a good internet connection, you will not be able to do anything on your PC or console.

Discs are dead for game distribution. Patches are often hundreds of MBs or more in size. Your choice is to give up PC gaming or not, because disc piracy is so bad there's no way they're reverting to the 90s way of doing things. It's suicide for them, and they're not going to lose money and go out of business just to make things easier for you.

Steam's client is IIRC about 35MB. If your internet connection is so bad you need an hour to do a 35MB update, you're finished. If the server Steam auto-detected for you was that poor, you can pick another one, anywhere in the US, and use that. Unlike most other services, Steam lets you pick what server to connect to if one is congested. Steam has roughly 10x the bandwidth most other sites do, including when I DL updates for ROF or DCS. I get DLs from Steam at 50+ Mbps consistently. I wish DCS was still on Steam, because I would've gotten all those massive updates on release day in an hour instead of having to wait a couple of days and it STILL taking 3 hrs to grab.

So your problem isn't Steam, it's that you have a POS ISP, and Steam is just the first thing to illustrate to you how bad it really is. Ranting against any service just because it's not convenient for you, even when it's convenient for a majority of people, does not prove it's inferior. It just means your situation sucks.

If they will not improve their service, and you have no choice for competition, than yes, you will have to find something else to do because the future of sims, like all PC games and now console games as well, is high-speed internet connections. That or you have to move somewhere else where the ISP isn't a waste of money. Maybe it's not Steam, but where you live that is a piece of crap. And yes, I'm serious about that. I would not move to an area with crappy internet, I would research it first and only move where a decent infrastructure exists. After 15 years of reliable broadband, starting at 1.5MB/s in 1998, to 60Mbps now...living in a town of ~20,000...I would not accept that.




The Jedi Master