Post by Lorenzonio in First Thoughts of EDCE.

Empire Deluxe Combined Edition » Community

Viewing post in First Thoughts of EDCE.

Yes, I feel the same way, but I guess it has advantages which Mark can delineate.

Currently the only advantage to the game on steam is the updates occur automatically, so you don;t have to mess with the files. If I chose to take advantage of the Workshop for map shares, or the Peer To Peer connection for pvp, then that would be a dfference as well.

Lorenzonio7 years ago

So that means we're playing it from Steam, not from our computers?

Killer Bee Software7 years ago (1 edit)

No, Steam is a game market place and library. People who buy their games on Steam are beholden to it being available on their Steam library. When you own a game on Steam, it is installed on your machine and runs on your machine but you must use the Steam Client to run it.

Many people have large libraries of games on Steam. As a hook, Steam allows me to distribute keys to the game in cases like the kickstarter or an itch.io purchase. I am sure they are hoping you buy some of their Steam dependent products. Many developers only release on Steam. I have chosen to allow a DRM free version which you are using.

Beyond the automatic updates, Steam has an API which offers various other things for your game, which with code I could plug into. Like external achievements and a workshop which handles the sharing of things like maps automatically, and even "Trading Cards".. Also an interesting hook because then the program is beginning to only be able to run on Steam to do "cool stuff" with these features.

Killer Bee Software7 years ago

Think of it as Itunes (iOS) or Google Play (android) for the PC. Those first two systems are more closed...but I think the term is "Games as a Service" - they handle all the management - purchase/install/execution - of your game.