They will gladly accept your game, unless it is crap, in which case you have other things to worry about than a release on Steam.
1: They are all major selling points for your game.

2: Origin - drmed. GfWL - drmed. Battle.net - drmed. GOG and GG do not support the things mentioned in point 1.

Could be, but whether it's crap or not is up to them, not you or your players.

And they've turned down indie crap like this, claiming that their users don't really like point-and-click adventures.

That's funny. Steam never revitalized my interest in gaming. I was a gamer before Steam even existed, and I hope to be one long after its passing.

There are better ways to handle DRM. Look at companies like Cakewalk and Garritan.

All you need to do is register online and be given a lifetime activation key and have the software personalised with your name - and you're allowed to install and activate the software as many times as you want. The company can choose whether to splash your name on the startup screen, display it somewhere as part of the user interface, or just contain it in the "About" window.

So this gets rid of a company worrying about losing 2nd-hand sales, because the user agrees that he won't resell the product.

Hackers won't feel any prestige in cracking the system since it's not really a draconian DRM scheme.

People like me who have very slow internet connections could have someone else download the software using a faster connection and burn it to a DVD, and I could then register via email or using an internet portal, obtain my lifetime activation key, and have my software installed and up and running with minimal fuss.

People generally will feel guilty if they're seen using software registered to someone else. Sure, some people won't care. But when they grow up, they will.

And of course, support is offered to registered users. And I have no objection to the software company requiring you to log onto their website to download patches using your registered account. But that would be on the understanding that the system would work exactly as at GOG.com. Once you've downloaded that upddate, you can simply install it without having to activate anything.

Now there's nothing preventing a site like Steam from doing the above, and it can then still provide its members with all the fantastic but optional benefits that you desire, but people in the minority like me don't need.

And you need to suck my yummy stick. It is good for your health.

They turned down everything from Radiant Games even though all of their games were considered by MS to be good enough for XBLA.

... Hackers... prestige...

Are we talking about the same people here? They usually do it for the challenge, not the fame.

I'll be damned if I can find these guys on Wikipedia or XBox Live, do you have a link (maybe you got the name slightly wrong)?

It's actually radiangames (I quite liked Super Crossfire).

Well, like you, I started in an arcade playing the Star Wars Arcade Game where you had a crosshair, some lines in a green monitor and some funky sounds a looooong time ago. I passed through Apple II, C64, Amiga, Atari, Intellivision, NES, Genesis and on and on walking the strange path of Video Gaming.

I must say that I think the same in MOST points but not all. For one, I actually do enjoy digital distribution platforms like STEAM severely, and even if my games are tied to an account, I cried with joy when I realized I could bring all my games no matter where in the world I was. My work prompts me to move around every 2 to 3 years in a country hopping pattern that totally made me realize, digital is the way of the future. I practically do everything in digital forms, music, videos, movies, games, books. I simply can't afford to move all my stuff with me every time I move. Digital is here to stay, and if it were up to me I would upload myself digitally to the net too! People ask this or that about DRM or this or that. Trust me, the day I can't access steam for not having net access is the day I will probably be more worried about the Zombies trying to eat me or me being lost in the middle of who knows where, where I can't even get a signal for my mobile sim card with net access.

Also if we are to be serious, ANYONE can simply get a "special" version of any DRM game without the DRM without that much of an effort. Meh.

The only point I strongly agree with you though, it's the way the BIG Corps , are becoming like Big Pharma, just in there for the BUSINESS of milking gamers out for everything they can. The DLC model is the most abominable thing in my mind and the main reason I love STEAM when after the hype has died I managed to get say DA1 Ultimate for 14.99% or Fallout New Vegas with all DLC for just 12.99$. I will do the same with Skyrim. At my age and with the limited time I have I can give myself a lot of time to wait for a game and just buy it when it's on digital sale. I recently finished KOTOR1 a couple months ago. I don't have leet friends to epeen around about how fast I finished this or that, most of my friends are more worried about health insurance coverages, Mortgages and new financial plans to afford the house annex they want to build. So I play alone and enjoy the games.

Anyway back to the main point, while I can share some of your feelings, and yes, even to me, some games totally changed my life , despite some people claiming it's a "hobbie" , and actually influencing me to become a Major in certain areas and even choosing the kind of work I wanted to do, etc, I honestly believe you ranting out it's simply not gonna make any real effort except point out the sad state of the mindset of modern gaming corps. They totally lost touch with reality and in their need to cater to the common denominator cheapened the whole genre with mass clones of FotM game style, game brand or game model. But you see, the new gen finds these games totally awesome and perhaps it will change their lives too, you, like me, are just getting older friend. The new gen is either used to not pay a SINGLE DIME (and acquiring the "special " version of the games) or totally corrupted into believing the SOP of : DLC make a half game and then release original content or crap fluff for 1.25$ a piece each month as the new paradigm of how to play, burn them out and see if you can milk them again in the ultimate GOTY pack with extra boobies for almost full price again THING.

Ugh. I too would love to see the REGULAR editions of PC game boxes that came with Telephone book thickness Manuals, Cloth Maps, Stickers, Cards, random goodies and assorted gifts era back! But see, these days the manual is skimpy, it comes in PDF and mostly links you to a crap faq and the goodies and whatnot are being sold to you as SPECIAL ULTIMATE EDITIONS PREORDER COLLECTOR BOX SET for up to 5 times the price of the regular.

I still look at the game manuals of Fallout 2, Falcon 4.0 (man that one was woa) and the cloth map that came in regular boxes back in the day. That era is gone, long gone, meh, I'm even eyeing my old Sierra Games shelf in the back of my mind and remembering some of the manuals. Everything back in the day was made with more care and attention to detail, but you see, thats just an ERA, something of the past. We can no longer live there, and vets, or bitter vets like you or me (I'm bitter sometimes) can't simply refuse to acknowledge the current trend. As disgusting as it is, the new gen simply does not know better. Meh, the real new gen doesnt even know about GoG at all, they just scream obscenities in their Xbox headset. It's like old men saying things were better in the 50's right after the war, meh.

Don't go for that route, it's a road that leads to destruction, and in the end, the only one that will lose anything is you. You will lose the joy of gaming by not modernizing to current times.

Don't be the old guy that sits in a park and hates people for dressing too brightly or not understanding how to even run their lives, trust me, they really aren't losing sleep to you, they don't even know you exist at all.

Just be one with the joy of gaming. Yes, it totally sucks the way things are run now, but unless you actually created a game system, platform or something with a heavy push in the industry, there's nothing really you can do but spout angry shouts at an uncaring universe.

Also you would be much happier too, just my thoughts. Be free to rebut them and destroy them at will, but after A LONG TIME of playing on my side, honestly, like most old people, I honestly DONT GIVE A **** anymore and just do what I find enjoyable.

Also wish GOG brought back the old SSI Gold box era rpg games :P

Cheers!

Yeah, that's them. I misspelled it a little. I think the team is just one guy. He mentioned on his blog that he submitted the games to Steam but they never got back to him.

I am only a hobby developer but I am sure setting up a webshop, paying through paypal, offering all your single player games there for download without DRM, not offering any stats, achievements, friends and marketing just by adding the nice line
"www.karazovangelgames.com - cool, cheap, DRM free software"
to every email you sent and occasionally here and there.

That should be possible. The idea is to offer this additional, a little bit later after your cool Steam game is out, but not for a higher price, but DRM free and without all the gimmicks that are so terrible to implement.

Do you really think this is so difficult as you described it?

I think you said to add this after the game is already out, right? That sounds like a bad idea to me. As Brad from Stardock recently said, these days people expect those bells and whistles in their games. And looking around gaming forums, I think we can both probably easily find examples of games that crash and burn for not having standard features around release time. Adding them later, means your game's rating already sank for not having it in most reviews that will matter for the coming months.

Of course, if you meant making a different, seperate no-DRM version that has the same features as the already released drm version then ignore all of the above ^^

I meant a separate DRM-free version, which is exactly the same except for the gimmicks like achievements, friends, stats and Steam cloud and Steam matchmaking. Be reminded there is still old-schooi matchmaking, where you just insert an IP adress and off you go. Or something like this.

The rest is anyway game specific and has to be programmed by yourself. Of course it's clear that the most difficult part to overcome for Steam is the plattform part. But until now it's not yet that integrated so that games without it are really severly limited. That much prove the pirated versions of many Steam games. This might change in the future.

And come on. Brad is not right. I am for one do not expect such features in a game. So not all people do expect it. And I can live perfectly without them. In fact I have never used any of these gimmicks.

There would be a market for it (me) and it would be practically doable. That's the point I want to make. Not more.

P.S.: Just look at the Double FIne kickstarter project. After one day they found that it is possible to also offer a version without Steam. (For single player games) it obviously can't be that hard and obviously not all people need this friends lists, achievements, ... gimmicks.

The Steamworks thing is not really the friendship list, that part can be done just fine with or without, just add your game to the Steam list as a Non-Steam game, and the overlay (including friends) will work on that game. (naturally you'd have to use Steam for the list though)

In Stardock's case they're going with it, for those 'gimmicks' as well but mostly what I gather for the multiplayer matchmaking part of it. And that part is not quite as easily done on your own as it might sound. There's plenty of examples of games who royally messed up their multiplayer coding, so any help there I'm sure is welcome to a development team on a limited budget.

The problem in that case of adding your own, separate DRM free version after that is that the playerbase would most likely be split up as they wouldn't share the same servers as the one already used by the DRM version (this is assuming it would be Steam), and that tends to leave one's multiplayer dead rather quickly if it turns out to seem too sparsely populated.

You're concentrating on multiplayer, I am concentrating on single player with my arguments.

Anyway what about direct connection for multiplayer? This is the historically used method and as far as I know working reliably. This way the Steam crowd and the non Steam crowd could be united?