It would be much easier to have the game only on Steam once it'd be out there (if that will happen one day that is ).
This poll doesn't mean that it would happen one day but I am just interested about your opinions.
Auto-updating, stats tracking, account protection, events scheduler, etc. would make the game much more flexible.

Please ship me this bunny costume. Thanks.

ComJak

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ComJak's house... stay out of it

I was also going to request the bunny costume, but if ComJak is getting to wear it first I will just be happy with Steam exclusivity thank you very much.......

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im not sure if it should be steam only. but eh im ok with that

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co-owner of NEWA

I'm not really crazy about the idea, but I already use Steam so it's not a big deal.

Even though I really don't like steam, I think with account protection and whatnot it will be good for RWR.
Now if only the damn steam updates wouldn't take so long every time i start it...

Btw, would we still have the separate installer available in some way? Even without any of the fancy steam additions? Or just any way of running the game without steam?
Afaik, the offline mode still has some problems, making steam pretty much just another always-on drm in effect. So some way of running the game offline (preferably without steam) would be appreciated.

In the case of steam-only then it would be steam-only as the name tells it. I am not too sure how the steam integration works and I am not sure of Pasik knows for now too much about it either but maybe there could be an official hack to make the game running without having to fire up steam. It would then of course not take any advantages of the online stats tracking and achievements and stuff but at least you could play it standalone and mod it like you want.

First, I don't think Steam forces DRM on games. Technically you should have your rwr_game.exe on your Steam RWR installation folder somewhere, so offline playing shouldn't be a problem. That's my assumption on it.

Steam integration would mostly be about getting profile data somewhere so that it could be shared between servers if allowed, and to provide a common doormat, the launcher page inside Steam app. Now I'm not sure how much content control Steam provides for that page, but to me it would sound great if we could have latest news shown there, to serve as a MOTD, links to serverlists, stats, leaderboards, lobby chat, and so on.

At least currently, I don't think that many players loiter around the website or the forum to get exposed on additional info about RWR, so getting any message thru to players (website, forum, IRC, fb, twitter, Desura..let's add a few with e-mail newsletter and Google+) seems a bit difficult. If all players would enter through the same portal to get to play RWR, there would be our chance to inform them about stuff, at least those players who frequently play.

Of course, the other option is to make it all in-house. I hope I don't have to tell you how much work that would be, and how useless it would be if Steam provides everything ready and tested, with plenty of server capacity and speed to provide the content.

Yea, I think ArmA has something like this, as I can play the official beta versions without Steam, but not the regular versions I get trough steam it seems.
Losing access to the game just because I lose internet access for some time is what I worry about. I wouldn't need the account stuff if I didn't have internet anyway. Running a local lan server without any internet connection should be possible too I guess. Unless you feel that opens a bit too much for piracy issues?


No, Steam is the DRM as you can't run most games from steam without it. And that goes for just running the regular game executable too. With most games on steam when you run it, it will start steam, and then steam starts the game. This pretty much means that unless you can log in to steam you can't start your game.
This is why I'd appreciate some bare bones no-steam alternative. Mostly for no-internet situations so none of the features from steam would be needed anyway.
I haven't used steam very much in a long time though so the offline mode might have been fixed, but I doubt it. It has been there ever since the very beginning of Steam afaik.

^Not true, Many games that require Steam, at least in my experience, run perfectly fine with steam in offline mode.

ComJak

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ComJak's house... stay out of it