OOTP 9 Now Available via Steam!

[battists]

Hi everyone!

Out of the Park Developments is proud to announce that OOTP 9 is now available for PC users through Steam, in addition to the standard digital download from OOTP.

If you're not aware of Steam, Steam is a 15+ million-person gaming community and digital game distribution system. See here for more information about Steam. Getting OOTP in front of that large community can only be a good thing for OOTP, and that means it's good for our customers!

To purchase OOTP through Steam, go to Steam's OOTP 9 page. The price on Steam is $39.99, just as when buying from us.

The game is identical on the Steam platform, and of course, if you already own the game like most of the people on the forums do, there's no additional value in buying it through Steam. We just wanted to let you know that we now offer this distribution method as well!

Thanks very much,

OOTP Developments

[ootp3to6]

Originally Posted by battists

Hi everyone!

Out of the Park Developments is proud to announce that OOTP 9 is now available for PC users through Steam, in addition to the standard digital download from OOTP.

If you're not aware of Steam, Steam is a 15+ million-person gaming community and digital game distribution system. See here for more information about Steam. Getting OOTP in front of that large community can only be a good thing for OOTP, and that means it's good for our customers!

To purchase OOTP through Steam, go to Steam's OOTP 9 page. The price on Steam is $39.99, just as when buying from us.

The game is identical on the Steam platform, and of course, if you already own the game like most of the people on the forums do, there's no additional value in buying it through Steam. We just wanted to let you know that we now offer this distribution method as well!

Thanks very much,

OOTP Developments

Hopefully this will attract more people. Good luck and continued success.

[tripli00]

Well lets hope it helps - its all over the steam site at the moment - someone must stumble onto it!!

[fantom1979]

Sorry, I dont know much about steam. Is this a replacement for e-license? Or do you still have to work with e-license after buying it from steam?

Thanks

[rudel.dietrich]

Originally Posted by fantom1979

Sorry, I dont know much about steam. Is this a replacement for e-license? Or do you still have to work with e-license after buying it from steam?

Thanks

No, they are two separate entities.
In order to play the game after purchasing it from Steam your PC MUST be connected to the internet. The game is validated each time you launch it.

In the age of broadband this is not a big deal but some people still haveproblems with that aspect of the service.

[fantom1979]

Originally Posted by Fallschirmjager

No, they are two separate entities.
In order to play the game after purchasing it from Steam your PC MUST be connected to the internet. The game is validated each time you launch it.

In the age of broadband this is not a big deal but some people still haveproblems with that aspect of the service.

Thanks.

From what I have read on the Steam website, it sounds like you can play the game on any computer, it just uses your user name from Steam. So it sounds like you no longer have to worry about transaction numbers and un-licensing during formats.

[fantom1979]

Battists,

Not sure if you or the other members of the company are willing to comment, but which service do you make more of a profit on? For a potiental customer like myself, it really doesn't matter to me if I get it from Steam or E-License. I would prefer to get it from the location that puts more money in Markus' pocket.

[rudel.dietrich]

Originally Posted by fantom1979

Thanks.

From what I have read on the Steam website, it sounds like you can play the game on any computer, it just uses your user name from Steam. So it sounds like you no longer have to worry about transaction numbers and un-licensing during formats.

Yes exactly
But you must have the Steam software on the PC that you intend to play the game on

I was a late convert to the service but I now see it as a superior way to buy PC games. One cool thing is that if your connection is fast enough you can begin playing the game as soon as your download begins and never have stop playing as the game downloads.

[fantom1979]

Originally Posted by Fallschirmjager

One cool thing is that if your connection is fast enough you can begin playing the game as soon as your download begins and never have stop playing as the game downloads.

Wow, that is cool

[Telefrog]

Battists,

Have you guys considered selling your game on Impulse? It's a similar service like Steam from Stardock. They sell a lot of indie (but high-quality) games which I think would be a better fit for a text-based baseball sim. The biggests sellers on their service is Galactic Civilizations II and Sins Of A Solar Empire which already has a big turn-based/strategy audience.

Steam is great, but the audience there is really focused on action games and shooters like Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2. I just think the Stardock audience would be more receptive to a nice deep sim game like this one.

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by fantom1979

Battists,

Not sure if you or the other members of the company are willing to comment, but which service do you make more of a profit on? For a potential customer like myself, it really doesn't matter to me if I get it from Steam or E-License. I would prefer to get it from the location that puts more money in Markus' pocket.

E-License puts more money in OOTP Dev's pockets today.

Steam could crack open a new market.

[old timer]

Originally Posted by Telefrog

Battists,

Have you guys considered selling your game on Impulse? It's a similar service like Steam from Stardock. They sell a lot of indie (but high-quality) games which I think would be a better fit for a text-based baseball sim. The biggests sellers on their service is Galactic Civilizations II and Sins Of A Solar Empire which already has a big turn-based/strategy audience.

Steam is great, but the audience there is really focused on action games and shooters like Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2. I just think the Stardock audience would be more receptive to a nice deep sim game like this one.

This sounds like a good idea to me too. I hope it's being looked into.

[kq76]

Originally Posted by fantom1979

Sorry, I dont know much about steam. Is this a replacement for e-license? Or do you still have to work with e-license after buying it from steam?

Thanks

Excellent question!

Originally Posted by Fallschirmjager

No, they are two separate entities.
In order to play the game after purchasing it from Steam your PC MUST be connected to the internet. The game is validated each time you launch it.

In the age of broadband this is not a big deal but some people still haveproblems with that aspect of the service.

I'm confused. Does Steam require you to be connected to the internet whenever you want to play OOTP or not? Reading their site it sounds like it does, but that's crazy to me. Surely you must only have to connect once.

Originally Posted by Raidergoo

E-License puts more money in OOTP Dev's pockets today.

Steam could crack open a new market.

I hope that whenever OOTP advertises that they're available on Steam that they note that as well, like the first post in this thread. Unless, of course, they don't want to twinge the nose of the Steam guys.

[Bonedwarf]

Impulse is horrible right now. Bug ridden and largely pointless.

Seriously, you're better off with Steam. Not to mention games on Impulse (or Stardock Central as it used to be) are routinely more expensive.

And I believe the requirement to be actually online in Steam varies from game to game. You CAN play games in "offline" mode, but I've not had cause to try that in a very long time now.

I love Steam. Been using it for 3 years now. Makes it entirely too easy to spend money on games

[canadiancreed]

Ugh @ Steam. If it's still as FJ stated having my system always having to be online and yet more software runnign all the time? Blah.

[battists]

Originally Posted by fantom1979

Battists,

Not sure if you or the other members of the company are willing to comment, but which service do you make more of a profit on? For a potiental customer like myself, it really doesn't matter to me if I get it from Steam or E-License. I would prefer to get it from the location that puts more money in Markus' pocket.

Yeah, I certainly didn't want to broadcast it in a big post, which seems unnecessarily aggressive, but we do make more money if you buy from us directly (i.e. with eLicense). Which is fine, really, because the point of Steam for us isn't to move sales from our existing customer base to Steam, but rather to reach a larger audience.

[vsp]

Originally Posted by kq76

I'm confused. Does Steam require you to be connected to the internet whenever you want to play OOTP or not? Reading their site it sounds like it does, but that's crazy to me. Surely you must only have to connect once.

If it behaves the same as other games on Steam, you won't have to be connected everytime you want to play OOTP. You would, however, have to explicitly set Steam to off-line mode first.

Don't take this at 100% accurate though. I pre-ordered my copy of OOTP 9

[Telefrog]

Originally Posted by Bonedwarf

Impulse is horrible right now. Bug ridden and largely pointless.

Seriously, you're better off with Steam. Not to mention games on Impulse (or Stardock Central as it used to be) are routinely more expensive.

Bug ridden? I haven't had an issue yet. After I installed it, Impulse immediately found and registered all my previous Stardock games. I haven't had an issue yet. I don't doubt that some people have issues with it, but then again, so do some Steam users.

As for the cost, I'm sure part of the issue between Steam and Impulse is that the guys at Stardock don't have the pull with major publishers that Valve does, so it's likely harder for them to secure deals. On the flipside, the audience with Impulse is a lot more used to strategy and sim games and since Stardock is very indie-focused, they also would have a higher tolerance for the relatively sedate pace of OOTP.

Both venues would be a great way to expand the market for OOTP.

[hobbes1020]

When will the 9.0.27 update be available for Steam? I noticed the Steam version is still at 9.0.26.

[battists]

Originally Posted by hobbes1020

When will the 9.0.27 update be available for Steam? I noticed the Steam version is still at 9.0.26.

Apologies, since we're new to Steam, we're just trying to work through the best way to update. I suspect it will be out there today, but we're in a little bit of uncharted territory right now!