On the viability of a Steam release

[UnimportantFarmhand]

Hello chatters. I ask for forgiveness immediately for I am about to make a long effortpost on an annoying, old matter, but I believe this is worth being proper about.

The idea of a Steam release, as is the case in basically every other non-Steam game, has been floated around endlessly for the past however many years. However, much of what is said seems to be speculation, that the game might be delisted or banned or that Valve would somehow require some sort of content control for the game. Therefore in this post I will try to clear some of this up, so that the idea can be discussed in a slightly more informed way, or that, perhaps, other people here can share ideas & examples of games that may have been removed for similar reasons.

1. The appropriateness of Haven's content
It has been my experience (I am a lazy man and will not attach examples, apologies if I am bullshitting) that whenever the idea is brought up this is one of the first concerns people have. However, I do not think current Steam policy warrants such a concern. Their stated policy, as far as I can tell is that

With that principle in mind, we've decided that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling. (steamcommunity dot com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1666776116200553082?l=english) (apologies for bad link, new account)

The quote is from a post from 2018 and I can't seem to find any more, but I think if you look at the games on Steam as of now I think this is probably still their policy:



etc. There are some more specific things here (partner dot steamgames dot com/steamdirect), but none of them as far as I can see apply more to Haven than many other unmoderated multiplayer games which are on there without a hitch.

If you are worried that the game might be banned based on its forum/in-game player moderation, I believe there are other games that have been on steam with many years with also essentially none (if one is looking for an example with a community of similarly infamous reputation, Blockland was also off steam for many years before such a transition that led to no issues at all with this AFAIK). If the worry is for user-generated content on the Steam platform itself, I doubt it would be much trouble for jorbtar and the forumers to just assign the same forum mods for the inevitably dead steam forums and to deal with the windmills on screenshots and such (or let Valve take care of it, since that's an option). There are sites that track de-listed games from steam (see steam-tracker dot com), and as far as I can tell almost all of the removals are copyright, redundancy, legal stuff etc. Closest thing I can find to a game that has been removed for Haven-plausible reasons is this gamedeveloper dot com/business/domina-pulled-from-steam-after-dev-posts-transphobic-tirade,which seems implausible for Haven still unless someone goes deeper into the deep end than previously imagined.

2. Technical annoyances
Issues which might be more salient are maybe the issues that Runescape's Steam Release had, IE custom clients and multiple instances requiring tricks. I say tricks instead of "not working" because both issues, which are admittedly annoying, have (as far as I can tell - maybe someone who knows more about Runescape can comment here) pretty simple player fixes. For Runescape, it seems that they made it so a Steam account can only link to one account (?) which might be the source of their issues, so maybe this is easier to avoid than it looks.

Also, I think you'd have to (finally) wrap the game on an exe file for it to be on Steam, or apply some other shenanigan (reddit dot com /r/SteamDeck/comments/145yt08/does_anyone_know_how_to_add_java_games_to_steam/). Custom clients might need to apply the same shenanigan if they want players to be able to do the aforementioned Steam hour tracking (for those who care about this sort of thing), but I would be surprised if it was that annoying. I am almost sure Steam has its own way of handling games with pre-install requirements to handle the whole Java situation, though, but I could be wrong.

3. The review issue
Many others have also said that the game has a high chance to review poorly on Steam. All reasonable men agree. On the other hand, I don't think the devs care, and I don't think users would care all much either. Plenty of Steam games have thousands of concurrent players and awful review scores. As far as I can tell, the game nowadays mostly gets new users from word of mouth/friend recommendations (for which the Steam score doesn't really matter, and for which Steam might help, given how often my friends are annoyed by having to download some game somewhere weird) and the odd internet content straggler (and for this one the score might matter, but I doubt all that much). Other games that have previously been on Steam have had new player influxes because of it, sometimes moderately small and sometimes quite sizeable.

4. Other issues I have heard of before
It has been believed that Steam's cut of profits would probably turn jorbtar off. This might be an actual big issue; Valve takes 30% of all IAPs, as far as I can tell, indiscriminately (partner dot steamgames dot com/doc/features/microtransactions). However, again with only the limited vision of my own, that when it comes to these things there might be some nuance at play under NDAs and such (I doubt Jagex is forking over 30% their profits for the majority of their playerbase which is off-Steam). I think it is best not to speculate much on these things unless there is solid information to offer. It would be interesting if others had examples here.

Lastly, which is I think the actual key question, is that of hassle. There's a lot of factors at play here, as you can see - it's not just a matter of posting the thing on Steam and having it be there, and it's hard to gauge the potential benefits from here. There are games that have inexplicably exploded after being put on Steam despite years of being apparently easily available on their website (a big example is the aforementioned Blockland), while for some games it doesn't seem to have changed things all that much (as is the case of Runescape as far as I know. Forgive me for the tiredness of these 2 examples, but I do not know many games which fit this criteria. People who know Transformice and old Maple Story might have more informed opinions on games which were off-steam going to it).

Is this worth all the effort? I don't know. Personally, given the personalities of our developers, I think they very highly value simply not being hassled over potentially needless capital b Bureau complications over the chance of this helping bring some, I think we all agree, much-needed new blood to the game, so the chances are low of it happening. If it does, I think the odds are good that it ends up being mostly the same plus some very minor annoyances for Steam to keep track of clients and such.

On a last note, I don't think one can have a very informed opinion on how much the game's population would chance because of such a thing. It certainly won't decrease, and every new source of players is a good thing, but I would be surprised if the change was as massive as some hope. If I were jorbtar, I would probably put this off until some new world/big announcement situation, and, even then, reconsider thrice more. It could be a bunch of hassle for nothing, or it could be a nice little stream of new players.

I hope this is of some use to somebody, since this topic seems to show up so often.

[Robben_DuMarsch]

You can avoid steam taking the cut of profits by directing players to make purchases through your off-steam store. Many games with both steam storefronts and their own merely increase the prices on steam storefront purchases to completely offset the difference and incentivize off-steam purchases (Albion, World of Tanks, etc.)

I've no question the game is going to be review bombed on steam if they upload the 2015 Hafen trailer video. Any description or content of the game should heavily advertise the unforgiving nature of the game, the necessity to learn the complex systems, and the presence of open PVP and permadeath.

I'd highly suggest linking to the Ring of Brodgar wiki, and describing the game as a hardcore survival crafting sandbox MMO with full loot PvP, the possibility of permadeath, and no rails.

[UnimportantFarmhand]

You can avoid steam taking the cut of profits by directing players to make purchases through your off-steam store. Many games with both steam storefronts and their own merely increase the prices on steam storefront purchases to completely offset the difference and incentivize off-steam purchases (Albion, World of Tanks, etc.)

That was my initial thought, but online opinions seem to differ on whether or not that's how it works. Partly what I meant by the whole NDA situation; maybe someone with experience with this sort of thing can clarify.







Probably misinformed reddit posts by insane people, yes, but it seems like the sort of thing developers would need to negotiate with Steam over somehow. Would be strange otherwise for some of these games.

[Robben_DuMarsch]

The purchases presumably aren't in app purchases if you've got no in-game storefront (in Haven's case) or aren't using the in-game storefront (Albion, Warthunder, etc).

If there's some special exception through "negotiation" that'd be odd to me, as in both the case of Albion and War Thunder the in-game purchases are more expensive to exactly the 30% cut, but if you log in to the respective games websites and use their online stores, the cost differential vanishes entirely.

[Nightdawg]

I've no question the game is going to be review bombed on steam if they upload the 2015 Hafen trailer video. Any description or content of the game should heavily advertise the unforgiving nature of the game, the necessity to learn the complex systems, and the presence of open PVP and permadeath -

- the lack of moderation, the lack of significant development, the lack of listening to feedback, the mandatory need for a custom client (which could have all types of malware), the lack of balance, the lack of punishment for exploiting stuff since 2015, the lack of an alarm going off anywhere ever when such exploits are triggered, the lack of documentation ANYWHERE, the obnoxiously toxic community, the absurd amounts of time needed to stay close to the top, the lack of "passion" for this "passion project". Just to name a few, of course.



But anyway if loftar only hosted one official server with regular wipes and allowed other communities to host their own servers with their own modifications and rules, this game would be the shit. Like minecraft or other open world survival crafts. But we won't see that, so yeah, it's gonna have overwhelmingly negative reviews and just die at the bottom of the barrel haha.

It ain't review bombing if you're just reviewing the game.

[UnimportantFarmhand]

The purchases presumably aren't in app purchases if you've got no in-game storefront (in Haven's case) or aren't using the in-game storefront (Albion, Warthunder, etc).

If there's some special exception through "negotiation" that'd be odd to me, as in both the case of Albion and War Thunder the in-game purchases are more expensive to exactly the 30% cut, but if you log in to the respective games websites and use their online stores, the cost differential vanishes entirely.

Huh, I see. Does seem to be the case for those games, nevermind.

[Robben_DuMarsch]

- the lack of moderation, the lack of significant development, the lack of listening to feedback, the mandatory need for a custom client (which could have all types of malware), the lack of balance, the lack of punishment for exploiting stuff since 2015, the lack of an alarm going off anywhere ever when such exploits are triggered, the lack of documentation ANYWHERE, the obnoxiously toxic community, the absurd amounts of time needed to stay close to the top, the lack of "passion" for this "passion project". Just to name a few, of course.

I agree with every one of these (not onboard with private servers because I think it'd kill the game, but I see your point when you compare it to other successful survival crafting games.)

But there are many redeeming features to HnH, despite all that, and by the time most of these flaws are visible, the players are probably already invested and see some of the good. I don't think the game would necessarily be doomed to poor reviews. Especially not if the game sees some measure of success and support comes back to approximate the earlier days.

Even the early days of W14 saw consistent patching and support until the game population dropped to around 400 concurrent again.

[Robben_DuMarsch]

Here's maybe the best advice Jorb/Loftar need when they bring the game to Steam. Your gameplay doesn't translate to video very well. Don't try to make a Farmville video.

Just do this, but instead of eating Chips, Jorb should be eating lutefisk (watch the first video): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1782210/Crab_Game/

Your gameplay clips should mostly show your animal sex animations, peeing on ant hives, noobs getting KO'd by a bee queen. Someone getting sniped off a horse by a mammoth snot. Zoom in on your ridiculous looking wolf model and let it just stare. When you mention permadeath, you should have a montage: Someone should overdose while high on opium, drown after their Snekkja is bashed by orcas, etc. Just the trolliest shit you can think of.

"Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you." - Tyrion Lannister

[Dawidio123]

Nvm.

Back on the topic, yeah steam wouldn't go well sadly, 0 moderation and lacks of devs motivation to work on the game would lead to super bad reviews and possibly being taken down from steam.

[terechgracz]

steam release for haven would end up killing the game
whole haven comminity would be introduced to normal people playing good games
its better to keep us from outside world