[SUGGESTION] Distribution through Steam

And he'll probably tell you to talk to legal, because he's not a lawyer. And legal will tell you that they will only talk to people in charge of the Xonotic project, as they did before when somebody else from the community asked them.

EDIT: Make sure you leave no ambiguity and make it clear that you are not part of the dev team.

Ofc, I'll not mention Xonotic, I'll just ask him about FOSS games in general.

I still can't believe he responds to every "spam" he gets, surely he at least has someone to filter out insane bits.

He have answered to all my mails before, thought his responses were mostly just yes and no.

Just because it is from his mailbox doesn't mean it is written by him personally. His organisation has close to 300 employees and I'm sure that at least one of those will be his assistant who will farm the query out to the correct department. Although I can personally say I have worked with 2 guys with similar net worth (billionaire status) to Gabe, I'd never get any email from themselves, everything is 'from the desk of...'. Usual everyday queries will therefore result in short answers, longer ones would be put to the correct department to look into it. Gabe might be the head of the company but it doesn't mean he's expert in everything the company does. It would be a pretty bad director who would act on legal matters without consulting the legal team.

As everyone has said before, wait for 1.0 and the approach has to be made officially by the dev team to the right contacts in Valve.

What? I said I wouldn't mention Xonotic!

edh, read my post again.

I actually think it was he that answered, he always wrote "/Gabe" in the end of the mails.

Okey here what I wrote to him:

Hi, I'm just wondering, what are your and Valve's thoughts on FOSS games distributed through Steam?

Thanks, Kalle R

Here is his response:

That's not our priority at the moment, if there is a demand we might look into it.

/Gabe

Nice, demand shall be.

He didn't say who he expected the demand to come from. Developers or players?

We should put Xonotic to Greenlight. If it success there, "demand" has been emerged.

We would get more than 500 players in 10 min if it gets up on Steam, ppl there are crazy in "Free 2 Play" games.

We should put Xonotic to Greenlight. If it success there, "demand" has been emerged.

Except if Greenlight's terms do not allow it, or imposes unreasonable restrictions to the Xonotic project.

We would get more than 500 players in 10 min if it gets up on Steam, ppl there are crazy in "Free 2 Play" games.

How many of them have anger control issues? I'd rather get a few nice players than a lot of mean ones.
EDIT: Obviously I'm not saying that should prevent us to publish on Steam.

I get what you meaning, but come on, if we get it up on steam Xonotic would be famous, and then we can tease Illfonic and alienTRAP

It probably never will happen, and I totally understand what you're saying, and I agree with you, rather a nice community than a big one.

As much as I would like to see this game end up on Steam, we have to be VERY CAREFUL if the developers decide to put it up on there. The reason I say this is that Tribes 4 was recently put up on there and now the game is loaded with the single most irritating crowd of players I have ever seen in my years of gaming.

I'd expect potential trouble from Illfonic and alienTRAP as both of them have their games on Steam already.

Anyway I woudn't care about the playerbase - it's not like Xonotic has a single one official dedicated server where the whole community plays, right? ;-)

What kind of trouble do you mean? Vendetta, or legal threats?

EDIT: People will join whatever server isn't empty. I'm not sure how you think it's possible to avoid a large rush of unpleasant people with this in mind.

Seeing as they are already there, they could (probably) have some kind of communication channel established to Valve and (probably) could influence Valve's attitude towards Xonotic to (probably) be less favorable. Nothing official, but they (probably :-) ) could make things harder for the game. Though I think this has rather a small risk of happening.

As for ppl... There are loads of games with non centralized servers like Xonotic and haven't seen that they had much troubles with trolls. Trolls are mostly annoying in games that have a limited amount of servers and/or only official servers that gather loads of ppl at the same time. As long as you can just switch the server you're safe.

Anyway I think we're dividing the skin on the bear with this discussion - let's first see if Xonotic is able to be distributed on Steam and then we can discuss if any influx of new ppl would be good or bad ;-).

I don't think Illfonic or alienTRAP will ask Valve to avoid Xonotic. And if they do, then I've had enough, gonna trough a molotov at Illfonic's studio and spam alienTRAP with mailbombs, kidding!

And tbh I think all those trolls won't be a trouble, Xonotic is to fast for them, they will quickly uninstall it and start playing CS and CoD again. I think they're is a quite big "arena" player base since steam got games like TF2, and many ppl there are previous Quake and UT players.

Cyber Killer: We're not talking about trolls, we're talking about people with bad attitude. And "just switching" isn't a solution, your trolls can also "just switch".

And, as a community, there's nothing we can do about Steam but discuss about this. Following your advice, I should lock this thread until the team decides to contact Valve

machine: Death threats aren't funny, no matter how many smileys and happy jokes follow.

I didn't made a death threat, I just made a joke about screwing up there studio and sending spam mail.

Lock this thread? Why can't the community discuss this? Also, we don't even know if it's possible to get it up on Steam so it's nothing to decide yet anyway!

I'm not saying I'm going to lock this thread. I was just saying we, as a community, can not contact Valve or speed things up in any way. We can only discuss the topic. Thus, if Cyber Killer thinks we should not discuss any further, the logical thing to do would be to close the thread. I don't agree that we should stop the discussion, so I don't agree with locking the thread.

I know your "joke" is not meant literally, but some people might take it as face value. Be careful with that.

I think they're is a quite big "arena" player base since steam got games like TF2, and many ppl there are previous Quake and UT players.

Well who knows, it may happen. Just not before 1.0 I would think.

Whether the game makes it onto Steam or any service like it does not really differ from Xonotic hitting it big in general. Popular games will always atract a certain trolly crowd too. The oldies here know that more or less the same happened with Nexuiz. Comparing the community from 1.5 to what we had in the end was sometimes disheartening (even though it was still lightyears better than most other game communities). Is that a reason to try and stay small though? I don't know!

But since Xonotic seems to aim pretty high, both in looks, gaming standards AND potential popularity, that would happen anyway. So the choice seems to be more: do you want to stay small and mostly happy or become big and potentially mostly unhappy :p

So much unknowns and doubts in this post..... I should have just ..... used ...hutty's... template ... .... ....

Okey here what I wrote to him:

Hi, I'm just wondering, what are your and Valve's thoughts on FOSS games distributed through Steam?

Thanks, Kalle R

Here is his response:

That's not our priority at the moment, if there is a demand we might look into it.

/Gabe

Just to come back to this and disect it a bit. Clearly there is no commitment here from Valve but how exactly has he read the question that you posed? Has he perhaps seen your question as asking if Valve would do the work to enable this to happen? In that case you'd expect a no as Valve wouldn't want to be repackaging games, or relicencing or at a stretch even maintaining games themselves. You don't know but this is how he may have read your question. I therefore don't see anything useful happening from this question. I'm sure any kind of licence concern he may have in his head will mean they absolutely can't make such a commitment.

Clearly without a specific example to look at this cannot be raised. If a game developer was to contact Valve and say 'our project, which I am representing the copyright holders of, wishes to make our game available through Steam under the GPL, what is possible to fulfil this?' then you would get some ideas of what is actually needed.

So please, can we just leave this to a fully informed member of the dev team when the time is right to broach the question? Earlier speculation may not help however wonderful me might envisage this to be.

@edh

Ask them yourself if you want a different answer!

EDIT: Also, I would asked him that anyway, I were just posting it here cause you guys might would like to see what he answered since Xonotic is a FOSS game and that this topic exists on the forums. I would asked him that either if Xonotic wants to be on Steam or not.

I just thought some of you might wanted to see his answer, but apperantly not.


I promise to not post relavant information anymore, I'll just be negative and talk about licensing instead.

Geez. He's not saying you made a mistake, edh is just saying it's not very relevant to the issue because Gabe Newell is not the person who can provide us with answers.

And if "being negative" means "discussing obstacles we might face", then yes, by all means, be "negative".

edh is being realistic about the issue. It's up to the Xonotic Team to contact Valve. And licensing is the main point of concern, and a very serious topic.