Steam Workshop

[Mulvinator]

I did a search and found a website that had mods for the game. However, I'm curious why this game doesn't have a Steam Workshop. Does it require something more from the devs to Steam in order to have one?

[piccolo255]

Yes, Workshop needs to be implemented in-game, possibly requiring a major rewrite.

It would also shut out every single person who bought the game off-Steam, which is probably the majority. Even ignoring other platforms like GOG, the game came to Steam pretty late, after most of the core player demographics already owned it. Alienating your most dedicated fans is not a very good business decision :)

Finally, for a host of reasons I don't want to get into right now, Steam Workshop is literally the worst mod portal I know of -- and this includes posting Dropbox links to random forum threads.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Does Piccolo reply make any kind of sense to anybody here?

[piccolo255]

Originally posted by Eagle_of_Fire:

Does Piccolo reply make any kind of sense to anybody here?

What can I say, I'm a bad communicator :)

Which parts did you have trouble with?

[Eagle_of_Fire]

All of it really. You just seemed like you sarcastically bashed on the OP while I completely think it would be a wonderful idea to actually have the Workshop myself.

[piccolo255]

Originally posted by Eagle_of_Fire:

All of it really. You just seemed like you sarcastically bashed on the OP while I completely think it would be a wonderful idea to actually have the Workshop myself.

There was no bashing and no sarcasm involved.

OP asked if implementing the Workshop would be additional work for the devs. Yes, it would.

The rest of my post explains that the Workshop is objectively bad, so even if the dev did the additional work, it would add negative value. I genuinely think that the Steam Workshop (as currently implemented) is a terrible platform, and games are better off without it.

I'll elaborate:

* There is no way to download a mod without subscribing (though there are/were some workarounds that seem to work for some people some of the time). There is no "download" link. Sure, Steam has no obligation to put it up for people who don't have the game on Steam. The devs, however, do. If the game is sold anywhere else, implementing the Workshop is a giant middle finger to non-Steam users. I had to completely give up on mods for several games I bought on GOG, which, as a heavy mod user, means that the devs sold me a defective product.

* Therefore, you need to buy the game on Steam to use the Workshop. And as I mentioned above, this game was originally sold off-Steam, for several years. So the core fans -- those that paid the most, those that paid first -- would be completely shut off.

* Forced mod updates. When the mod updates, that update is pushed to all subscribers. If the new update changes something major, you still can't opt-out or delay to, for example, finish an ongoing game. This is unacceptable.

* No mod versioning. You can't download and use old versions of mods. You don't like some of the changes in the current version? The current version is buggy or breaks your saves? Tough luck. Combined with the previous point (forced updates), the workshop is outright hostile towards users.

There are some other annoyances, but those are the main problems. Those are easy to fix (just allow downloads of current and old versions), but Valve doesn't seem to have any intention of doing so. Until they do, Steam Workshop makes the games worse, not better.

So no, I disagree with you: it would definitely not be a wonderful idea to have the Workshop :)

[Eagle_of_Fire]

I completely disagree with absolutely all your points but I do respect that you took the time to actually explain yourself instead of bashing around, which is what you looked like you were doing before.

[Tooslow]

The game barely uses Steam at all. You can go directly to the directory it's installed in and create a shortcut from the .exe and it'll run without invoking Steam.

To get Workshop support would have required a big re-write on a game that was "done". The version on Steam was last of the line - there was no way they were adding Steam support.

Buying off Matrix, as I did originally and for most of the DLC, was a poor experience overall. You had to keep a manual back-up because Matrix didn't guarantee you'd be able to re-download after, I think, three months from purchase.

I'd be surprised if most people who bought the game didn't buy it on Steam so hopefully the Steam infrastructure will be built into the sequel. I'm not holding my breath.

IF the game had workshop content the developer (one guy, right?) would probably have to keep on top of updates to the Workshop (the underlying infrastructure, not individual projects) and that's probably not something he wants to do.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

There is plenty of games which integrate Steam via a launcher. This game has a launcher. I'm pretty sure that it would be trivial for the devs to update their launcher so you could make it compatible for mods... Especially since mods installation usually only revolve around copying (and sometimes overwriting) stufff already present.

That's not a good argument.