mcirish3 Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 3 hours ago, kiwi1960 said: Even that would be too high! You should read more!http://www.pcgamer.com/notch-on-why-minecraft-still-isnt-on-steam/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwi1960 Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 2 hours ago, Kerbart said: Not entirely. Remember that there is a reason the public test-release is released only through Steam; they're the only ones (within Squad distribution network) who can handle the bandwidth that is associated with the rapid (daily?) updates during the test cycle. Contrary to popular belief (read: Tintin and the Cursed Mods) hosting server space and having ample amounts of bandwidth for downloads available is not free and the ability to have several hundred or maybe thousand users download a couple of gigabytes of content on a daily basis is nothing to frown upon. Steam would not be where they are now if they didn't put a tremendous amount of work in it. Conversely, they can charge what they do because, apparently, for Squad, it is worth it; otherwise Squad wouldn't be distributing the game through Steam. If the added value of Steam was minimal (“they can just sit back and watch the money roll in”) that wouldn't be the case. Bandwidth is not all it seems. Some server owners have "unlimited bandwidth" available, but even so, 30% of a games price for an online download IS excessive. If kerbal is say 500m megs, then bandwidth (at wholesale prices) will not cost more than .5 cents a meg... because high use users can negotiate massive discounts. Comes to $2.50 to the cost of a download. 2 minutes ago, mcirish3 said: You should read more!http://www.pcgamer.com/notch-on-why-minecraft-still-isnt-on-steam/ "by a single entity that takes 30% of all PC games sold" That isn't talking about price, its talking volume, as in the numbers of all games sold... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcirish3 Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 3 hours ago, KerbalSaver said: I see no reason for SQUAD to keep that data if a system is in place for them to access said data in real-time. 3 hours ago, DoctorDavinci said: What he said ^^^^^ Let alone nobody playing KSP will upgrade their computers ever, right? You have seen this screen before right? 2 hours ago, SpaceplaneAddict said: This is exactly what we deal with. Do you really want a buggy, crash ridden game? Great post @Mad Rocket Scientist, we just need to.... Stay Determined . . . EXcept this--------------------> There will come a point when most or even all the major bugs will be fixed and the store users still won't have the game becuase the decision to release has not been made yet. At that time and for however long that time lasts, man will the Suckmeter be tapped out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceplaneAddict Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 8 minutes ago, mcirish3 said: EXcept this--------------------> There will come a point when most or even all the major bugs will be fixed and the store users still won't have the game becuase the decision to release has not been made yet. At that time and for however long that time lasts, man will the Suckmeter be tapped out. Steam users have two weeks to report da bugs. Devs have those same weeks to wait for reports, and then start fixing. If we're talking major bugs, I doubt they'll fix the majority of them within the two weeks of the pre-release Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcirish3 Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 (edited) 36 minutes ago, armagheddonsgw said: Well, KSP has more than a million steam users (and that's old data - it was on steamspy until squad removed it about a year ago). Seems unlikely the store servers would be able to handle 10% of that on a typical release cycle, though I guess it's not impossible. EDIT: some statistics for visits to ksp's website. if you consider each person that buys the game will make many visits to that particular domain, and that many people who have bought the game via the store have since transferred to steam (this includes me and several people I know), that would seem to suggest the steam group is far larger than the store group, though apparently less active on the forums. Still your point? 31 minutes ago, kiwi1960 said: Bandwidth is not all it seems. Some server owners have "unlimited bandwidth" available, but even so, 30% of a games price for an online download IS excessive. If kerbal is say 500m megs, then bandwidth (at wholesale prices) will not cost more than .5 cents a meg... because high use users can negotiate massive discounts. Comes to $2.50 to the cost of a download. "by a single entity that takes 30% of all PC games sold" That isn't talking about price, its talking volume, as in the numbers of all games sold... Fair enough I mis read. Turns out no one that can talk about it knows. Those who do are under DND agreements. However the general assessment is 30% But it is only an educated guess, so I cant point to proof. Edited March 30, 2016 by mcirish3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anquietas314 Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 1 minute ago, mcirish3 said: Still your point? Well, my point was we didn't necessarily need to get the information from squad to get a rough idea of the proportions of each group, and that the data seems to support the claim that the steam group is bigger..... which should be clear from the quote I was replying to, but never mind. As to what @322997am's point was in making the claim? If i were to guess, they were trying to give an explanation for squad's decision. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
technicalfool Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 16 minutes ago, kiwi1960 said: Some server owners have "unlimited bandwidth" available I run a server with "unmetered bandwidth". It costs me less than US $12/month. If I tried to serve a few hundred terabytes out to a couple of million users through it, the server would quickly either fall over or get throttled to death. It's the same deal with "unlimited bandwidth" Internet connections. Fine until you start abusing it, at which point you'll find the sharp end of the ToS pointed at you. If you want something that can handle huge amounts of traffic over multiple load-balanced high bandwidth servers, you need to pay for it, and pay heftily. Otherwise, Wikipedia wouldn't have black begging banners at the top of every page every few months or so. As and when Squad find the time between game development to fix their damn patcher (yes, I'm as infuriated as you about that), or find some way of spreading the load around, then I'm sure they'll be happy to give store users, steam users and GOG users the same ability to get pre-release versions. Until then though, I for one would rather effort and money be spent on making an awesome game. You know what's really annoying? Having 1.1 access, via the store even, but not being able to stream it or show off so much as a single screenshot because it's not the public pre-release build but an "experimental" (read: extra buggy) version. I'm not going to start hopping up and down and shouting "SQUAAAAAD" though, because I'd rather there be a pre-release of some sorts than no pre-release at all, and maybe I speak to some of the people involved often enough to know they aren't malicious Dr Evils rubbing their hands together and wondering how to stiff their users next. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcirish3 Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 (edited) 11 minutes ago, armagheddonsgw said: Well, my point was we didn't necessarily need to get the information from squad to get a rough idea of the proportions of each group, and that the data seems to support the claim that the steam group is bigger..... which should be clear from the quote I was replying to, but never mind. As to what @322997am's point was in making the claim? If i were to guess, they were trying to give an explanation for squad's decision. I meant the point of your original post. So your point is Squad said screw the minority we will give it to the majority! I think I will take their initial claim, as the truth, that the reason for going with steam was technical. Edited March 30, 2016 by mcirish3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anquietas314 Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 1 minute ago, mcirish3 said: I meant the point of your original post. So your point it Squad said screw the minority we will give it to the majority! I think I will take their initial claim, as the truth, that the reason for going with steam was technical. That was my "original" post, at least as far as this particular conversation goes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcirish3 Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 8 hours ago, 322997am said: I'm willing to bet most of the users are steam so they decided to go with the bigger group. I meant this as your original post. Your point is then as I stated above? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tourist Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 (edited) Wow, the entitlement meter is going crazy! Customers have not been denied their toy. The open beta is not Squad giving customers the toy. The release is when they give you the toy. If they don't give you the toy when it is released, then its really is open season on squad and I will march side by side with you comrades! Because you are entitled to the toy when its released. The open beta is Squad letting a whole bunch of unpaid product testers try to break the toy, so they can learn how to make it so it doesn't break. It is up to them to choose the most efficient and effective means of doing this... which just happens to be Steam. It is entirely their right to decide who the product testers are. They could have chosen by initial... all people with a surname starting with C gets to be a product tester. Or geographically. All existing customers in Europe get to be product testers. They chose Steam because it gets them the maximum results at minimal cost of time and budget. It makes good project management sense. But regardless, the point is, there is no entitlement to be a product tester. That's not to say I can't understand why people are upset. We have been waiting for the update for a long time now, but jeez, the entitlement and the hurt is so out of proportion. Ultimately my final word on this is that I think an open beta was a mistake because it steals the momentum from the hype. Its a bad marketing decision. All you need to do is compare the hypetrain thread yesterday to now. Yesterday it was popping, new replies were coming in thick and fast. Now its like a ghost town and the update is still weeks out.With no open beta it would have kept up and build to fever pitch right to the moment of release. Edited March 30, 2016 by Tourist Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anquietas314 Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Just now, mcirish3 said: I meant this as your original post. Your point is then as I stated above? .... You realize that's an entirely different user, right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcirish3 Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 (edited) 6 minutes ago, Tourist said: SNIP Except this-----------> There will come a point when most or even all the major bugs will be fixed and the store users still won't have the game becuase the decision to release has not been made yet. At that time and for however long that time lasts, man will the Suckmeter be tapped out. 26 minutes ago, SpaceplaneAddict said: Steam users have two weeks to report da bugs. Devs have those same weeks to wait for reports, and then start fixing. If we're talking major bugs, I doubt they'll fix the majority of them within the two weeks of the pre-release Except that is not how squad described it. They will be fixing those bugs as reports come in. Quote This opt-in branch will run for just under two full weeks before the targeted release date of the final update. Emphasis mine. IN other words they will fix as they go! THus this statement------->There will come a point when most or even all the major bugs will be fixed and the store users still won't have the game becuase the decision to release has not been made yet. At that time and for however long that time lasts, man will the Suckmeter be tapped out. Edited March 30, 2016 by mcirish3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tourist Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 (edited) 15 minutes ago, mcirish3 said: Except this-----------> There will come a point when most or even all the major bugs will be fixed and the store users still won't have the game becuase the decision to release has not been made yet. At that time and for however long that time lasts, man will the Suckmeter be tapped out. Except that is not how squad described it. They will be fixing those bugs as reports come in. Emphasis mine. That makes no sense, once all the major bugs all squished the decision to release will be made and store users will get the product. Squad are not going to sit on a finished product for months because... I don't know, the augers say its a bad time. Once the bug testing is done, customers get the toy. The targeted release date is clearly a date not long after the bugfixing is done. Edited March 30, 2016 by Tourist Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceplaneAddict Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 3 minutes ago, mcirish3 said: Except this-----------> There will come a point when most or even all the major bugs will be fixed and the store users still won't have the game becuase the decision to release has not been made yet. At that time and for however long that time lasts, man will the Suckmeter be tapped out. Except that is not how squad described it. They will be fixing those bugs as reports come in. Emphasis mine. I see no where for your emphasis. 2 Weeks before targeted release date. TWhich means, as soon as the prerelease starts, the 2 weeks before targeted release date situation starts. And I was basically describing the same thing. Bug reports come in as people play the prerelease, and they have the prerelease duration to fix 'em. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwi1960 Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 (edited) 20 minutes ago, technicalfool said: I run a server with "unmetered bandwidth". It costs me less than US $12/month. If I tried to serve a few hundred terabytes out to a couple of million users through it, the server would quickly either fall over or get throttled to death. It's the same deal with "unlimited bandwidth" Internet connections. Fine until you start abusing it, at which point you'll find the sharp end of the ToS pointed at you. If you want something that can handle huge amounts of traffic over multiple load-balanced high bandwidth servers, you need to pay for it, and pay heftily. Otherwise, Wikipedia wouldn't have black begging banners at the top of every page every few months or so. As and when Squad find the time between game development to fix their damn patcher (yes, I'm as infuriated as you about that), or find some way of spreading the load around, then I'm sure they'll be happy to give store users, steam users and GOG users the same ability to get pre-release versions. Until then though, I for one would rather effort and money be spent on making an awesome game. You know what's really annoying? Having 1.1 access, via the store even, but not being able to stream it or show off so much as a single screenshot because it's not the public pre-release build but an "experimental" (read: extra buggy) version. I'm not going to start hopping up and down and shouting "SQUAAAAAD" though, because I'd rather there be a pre-release of some sorts than no pre-release at all, and maybe I speak to some of the people involved often enough to know they aren't malicious Dr Evils rubbing their hands together and wondering how to stiff their users next. My point was that some server owners pay a flat rate for bandwidth, or are such high volume users that they can demand, and get, a discount. bandwidth is not all it seems, it isn't charged for maintenance to the network, as such, but huge profits they would be making regardless means they can REALLY offer a discount.... upwards of 99.9% in fact.... take that as fact because as i said elsewhere, I'm a webhost and the fact is.... its always the little guy that pays for the heavy users... read that to mean, no discount for me... but YOUtube .... yeah,.... I hate those guys.... Edited March 30, 2016 by kiwi1960 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DoctorDavinci Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Pain, so much pain (and agony reading this thread) ... Skywalker the kiddies are in so much pain Spinning, spinning (and getting dizzy) ... You spin me right around (and unfortunately I didn't end up before I started when I started reading this thread ... see 'Time Travel' and 'Granfather Paradox') There is an old saying ... The less you know the more you speak Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black Francis Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 People sure know how to take things personally when they need to, huh? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fearless Son Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 20 hours ago, alacrity said: Squad how do my tears taste? Delicious. The answer is always delicious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Basto Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 The thing that kills me is that this is a FREE update. I just can't wrap my head around the fact that giving someone $40 and suddenly you own them and they are beholden to you. You got your $40 worth in the game you have right now. Seriously we are talking about 2 weeks earlier access to a buggy game. It's not like they are denying you access to the game. To be honest if I was in your place and had been enjoying this game for so long I would probably just go and buy the game on steam to show my appreciation for all of the free updates. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Red Iron Crown Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Removed some posts from the thread, please do not lower the discussion to name-calling each other. We can be civil. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nli2work Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 1 minute ago, Basto said: The thing that kills me is that this is a FREE update. I just can't wrap my head around the fact that giving someone $40 and suddenly you own them and they are beholden to you. You got your $40 worth in the game you have right now. Seriously we are talking about 2 weeks earlier access to a buggy game. It's not like they are denying you access to the game. To be honest if I was in your place and had been enjoying this game for so long I would probably just go and buy the game on steam to show my appreciation for all of the free updates. No, I don't feel I own them. I'm simply unconvinced by their reasoning for a steam-only prerelease. Either no pre-release at all or pre-release for everybody, steam or not. Whats another two weeks waitinfgfor non-steam users? well if that's the argument... whats another two weeks waiting for steam users? What better bonding experience for the community if not slogging through the same buggy pre-release together? Current active players is around 4300 on steam. Nothing close to 1.0 release this time last year when users peaked around 20k for a week. the bandwidth argument seems shaky at best. Hard to believe Squad really expected 20k users to jump on the pre-release. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HoloYolo Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Just now, nli2work said: No, I don't feel I own them. I'm simply unconvinced by their reasoning for a steam-only prerelease. Either no pre-release at all or pre-release for everybody, steam or not. Whats another two weeks waitinfgfor non-steam users? well if that's the argument... whats another two weeks waiting for steam users? What better bonding experience for the community if not slogging through the same buggy pre-release together? Current active players is around 4300 on steam. Nothing close to 1.0 release this time last year when users peaked around 20k for a week. the bandwidth argument seems shaky at best. Hard to believe Squad really expected 20k users to jump on the pre-release. So let them pour resources away from the update so you guys get a pre-release? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frybert Posted March 30, 2016 Share Posted March 30, 2016 Discussion becoming circular and posters resorting to personal attacks: Locked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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