I have always wondered about this, because I am seeing more and more games on steam that are not Valve developed or published, even some 1-man developed games/mods (Audiosurf, garrys mod)

Is Steam now a free market, would LFS be able to be sold on steam...if the LFS team felt it was a move forward?

This has confused me tbh, theres so many games I can think of that would benefit from being on there, I buy many games from it, its a great way to keep track of friends and its generally easier.

I'm always tempted to buy stuff from steam, I open to play CSS or TF2 or COD4, always look at the shop first....:P

The current available racing games on there dont compare to the in-depth physics of LFS.

What do you all think?

Valve takes a major cut of all sales through Steam so I'm not sure if it would be good business for the Devs.

Quote from spacedskunk :

The current available racing games on there dont compare to the in-depth physics of LFS.

If you observe the amount of cruise, drift, role playing and bizarre city life related threads (and the clutch heat extravaganza was off the scale too) in the general discussion, you can see that relatively big part of community does not really even care about good physics. They want NOS, fancy rims and some fat rapper wobble his lard to some second rate TR808 beats in the background.

I assume any game makers/publishers can distrribute on steam.

There's probably a price to be paid though, either upfront or a % of each sale.

*edit* bah spanky

Ahhh I see.

Still though COD4 has been in the top sellers since it was added to steam and its $70/£40 lol.

LFS was what? £24, that would be around $45 on Steam which would make it the second most expensive one, even if it was sold at that price, the devs would be making a profit even with a cut towards steam as a publishing fee....I presume anyway.

I mean add all up the players on steam, just adding the players from CSS nevermind the rest of it will add like over a million viewers a week

TBH though I am talking about future, maybe S3 LFS

Steam started out as a good idea.

But when you can order games from play.com and hmv.com for less than they cost on Steam, and physically buying the game involves manufacturing, shipping, then shipping again to deliver it to you, and a cut for everyone involved in this process, then you know someone at Valve is getting mighty greedy.

Quote from spacedskunk :

Still though COD4 has been in the top sellers since it was added to steam and its $70/£40 lol.

COD-series has a large fan base, lots of marketing and overall a much bigger democraphic.

Quote from spacedskunk :

I mean add all up the players on steam, just adding the players from CSS nevermind the rest of it will add like over a million viewers a week

A million views won't matter in the end if the Steam user base is not interested in proper racing sims. And LFS having graphics from DX8-age will most certainly be a handicap to the same average Steam user who is expecting DX10 shaders and easy glory.

Quote from spacedskunk :

TBH though I am talking about future, maybe S3 LFS

My money is on the 'There will be no S3' ticket. Even the idea of S2 stage without new good tracks and cars feels dated already.

Quote from STROBE :

Steam started out as a good idea.

But when you can order games from play.com and hmv.com for less than they cost on Steam, and physically buying the game involves manufacturing, shipping, then shipping again to deliver it to you, and a cut for everyone involved in this process, then you know someone at Valve is getting mighty greedy.

Agreed.

I think steam is good as it is, LFS is more of a specific market product, aimed at people who want to drive a realistic game and get good at it the hard way, not just play a game that drives for you.

I think LFS has enough customers at the moment and its customer database is expanding nicely, the last thing we want is a 1000 full servers of wreckers, that steam brings in.

LFS + Steam= Fail

Think of the buyers through steam, CS players on LFS

Quote from spankmeyer :

Valve takes a major cut of all sales through Steam so I'm not sure if it would be good business for the Devs.

They take a cut, yes, but my understanding is that it is far less than a normal publisher, also the developer gets to keep full control of the product. Plus the exposure you get through Steam is pretty good, a lot of free advertising.

I think LFS would be good on Steam, it would make the devs a lot of buisness, but I think they would need to wait until S2 final before releasing it.

Steam started off a bit dodgy, but these days I think it's a great service. I'd be happy to see LFS on it!

Quote from Takumi_lfs :

LFS + Steam= Fail

Think of the buyers through steam, CS players on LFS

yes, in every crash someone yells '' BoOM HeADshot!?!!!, f u freaKing n00B '' and that, isnt fun anymore. that is actually why i stopped playing CS. every single time someone killed other people they yelled that into microphone or said it at chatbox. and than there would be more hackers, in many servers at CS you see atleast one hacker

Even though valve take a fair share from selling games on steam, the game will become more popular just by being on steam, allowing popup news, auto updates, etc.

I remember how people hated steam back around 2004, but now it's just brilliant.

Quote from STROBE :

Steam started out as a good idea.

But when you can order games from play.com and hmv.com for less than they cost on Steam, and physically buying the game involves manufacturing, shipping, then shipping again to deliver it to you, and a cut for everyone involved in this process, then you know someone at Valve is getting mighty greedy.

This isnt exactly true, some games...about half of them are cheaper and obviously when bought from steam are instantly available for download and it will autoupdate them for you. I picked up san andreas for real cheap off there a couple of months ago, and it still remains cheaper than even play.com atm.

You have de-railed abit here though onto a steam problem, and forgot about LFS only being available as an internet download anyway.

Now I see the problem with CSS players etc maybe downloading the demo and using it stupidly, but in my prediction your going to get this anyway when showing LFS to so many people who have instant access to its download without even looking which steam allows you to do...

Another point I would like to argue with yours is this....I have bought many games off steam on impulse...games I wouldnt normally buy, even if they are on special offer, right there, right then. I fancy playing a strategy game....woops, dont have one...lets see whats on steam...and an hour later I was playing Civilizations IV, steam had made a sale and I didnt have to wait for the disc to arive. I was drunk with my friends here, we wanted to do something, we bought Doom3 (well I bought :P) off steam, downloaded it within the hour, turned the lights off and had a right laugh and this is all true. You cant do this buying from an online store, you dont have so much accessability. Someone fancies a good racing game..."oh look, Live for Speed, is it really that realistic? Cool an unlimited time demo, well might as well try it"...and the rest follows on.

Providing LFS gets the credibility it deserves on Steam (via the use of metareviews to backup the claim of the one true simulator) I would like to predict a vast increase in sales.

The biggest advantage of Steam is that it reaches a huge market, and it provides an extra level of anti-hacking protection, not only though VAC itself but also the account creation process and risk of banning.

Of course they have to pay for bandwidth and costs like anyone else, so they take a cut.

I think it's a good service. It's a way to get good independant games that the developers maybe can't afford to publish themselves. No distribution costs = win for an indie dev.
LFS is different because there's not that many results when you search for something like "online racing simulator", so it's always going to be near the top of a list. But not every game will have such clearly defined search terms. Platform games, puzzle games, etc will all turn up millions of results. Whereas in Steam you can get a random feature or you can get a lot of publicity just by putting your name in there.