I would hazard to guess that the problem with Steam is that they take a 20%(?) cut on the sales price. I don't know if Steam keys cost something extra for already existing customers with S1/S2/S3. Also as LFS has never been discounted I guess the full price might be something not many would pull the trigger on and the devs are not too keen to make discounts. Although the Steam platform would bring a lot more potential customers than what word of mouth can achieve.
Well, now we start racing AS4 1hr race on LFS SUOMI server. Feel free to join NOW. 
)
(We race every day at 19:00 or 20:00 CET.)
Going to Steam would be a big step for LFS. As an accountant, I would like to see all the profit calculations: how much the sales are thought to be increased and what would be the difference if we take Steam costs into account.
)(We race every day at 19:00 or 20:00 CET.)
Going to Steam would be a big step for LFS. As an accountant, I would like to see all the profit calculations: how much the sales are thought to be increased and what would be the difference if we take Steam costs into account.
With an audience of 10 million active users, is hard to understand why "any" game chooses to not be there at all.
I would understand the hesitance on selling the game in there if the game was flawed, risking bad ratings and public perception.
But this game is virtually perfect in its functionality.
With Steam providing to the developers 10 million users who look for and trust the ratings system, if you find yourself in the position of having an insanely polished product, you are not maximizing your chances staying out of it.
I would understand the hesitance on selling the game in there if the game was flawed, risking bad ratings and public perception.
But this game is virtually perfect in its functionality.
With Steam providing to the developers 10 million users who look for and trust the ratings system, if you find yourself in the position of having an insanely polished product, you are not maximizing your chances staying out of it.
Presumably there would have to be some sort of programming change to make it work with steam. They, or Scawen on his own rather, would then have to sort steam keys for all the users. They wouldn't get all the money per purchase. They would get absolutely murdered in the steam reviews for the way and rate of pace the game is worked on. Servers would likely get beset by the kind of idiots that use arcade racing games. Don't know whether you've ever been on Assetto Corsa public racing servers, full of numptys. So in short:
More effort that takes away from developing the game
Less money per purchase
Likely lowering the quality of racing in the game
Higher overall return is speculative.
Possible ethical objection to making a third party DRM a requirement.
More effort that takes away from developing the game
Less money per purchase
Likely lowering the quality of racing in the game
Higher overall return is speculative.
Possible ethical objection to making a third party DRM a requirement.
Didn't Scawen mention they would need to change their company structure because of certain tax requirements enforced by steam? They would also loose some independence, it may be easy and convenient for us but I doubt it's as straight forward for devs.
When you sell a game, you need to look where people are, and on pc steam have the lion share of the industry, that can't be helped sooner or later they need to move to steam or similar platform.
It's good to being sticked to principles of independency etc, but if you care a minimum about your game and want it to survive you have to make the necessary moves to keep people interested with a minimum of coverage.
As for multiplayer, we don't have to worry since we can regulate the races per safety rating thanks to the airio, in Assetto corsa they use similar solution ( Minorating.com ) and racing is much more safe now.
But the timing is important, moving to steam with the actual state of the game is rather stupid, devs will get themselves buried under harsh comments and reviews, so unless they bring the game to a more modern state they sur will fail in their action.
It's good to being sticked to principles of independency etc, but if you care a minimum about your game and want it to survive you have to make the necessary moves to keep people interested with a minimum of coverage.
As for multiplayer, we don't have to worry since we can regulate the races per safety rating thanks to the airio, in Assetto corsa they use similar solution ( Minorating.com ) and racing is much more safe now.
But the timing is important, moving to steam with the actual state of the game is rather stupid, devs will get themselves buried under harsh comments and reviews, so unless they bring the game to a more modern state they sur will fail in their action.
whats the current state? everything worked last time i picked the game some 5 years ago. Honest question.
consumers trash broken games ratings on steam (deservingly so!), but not perfectly functional games. Not liking the graphics/sounds hardly warrants that kind of review, least of all on Indy titles like this one certainly classifies as.
consumers trash broken games ratings on steam (deservingly so!), but not perfectly functional games. Not liking the graphics/sounds hardly warrants that kind of review, least of all on Indy titles like this one certainly classifies as.
Sometimes you need to face the truth and say that LFS is very poor graphics wise and it's a real immersion breaker not only for me but alot of people will say the same, fictional cars/tracks are fine but the content is very unequal quality wise and we lack some other racing categories, physics are good tbh but has many flaws that some guys exploit to get a completely laughable pb which will discourage many people getting into serious and close racing servers or leagues, also apart from multiplayer LFS has no many features for a good single player experience.
Just look to steam version of Rfactor 1 and the other Rf mod called automobilista, they don't have many attraction because of that.
For a simulator with nearly full of fictional contents who was released since 12+ years, people will except a little more polished product, especially with the ferocious competition that we have now on steam/pc, multiplayer experience is not enough if people can't enjoy the contents with a perfect condition and many features, I suggest for scawen to drop a bit about this VR euphoria and concentrate on the core game to improve contents and feature into a equal state, and why not implementing real time weather or other fancy stuff to attract crowds.
But knowing scawen through his various forum posts, with him it's all about motivation, I think he's not taking lfs as serious business but rather like a free time hobby, if he don't feel like coding into lfs he can drop the things for many years, now he have motivation to develope VR stuff, but after that we are not sure about not entering again into those years of dead development.
And I perfectly understand his situation, as I have same time consuming hobby ( cars design, 3d modeling ) and if you can't have the motivation to start or continuing things you simply can't face them again.
It's only MY opinion with my poor english, I don't force you to be okay with my reasoning.
I understand.
But you have to understand that value is attached to cost, and most of us got their value back many times over the course of 5 years since it released (when it peaked). For the consumer the game ran its course. For the developer at this point in time, he should be on its 3rd of 4th generation of the game.
Interesting to see that one of the heavy hitters of today, Assetto Corsa, compared to LFS has a horsesh*t multiplayer environment and an even worse netcode. It wasn't until last week that finally, finally the collisions were sort of fixed, finally allowing some close racing on a racing game!
Until some member presented Kunos with server/client telemetry demonstrating the horrible netcode, the developers stance was: "everything is fine, the problem is that you don't understand physics"..
Thats why i think that Scawen might still have a chance to revive LFS.
Put it on steam, collect some money, invest on visuals/sounds/content/mods, and it might take off.
But you have to understand that value is attached to cost, and most of us got their value back many times over the course of 5 years since it released (when it peaked). For the consumer the game ran its course. For the developer at this point in time, he should be on its 3rd of 4th generation of the game.
Interesting to see that one of the heavy hitters of today, Assetto Corsa, compared to LFS has a horsesh*t multiplayer environment and an even worse netcode. It wasn't until last week that finally, finally the collisions were sort of fixed, finally allowing some close racing on a racing game!
Until some member presented Kunos with server/client telemetry demonstrating the horrible netcode, the developers stance was: "everything is fine, the problem is that you don't understand physics"..
Thats why i think that Scawen might still have a chance to revive LFS.
Put it on steam, collect some money, invest on visuals/sounds/content/mods, and it might take off.
Of course it turns into a thread about steam. LFS is a sim, and if its one of the best sims, then people looking for a racing sim will buy it. We're looking for racers, not gamers.
On topic: I don't think I've ever raced with 3+ people on a US/Canadian server. There are enough of us here, we should setup an informal time to race!
On topic: I don't think I've ever raced with 3+ people on a US/Canadian server. There are enough of us here, we should setup an informal time to race!
Assetto corsa are knowing the success because this game somehow achieved what many people dreamed since long time, I mean a good quality contents and a forza/GT like graphics but with realistic enough physics to make it enjoyable, they have pretty good AI for solo players and some interesting features like dynamics time of days, race weekend etc... and the easy modability is a huge advantage too, despite their discutable multiplayer design they have many active servers, it's just like LFS on his golden age, that mean a good base game cannot stop people from playing in multiplayer even with a shitty netcode, but kunos managed to fill some gabs and it's pretty good for pickup racing now.
We have many interesting choices now, for exemple Iracing are for multiplayer crowds, RF2 for those who like ice-like realistic physics
, AC and automobilista for content and overall good features etc.... it will be difficult for LFS to find a comfortable place between them, but what LFS must bet on is offering a balanced product with a good price, but a balanced product must be up to date to the current standard.Sadly even racers are on steam now, being arrogant against steam users is a very big mistake.
LFS needs money to evolve. Steam would bring fresh money. Word of mouth did its course, and searching for LFS keywords on racing forums no longer brings any hit
It turns to Steam as that is probably the most used game service there is and therefore an easy way to access lots of newcomers, love it or hate it you can't argue with their customer base.
At this point in time it is not just hardcore racers lfs needs, it needs gamers, casual users, drifters, VR users, It really doesn't matter, and for that it needs publicity and people talking about to get the servers busy. Obviously it is a sim, but it has never just been hardcore racers, it's always had a mix of abilities and interests within its users even from the early days. Everyone always just found a server that suited them.
I tried LFS again yesterday. I think it still does the best job of any sim telling the driver what is happening in those 10 cm between the contact patch and the wheel rim. I can just feel the car moving about on the contact patch which I don't get with any other sim. But ... I will still go back to the sim I have been driving for the last 5 months. It has at least 20 cars that I like and 15 tracks that I enjoy (and they don't have chicanes and horrendous curbs ). That seems to make up for any lack of physics and "feel".
That said, I would still like to see LFS flourish. Scawen is a talented programmer and it is evident that the interface of LFS been given a lot of thought. And the netcode is great. But all that doesn't make up for the lack of content. And LFS is competing with developers with a lot more resources.
The only hope I see is that they can find some kind of nitch market. Maybe they can become a poor man's iRacing. Netcode is one part of the online experience ... human drivers are the other. And human drivers are the worst part of the online experience. iRacing uses Safety Rating and licence levels to attempt to restrain drivers. Maybe some kind of incentive can be built into LFS (not just tacked on through insim) that would accomplish this. Anyway, I wish them good fortune.
). That seems to make up for any lack of physics and "feel".That said, I would still like to see LFS flourish. Scawen is a talented programmer and it is evident that the interface of LFS been given a lot of thought. And the netcode is great. But all that doesn't make up for the lack of content
. And LFS is competing with developers with a lot more resources.The only hope I see is that they can find some kind of nitch market. Maybe they can become a poor man's iRacing. Netcode is one part of the online experience ... human drivers are the other. And human drivers are the worst part of the online experience. iRacing uses Safety Rating and licence levels to attempt to restrain drivers. Maybe some kind of incentive can be built into LFS (not just tacked on through insim) that would accomplish this. Anyway, I wish them good fortune.
I agree. And AC developers didn't start with that many resources. Assetto only got big in the last year or two. It sold enough in the beginning to fund the licensing of many cars/ tracks, visuals sounds, and even resources to develop/publish on Console.
LFS does not to be on steam becoming popular.
LFS is a remunerative product, if they can't reach where people are, crowds will simply ignore this game existence, and since we need more people to play with, this is sadly a much needed step.
But it's not yet the moment to do so.
Lalz. I see LFS isn't a product which is controlled by people ( of where the next step should be taken). It is quite opposite.
yea, sure we can't control things that we don't own, but being arrogant and waiting for consumer to come is the wrong thing to do for selling the game, you can make the best simulator of all time but if you don't advertise it and trying to put it when people are, your game will simply stay still on your HDD without anyone knowing.
Developer can develop and consumer is supposed to consume, they are two things in the same chain and no one can survive without the other unless you make a free game.
It can be advertise with other methods than steam
If you have any other way to make LFS more popular, you're welcome to suggest it here on the forum or directly to the devs.
IMO steam is just one of those popular stores, I think it's even better if they manage to sell LFS through each of popular online gaming markets ( GOG, amazon, Oculus store etc... ) the more visibility the better for LFS.
IMO steam is just one of those popular stores, I think it's even better if they manage to sell LFS through each of popular online gaming markets ( GOG, amazon, Oculus store etc... ) the more visibility the better for LFS.
I wait for updates, then let's see
Of course, the game is not ready yet.
LFS is one of the best sims, but time is running and game sim opponents are overtaking LFS, let's be honest, the game is good, it lacks content and player base, Steam would help but also Steam community players that are used to Higher quality sim games would not give money into a limited game like LFS, so finish the product (the base) then think about putting it into STEAM
Also for people who says that LFS doesn't need Steam to get popular, you're wrong, LFS is most likely unknown nowdays in the internet; and everyone is only asking about games on Steam, who today would think of downloading a game from a website? Maybe before 2010..days changed and this needs renovation
Also for people who says that LFS doesn't need Steam to get popular, you're wrong, LFS is most likely unknown nowdays in the internet; and everyone is only asking about games on Steam, who today would think of downloading a game from a website? Maybe before 2010..days changed and this needs renovation
Steam that and Steam there... so we need LFS to be on SoMe?
Yes, it needs to be advertised, but there is other things than only Steam, so, answer is invalid.
But if LFS goes on steam, then so what? Even if I dislike the thing, it won't stop using me the product anyway.
But as I have said and you have said, finish the product/update it more = then ok.
I also did think that there might be actually some benefits on steam, but why only steam? or steam anyway... Ugh, hmmh, blah...
I still don't see the reason, specially when I have see some other games having huge amount of people without any steam, and still goes on. The genre itself just isn't for me at all.
Where the hell are the racing servers?
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