I decided to price it alongside similar games at $20. It took a long time to come to this decision and it wasn’t made lightly.
Where does the money go?
KorGgenT, who is the driving force behind the steam release will receive the steam sales. Anyone who wants to donate to the rest of the Developer team will need to check Donations for those who have set up ways to receive donations.
Does the steam release mean XX feature/content?
No, the steam release will keep up with the most recent stable for the forseeable future.
Will there be workshop support?
Yes. you will be able to use the workshop for tilesets, sounds, mods, and more. ETA currently unknown.
I thought the Devs were against a Steam release?
Nope, none of them simply had any interest in putting the legwork in until now.
I’m not sure what I’m more excited for, seeing the game on steam and being able to more easily recommend it to friends, or watching the absolute seething in the steam community as the brainlets come out to play and fail to ‘get’ the game at all.
Either way, glad to see the game trying at steam again!
What exactly are people getting for the cost of the game if you can download it for free straight from your site? I assume you got inspiration from Dwarf Fortress release on steam and the popularity it gain. I understand that, but they developed a full graphic interface and a change of UI alongside with updates to bump it to version 0.50. If you’re going to be adding some unique features and make a seperate Steam version, you should point it out. At the moment, it just looks like a cash grab.
I’ll assume from your new account that you’re not particularly familiar with CDDA’s development history, but our boy here is a prodigious developer of some major, core features for the game, and we have him to thank for wild shit like the containerized inventory overhaul, the Magiclysm mod (With other hands, of course, but pretty sure he built the core spell infrastructure) and probably a dozen other impactful things that just washed right over me with the rate he manages to make the game great.
If dudes willing to put in the legwork to sustain a steam release, and gets paid for all the great shit he’s put into the game indirectly as a result, I’ve got no problem with it. Its no more a cash grab than say, Song of Styx, the ‘demo’ of which is just the entire game, a few versions lagging. Buy in to support development and such. As long as the other core contributors are cool with him making and maintaining the fork, Its all good.
Maybe its just me, but having someone of his talents financially vested in continuing to improve and develop the game is more than worth $20 to me. And that’s ignoring all the years of fun I’ve had with the game.
I’m not doubting his skills and work. The game very well may be worth $20 or even more to some. If he’s going with the route of just putting the game on steam to for sale as being like a tip jar and not an added features bonus, he should make potential customers aware of the free version.
And they do: The steam page has the links to the project where people can get the game for free if they want the experimental version. All the information is there and very plain to see.
With this said: this game has given me more than 20 dollars worth of content and enjoyment - I’ve been playing since 0.C (never played stable, so read that as “experimental 0.D” I guess) and given how many thousands of hours I dedicated into this game, it’s a no-brainer.
What I would argue is that the “list for donations” for other devs/main contributors of the project could be made available on the page too - maybe the “dot org” website needs some rework to make some things more clearly visible, but that’s an unrelated issue.
I’m playing Cata since the Whales early versions, i’ve had way enough fun already for the asked price.
However, i feel i disagree with where is going the money. The game is the result of the work of dozens of people if not hundreds, and even if one man leads the Steam version, in my opinion it’s unfair for all contributors over the past years.
From what I understand, the reason why the money is going to one specific person - that being Korg - is because they’re the one tasked with the headache of dealing with all the stuff that will come out of the game being on steam, from the expense of listing the game there, to the upkeep it requires for it to be available.
Splitting 20 bucks for 1000s of people would result in nothing per person, whereas someone having the sum helps giving them the time to put into the game and its development - especially given Korg is the person behind a lot of the important systems that make the game’s current integral structure. They’ve already put a ton of hours and probably money too into the game themselves.
This is, of course, what I am gathering from all the stuff I’ve seen both here and on Reddit - I am sure they’ll make a concise “thread” or something for people to read and to reassure them of certain things that may arise.
I agree, but it’s not splitting 20 for 1000 persons, it’s 20*N copies. How many copies, no one knows i guess, but with the game’s aura, it could be easy to imagine at least 10 000 copies, probably 100 000 or more with some time. I know, taxes and all, still a great potential amount of money.
Anyway, not mine to decide, and i don’t actually have a perfect solution neither. It’s simply my own opinion, open for discussion and controversy and argument and ignorance.
Trust me as someone with experience, trying to operate any sort of revenue split is a nightmare of paperwork to legally do right, and the nightmare grows exponentially the more people you add in. Its very likely that the endeavor would end up costing money after all the accounting and paperwork hours required to divvy out funds beyond a handful of people. Steam will only deposit revenues into your singular business account, so you can’t just have them deal with it for you.
It is a cash grab but its a deserved cash grab. Some people will probably be butthurt about it but if KorGgenT cares he can just spent it on CDDA indirectly, like put up bounties for implementing features or pay for hosting or something.
Only potential problem I see is that with putting up CDDA on steam at all - soon the place will be swamped with tech illiterate kids spamming bug reports because they can’t start the game or copy the save and making suggestions that most of the community have seen and discussed and buried years ago already.
soon the place will be swamped with tech illiterate kids spamming bug reports because they can’t start the game
And this is one of the reasons why 1 person getting the “income” from the game is better than splitting it in 1000s, aside the already mentioned possibility of putting a bounty for features or fixes.
I do not envy KorG for this task ahead of them - mainly because I know of a few self-published developers, and from their experiences, having to deal with “kindergarten-esque” users who either fail to understand basic reading or refuse to spend more than 30 seconds in a task or in learning something can be excruciating somedays.
Mind you, this doesn’t mean it has to be KorG and KorG alone doing this: surely others who play the game (or contribute to it) will more than happily lend a hand to moderate both steam “forums” and help keeping things tidy here.
Despite my initial hesitation, the Core Developers really believe this arrangement makes sense, and so nothing for anyone else to say other than support them and CDDA’s success.
I’ve seen some people being Skeptical, with the justification of “Dwarf Fortress has a bunch of QOL, UI changes in the Steam version, AND THIS GAME HAS NOTHING DIFFERENT AT ALL!!!THISGAMEWILLFLOP!!!”, but here’s the fact: They’re LITERALLY comparing v50 Steam to v47 Classic. If you ACTUALLY COMPARE v50 Steam to v50 Classic, the ONLY KEY DIFFERENCE IS THE TILESET, other than that, QOL improvements, UI overhaul, mouse support, all in the Classic version, albeit having to spend a while identifying objects. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have any suggestions for this Steam version, a couple of ideas that I’m having now:
Include with a Soundpack in the Steam version
Having the ability to download newest versions of mainline tilesets
I’m sure CDDA will be well received on Steam; There’s no doubt about that. It’s quite frankly one of the better if not best Rogue-like Dungeon crawlers out there.
I guess I’m worried about the potential controversy that will occur. But this is more set on the lack of reference for this sort of thing happening, than any factual concern.
I mean, I don’t know many games that have been developed by a community before, let alone entering a commercial space as one. Will it work? I have no idea; I haven’t seen any examples until now.
Still, on a lighter note, the potential for this game to grow and expand is always a welcoming sign. An regardless of concerns, this was likely going to happen one way or another. May as well be now.
I feel the same way as Tchey. I can’t explain why but the idea of one person (who I don’t trust or know) being the beneficiary of a community-developed project like C:DDA feels wrong to me.
I’m also concerned that it might drive away some people from contributing in the future, that some people may purchase the game believing multiple developers are receiving their money, and the thought of someone purchasing the game without the knowledge of a free version existing. I mean no disrespect and this is how I feel.