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question on steam - 6/23/2015 10:06:40 PM

kingstuart444

Posts: 44
Joined: 11/10/2009
Status: offline

help out an old guy please

steam has unity of command the whole thing trilogy bundle for 4.49. yeah that price is what is talking to me.

had my eye on the game and ill prob buy it. but...
what are the advantages and disadvantages of going with steam instead of matrix on this aside the price (base game 19.99 + 9.99 + 9.99)

never did steam and don't know too much about it. whats next, email on my phone? a walkman with no moving parts? what's next? i cant keep up argh!

thanks

Post #: 1

RE: question on steam - 6/23/2015 11:44:52 PM

budd

Posts: 2972
Joined: 7/4/2009
From: Tacoma
Status: offline

the advantages are you can install and play your games on any computer by signing in to steam [have to have the steam client installed] steam keeps your games up to date [not really a big plus with unity of command, its not getting updated any more.] the biggest advantage is probably the sale prices and having all your games in one place. It is a kind of DRM that some people are opposed to, feeling like if steam goes belly up your games will be gone. I've been with steam since it started and have never had a problem with it [knocks on wood].

_____________________________

Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Be Yourself; Everyone else is already taken" ~Oscar Wilde

*I'm in the Wargamer middle ground*
I don't buy all the wargames I want, I just buy more than I need.

(in reply to kingstuart444)

Post #: 2

RE: question on steam - 6/24/2015 12:11:06 AM

milkweg

Posts: 546
Joined: 7/23/2007
Status: offline

The downside is you have to have the Steam client open to run the game and by default it connects to the internet. You can set it to go into offline mode so you don't need to be connected to the internet to run the game but the Steam client still needs to run first before the game will run. There are a few games that will run without the Steam client running but very few.

There is a security option called Steam Guard (enabled by default) that ties your computer to the client or you can turn it off and use just password for security (less secure). If you turn off Steam Guard now and again Steam will ask you to confirm your email address and sometimes ask you to login with password again too, which I find annoying.

Matrixgames has none of those annoyances and you just enter the serial code when installing or updating with patches.

(in reply to budd)

Post #: 3

RE: question on steam - 6/24/2015 1:03:53 AM

aaatoysandmore

Posts: 2848
Joined: 9/11/2013
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: kingstuart

help out an old guy please

steam has unity of command the whole thing trilogy bundle for 4.49. yeah that price is what is talking to me.

had my eye on the game and ill prob buy it. but...
what are the advantages and disadvantages of going with steam instead of matrix on this aside the price (base game 19.99 + 9.99 + 9.99)

never did steam and don't know too much about it. whats next, email on my phone? a walkman with no moving parts? what's next? i cant keep up argh!

thanks

Three things with Steam that can be a problem basically. Them going out of business and all the games you bought you might lose. The 2nd is the control they have over you and your games and now even the developers. If a developer gets it in for you because you spouted negatives about his game then in the multiplayer portion of the game he can now ban you without Steam intervention. This doesn't bode well with giving ones opinion about a game in the negative manner. Steam also controls your "account" and if they find reason they can ban you from their service online. It's still possible the games will run offline though.

Just something to think about. I only buy cheap games on steam and maybe one or two AAA titles like Total War and Crusader Kings II. But, if the game can be bought outside of Steam you can bet that is where I will buy it. I buy all my Matrixgames games here and use to buy Slitherines from them. Sad to hear they are no longer going to develop games. Some of them were truely good.

(in reply to kingstuart444)

Post #: 4

RE: question on steam - 6/24/2015 1:05:00 AM

marcpennington

Posts: 335
Joined: 1/31/2011
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: milkweg

The downside is you have to have the Steam client open to run the game and by default it connects to the internet. You can set it to go into offline mode so you don't need to be connected to the internet to run the game but the Steam client still needs to run first before the game will run. There are a few games that will run without the Steam client running but very few.

True in the sense you need Steam running to download the games initially. But after that as far as Matrix games go, you can just create a shortcut to the .exe file in the Steam common directory, and just click on it to play the game without ever logging into Steam again. Different publishers have different rules, but Matrix seems to be using Steam as just a very light-weight (as far as DRM goes), and convenient (as far as patching goes), framework.

There are issues with sub-publishers of Matrix not releasing Steam friendly patches of their games in a prompt time-frame (cough, Age-OD, cough.) But in general otherwise I'm a huge fan of Matrix moving towards Steam, while still allowing direct downloads from their site. I've bought a large number of Matrix games at big discounts, games which I probably wouldn't have purchased otherwise, but some I've become hooked on since (AJE most of all), that I would not have bought but for the discount as well as the Steam convenience. But do buy from the Matrix store when reasonable comparative prices are available, just to get the actual developers a bigger cut of the profits.

< Message edited by map66 -- 6/24/2015 2:17:04 AM >

(in reply to milkweg)

Post #: 5

RE: question on steam - 6/24/2015 3:37:07 AM

milkweg

Posts: 546
Joined: 7/23/2007
Status: offline

I bought Pandora from Steam (matrixgames is the publisher) and just tested what you say. When I ran Pandora via a shortcut to the exe file it opened up Steam too.

Tested it with CC:Gateway to Caen and it also opened up Steam client when running from the game exe.

One more...

Tested Qvadriga and that did run without running the Steam client so guess some matrixgames games will run without Steam and some won't.

< Message edited by milkweg -- 6/24/2015 4:37:33 AM >

(in reply to marcpennington)

Post #: 6

RE: question on steam - 6/24/2015 4:25:07 AM

kingstuart444

Posts: 44
Joined: 11/10/2009
Status: offline

thanks for the comments thus far

i saw that the game had some user made scenarios at the dev website, it is the norm that games can add such files with no problem?

(in reply to milkweg)

Post #: 7

RE: question on steam - 6/24/2015 6:44:49 AM

aaatoysandmore

Posts: 2848
Joined: 9/11/2013
Status: offline

Just like other things not all mods outside of steam work. Made ones from the Workshop they use for modding now will work. It's sort of a trial an error thing as well.

< Message edited by aaatoysandmore -- 6/24/2015 5:46:00 PM >

(in reply to kingstuart444)

Post #: 8

RE: question on steam - 6/24/2015 9:44:01 AM

chemkid

Posts: 1238
Joined: 12/15/2012
Status: offline

.

< Message edited by chemkid -- 4/24/2018 12:24:44 PM >

(in reply to aaatoysandmore)

Post #: 9

RE: question on steam - 6/24/2015 11:40:44 AM

Fred98

Posts: 4430
Joined: 1/5/2001
From: Wollondilly, Sydney
Status: offline

I have only one Steam game - Arma 3.

I tested whether you have to be online to play. I turned off my modem then started the game. I was asked "Do you want to play offline?" I answered yes and continued.

1. I have found that Steam will automatically update a game.

2. Steam gives the option to save the game files to an external hard drive.

I always did both of those things with any Matrix game I bought by download.

So, Steam has no specific benefits. Arma 3 is not available by any other means!

.

(in reply to chemkid)

Post #: 10

RE: question on steam - 6/24/2015 12:32:14 PM

Alchenar

Posts: 360
Joined: 8/2/2010
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Joe 98

I have only one Steam game - Arma 3.

I tested whether you have to be online to play. I turned off my modem then started the game. I was asked "Do you want to play offline?" I answered yes and continued.

1. I have found that Steam will automatically update a game.

2. Steam gives the option to save the game files to an external hard drive.

I always did both of those things with any Matrix game I bought by download.

So, Steam has no specific benefits. Arma 3 is not available by any other means!

Those sound like specific benefits given they happen automatically.

Also steam will sync your saves to a cloud account so if you install your game on any other system (or just uninstall it and delete the saves then re-install) you get to pick up where you left off.

(in reply to Fred98)

Post #: 11

RE: question on steam - 6/24/2015 4:48:10 PM

aaatoysandmore

Posts: 2848
Joined: 9/11/2013
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Joe 98

I have only one Steam game - Arma 3.

I tested whether you have to be online to play. I turned off my modem then started the game. I was asked "Do you want to play offline?" I answered yes and continued.

1. I have found that Steam will automatically update a game.

2. Steam gives the option to save the game files to an external hard drive.

I always did both of those things with any Matrix game I bought by download.

So, Steam has no specific benefits. Arma 3 is not available by any other means!

.

While that works that way. Try uninstalling the STEAM CLIENT and see if they still work. Only some games that aren't under Steams full control like Paradox games and the like will work without the Steam Client. It has to install something on your computer for many of them to work even in "offline" mode.

Something else I discovered is memory usage goes way up with Steam Client working and even after you shut Steam down there is still a memory usage going on. Who knows what that Steam clent is doing in the background. Only way I can get rid of it is to restart the computer it will go down then from 40 to 20 until I run Steam client again. Then memory creep right back up to 40.

< Message edited by aaatoysandmore -- 6/24/2015 5:53:23 PM >

(in reply to Fred98)

Post #: 12

RE: question on steam - 6/24/2015 6:55:42 PM

Lecivius

Posts: 4845
Joined: 8/5/2007
From: Denver
Status: offline

Steam client is not the only file. They add in to the registry as well. DamnifIknow what or why, but they do. Also, running a game bought from Stream will cause a coded 32k upfile transmission. I don't know why, but I don't like sneaks.

My opinion, of course.

(in reply to aaatoysandmore)

Post #: 13

RE: question on steam - 6/24/2015 9:55:22 PM

demyansk

Posts: 2840
Joined: 2/20/2008
Status: offline

I have a load of games on Steam and it works well and for that price- it's worth it. By the way, not many of us play games from 10 yrs ago, steam works well and enjoy

(in reply to Lecivius)

Post #: 14

RE: question on steam - 6/24/2015 10:27:12 PM

marcpennington

Posts: 335
Joined: 1/31/2011
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: milkweg

I bought Pandora from Steam (matrixgames is the publisher) and just tested what you say. When I ran Pandora via a shortcut to the exe file it opened up Steam too.

Tested it with CC:Gateway to Caen and it also opened up Steam client when running from the game exe.

One more...

Tested Qvadriga and that did run without running the Steam client so guess some matrixgames games will run without Steam and some won't.

I didn't really that some of Matrix games behaved like that. I had only tested Command air/naval, Flashpoint Campaigns, and AJE, so just had assumed that all of them behaved like that. My bad.

(in reply to milkweg)

Post #: 15

RE: question on steam - 6/25/2015 5:09:31 AM

kingstuart444

Posts: 44
Joined: 11/10/2009
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: chemkid

@kingstuart - how about buying directly from the maker? for 7.49 can't make a mistake there, i guess!

http://unityofcommand.net/buy

also, you'll get both - the installer AND steam keys!

quote:

Note that the game is entirely DRM-free. You are not required to install Steam to play Unity of Command.

cheers!
chem!

thanks chem kid nice find

(in reply to chemkid)

Post #: 16

RE: question on steam - 6/25/2015 12:10:25 PM

gexmex

Posts: 150
Joined: 11/13/2008
From: Nashville, TN
Status: offline

Steam will run offline. Yes the client opens, but you are not required to connect to the internet to play most games. Only caveat is that it won't keep track of your play time logged whilst offline. Obviously that's not a huge deal for most folks.

(in reply to kingstuart444)

Post #: 17

RE: question on steam - 6/25/2015 12:48:56 PM

Eambar

Posts: 240
Joined: 4/2/2010
Status: offline

I have 51 games on Steam and around a dozen (including many Matrix titles of course) not through Steam.

The reason that I have the non-Steam games primarily is that I used to spend a lot of time off-line and even when you go off-line with Steam (you have to be on-line first to go off-line) after two weeks the game would go looking to go on-line again, in some cases locking the game until I went back on-line.

I like Steam for the ease of purchasing, patching (+ updating) and of course, the sales. I also like seeing how many hours I have spent playing the game.

As far as using mods on Steam games, I have over 200 mods for Skyrim which I downloaded through the Nexus Mod Manager, and the game works fine.

I don't get into the trading cards, achievements and all that stuff so can't comment on the usefulness of that aspect of having a Steam account.

Cheers,

(in reply to kingstuart444)

Post #: 18

RE: question on steam - 6/27/2015 12:23:51 PM

Gilmer

Posts: 1452
Joined: 7/1/2011
Status: offline

Many games you buy at Matrix, they'll also give you a steam code, if you want to play it through STEAM. The best of both worlds!!

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"Venimus, vidimus, Deus vicit" John III Sobieski as he entered Vienna on 9/11/1683. "I came, I saw, God conquered."
He that has a mind to fight, let him fight, for now is the time. - Anacreon

(in reply to Eambar)

Post #: 19

RE: question on steam - 6/27/2015 1:00:02 PM

pmelheck1

Posts: 610
Joined: 4/3/2003
From: Alabama
Status: offline

only issue I've had with offline steam mode is you sometimes MUST connect to steam or it locks you out of offline mode. I also have updates to titles of only KB of data that seems to be some sort of security check. You can't run the game until you allow it to update the game. These updates are not patches as they occur with tiles that haven't been updated in years and in some cases where the company that made the title no longer exists. Only other issue I've had with steam is the client running in the background with some memory intensive steam games and sometimes had memory issues before a memory expansion.

< Message edited by mullk -- 6/27/2015 2:01:47 PM >

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Post #: 20

RE: question on steam - 6/27/2015 3:07:35 PM

aaatoysandmore

Posts: 2848
Joined: 9/11/2013
Status: offline

Have many of you looked at the update policy lately on Steam? Used to you could turn it on or off. The last few games I have bought and checked I don't have that option anymore.

There's 3 options but turning off updates to a game is not one of them anymore.

(in reply to pmelheck1)

Post #: 21

RE: question on steam - 6/27/2015 3:29:05 PM

Talon_XBMCX

Posts: 220
Joined: 8/1/2008
Status: offline

I prefer all of my wargame purchases to be through Matrix. I have never had a problem with the 40+ games I do have on Steam, but I prefer to support smaller developers on their own stores. I do like getting AAA titles on the cheap from Steam. But for the games I put the most time and investment into, I prefer not having to depend on third party access.

(in reply to aaatoysandmore)

Post #: 22