IIRC, wasn't one of the problems with Steam publishing that they didn't like/allow your purchasing/subscription model at the time?

I don't think so. We have in-app purchasing solutions on Android with Google and now with Microsoft on WinRT/Win8, where we lose a substantial cut off the top for the benefit of appearing in their respective stores and the relative convenience of checkout using those stores. We would have done something similar for Steam, and I think I had even discussed that with the Steam people. But, they never said why we weren't accepted, and explicitly said they would not tell us.

For what it's worth, I just bumped your metacritic user score to Universal Acclaim.

Thanks much, we appreciate it. I'm not sure how much weight that will carry, since the user score could theoretically be "astroturfed" by any well-heeled publisher or developer.

Anyway, we do have a number recent, positive articles from reputable gaming sites (Massively, Kotaku), just not the type of reviews that try to boil everything down into the all-important representative digit. Hopefully the articles we have will be helpful when the time comes to re-approach Steam.

"and explicitly said they would not tell us."

Aha, I was wondering why I used to have Steam pegged as lower-than-trash. But I didn't remember so I unpegged them - a grievous error. Now that I remember again, I revoke my condonement of the OP. I have no tolerance whatsoever for that sort of mentality.

Aha, I was wondering why I used to have Steam pegged as lower-than-trash.

Eh, I didn't react as strongly to them on that point.. they don't want a bunch of people publicly complaining about being rejected for one reason or another, or arguing about the validity of different reasons. I can certainly identify with the desire to minimize drama.

I did object to wasting a lot of my time (I was under the impression we were accepted, we even started allocating dev time to their achievements API and such) prior to receiving their rejection. I spent something like a year trying to raise them via email, finally sat down amicably with them at GDC, left with a strongly positive impression, and then got rejected a few weeks later. That irked me; but, that's just life.. and business.

That's also why I haven't re-approached it since. We're a small shop, I don't have a hell of a lot of time (or budget), I strongly object when it's wasted to no purpose. I'm sure it wasn't intentional on their part, but that's how it worked out.

Anyway, we'll give Steam another try sometime soon, perhaps after a few other changes slated for the next couple of months.

Why don't we just do it now and stop wasting all the free marketing opportunities? It sounds like something that should happen sooner rather than later...

"...stop wasting all the free marketing opportunities?"

Ya Inc! Get off your butt! You need to get free national television exposure, have the game preloaded on mobile devices, and get your game bundled with a widely released OS.

So lazy.

lol, it's only speculative, but the idea that porting to android presented a good cost/reward marketing scenario compared to improving the gameplay and following a traditional PC marketing model seems a little silly to me. In either case what's done is done, steam is the frontier of online game sales it's insane to ignore that.

We would have gone out of business without mobile. Period. The game would not be here, especially not in any developing sense. But, I suspect people will never really believe me, on that. People will always justify gameplay improvements because it's what they want, even though in early 2010 we had near-zero marketing reach and were scraping rock bottom.

Yes, we will re-approach steam. I've already said so, multiple times, on this very thread. No, I'm not canning six-month-long projects that have recently made us a lot of money, or are likely to in the immediate future, to run over to steam. Because that would be stupid.

And while we will re-approach steam, I would advise cautious expectations and enthusiasm. As far as I can tell, they do not like MMOs (not since their early days), and they don't games with low metacritic scores. I think there is a strong chance that they will not accept us. But I'm fine with trying anyway, in the near future, I just have zero developer time right now.

As long as I have the choice to run/install this game with Steam, or without it, I'm all for it. I prefer to not use Steam.

Inc, I absolutely believe you, and while a lot of us pine for game play updates, we understand.

Assuming that each developer only made $30k, and there were no other expenses like resources, taxes, and office costs, it would take 750 subscriptions a month just to pay dev salaries. Since we don't see a player base that supports that number, we have to conclude that GS is getting substantial income from the mobile platforms to offset the lack of subscriptions.

So....while we give you a hard time about porting to mobile platforms, we understand it was necessary, and we thank you every time we play from the toilet.

haha Savet

You are assuming the subs aren't making use of bulk discounts. And don't forget there are 4 devs now.

That's why it's great to be here; VO is such an improbable, awesome phenomenon. No wonder it has so many fervent fans. There should be a documentary on us someday.

Actually, I was using some best-case scenario numbers, with Incarnate working for free.

I think you may be significantly underestimating the number of subscribers.

I'm not suggesting they don't have a lot of subscribers, I'm just stating that the population in the universe does not indicate a number that would fund servers, developers, office expenses, travel costs, development equipment, etc.

I'd guess that 50% of active veteran players have 2 paid accounts, which probably helps as well.