The 2012 Stardock Customer Report

Informative and interesting, as usual!

Interesting read Stardock, thanks for reading. Minor chuckle at hiring all those various civ 4/5 devs.

2 new games woot!!  ARe they going to be totally brand new or...perhaps one will be a new version of an old favorite(hint hint one that may have a cat type race that likes to conquer and eat everyone?)  Glad to see you guys are doing good, especially with the way things are today.

Since you are making lots of Win 8 apps, does that mean Win 7 users are now outta luck and should move to Win 8?  I guess it could be time for a new gaming laptop for me...just have to get the boss to approve, but she gets so feisty on spending money on that, and has allocated alot of our resources to buying new dresses for our 6 month old!!  I keep telling her, that Bree is 6 months old and doesnt need new dresses, which then gets me the "Stare" so I then head into town and go buy some dresses.  

Thanks for all the hard work!

First off, I really appriciate that Stardock has felt it necessary to share it's private successes and failures with the public. I have a few things that I took note of:

I find it interesting how Brad has acclaimed 90% of their sales to steam. Obviously, if you release products that are steam-only, than the % will be weighted in that direction. Only way that stat would be useful is if the products all had multiple venues of sale.

The same can be said for download sales versus store sales. Since developers stopped selling their games through stores, obviously the % will shift towards direct download. You can't get it in stores. It's being forced on the customer base.

I also found it interesting that only 37.2% prefferred steam. The rest want alternatives. Granted, a portion of the rest are willing to live with steam, but there is a portion that would be happier without. Comparing closer to home, 20.8% still want direct purchase from the developer. Even if half were willing to use steam, that still means Stardock has decided to cut away 10% of it's market by going steam only.

I'd wager, if SD was on the stock market, the release of this document would have made the market very cautious to invest, despite being SD's best year to date.

Thoughts? Comments?

As in Galactic Civilizations, Fallen Enchantress, and most of our other games?

I think it's safe to say that at this point, the market has gone with Steam. I put my money where my mouth was and spent millions on an alternative -- Impulse.  So I think it's safe to say I tried to provide consumers with an alternative.

SD won't be on the stock market.  It's privately held and independent and I have no intention of changing that. 

Over 95% of the customerbase is male?

Firefly, did steam steal your firstborn in the dead of night or something? You seem to have a rabid hate for them, and seem to feel everyone else should. I can't understand someone spending so much time and effort trying to justify not using Steam.

Interesting stuff, Frogboy.

Glad to know SD isnt going on the market...that would kill they way you do business and treat your employees.  I worked for a small company making motherboards, which got bought out by John Deere...4 years later its now all in Mexico...Im not in Mexico, so you can see what can happen.  Keep strong Frog!!  WE love SD(ok some of us) the way it is!!

Why u think im not mad at LH being steam only? You guys tried. I do suggest this, one thing that held the Civ5 Steam Exclusive tensions was the integrated Steam Workshop. Having a steam workshop made players feel like there was some benefit to having steam other than having steam (which isn't always a benefit).

I would hope that a Steam Workshop integration would inspire you to similar action. Yes, there are ways to get mods however a lot of people are kind of confused about it, and uncomfortable "tinkering", they just want a button to make it work.

Keep up the great work, everyone. 

+1 for Steam Workshop, and improved mod integration.

Good stuff, glad to see SD is doing great. 

Also hell yes for Steam Workshop and more mod stuff! 

Wow never new you published this.  Thats' fantastic, good for you Brad/Stardock.  Interesting read thanks.

Awesome Sauce for Stsrdock!

Didn't think you would be putting it on the stock market.  Just a point of comparison.

I would never have called Impulse 'an alternative' to steam. That's like saying that the democrats are an alternative to the republicans.  It's picking one evil for another. Any time there is a client involved set up to manage the users system for them, it's bad for the user because he has to give up control for the system.

That said, I most certainly appriciated the effort you placed into offering a direct download option for the FE release. Thank you for that.

In the end, you've got your private business to run. You've decided to go with steam and that's most certainly your right and your call. Despite my decision not to use steam, I'm still staying on the forum board because I believe that FE:LH is still currently gamers greatest hope of seeing MoM's spirtual successsor. I'll continue to follow the forums and offer any comments and opinions I have so that the game will end up being as good as it can be. Obviously, as you've probably alreadly seen, I've stopped commenting on things that have to do with game balance. Without the game, I can't really comment to those points...now can I.

I'm still going to be hopeful that after everything is said and done and after FE:XX is released and the final update is estabilished, that Stardock will be willing to put together a direct download release completely free from the intrusive steam software for those that wish to make the investment. When/If that day comes, you'll get my money.

Nah, I don't feel like everyone needs to have the same opinion as me when it comes to steam. You are quite welcome to your own.

As for why you can't understand my position, I'll try to explain it to you:

FE:LH and it's future successor game to be released on steam have placed me at a crossroads.

On the one hand, I hate steam. I've tried it. It strips control away from me. Even after switching to manual update and offline mode, the games still periodically demanding online connection and whenever steam updated, it reset to defaults auto-updating my games and corrupting my saves. Absolute frustration with the client, not to mention the extra memory it takes...and yes, every little bit counts. Compound that with the fact that whenever you didn't have access to the client or whenever the client crashed, you lost your game too. Now, this all happened quite some time ago and maybe steam has come along way, but the Eula steam enforces is also completely off the wall! Digital software law is way behind the times and at the moment, all the power is with the host of that software...not with the user. That means that if steam wants to change, they can. If they change their Eula....I have no choice but to accept or lose access to ALL my games. If they don't like something I post online, it dictatorship style, they can BAN me from their server. Don't think that it can never happen. It HAS already happened to people. The law NEEDS to catch up to the flagrant abuse that is currently happening with steam. Most people don't care and are willing to use the product. Most people don't care who runs their country either. In the end they will reap their own reward. In short, I hate steam, and so I've removed it and will have nothing to do with it. I guess I'm just old fashioned and competent that way. I like being able to control what goes on my machine and what is running in memory.

However, on the other hand, FE has been the closest game to be released that has been MoM's spirtual successor since MoM itself. MoM has been my absolute favorite 4x game of all time. Nothing had come close to it's complexity and uniqueness and adventuressness until FE. I don't have to speak much to this point because the game speaks for itself. By the end of this series release, there will be a mod that'll basically MAKE MoM for users to enjoy all over again. I asked several times during FE beta whether or not Stardock would be going with steam or not because the question and concern was already raised back then. When Brad informed us that a direct download option would be available, I was instantly on board.

That FE:LH switched to being steam only....well, it's like have the rug pulled out from underneath you. Granted, FE:LH is not FE.....but the original impression given was that FE:LH was to be an expansion to FE, and thus free from steam. However, since the decision to turn FE:LH into a stand alone product so that they can make it steam only....well, I like already said......rug was pulled out.

Anyways, hope this clears up my point of view on why I dislike prettymuch the entire embodiment of what steam represents. Steam may have been a temporary stopgap measure to ensure continued existance of PC gaming, but it's very quickly turning into the end of PC gaming as we know it. Once steam hits the console market as well, all games thereafter will be released at low console quality. PC gaming will be over.

An atmosphere of independant direct download gaming needs to be prevelant amongst gamers to encourage developers to continue aiming for top quality, independant, products.

Wow,

I disagree with so many of your assumptions about steam being the death of pc gaming that I won't bore you with them. Steam is the very best thing for small developers to come along in ages, IMHO. I have purchased no less than 5 games off steam in the last 6 months that I would not have been able to even find without steam.  The latest being Sang-Froid by a small Canadian developer that is excellent. I doubt I would have been able to find or purchase this game without steam. 

Steam is one of the best things to happen to PC gaming in years. I'd say probably 2/3 of my currently played games are on Steam, and many I repurchased on Steam at a discount so I could have easier access to them. I'm sick of CDs, and a couple hours to install a game is a minor price to pay.

Also, so many games I really enjoy that I never ever would have known about if not for Steam.

Impulse was nice, and Stardock Central before it. Impulse even protected me from installing E:WOM*. I kind of resent the Gamestop client now, though.

* Actually actually a weird problem with my dsl modem being incompatible with Impulse. I never did figure out how that was possible, but whatever. All the games I care about are on other clients now.

There's actually a like/hate Steam thread in this forum. Of course, finding for it is extremely inefficient given the state of Search, but still, I did think this thread was supposed to be all about Stardock's customer report. Just saying.

you should try the search function. It was completely redoe recently.

You're right. It's competent, now. Thanks for pointing that out.

I can't find the over-all "why Steam?" thread, though there are quite a few others that get into this. Here's one of the longer to drop opinions on:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/441788/page/1/#3334392

This forum doesn't represent the majority who buy Stardock's games, just the most vocal fans who feel like they have something to say (such as myself, I'm pretty damn vocal sometimes)

I'm one of those folks who prefers non-Steam, but will accept Steam given no other alternative.   I do believe if Steam goes dumb, an alternative will pop up very quickly (but I've also learned never to underestimate the willingness of gamers to throw away their principles for a game)  I do understand the logic behind going Steam-only, as much as I don't like the decision. 

I'm not surprised 90% of Stardock's sales are Steam.  Ironically, I think it helped FE that so few people actually played War of Magic because it wasn't on Steam.

I realise people have a love hate relationship with steam. My question is a simple one. If the internet goes down and I try to load Legendary Heroes, will it still load? My present understanding is it won't. Previous to Steam Fallen Enchantress through Stardock meant it resided on my machine and was independent of the internet. Not so with Legendary Heroes on Steam. How many people around the world have internet failures, and according to Murphy's Law, it is just going to happen when I am in a critical part of the game and haven't saved.

I prefer the freedom, after I pay my money, to play Legendary Heroes when I would like to, and for long as I would like, not dictated to by the whims of the internet.

You can play Steam games just fine without an Internet connection.

There's actually quite a large population of women using Stardock software.  They just expect you'd know that already without having to tell you or by responding to a survey