That`s pretty much ME!!

IF there a chance to get a DVD Copy of GC 3 and expansions,... I`ll get it. I have my reasons!!

Why don't you just buy blank dvd box from a shop and print a paper cover yourself? I'm sure you can spice it with a screenshot from the game or something. Or if you want to get serious and have a collector's edition, then buy a 3d printer and print a subject related box . Inside you can put your Steam user account details.

DIY collector's edition with style?

It would be awesome to 3D print a custom design starship. Even better a model that of the Drengin or Altarians!! You think Stardock could distribute some modelfiles??

You have a 3-D printer?!? You lucky ma'fuka'!

I have a few Steam powered games, Civ5 being my favorite, and I have a difficult time getting it to run "offline". I am currently living and working in Afghanistan and the internet access here is not very dependable and extremely limited (as far as where I can access it from).

So, I am NOT a fan of Steam access

Seems like everyone's got a smartphone now, but yeah, I never even  had one of the older ones that was just a phone.  I can see where a cellphone would be nice in emergencies, but I can't see where I'd need access to the internet away from my home computer.  I use the internet for basically two things; gaming and pornography.  Either way, smartphone screens are too damn small.

Modelfiles for their Ship Designer? Eh... I think it'll ba half of game's size. Not necessary bad thing, I admit.

Let's start simple - some soft that would allow us to unwrap model we created. Those unwraps could be printed and turned into papercraft models. Much simpler and cheaper solution.

I can't say for Afganistan, but I've visited countries with... let's say "problematic" internet connection. Downloading something is indeed troublesome on dialup or it's mobile equivalent, especially when there is extra fee for traffic (or additional fee for abroad roaming. $1 per 1MB is cheap in those circumstances.

But in current state Steam seems to be working fine offline. If it can't connect to Internet upon launch it stays offline regardless. I don't know whether my and my "comrads in arms" requests had taken effect or not, but I like that.

Since game is digitally distributed, I guess we tied to Internet anyway.

Actually I don't have one (wishing!) but I hear you can take/send your file to a company and they will print one for you. Or, you know, for the future where we all have one

okay DIY manual, if you could actually make a professional looking manual bound and all great for you, to have a print shop print it for you (assuming Stardock would allow you to print copyrighted material) would be around $40.00

DIY box, if you can print a box great otherwise you have to have that printed as well (again assuming Stardock gives you rights to print copyrighted material) would run about $15.00

DIY sleeve cover anyone could print with little effort next to no cost.

DIY disk label minimal cost purchasing the labels

DIY disk (assuming you can get the game installer and the steam installer and put it on a disk) being you need steam to run the game.  blank disk DVD/Blu-ray with case $1-$3

Total cost assuming you need a print shop about $55-$60 (this is all assuming you get access to copyrighted material and you are only printing 1 copy for yourself)  If you could print in bulk this would potentially cut this cost in half up to a quarter.  Bulk meaning 1000+ copies....

Now if Stardock would choose to do so being they are the company they could offer this package potentially for an additional $25 and still sell this kit fully printed and delivered but, would they sell 5 or would they sell 10000, that's where the problem comes in, you don't want to invest money into this with the overhead you can't drop.  One solution to this would be to come out and offer a pre-sell of this material with the option if they only sold 20 then they could refund and not produce, however, if they sold 1000 then they would ship on release date?  But only available prior to release and only to those who preordered, that way no overhead that you can't get rid of.

I think that would be a solution to this concern...

That's the slippery path, don't let EA read about that, or they'll offer us bucket and pickaxe (only for $60 each, only on origin) and say "trees are over there, oil is over there (beware of local populace), ore is over there, you can buy blueprints, maps and additional tools in origin, only for $30 apiece... Feel yourself like home." And next thing you'll see will be Gnomoria IRL for all games made by EA, 2K, and Activision.

The OP is still correct, to an extent.

Also, his claim of intending to download a pirated copy from the internet was not "in lieu of" a lack of internet connection.  The statement was made with the intent that a lack of internet connection is what bothers him in a download-only game, and that he'd rather pirate it in such a case while he does have a connection.  Perhaps still a bit silly, but hardly contradictory.

To which I say, I wouldn't talk about that sort of thing on these forums, OP, liable to get banned.

Nevertheless, what will you all do when the entirety of the system collapses around the next decade or so?  You won't even be playing games with physical copies, let alone online.

Number Cruncher and Twitchers...go figure.

To clarify; what I meant was that most pirated games don't require Steam and/or an internet connection once installed. Even though the original of those games does. At least, that's my experience and understanding from browsing around the web (where people indicate this).

I was not saying I was going to illegally download GalCiv3. But I do think I am going to cancel my pre-order and just wait untill the game and all of it's expansions and dlc are available for just a few bucks.

It's up to you to decide, but even if they will be available for few bucks, aren't they still be bound to Steam? Unless, of course, GoG...

I know it'll probably still be on Steam, but that's years from now and who knows, maybe my opinion will differ then.

It's your choice and your money, so only you can decide.

Someone's going to have to remove or replace the Steamworks stuff to make it not bound to Steam. There's no just flipping a switch and going "oh hey, now it's on GoG!"

There are games both on Steam, and on GoG. Somehow I don't think it would be that difficult to disconnet steamworks, even at cost of reduced functionality lost due lack of Steamwork. Whether Stardock is going to do that or not - is up to them.

I mean we used OFP/ArmA related sites for decades before Steamwork was added for ArmA3. Duke Nukem 3D is not Steamworks bound on GoG. Same could be said about Shadowrun, or Legend of Grimrock.

I don't understand the problem.  You'll need an internet connection to download, but the FAQ clearly says you don't need it to play. That is, you'll be able to deselect it or some such thing.  

If you lose your machine to an asteroid strike or something, you can always hop online and download at the hospital while they're sewing in that new spleen.  If you do, in fact, move to Pluto, you can be sure there's a Starbucks with free wifi there.

Digital media is everywhere.  I can't be bothered to fumble around with a CD since I can carry a lot more on my flash drive.  It's not an age thing either. I'm much older than you, Nitro. I'm in my 50s and would rather have the convenience of digital media rather than a box taking up space.

It's certainly up to you, though.

Oh, my first video game was pong on a black and white TV.  No game cartridges, just a pong console. We only had 3 channels and I had to go to a neighbor's house to watch anything in color.  5 miles barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways.

depends. It's not that hard to replace it with nothing, in which case that functionality goes awaY in the GOG version. If people are okay with that, no problem. 

Making functionally identical versions is not trivial at all. 

Well, I see little advantages in ArmA3 over ArmA2 in terms of mods installations or functionality (outside of obvious differences), or between Steam version of ArmA2 or any other. Same goes for TESIV or TESV. Yes, you have to do some things manually, like install the files, but it's not the big deal. Especially if you're not into mods or multiplayer much.

Getting version compatible with each other, in terms of multiplayer and/or mod compatibility, could be a challenging, probably, but I don't have Steamworks experience from modding perspective. Kinda stopped before it appeared.

Because the game is seventeen years old and Steamworks support was just specially retrofitted in to the Steam release a few months ago. Probably not the best example.

How easy or not it is to do a non-Steamworks version of a Steamworks game depends on a variety of factors: what features are used and how tightly coupled they are (those that offer without are probably hooking it up via a loader and using only basic features like achievements), and whether the expected extra sales are worth the effort.

Using Steam for multiplayer support greatly increases the effort needed and reduces the potential profit at the same time (people interested in multiplayer are a lot less likely to want a non-Steam version).

In terms of multiplayer it'd be easy: they don't. It's using Steamworks for MP stuff, and a non-Steamworks version would either have no MP at all, or wouldn't be able to talk through Steamworks to all those players. That happened with Sol Survivor - it had Steam and Impulse versions, and their MP communities couldn't talk to each other. Suffice to say there was only significant MP play in one version.

The most likely result would just be no MP in the GOG version, because replacing what Steamworks is doing with your own code is a significant amount of effort (and cost), and Stardock has already been there once and is now using Steamworks instead. That's kind of what it comes down to - if people are okay with a GOG version that is strictly speaking the Steam version except for a bunch of stuff being removed, then it's comparatively not that hard for Stardock to do it.

Making functionally identical versions would have significant cost, and they don't sound enthusiastic about it right now.

2Kryo

The only drawback of texts - you can't express irony without too obvious hints (unless you personally know each other and reading texts while imagining your interlocutor's reading them for you, with his specific voice and intonations). Yes, I mean DN3D example.

I'm not telling you it's your job to tell us how difficult it would be to release GC3 outside of Steam. It would be interesting to know, I admit, without financial side, of course, probably even without telling us about man-hours required.

All I'm telling that although I do not hate Steam, I simply like alternatives, especially good alternatives, like you or GoG present. I'm not going to criticize Steam's support for being slowpokes, I understand why is that, if have less than 300 people in Valve at all. At least they help, even if slowly, take that any day over EA "support", they are less useful than tits on boar.

I am kinda used to "unshacled" versions I could download from your site or GoG's, and play freely, even if Steam is giving away Left4Dead2 down (yes, PTSD from working with dialup and Steam). I like CD Projekt Red and Stardock, because games are DRM-free, gamers bill of rights, fast and helping support, you both listen to your audience, have no "art" nonsense, and you show you trust us through your deeds, not your words.

So I wouldn't mind to get "non-Steam" version of game, even if I had to buy it one more time - I did that with Witchers, for example.

He-he. Sounds very familiar, only for different reasons - regional locks "and stuff", like delayed patches, or simply incompatible versions, so you forced to play in reservation either among your compatriots, or among people from country where you bought game.

So I'm not much multiplayer-oriented person, not only because I live with dialup for more than a decade.

Like I said, there are many reasons why I'm not multiplayer person, so I don't mind such "cut" version at all.

I'm interested in Stardock's estimates of hypothetical audience of MP players though.

Yeah, I played Game Dev Tycoon, so i'm aware about featurecreep.

Yeah. If you're using your own MP code, than it works across anywhere you can make it work. If you're using a library, it only works where the library works. Steamworks obviously only works with Steam, but it's free and popular (so it's been well tested). It's pretty hard to pass up, especially if MP isn't the focus of your game and you can get a lot if it working by linking into a library and making some calls. They've mentioned this is a SP first game, so if they can get MP without having to spend a lot of money, it's an appealing value-add. (And since what I want out of MP is a coop version of the SP game, keeping the two as similar as possible also makes me happy.)

I'm big on coop MP, but I also like single player games. Used to play more competitive MP in the past, but I kind of got away from that as I got older.

That'd be neat. I can't imagine it's huge, but it can help you sell copies. I'm buying either way, but my best friend likes playing games like Civ with me. He's not buying right now, but if the coop works he'd pick up a copy so we can play together. Having it also gets you publicity and reviews on some gaming websites that would ignore (or penalize) a SP only game.

That was a great little game. I tried to make a MMO and it bankrupted me!