Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General DRM-free, CE and steam

I am personally a little bit disappointed to not have the full game on disk in the CE like the old times, (and it's unpalatable for non steam users), but I am surprised by the excessive reactions of some of us on KS and forums !!

* DRM-free != game on disk

DRM-free mean no software protection on digital content, ONCE you get the game you can copy and play it without any restrictions regardless how you get the game (via steam, GOG, or in a disk !). DOS is definitely DRM-free and the disk contains the majority of game data, so the download time is short.
(buy the game, download and burn it, you have your DRM-free disk with the game running everywhere without steam !).

Larian studios guys are working hard to offer us a good and finalized rpg game before the end of this month. Most of you probably never had to develop a real game or a computer software, so you don't realise how hard it is ! They need the support of the community, not insults and discouraging comments.

If Larian want to cheat on us, okey don't play their games and don't buy it, but did they made misleading advertising and sells a poor CE for 100€ like some big editors ? No ! So stop selfish acts, be less aggressive and more mature in your comments guys. We had 61 updates on KS and everyone appreciates it !

Personally I am expecting a game not a box... and I am sure that Larian will not repeat this issue for their next games.

Yes, there were some insanely overblown reactions there. I feel tired of seeing the nonsense and it's not directed at me over something I poured my heart and soul into so I can't imagine how hard this must be on Larian. I feel very sorry there had to be so much dirt over so little.

From the look of it, it's just an individual who spends his/her time on insulting rather than communicating, whom I won't name. That said, while I somehow managed to get adopted to the digital era, I understand the needs for a good olde disc from the pastoral age of pre-copy protection/online platform clients, which simply contains the game. I didn't expect Larian, as veteran gamers themselves, failed to understand the needs. On the other hand, at the same time, I understand the additional labor/time for patching different platforms.

Personally, I took digital only tier since I think it spares some cost/time for both Larian and me. However, I chose GoG option, which turned out to require more work at their side, compared with Steam, simply because I wanted both versions but can wait for Steam price drops, which is usually earlier than GoG's. Yeah, I wish we had examined our needs thoroughly before something like this happens since, at times, both sides don't have a clue in what the possible conflicts with the needs of the other side.

well even if people overreacted on the topic, we can understand their concerns...
This being said, I think it is a bit pointless to re-argue about that again

Arguing is almost always pointless, anyway (Well, between close friends, it can remove frustration at times, though).

While I have quite a few games now on my Steam library, I remember my feeling when I had to install Steam first time when I bought a game on dvd. I felt it was forced on me but the indie game company developed the game didn't have any other option since the deal is done by the publisher. Some of us put more than I have spent on the game for CE+ tiers and they were buying it directly from the developer. Also, the concept of DRM free as "no string attached" i.e. no SecuROM, no Steam, no Origin, no UPlay seems to be common if you browse some digital download sites.

I, myself, still have the habit of using Steam offline but I'm not sure how much of info they gather from my activity even if I'm doing so. Personally, I use Gmail as a platform to gather incoming mails (initially for the powerful spam filter and now to organize on the top of it) but I don't tell this to everybody who send me a mail. And you know, when it comes to the privacy, Google is kind of... In any case, nowadays, on daily basis, we have to weight our privacy (and some other people's privacy) against daily convenience as long as we are putting our devices online. DRM is just a part of this trend. While I'm accustomed to some conveniences which Steam offer, I don't blame some people simply because they have more strict "security policy" than mine (by keeping their devices free from these clients).

@Dasyure I totally agree with you on privacy issues. I am not arguing on the question and I am not blaming people who want the game on disk without steam since I am one of them !
I am just blaming insults and overreacting which can be very hurtful for developpers, the game is more than a piece of code for them, and it's not the time to get discouraged

Not releasing it on disk makes total sense given the development nature of this game. If it had to go on disk, there would be a hard dead line, a gold copy, people rushing deadlines, and an unpolished product being released to the masses.

With digital distribution, they can update the final build minutes after the game has been released.

@HKFF
Yeah, and I agree that some of the wording were unnecessarily offensive. Just as another old-timer, I understand the needs.


@chimp
That is Larian's view and I'm happy with the digital distribution but the point here is not everybody share the view. Even in this era of digital distribution, I know some people who rather stick to buying boxed copies. To be honest, I was surprised by the demands of physical goods in different crowd-funding campaigns while everybody knows they are talking to digital game developers-not toy makers. This, however, confirmed that physical box collectors I know are not just a minority.


Also, after supporting some projects, I felt the tendency in which developers overlook some "obvious" things from the side of the players/consumers and vice versa. In such projects, developers have to do things they wouldn't as long as working as a part of conventional business model. I think it's a good move for Larian to have used the marketing company, which cooperated with CD Projekt ReD and GoG.com. So, it covered the marketing sector but, judging from some outputs (eg no dice for CE), they seem to have underestimated the distribution sector while some consumers are accustomed to getting games "in perfect condition" through retailers-otherwise, they will complain to the section which is responsible for this (Larian can end up with playing the role of a poor shopkeeper at times).

What would be possible lessons for both sides, then? I think there are some benefits in the traditional business model: For example, consumers/players don't need to risk/spend a cent before products are finished or, when they found the products are flawed, there are often established systems of replacing them. Crowd-funding projects are rather new and not all the people are ready for some clumsy occurrences. Some common sense helps but expecting everything is not possible, well, at least, for me.