Survival game Vintage Story adds 200+ new blocks, lightning, water physics update

If being on Steam gets you 43% more sales than not being on Steam, then the 30% pays for itself, even ignoring the saving in hosting and bandwidth costs. Everyone's free to make their own decisions of course, but "I'm not putting my game on Steam because I'd like to make more money" isn't a terribly reality-based position for anyone EA-sized and below.

Did i say earlier i think Vintage Story is the best of its kind ?

Yeah, i think i said ten times maybe...

If being on Steam gets you 43% more sales than not being on Steam, then the 30% pays for itself, even ignoring the saving in hosting and bandwidth costs. Everyone's free to make their own decisions of course, but "I'm not putting my game on Steam because I'd like to make more money" isn't a terribly reality-based position for anyone EA-sized and below.

Statement from Vintage Story forum :)

First item on the FAQ page: https://www.vintagestory.at/features/faq.html/ Short answer is 'someday maybe'. It's not really mentioned in the FAQ, but another reason is that steam crowds can be pretty harsh, and you only get one chance to make a first impression. There's a desire to get the game to a really good state of polish, before throwing it upon steam's tender mercies. And it's not there yet.

https://www.vintagestory.at/forums/topic/2573-steam/?do=findComment&comment=9765

Did i say earlier i think Vintage Story is the best of its kind ?

Yeah, i think i said ten times maybe...

I will add to the choir. The very best in its genre. Its also a coherent game, its not a ton of crap thrown together like that other, well known, blocks game. Everything is designed to work together. The art style is great and consistent. The game is also ultra realistic, but not to the point of making gameplay tedious. You like survival and/or crafting games? You like to build stuff? You like amazing pixel art? Maybe you are more the dev type and you like an easy to mod game? This game is for you.

Is there a cinematic mod such as this one:

https://content.minetest.net/packages/x2048/cinematic/

This game needs no cinematic mod. The graphics and environment is astonishing considering the limitations. I remember when i first played it i was constantly amazed just how good devs managed to make a blocky game look. For example, sunny yet frosty mornings in autumn actually did feel like cold yet beautiful, just like in real life.

One thing that did annoy me to no end in this game was fighting mechanic. Every fight with an enemy felt like hitting a cardboard with a stick. Even Minecraft (thing that people usually compare it with) has it better with critical hits and feedback system. I wish that devs tackled that problem soon so it would attract a lot more people! Other than that the game is amazing. It has some survival realism like seasons and the need to store food for the winter and etc. But it is not too tedious and can be quite fun. Building mechanic is also pretty good, it can be as simple as building a house out of 1m3 cubes, just like in MC but also has a feature to chisel any block that turns one 1m3 cube into 16x16x16 blocks (with different materials) adding a hell of a lot more detail if you are up for it to do it manually.

By the way, if anyone is up for setting up a GOL server, i would try this game again.


Last edited by woox2k on 6 September 2022 at 10:57 pm UTC

This game needs no cinematic mod

Cinematic mod is important for the gaming community, both to show off their world and for camera control in live-action, episodic content, like those that Neebs Gaming make.

But as an indie studio not on steam, no-one outside of GOL is likely to know much about this game anyway.

If being on Steam gets you 43% more sales than not being on Steam, then the 30% pays for itself

I completely agree. Maybe the game has sold 50K units off-steam, I don't know, and the dev is happy with nearly £1M revenue, right? But then you have Valheim on several million sales - even with the lower price AND the 30% cut, it's a different league. 50 million sales (so far) - roughly £500M revenue after the 30%. That's... half a billion pounds. Insane money. They sold 3M units inside of a fortnight. You can bet that the 5-person studio behind Valheim weren't moaning about the 30% cut when those sales started rolling in.

And yet there are probably quite a lot of Vintage Story fans that would make the case that it's better than Valheim. Surely worth the risk?

steam crowds can be pretty harsh

But on the other hand, I agree with this too, and since Vintage Story looks like Minecraft, it's likely in for a rough ride in a way that Valheim somehow got a free pass, despite their similarities.

(That was a very long-winded way of saying that I'll likely pick this up when it hits Steam, but unlikely to do so before it does - it's the kind of game I'd enjoy playing with my small circle of online mates, and getting them to set up/host games from Steam is already a challenge - it's just not worth the hassle trying to coordinate it all in a custom off-steam environment)

If being on Steam gets you 43% more sales than not being on Steam, then the 30% pays for itself, even ignoring the saving in hosting and bandwidth costs. Everyone's free to make their own decisions of course, but "I'm not putting my game on Steam because I'd like to make more money" isn't a terribly reality-based position for anyone EA-sized and below.

What's this developers email or Twitter? Could somebody just tell him exactly this for crying out loud

Maybe the devs just don't want that huge of an attention currenly with the game being still in work in progress state. They might be happy enough with the current situation about the money. The fans will buy the game anyway and they get some feedback to work towards the fully feature complete game and then maybe one day they release it on steam to get more attention. My thoughts on that.

The game doesn't need a cinematic mod... its already built in!

https://wiki.vintagestory.at/index.php/Cinematic_Camera

If being on Steam gets you 43% more sales than not being on Steam, then the 30% pays for itself, even ignoring the saving in hosting and bandwidth costs. Everyone's free to make their own decisions of course, but "I'm not putting my game on Steam because I'd like to make more money" isn't a terribly reality-based position for anyone EA-sized and below.

What's this developers email or Twitter? Could somebody just tell him exactly this for crying out loud

Thanks but I am well aware of this - and being made aware of it on a regular basis
It is likely that the game will be on Steam some day, but I currently see no urgency for this.

If being on Steam gets you 43% more sales than not being on Steam, then the 30% pays for itself, even ignoring the saving in hosting and bandwidth costs. Everyone's free to make their own decisions of course, but "I'm not putting my game on Steam because I'd like to make more money" isn't a terribly reality-based position for anyone EA-sized and below.

What's this developers email or Twitter? Could somebody just tell him exactly this for crying out loud

Thanks but I am well aware of this - and being made aware of it on a regular basis
It is likely that the game will be on Steam some day, but I currently see no urgency for this.

Good to hear! But to be blunt: we users kinda have a huge urgency for Vintage Story to be available on Steam i mean, what would you lose for putting it out there? Or maybe i'm just a damned simpleton.

If being on Steam gets you 43% more sales than not being on Steam, then the 30% pays for itself, even ignoring the saving in hosting and bandwidth costs. Everyone's free to make their own decisions of course, but "I'm not putting my game on Steam because I'd like to make more money" isn't a terribly reality-based position for anyone EA-sized and below.

What's this developers email or Twitter? Could somebody just tell him exactly this for crying out loud

Thanks but I am well aware of this - and being made aware of it on a regular basis
It is likely that the game will be on Steam some day, but I currently see no urgency for this.

Good to hear! But to be blunt: we users kinda have a huge urgency for Vintage Story to be available on Steam i mean, what would you lose for putting it out there? Or maybe i'm just a damned simpleton.

Just read the earlier comments. Tyron has made clear several reasons (on their blog/forum - read crse's comment) why it's not a priority. I want it on Steam too, but there are good reasons it's not.

Just read the earlier comments. Tyron has made clear several reasons (on their blog/forum - read crse's comment) why it's not a priority. I want it on Steam too, but there are good reasons it's not.

Not really good reasons. They think they'll make more money - see my prior comment - and they believe that they need to charge the same price for sales off Steam as they do for sales on Steam, which isn't at all true if they aren't giving Steam keys for sales off Steam and isn't quite true if they are giving Steam keys. It's their choice, of course, and if they don't feel their game is even at Early Access quality yet that's also their choice.

Just read the earlier comments. Tyron has made clear several reasons (on their blog/forum - read crse's comment) why it's not a priority. I want it on Steam too, but there are good reasons it's not.

Not really good reasons. They think they'll make more money - see my prior comment - and they believe that they need to charge the same price for sales off Steam as they do for sales on Steam, which isn't at all true if they aren't giving Steam keys for sales off Steam and isn't quite true if they are giving Steam keys. It's their choice, of course, and if they don't feel their game is even at Early Access quality yet that's also their choice.

Even if you could debate those particular reasons, the main one I completely agree with is that Steam is an unbelievably harsh audience - critical, demanding, largely uneducated and unbending. And the worst part? They get to review your game publicly, allowing for a sole developer's career to be largely ruined on the basis of, say, a similarity to Minecraft.

If Tyron doesn't have immediate cashflow issues, and actually cares about their reputation as a game developer, then I completely agree with their caution. Despite the fact that I'd really like to play this, but as I say, without Steam multiplayer, I can't see me buying this.

Even if you could debate those particular reasons, the main one I completely agree with is that Steam is an unbelievably harsh audience - critical, demanding, largely uneducated and unbending. And the worst part? They get to review your game publicly, allowing for a sole developer's career to be largely ruined on the basis of, say, a similarity to Minecraft.

If Tyron doesn't have immediate cashflow issues, and actually cares about their reputation as a game developer, then I completely agree with their caution. Despite the fact that I'd really like to play this, but as I say, without Steam multiplayer, I can't see me buying this.

I think I've said it three times already, but I'll say it again just to be sure: it's entirely their choice whether they put their game on Steam or not, exactly as it should be. No skin off my nose either way. There are those (including yourself) that will be aware of the game and yet choose not to purchase it unless it's on Steam, but there are far more that will never hear about the game if it's not on Steam.

I wish the best of luck to the devs, and it seems they've created something that people really like, which is great.

If Tyron doesn't have immediate cashflow issues, and actually cares about their reputation as a game developer, then I completely agree with their caution. Despite the fact that I'd really like to play this, but as I say, without Steam multiplayer, I can't see me buying this.

How does Steam handle community servers? I have yet to play a game on Steam where they are a thing. There's no on demand server instances for VS... I guess you could choose to share your single player instances with your friends on Steam and allow them to join through there, but that would be about all the benefits Steam would give you. In the end it would still be like Valheim where you have to tell your friends on which community run server you are playing, giving them the IP/domain like we used to do years ago, and completely bypassing the Steam multiplayer thing.

If Tyron doesn't have immediate cashflow issues, and actually cares about their reputation as a game developer, then I completely agree with their caution. Despite the fact that I'd really like to play this, but as I say, without Steam multiplayer, I can't see me buying this.

How does Steam handle community servers? I have yet to play a game on Steam where they are a thing. There's no on demand server instances for VS... I guess you could choose to share your single player instances with your friends on Steam and allow them to join through there, but that would be about all the benefits Steam would give you. In the end it would still be like Valheim where you have to tell your friends on which community run server you are playing, giving them the IP/domain like we used to do years ago, and completely bypassing the Steam multiplayer thing.

Well, for something like Don't Starve Together, the "server" is just your own PC. You create the world locally, then use Steam's multiplayer to invite friends to it. I imagine that VS would use the same approach.

The main point here is that I know if my friends are online, what they're laying, and inviting them to play is as simple as right clicking their name and choosing "invite to game". I can message them, voice with them, etc. Maybe VS makes it trivially easy to do something similar for multiplayer - and that's great, because it has the advantage of running on something like GOG too. But I'm less likely to be playing it in the first place, because 99% of my gaming is on Steam.