A Question Out of Curiosity: Why isn't this game on Steam yet?

As the title says, why isn't the game on Steam yet? They took it off when the game went F2P, but it hasn't been brought back yet.

Any word on the matter?

Basically they'd have to spend money to put it back up and apparently they haven't determined that to be a good investment at this juncture. If I had to guess, which I do, I'd say that steam was never a major source of revenue for them so they're not too bothered about losing it for the time being.

All they've said is that their concurrent players increased by a thousand percent. What that doesn't tell us is how many they had in the first place. It also doesn't tell us that steam had anything to do with it. We know from player testimonials that logging in is difficult to impossible and the servers are unstable, but that isn't traditionally considered a positive thing. It's as likely that it reflects badly on their technical skills as it is that it demonstrates what success they're having.

CoH was never in the top twenty on steam. Not when it was added, not when expansions came out, not when it was put on sale. Why bother when your own website, which you already are paying for, is bringing in far more players?

For me Steam was where I learned of the other game going F2P and seems a popular tool for people in the EU.

Steam would be a good place for NCsoft to advertise CoH F2P for the EU's, it's better than nothing.

There's far too much compare & contrast in this thread, even without directly naming the MMO in question.

In addition to the above, when CoH *was* on Steam they neglected it massively to the point that when they switched to requiring the NCSoft launcher those of us with Steam copies of the game were left unable to play it through Steam and never got a satisfactory response from support about it.

Hi everyone,

Please remember to keep the discussion on CoH.

Thanks!

MOD 7

Listing games on steam costs money, as does having them featured in the rotation of graphics at the top. Games that are not in that rotation do not sell well compared to those that are. Valve also has the discretion to choose what games it accepts on steam in the first place so it is not unthinkable that even if NCSoft did want CoH to be put back on there it may be rejected for poor past performance. I suspect that NCSoft and Valve have a good enough relationship that that wouldn't be a problem, but they just don't feel the investment is worth it.

'Cause hax.

Because Steam has changed their terms for developers as Valve began allowing F2P games on the service. The rule is that if you wish to sell DLC for the Steam version of the game, it has to be sold through Steam. Which makes sense, since otherwise Valve would be giving up bandwidth for free.

But since City of Heroes: Freedom uses the Paragon Store with the Paragon Points, it sidesteps Steam altogether when selling DLC. Thus, it does not obey the F2P terms of Steam. Now CoH could get on Steam if there was a Steamworks version, but that'd mean to allow Valve to take a piece of the pie when selling stuff, and it'd have to be done through the Steam Wallet and built in DLC browser. In other words, it's very unlikely that it'll happen.

While I cannot mention other games here, CoH is not the only game to fall for these new terms.

None of the other F2P games on Steam, as far as I am aware, use Steamworks. At the risk of more moderator intervention, I believe that entire terms of service change rumor was started by EA during the spat over Origin. Basically though, tons of games on Steam sell things via in game interfaces without cutting Valve in on it so those claims are hard to believe.

Because Steam is a huge pain in the ***.

BBC News Article about Steam Hacking

My experience with Steam has left me with a great dislike for the service. Now excuse me while I go change my account passwords.