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If you think about buying addons from the Steamstore..

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Just my two pennies.

i just installed fsx se after buying it over one month ago. The reason it took so long was Steams inability to connect to the Internet. There are a myriad of complaints all over the net about this. Support took an average of 7 days to reply and after three of these sessions they finally came up with the cure: disable all startup programs but ms services.

this was a long and frustrating experience. For a company that is so large and provides so many games, this glitchy protection should have been taken care of long ago.

on the good side, everything I have loaded so far works well.

Bob
 
IanP said:
No, Bjoern - you go to the store for a refund.

Also:
Developer:Aerosoft GmbH
Publisher:Dovetail Games - Flight

Therefore, Steam are the vendor, Dovetail the publisher and Aerosoft the developer. The publisher is responsible for content, the vendor for the product being "fit for purpose" and the developer has no part in the transaction with the end user, in this case. if you'd bought it from the Aerosoft website, then all three parties would be "Aerosoft" and oddly they'd be responsible for everything.
Click to expand...

Nice system. Especially for passing around customer complaints without ever solving them.
 
Bjoern said:
Nice system. Especially for passing around customer complaints without ever solving them.
Click to expand...

I think you'll find that's standard across all goods, whether physical or digital, Bjoern. It's done that way because it works. You buy something from a shop and you have a problem, you take it back to the place you bought it. Patches, fixes and updates are the responsibility of the local distributor (physical goods) or publisher (digital goods). The developer's contract is not with you, but with the publisher. Depending on the contract, the developer may have already been paid in full when they completed their work for the publisher, or they may get a payment for every copy sold (which I suspect is what will happen in this case).

If you buy a book, do you think you pay the author directly? What about if you buy a copy of a piece of music? You pay a shop, who takes their cut and gives the rest to the publisher. The publisher takes their cut and the author/musician/developer gets a tiny fraction of what you paid. That's reality!

Ian P.
 
JimmyRFR said:
I feel I have to toss in two cents on this subject.

The name 'Steam' keeps popping up as a 'they did this' or 'they did that'. For the most part, this is very incorrect.

Steam is simply a store that acts as a distribution platform. They have certain guidelines that have to be followed by their developers regarding the main installation location of a application / games files, and they provide a varying level of DRM / copy protection. Outside of that, almost every other thing is in the control of the developer of the application. When DLC doesn't work right, it's almost always the developer / original publisher of the DLC to blame, not the distribution platform.

Steam currently has 6908 applications available through it... do you think they personally package and inspect every single one? They simple sell and distribute the packages that are submitted to them by developers or publishers.

Everyone's mileage may vary, but I've used Steam as a method of purchasing computer games (in the hundreds) for as many years as it's been around, across many different computers, and I've never had a single issue with Steam itself. With the games bought through Steam? Occasionally, yes. But 100% of the time, these issues are the result of a developer, directly or indirectly, or an original publisher's application of additional DRM.

Issues regarding the Steam edition of FSX and addons or DLC bought for it through Steam have more to do with the fact that our current FSX installations are an extremely complex mess, in even the best of circumstances. Problems with addons not installing correctly occur just as frequently in boxed FSX as they do in Steam. The question becomes more an issue of whether a program whose life has been extended and prolonged as FSX actually belongs on a platform like Steam, where the vast majority of applications / games are designed from the get go to be a single location, one click install, with easily extendable assets.

As I said, one's mileage may vary. Not everyone has had as good of a run with Steam as I have, and there are certain issues inherent to any digitally locked-in platform. But those issues are separate from very application specific problems.
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Voice of reason! :encouragement:

though FSX Steam edition does now use a DLC folder so it fits perfectly into the steam platform and as for going out of business? You have more chance of being asked if you're a professional user of P3D and denied use if not able to produce evidence than you do of steam/Valve being brought out by someone or going under. As I write this there are over 8.5 million users logged on playing on steam (and thats none peak time). Its like those at the school i use to work at when we went GAFE (Google apps for education) stating what happens to our stuff if Google goes under,.. if these big companies go under, what happens to your computer work or computer games will be the bottom of the list and far below how much is bread going to cost today given the worlds economy is crashing.
 
What is the benefit to using Steam? I have FSX on disk and after hearing all these horror stories, I wonder what the benefit would be to ever buying FSX or any other sim on Steam?
 
jandmbear said:
What is the benefit to using Steam? I have FSX on disk and after hearing all these horror stories, I wonder what the benefit would be to ever buying FSX or any other sim on Steam?
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I own about two dozen games that I bought on Steam (including FSX) and never had any trouble with any of them.

The Steam edition of FSX brings along a few updates that will reduce the frequency "out of memory" errors with complex add-ons.
I wouldn't pay full price for it, but for 5 bucks, FSXSE is a great backup option in case your physical FSX disks ever go bad.
 
I wonder how Steam tabulate their usage. I purchased FSX for $5 some long time ago as an insurance against my CD's going tits up. I installed it but have never even used it. Steam shows my usage at 10 hours.
I note also that DCS seem to be shying away from issuing future items on Steam.
 
I purchased FSX for $5 some long time ago as an insurance against my CD's going tits up. I installed it but have never even used it.
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Same here, except I haven't even installed it.
 
I have won the dispute! I dropped a claim at PP, with arguments, and they ruled in my favor. What a relief!

:a1310:

Cees

BTW: Dovetail has a very poor policy in solving these cases, none whatsoever, and the same applies to Steam. The only solution
was to file a complaint about my payment.
 
Naismith said:
I wonder how Steam tabulate their usage. I purchased FSX for $5 some long time ago as an insurance against my CD's going tits up. I installed it but have never even used it. Steam shows my usage at 10 hours.
I note also that DCS seem to be shying away from issuing future items on Steam.
Click to expand...

Negative. All future DCS modules will release on steam. Some of them will only be available to pre-purchase from ED store.
1.5 beta was released on steam at the exact same time as the client downloaded from ED.
 
Hi,

I got a cheap promotion of FSX steam to see. I installed it on a brand new portable pc with W10 and it is the worse choice of my life. I think i am in the hands of big brother ....never more steam for all games or simulators! I prefer my FSX Gold on DVD installed on my home PC, a desk one.

JMC
 
You need to keep in mind that Steam isn't tracking the individual DLC that you are having problems with when calculating the two-hour usage before refund window. If you flew it for five minutes but then flew something else for a few hours as far as they are concerned, you have been using "it" for those few hours. You probably don't even have to fly it once for the clock to start. Once it is downloaded and you start the game the clock is running.

I've been using Steam to source DoveTail Games TrainSim (TS2016 now) stuff for a couple of years now and have had no problems whatsoever. They are slow (in some cases "its just never gonna happen" slow) to fix things and DoveTail Games release of FSX (FSX-SE) works infinitely better on my Win 8.1 system than the old boxed version of FSX-Gold. I run them both as well as a couple P3D versions for testing purposes but when I just want to fly I always launch FSX-SE. Plus they have made improvements. Something we haven't been able to say about Microsoft for nearly a decade.

Dovetail Games is a very cautious about copyright to the point of not even wanting to include Stars-&-Bars US insignia. That is probably why most of the textures seem to be missing. If you want the full package buy it from the original source. They probably have a better return policy for their own stuff bought from their own store anyway.
:ernaehrung004:
 
All true Frank. I have FSX and FSX-SE. I prefer the FSX-SE. Luckily I paid using PP. They intervened on my behalf and in my favor. Seems there is stil justice after all.

:wavey:

Cees

Maybe this thread can be closed?
 
I also have to agree with Frank about Steam and DTG. I have well over 80 games on Steam and I can say that the only one I have ever had trouble with was Fallout 3, but that was my fault. Despite the warning that it would not work with Win7 I bought it anyway since I had seen workarounds for that problem. Result? No joy, but as I said that was my fault.

Also, I have TS2016 and loads of DLC for it, only when DTG had changed a few things in it's 2014 update did I have trouble but that was fixed with a full re-install. Overall with only two major problems in 82 installed games my opinion of Steam is rather high. That does not mean that I will use their DLC IF their is a viable alternative.

So much for my 2 cents.
 
Sorry to go even further off topic, but I have all the fixes to make Fallout 3 work on anything from 7 to 10, strikehawk... If you want them, drop me a PM and I'll sort out links for you.

I just finished it again and am now chatting up Willow in New Vegas. :)

Ian P.
 
Massive simmer here, I also use Steam, especially for the simulator games... like Spintires, Silent Hunter, etc etc, and I love how easy it is to get bargains, f.e: https://www.g2a.com sell steam-keys which take about 1 second to activate in your steam account
 
This thread served a purpose started by the original author. Since then the issues were resolved. Things are going off topic now so time to close this one down.
 
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