Thanks for both of your comments. I do have to agree with Chris's comments and welcome his supporting comments here, but also thank you for your kind words jgf. If I had more time I would include information about many other game distributors such as Gamersgate, GOG, Big Fish games etc. I used to do that here in the forums, but as I got little response from the community over time, I cut back on the time i spent here and all my free game posts vapourised, though that was partly to do with how cheap games had become, especially those from the indie bundles.
I still purchase games from a variety of distributors including all of the ones I mention above. All have sales on almost as regularly as Steam. I mention Steam more because it has by far the largest community of any game distributor and also offers many great deals, plus virtually every indie bundle site offers Steam keys above any other. I used to post more details in my reviews, but after complaints that my reviews were to long, I cut back on certain area's and instead post links to a thread here in the forums, though I don't update it as frequently as I'd like to. I also prefer Steam to other clients and/or game distributors, though prior to joining in Jan 2009 I would have been as against Steam as JGF and other community members appear to be. It was only by a stupid mistake by me that I ended up with a couple of Steam games, (Defense Grid: The Awakening and Galactic Bowling). The former game has turned out to be one of the best Tower Defense games I've ever played and the bowling game was a favorite genre of mine at the time, so instead of trying to get a refund I went ahead and installed Steam because I really wanted to play those games. I did email Direct to Drive, where I'd purchased the Steamworks games to complain that they hadn't made it clear what Steamworks meant nor had they displayed it prominently. (It was basically a foot note I'd missed). I didn't even know at the time what Steamworks meant, despite having been a keen gamer since computer games became readily available on PC's back in the 1980's; partly because I'd not got into the Half Life franchise or the Counter Strike games at the time, so hadn't installed any Valve products. When I found I needed Steam I was furious, but the wish to play those games was strong enough for me to go ahead and install Steam despite my misgivings.
Within several weeks I got to like Steam (despite my previous concerns over such a platform), partly due to the weekly sales (they didn't have as many sales back then, but more than I'd seen anywhere else), plus there was a decent community, with a good forum as well as gaming news etc that I could access very easily. Now I swear by Steam and find it hard to understand why some community members are so against it. Okay, Steam has DRM, but not every game I purchase via Steam actually requires Steam to be logged in or online. I can play many of my Steam games directly from the installed executable, plus games that are linked to Ubisoft can also be played via their uPlay client and some via Origin share the same codes as my Steam games. I always preferred games that required no DRM, and that I could install to any computer without having to go online. Sadly, that reality has faded almost into obscurity now, partly due to many gamers ripping off games that have cost the gaming industry billions over the years. Although I don't like DRM, I can see the need for it and have accepted it.
With respect to the negative comments, they are only coming from a very tiny minority of community members. Considering only a very tiny percentage of community members ever actually bother to comment anyway, i.e around 0.1% to 0.005% and of those only 0.1% to 0.05% are actually about the game, you can see that even though it appears that there are a lot of community members not happy (because most of the comments that are posted are negative and unrelated to the actual giveaway), it is actually a very insignificant number when you consider the community as a whole. Besides, it's not like the giveaway team are giving away Steam games every week either. They are still giving away non Steam arcade games.
With respect to the use of social media, there is a reason for their use. The giveaway team are trying to increase the numbers of community members. By advertising the site through Facebook and Twitter, they hope to inform many more people in the hope they will join the community. The point of that is to entice more developers. The greater the number of community members the site has, the more likely we will get more developers joining us. The reason for that is because there will always be a small percentage of that community (like myself) who actually purchase games from those developers who give their games away, so the greater the community, the more that are likely to purchase other games and even the giveaways from those developers. It definitely worked for Alawar and Playrix. Both developers got a faithful following of giveaway community members buying not only the games that had been given away, but other games as well.
I used to have a Facebook account several years ago. I created it, not for the social media aspect, but for the free games that were being offered at the time, for example I got really addicted to a text based game called Mafia, a couple of city building games and one of the farming games, at least for three or fourth months. I only stopped playing them because I 'd more or less stopped playing all of my Steam games including my most recent AAA purchases for example Skyrim and Fallout: New Vegas. Both of which were some of my most favorite games, yet I was signing into my Facebook account to play the free games in preference to those. Eventually I got a little bored of them and returned to my AAA games and didn't sign into my Facebook account again until about 2 years ago, but found it had been closed. I found out that they had changed the rules regarding account names. Prior to about 4 years ago, you could create a Facebook account using a false screen name, but they changed that. Warnings were sent out to change your name to your actual name, but because I didn't sign into my account for almost four years, I missed the warnings. They gave a time limit, which by the time I did sign in (to revisit some of those games) I found my account had been obliterated.
I don't use social media apart from getting freebies, and with that in mind I created a Twitter account specifically for getting free games and software, not only via the giveaway project, but via other free game and application sites, where it has become very common to use Facebook and Twitter to advertise. As for Facebook , I've been using my sons old Facebook account, which he no longer uses. Both accounts use emails that are used for nothing else, and all were created using information that isn't going to compromise my identity (or my sons) online, for example false birth dates, false addresses etc were given when asked for. I'll never use Twitter, except for getting free stuff. Why people seem so against Twitter and Facebook is beyond me when there's no danger of giving away any useful information if they create a bogus account. It takes just a few moments then you can get all the freebies you want. In fact it probably takes less time than the amount of time those people have spent posting about the issue. Unfortunately there will never be a 100% consensus on anything. If there were, the world would be a very boring place indeed.
With respect to those non Steam sources seeing a viable market for their offerings after seeing all those 'Steamophobic' comments! I'd believe it if I'd seen the non Steam developers increase prior to April 2016 before any Steam games were given away. Yet did it give those non Steam developers an incentive to give away games? no it didn't. The decline in the numbers of developers is more a result of the changing face of the gaming industry, economics and the expansion of the android gaming community, as well as the increase in the number of sites giving away free games, plus the advent of the Indie game bundle. There are now more than 60 indie bundles being offering virtually every week, offering recently released (and older) games ranging from AAA games to the latest arcade games at upwards of 95% off the market price. For example a few years ago, the entire THQ catalogue appeared in a Humble bundle for the price of $5. In fact, most of the bundle could be bought for $1. The bundle included around $400 worth of games that included games such as Darksiders, the Company of Heroes trilogy i.e. company of heroes, Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts and Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor, as well as Red Faction Armageddon (which had only just been released) Metro 2033 and Saints Row: The Third , Other AAA bundles have included similar deals, with savings of up to $500. Also, since the advent of the game giveaway project in Dec 2006 times have changed significantly. We are still suffering the back end of the economic crisis of 2008. I remember arcade games used to cost almost $20 each before 2008; by mid 2008 arcade games had virtually crashed within a few weeks by almost 75% and have never recovered. AAA games have fared better, but only because they now release part made games and then release lots of what they laughingly call downloadable content and expansions to add to the game over a period of several months or more. Take for example the Call of Duty franchise. The last games I remember that didn't include dlc and were basically fully completed games were the developers fourth and fifth titles in the Call of Duty franchise i.e. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (COD4) and Call of Duty: World at War released in 2007 and 2008; for example the next release, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II included two dlc packs that cost almost as much as the original release. It's got to a point where the cost of dlc far exceeds the initial games release price, for example the 2014 release of Call of Duty Advanced Warfare has 43 dlc packs, costing a total of over £150, most of those packs only add weapon skins or different outfits to the main characters and hardly any of it adds extra playable content for single player aficionados, preferring to concentrate on their online community. Most of the dlc released for that game didn't even include playable content instead it was just to change the look of various items of equipment like rainbow coloured weapon skins. Yeah, as though any soldier or mercenary would use such a colourful weapon.. Other AAA games like The re-release of Microsoft's Flight Sim X, which was originally released back in 2005, now has over £2,160 worth of dlc content and Train Simulator 2017 has over £3680 worth of dlc content. PayDay 2 has around £150 worth of content again similar to Call of Duty dlc in that most of it is skins that add no additional playable content.
Unfortunately, if all we see in the comments section is complaints, and mainly complaints not even related to the games, then the developers are not going to want to give away their precious games. I've been trying to say this for years now, with little effect.
I am getting very fed up of all the negativity, but it hasn't yet deterred me from continuing. If I was working I probably would have left as soon as things started to change, but as I do have plenty of time on my hands, I'm happy to continue. I have decided to stick more to the moderation policy than I have previously, which means, most comments unrelated to the actual game will ether be deleted out right, or I will post a reply asking them to contact the giveaway team with their complaint's.
regards
Stephen
