Hey guys, I have been really interested in this game for a while, and the only thing holding me back from buying it is that I don’t use Steam. I don’t know if this is something you’ve already made a decision on, but if for example it was on GOG I’d already be a paying customer. Steam is of course the biggest platform out there but there are plenty of people like me who don’t like it and refuse to use it. If there are any plans to provide an alternative I would be happy to hear about it, if not, there’s my suggestion for whatever it’s worth.
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It was just announced for the switch, and I’m pretty sure the launch date for PS4 is in the summer, so its all good news there!
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That is definitely good news, but I don’t have plans to buy either console any time soon and as much as I really want to give FS a go, I don’t want to pay hundreds of dollars to do so. I am really hoping for another way to purchase it for PC.
I’m curious, why do you hate steam? It is free, after all.
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I don’t know if I would say I “hate” Steam. I object to any company acting as a singular platform through which any game has to proceed to be financially successful, because it gives them too much power over what does and doesn’t get exposure. Alternatives exist to Steam, but they are still so little used by major publishers that Steam is able to act as a de facto standard. So for ethical reasons I don’t want to support them. I want to support the alternatives instead, in the name of balancing the playing field.
I really can’t see any good reason for companies who put their games on Steam not to put them on GOG too. There’s no evidence whatsoever that the DRM-free stance of GOG impacts sales. The Witcher 3 was one of the most financially successful games of 2015 and it was launched on GOG from day 1, made by the very company that published it on their own DRM-free platform. And the GOG community loves quality passion project stuff like Fantasy Strike. I can’t see how it would be anything but a win for all.
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It is significant work for us to support a new platform. I’d like to emphasize that. It really, truly is. It is not some zero work thing that we can just be on any platform. A multiplayer game, with an integrated friends list for challenging other players, and that surely needs cross-platform play…it’s a big deal. We are already stretched too thin and face a monumental challenge to support the platforms we’ve already announced.
If your goal is to make sure developers are supported, I don’t see why there’s this catch of only if they do significant work to port to some other PC platform (plus all the testing, plus all the maintenance and simultaneous of deploying of patches that is involved). We can’t really stop developing content and push out our release dates just to get to another PC platform when we’re already on a readily available PC platform right now. We are very bottlenecked by engineering and I already worry about being able to ship with everything we’d like to have, and that’s without diverting our few engineers to integrate with new platforms.
We’re looking for people to support us right now, on Steam. The more support we get on Steam right now, the better the PS4 and Switch release can be, btw. Thanks.
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Ah, sorry, I didn’t mean to discount the work involved in supporting additional platforms. I should have specified I wasn’t asking if it could be done right away, only if it was planned. My thought process was that surely, although it would require lots of work, supporting another PC platform would require much less than porting to an entirely different system, and generate additional revenue which would then help with the porting. But obviously you guys are right in the middle of working on the console ports and can’t just drop everything, and I wasn’t expecting you to. Just wanted to find out if there was already a plan for more PC platforms and if not throw in my two cents.
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The stuff that is tied to Steam is the online multiplayer / matchmaking. Exactly how tied it is I’m not sure, because I remember there were playable builds released before the Steam release.
So they could release a version on GOG tomorrow, but it wouldn’t have any online play.
The Steam networking library is being open-sourced, so it will be usable on other platforms, but I think this is just the underlying transport protocol, not the match-making part. So they would have to write their own match-making, or integrate GOG Galaxy.
I used to avoid Steam, because I avoid DRM, but then I learnt that DRM is actually optional on Steam and many developers don’t enable it. Of course for online games if they are dependent on Steam networking then you could view that as a form of DRM.
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For ethical reasons I do not want to support the Switch, but since another accessible fighting game SNK Heroines is coming out on the Switch I am either going to buy the Switch or get the collectible PlayStation 4 version.
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I’d be curious to hear what ethical objections one would have to the switch. I haven’t heard that before and like hearing new perspectives.
I own a switch and personally love it. It’s currently my favorite platform to game on! But I’m open to hearing other viewpoints!
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A friend of mine worked on M+R : Kingdom Battle on Switch 
He’s a big fan of Fantasy Strike and Codex !
This game is awesome, if you own a Switch grab it 
About Steam, I love this platform. It’s so convenient to have all at the same place ! Nothing to argue against it, except that taking about 30% of selling price is a bit too high. But this margin is open to negociation with the developper, right ?
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I do not want to support the Switch due to what I keep hearing about NIntendo’s draconian video game video policies. And on top of that SNK Heroines is being localized by NIS America.
Nintendo has draconian policies? In the year 2018? They’re strict on quality, true… but, like, this is the company that funded and published Bayonetta 2 and 3.
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