OS X Would you support a Patreon account for Feral and/or Aspyr?

[saturnotaku]

While I love Steamplay as a concept (buy a game once, play it on any computer and/or operating system where my account is available), I've always found it grossly unfair to Feral and Aspyr. These companies toil endlessly to bring quality game releases to OS X. If you've already bought a game to play on Windows, either through Boot Camp or on another PC, then an OS X port is released on Steam, you can download it there but the porting firms won't see a dime of revenue.

I certainly don't have any desire to re-buy a game I already own, and Steam won't allow it anyway unless you're giving a gift. At the same time, there has to be some way to provide Feral and Aspyr with a bit of cash to support the work they do.

That's when I began considering the possibility of a Patreon account. Each company could set up an account, and we the Mac gaming faithful could contribute some money once a month or whatever to make up for at least some of the revenue they've lost due to Steamplay.

Consider this some "thinking out loud" as I don't know how the logistics of such a thing would work, or if it's even possible in the first place. I would be interested in soliciting feedback for this, to see if anyone here also supports an idea like this.

 

[Dirtyharry50]

I do not believe either company is in need of charity nor that Steam is a terrible deal for them. They would not be on Steam if at the end of the day it was not more profitable than not doing it. It does seem some revenue is lost but not as much as is gained by being on Steam. In a perfect world, none would be lost but I do not think the resolution to that problem should lie with gamers making charitable contributions. These businesses can manage themselves without our help.

I don't mean to sound harsh. I appreciate the sentiment and spirit of goodwill. I will not buy a windows release that is going to be Steamplay ahead of the Mac version on sale myself. I will wait for the Mac release to buy it and possibly later if I want a sale price. This works for me but I will admit that I do not want to play games on Windows anyway. I only have it for legacy titles I own and rare special cases. I can't recall the last time I bought a game for Windows. The Mac developers are the ones responsible for me being poor.

 

[Cougarcat]

I think it would be more effective if Valve made their financial arrangements more transparent somehow. Most people have no idea Feral or Aspyr don't get any money in a lot of cases. (And I suspect many people don't even know what it is that Feral and Aspyr even do.)

I think there are things that Valve could do to make Steam a better pill for porters. A while back someone (from Feral, I believe) mentioned that they wished people would submit more requests for games. Valve could add a "remind me when this comes to platform x" button to game pages. Developers and Porters would then be able to see how many people clicked it to help them make better decisions on what to port (and maybe even help porters convince reluctant developers.)

 

[Washac]

In a word "No" I would support more of their games if they were on GoG, and if I really want the game I will buy a hard copy as long as it is not tied to steam.

Patreon is as bad as Kickstarter you do not really know where the money is going, Kickstarter has many companies now that really do not need Kickstarter, they just use it to fill their coffers further, in the words of the Metallica song, sad but true.

 

[Cougarcat]

GoG isn't really an option because the publishers would never allow it. Perhaps Feral would have luck with their classic line but even then I don't think any of the PC versions are there now.

 

[saturnotaku]

In a word "No" I would support more of their games if they were on GoG, and if I really want the game I will buy a hard copy as long as it is not tied to steam.

Aside from CD Projekt Red's own titles, you almost never see anything close to a AAA game on GoG, at least not that was released in the last 10 years anyway.

In any case, I appreciate the perspectives being offered.

 

[insane79]

i agree with the OP, few games i buy from the Feral site directly(boxed versions) call me old fashion, most of my games are by Feral & few by Aspyr, Feral at least gives the option for boxed version which Aspyr don't & you have to use steam client for their games, so i guess aspyr loves steam for some reason
buy the games from them directly, thats feral & game agent site & stop feeling guilty

 

[N19h7m4r3]

Many developers, especially Indie's have stated that without Steam they would not be selling anything really.

Steam is only a positive, and Aspyr and Feral can sell far more there than just doing boxed or through the MAS due to people also getting a Windows and often Linux version of the gem as well.

Your argument that they don't get anything if a Mac port is released after the game is bought doesn't hold up, they're hardly the only two companies that do ports. There are also folks like myself and Dirtyharry that wait for the Mac port.

I've often bought the game on MAS, and then through a steam sale as well just for the convince of Steam, and the fact that I don't have to wait 8-10 hours to download from there like I do the MAS.

Choice in shopping is important and if someone doesn't want to buy on Steam, fair enough. Patreon and Kickstarted are hardly going to help and are no solution at all.

Forgetting that Aspyr released MW2 & 3 as Steamplay only due to the fact that it adds Windows Multiplayer players into the mix. Otherwise the Mac buyers would have likely had a very lacklustre multiplier experience with limited players.

The only issues with Steam is that it's a form of DRM, and their customer service( so I've been told), other than that it's nothing but a positive for mass selling Games to a global market, and the sales can generate plenty.

Feral themselves are in the process of bringing plenty of their 'older' games to Steam. Why would they do that if it was such a bad deal? it's because there is a larger target audience and more people likely to buy.

 

[insane79]

Many developers, especially Indie's have stated that without Steam they would not be selling anything really.

Steam is only a positive, and Aspyr and Feral can sell far more there than just doing boxed or through the MAS due to people also getting a Windows and often Linux version of the gem as well.

Your argument that they don't get anything if a Mac port is released after the game is bought doesn't hold up, they're hardly the only two companies that do ports. There are also folks like myself and Dirtyharry that wait for the Mac port.

I've often bought the game on MAS, and then through a steam sale as well just for the convince of Steam, and the fact that I don't have to wait 8-10 hours to download from there like I do the MAS.

Choice in shopping is important and if someone doesn't want to buy on Steam, fair enough. Patreon and Kickstarted are hardly going to help and are no solution at all.

Forgetting that Aspyr released MW2 & 3 as Steamplay only due to the fact that it adds Windows Multiplayer players into the mix. Otherwise the Mac buyers would have likely had a very lacklustre multiplier experience with limited players.

The only issues with Steam is that it's a form of DRM, and their customer service( so I've been told), other than that it's nothing but a positive for mass selling Games to a global market, and the sales can generate plenty.

Feral themselves are in the process of bringing plenty of their 'older' games to Steam. Why would they do that if it was such a bad deal? it's because there is a larger target audience and more people likely to buy.

Spot on what you said, one thing i don't like about steam is the customer service, it doesn't exist just few bots doing the replies, many users are frustrated by steam as few games like Metro last night works if downloaded from MAS or other places that don't use the steam client. Its been a month now since those poor buyers can't even play metro last nite they bought from steam, a lot of threads going on in the steam forums regarding the issue but no progress except the blaming game, the developers are blaming the steam client themselves & saying its difficult to fix the issue Steam is good no doubt but it does have its drawbacks specially for mac users in support..

 

[madeirabhoy]

While I love Steamplay as a concept (buy a game once, play it on any computer and/or operating system where my account is available), I've always found it grossly unfair to Feral and Aspyr. These companies toil endlessly to bring quality game releases to OS X. If you've already bought a game to play on Windows, either through Boot Camp or on another PC, then an OS X port is released on Steam, you can download it there but the porting firms won't see a dime of revenue.

I certainly don't have any desire to re-buy a game I already own, and Steam won't allow it anyway unless you're giving a gift. At the same time, there has to be some way to provide Feral and Aspyr with a bit of cash to support the work they do.

That's when I began considering the possibility of a Patreon account. Each company could set up an account, and we the Mac gaming faithful could contribute some money once a month or whatever to make up for at least some of the revenue they've lost due to Steamplay.

Consider this some "thinking out loud" as I don't know how the logistics of such a thing would work, or if it's even possible in the first place. I would be interested in soliciting feedback for this, to see if anyone here also supports an idea like this.

Definitely agree, in fact i suggested similar to Edwinn from Feral before

https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=19112202#post19112202


lots of times i see a game on sale, and i know from insidemacgmes that its coming out for mac, and i see it 75% off, buy it, and hope that feral get it out before a month is up (if you install it only on the mac side within the first month, they get the cash). it comes out 2 months later, i only install it on my mac side, so im only using feral's work, yet its the pc company who got paid for it, and feral didnt get a dime.

im not flush enough to buy a second copy, and im not flush enough (or strong willed enough) to ignore a steam sale, but i wish there was a tip box that i could fire 5 or 10 euro into, to salve my conscience and thank feral for my game.

 

[MichalM.Mac]

Simple solution to "support" problem. Buy another game from Feral/Aspyr that you would not buy othervise.

 

[madeirabhoy]

Simple solution to "support" problem. Buy another game from Feral/Aspyr that you would not buy othervise.

i do look to see if theres any cheap games that i can buy more of a thanks than a purchase, but its not quite the same for two reasons

having paid for the game already, id imagine most people would be thinking of lobbing in an extra 5 or 10 euros/dollars as a thank you. buying another copy is too much cash.

if we just buy a copy if lego indiana jones, its not obvious to feral that people are spending 5 dollars to say thank you, instead they'll just think theres more of a market for cheap old lego games.

 

[Dirtyharry50]

Definitely agree, in fact i suggested similar to Edwinn from Feral before

https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=19112202#post19112202


lots of times i see a game on sale, and i know from insidemacgmes that its coming out for mac, and i see it 75% off, buy it, and hope that feral get it out before a month is up (if you install it only on the mac side within the first month, they get the cash). it comes out 2 months later, i only install it on my mac side, so im only using feral's work, yet its the pc company who got paid for it, and feral didnt get a dime.

im not flush enough to buy a second copy, and im not flush enough (or strong willed enough) to ignore a steam sale, but i wish there was a tip box that i could fire 5 or 10 euro into, to salve my conscience and thank feral for my game.

The thing is, Steam is constantly running sales including the big seasonal ones. You can get email delivered to you whenever something on your wish list goes on sale. I do this and they give me a heads up so if I want to buy then I can.

You can still support the Mac developers and get sales prices too with a little patience. For example, if you follow what is going on with Steam sales, dailies, weekends, etc. it was easy to know that after Simcity 4 released for Mac you would have a sale opportunity and so it came to pass too.

I am not intending to go so far as to tell anybody else how to spend their money but I am saying you do have options that don't require not getting it on sale. In Summer and Winter particularly, virtually everything is on sale and often by a lot unless it is fairly new. I think the other seasons are nearly as good but the length of those sales runs shorter.

----------

i do look to see if theres any cheap games that i can buy more of a thanks than a purchase, but its not quite the same for two reasons

having paid for the game already, id imagine most people would be thinking of lobbing in an extra 5 or 10 euros/dollars as a thank you. buying another copy is too much cash.

if we just buy a copy if lego indiana jones, its not obvious to feral that people are spending 5 dollars to say thank you, instead they'll just think theres more of a market for cheap old lego games.

Or if you really want to say thank you...

Buy it and play it on Mac when it releases for Mac. Not cheap enough? Wait for the next sale then.

How many gamers today don't have a backlog of titles from sales they have yet to get around to not to mention go to games they replay often from shooters to strategy to MMOs, etc. People really are unable to wait even though they say this issue of fairness resonates with them?

I don't want to seem mean at all but if you care about this the solution as outlined above is simple. It does not need to be a problem requiring grand solutions of charity that in reality most people who just had to have 75% off before the game is even out would even participate in, in any significant numbers.

Let your own conscience be your guide here and do what you feel is the right the thing. It isn't complicated. That said, I absolutely agree that some better solution to this on Steam's end to ensure consistent fairness to developers would be nice if they can figure out a way. Meantime for those of us who are aware of this and care about it, there are ways to do what we feel good about.

 

[madeirabhoy]

The thing is, Steam is constantly running sales including the big seasonal ones. You can get email delivered to you whenever something on your wish list goes on sale. I do this and they give me a heads up so if I want to buy then I can.

You can still support the Mac developers and get sales prices too with a little patience. For example, if you follow what is going on with Steam sales, dailies, weekends, etc. it was easy to know that after Simcity 4 released for Mac you would have a sale opportunity and so it came to pass too.

I am not intending to go so far as to tell anybody else how to spend their money but I am saying you do have options that don't require not getting it on sale. In Summer and Winter particularly, virtually everything is on sale and often by a lot unless it is fairly new. I think the other seasons are nearly as good but the length of those sales runs shorter.

----------



Or if you really want to say thank you...

Buy it and play it on Mac when it releases for Mac. Not cheap enough? Wait for the next sale then.

How many gamers today don't have a backlog of titles from sales they have yet to get around to not to mention go to games they replay often from shooters to strategy to MMOs, etc. People really are unable to wait even though they say this issue of fairness resonates with them?

I don't want to seem mean at all but if you care about this the solution as outlined above is simple. It does not need to be a problem requiring grand solutions of charity that in reality most people who just had to have 75% off before the game is even out would even participate in, in any significant numbers.

Let your own conscience be your guide here and do what you feel is the right the thing. It isn't complicated. That said, I absolutely agree that some better solution to this on Steam's end to ensure consistent fairness to developers would be nice if they can figure out a way. Meantime for those of us who are aware of this and care about it, there are ways to do what we feel good about.

no one is saying its a big issue, and no one is talking about a grand solution of charity, just saying if sometimes in those times where you end up with a feral game without paying for it there was an easy way to say this and stick in a few quid.

of course i could wait and religiously only buy mac games, but life doesn't work like that. sometimes i buy pc only games because i want to play them, and in most cases, like fallout 3, far cry 3 etc.... i buy it on pc and play it on bootcamp. sometimes however i buy it expecting to play it on pc, and before it gets to the top of my game playing list (out of laziness mac games always go quicker up the list, id prefer not to use bootcamp but i do use it), it comes out on steamplay and again feral loses out when i then play it. or i bought a humble bundle and it includes some mac games (they now give the option to specify mac for the statistics but didnt originally) , or a green man gaming offer, or something else where feral might not get anything from that, or again it might be pc only at the time but later, it becomes steam play.


there are reasons why lots of us end up playing feral (and other companies) ports without paying anything to feral. and it would be nice to be able to, if we wanted to, give something to feral for this. thats all.

i am letting my conscience be a guide, and to do the right thing, thats the whole point, i just want to salve that conscience and give 10 euro to feral without having to buy a lego game.

 

[Huntn]

The way I see it Macs are not going away, but they are not known for their native games. The porting process is major disadvantage, but a fact of life. PC/Consoles own the market place. I wish good fortune for Aspyr and Feral, and hope the niche market for Mac native games remains profitable, but I would not pay into an account or extra for a Mac game with less performance then it's PC counterpart. Realistically once the cost of game ownership goes up just to get a Mac native version, I don't see many people supporting it.

Bootcamp has been the savior of gaming on a Mac, even if it is using Windows. I'll be unhappy if Apple discontinues this support in the future.

 

[antonis]

I'll be unhappy if Apple discontinues this support in the future.

No worries about that, it's not going to happen. As a matter of fact, thunderbolt external drives allow us to install and use Windows without even using bootcamp anymore. As long as Macs are h/w compatible (e.g. intel based) with PCs, Windows functionality does not depend on Apple.

Now, a Patreon account ? That wouldn't go too far imo. That would be something towards the wrong direction. It is Apple that needs to do more, in order to improve gaming on the OS X side, then things will get better for the game developers too.

 

[Dirtyharry50]

no one is saying its a big issue, and no one is talking about a grand solution of charity, just saying if sometimes in those times where you end up with a feral game without paying for it there was an easy way to say this and stick in a few quid.

of course i could wait and religiously only buy mac games, but life doesn't work like that. sometimes i buy pc only games because i want to play them, and in most cases, like fallout 3, far cry 3 etc.... i buy it on pc and play it on bootcamp. sometimes however i buy it expecting to play it on pc, and before it gets to the top of my game playing list (out of laziness mac games always go quicker up the list, id prefer not to use bootcamp but i do use it), it comes out on steamplay and again feral loses out when i then play it. or i bought a humble bundle and it includes some mac games (they now give the option to specify mac for the statistics but didnt originally) , or a green man gaming offer, or something else where feral might not get anything from that, or again it might be pc only at the time but later, it becomes steam play.


there are reasons why lots of us end up playing feral (and other companies) ports without paying anything to feral. and it would be nice to be able to, if we wanted to, give something to feral for this. thats all.

i am letting my conscience be a guide, and to do the right thing, thats the whole point, i just want to salve that conscience and give 10 euro to feral without having to buy a lego game.

I can understand what you are saying when you explain various purchases that happen and why. That happens to be how it works out for you and I am in no way critical of that. And it is nice of you to want to give something to Feral so I am not critical of that either but on an individual basis, I guess you could easily enough mail them a check if you wanted to. My guess is, they would thank you and express appreciation for the sentiment but return it to you.

My comment about charity was in reference to the OP and main topic of the thread which was about charitable contributions, at least that is what I would call them. You are of course welcome to call them whatever you like.

What I think people may not be thinking about is that businesses make considered moves that are thought out and ultimately judged to be profitable in one way or another, judged to be well worth doing. Feral and Aspyr are well able to manage their affairs successfully without us worrying about it beyond making whatever attempts we like to try and ensure the revenue goes their way when we can. To each their own it is as far as that is concerned.

I realize too that sometimes somebody may buy a game for Windows without having any way to know a Mac port is even coming, or maybe that port comes a year later or whatever. Well, if you bought a game for Windows that long ago, whether or not you got around to playing it, it does seem fair to me that the Windows developers should be paid for that. If you wind up with the game as a Steamplay title before you got to it and play it on Mac that is because of the way Steam currently operates and in my view it is not our responsibility to make up for that.

Lastly though, I am just sharing my views on how I see it. I am not telling anybody how to live or spend their money as I mentioned in an earlier post. I mentioned how I like to do it but I appreciate that is just a solution that works for me. I know it doesn't work for everybody else. So you guys have to come up with your own I guess which was what this thread wanted to explore, a possible option for that. However, if you look at the poll the overwhelming majority wasn't too fond of this option. Of course, only a very small number of us are voting here and discussing this.

 

[tomvos]

There’s the saying: “You can’t have the cake and eat it.”

You can try to get a game as cheap as possible or even buy it for Windows during a sale in anticipation of an OS X port. But you can’t support your favorite porting company with a fair sales price at the same time.

So choose one, and choose wisely.

 

[Plutonius]

It's a business not a charity .