Yay! I can finally play this natively. Not sure how I feel about the music though (never had that under Wine)

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Desura's "achievements" are called "accolades" and aren't really something that can be implemented on the client side. I don't think we'll be seeing them until after the Desura API is available (that's separate from the client) and game developers start using it.

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Quoting: "liamdawe, post: 3083, member: 1"What makes you think it won't be healthy for Linux Gaming? I still prefer [URL='http://www.desura.com']Desura[/URL] and [URL='http://www.gameolith.com']Gameolith[/URL] since I don't have a separate email for every game I have, i have a single login that displays all.

You asked if there was a possibility for this to put Desura and Gamolith out of business. If they died, I think that would be ultimately be a negative thing.

I can't recall if it was a tweet or a comment on the Wolfire blog, but I believe there was mention of a combined download page being worked on.

Quoting: "Jeffrey Rosen, post: 3089"Hey there, some of those stores are intended to be private -- they were automatically created for all games in the Humble Bundle so that we could approach various developers to show them a Humble Store widget.

In case you're not aware, Google has indexed a number of Humble Store URLs. A search for site:http://humblebundle.com/store [External Link] will reveal them (I believe that's how word got out - it's how I found them at least). Good luck with the project. It will be interesting to see which aspects of the Humble Bundle promotions carry across (charity support, Linux, MacOS and Windows support, etc.).

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It possibly has the capability, but I fear it wouldn't be healthy for Linux gaming...

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Too true! Though I hope there's still some level of cooperation between them and Desura. It seems a bit sad that they're providing Steam keys, but no equivalent for Linux users.

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Quoting: "Hamish, post: 3075, member: 6"Plus, as I have said before, the recent pace of Bundles has been, in my opinion, unsustainable and tarnishing the brand.

I had an email conversation with Jeffrey last year that addressed those points (and some others).

There are some pretty obvious branding and expectation management failures there that they're looking for ways to overcome, but the general gist of it was that they are running a couple of bundles per year (the "Indie" bundles), and Jeffrey's question back to me (and I suppose to anybody questioning their additional promotions) was "...does that mean that we should not do anything else?" With hundreds of thousands of people buying them, it's not really possible to deny that there is demand for the smaller scale stuff, and so long as they can separate them from the "indie" bundles as different brands, I don't personally have a problem with it.

Quoting: "Hamish, post: 3075, member: 6"There is also the recent lack of interest in source releases; I mean, Rosen, do not tell me Apple's screw up has turned you against the concept completely?

The Humble Bundle guys still recommend source code releases, but that's down to the developers. Apparently it's never been considered a tenet or core requirement of any of their promotions (again, an expectation management issue?). It seemed indicated to me that though the Lagaru AppStore thing was a disappointing incident, it hasn't diminished their believe that making source available is positive and worthwhile.

I agree that there's potentially a very big problem when Linux ports of games aren't otherwise made available. It's difficult too because that's generally not a problem that's visible to people who purchased the bundles (I spent a long time waiting for Trine to be released on Desura, but I probably wouldn't have noticed it missing if I had picked up the Frozenbyte Bundle when it was released).

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IndieRoyale doesn't have the charity thing going for it either, and the beat-the-minimum thing seems a bit like a moneygrabbing gimmick (customers competing with customers never sits well with me unless there's some kind of Good Cause, and a lower minimum for other buyers doesn't quite fit that description for me). I'm not saying it's explicitly bad, just that it's not attractive to me, especially without some sort of guarantee of Linux support.

The Humble Bundle guys have said it's more a question of whether or not the games are already on Desura more than a concerted "No Desura keys" policy.

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As I understand it the dynamics between the Humble Bundle guys and Desura have changed, though there is still at least a friendly relationship between them.

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Quoting: "Joe, post: 3057"If you really wanted to reach all your current users then you should have built in a news section in the menu of the game that updates over the internet, don't rely on a third party to inform these people.

Actually, the current "Message Of The Day" as seen from the main menu of the game does just that (it currently talks about the weapon pack DLC and Steel Storm 2 development).

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Quoting: "motorsep, post: 3055"Eeh, why would you get offended? This is total non-sense to me. It's not like we are peeping through your web cam or something. Why wouldn't you get offended by HIB sending you e-mails, but you would get offended by us sending you updates or what not?!

Mostly because it'd be a breach of the privacy policy, but also because I don't like organisations sharing my personal information. If I want to be on your mailing list, I'll sign up for it myself, thanks.

People who tick the "Notify me about future Humble Bundles" checkbox want to know about Humble Bundles. That doesn't indicate they want to know about other stuff.

Quoting: "motorsep, post: 3055"Anyhow, that's fine. But what stops HIB to telling you: "Hey, KiA has 2 new games coming up. Check out their website/blog/twitter." ?

I agree, it'd be nice to for developers if they did that sort of thing, but I can't say it's explicitly bad that they're not (in fact, it has some positive aspects - a much nicer signal-to-noise ratio being one of them).

Quoting: "motorsep, post: 3055"There are some websites/magazines with good userbase, but they are still very expensive to advertise on. Linux Format reviewed SS:Ep1, but I was unable to persuade them to review SS:BR. So, if you have any tips, please share :)

Of course :)
Here are some thoughts:
Print magazines are probably a good move (if you wanted to make it more attractive to them, you could look towards something like limited time demo exclusivity for their cover discs).
I've heard that attending conventions can have a huge impact (though there are pretty significant costs associated with that).
I'm assuming you're already planning some competitions/giveaways. If you are, I'd suggest going for stuff that encourages entrants to be creative rather than stuff that requires them to spam tweets and facebook shares (make your user community want to tell others about your stuff of their own volition, don't force them).
It's extra work, but you could look at offering some free content updates (not free DLC, since that doesn't automatically get rolled out to users) for SS:BR in the lead up to SS2's release. One possible clever approach could be to run a modding/mapping competition with the prize being to be included in an official update.

At the end of the day, it takes money/effort to get the word out, and balancing that can be really hard when you don't have the resources for a brute force marketing campaign.

Oh, and you've created a potential marketing nightmare by calling it "Steel Storm 2". Make sure you put a lot of effort into expectation management.

Quoting: CheesenessI even said I wanted to pay more for my SS2 in the merchant instructions for my pre-order, but nobody has gotten back to me

I'm curious about this. Do you guys get to see the merchant instructions? If so, do you pay attention to them? That's totally an opportunity there.

Quoting: "motorsep, post: 3055"The worse thing is that we have 250k of people who owns SS:BR on Steam (most of those redeemed their copy on Steam from HIB3) and some people on Desura, however, there is absolutely no way to reach them. Desura is the same way as HIB. We can't have e-mails from them, and they are not willing to e-mail our users, not even if we do alpha funding through them.

IMO, you're doing a good enough job of contacting your customers via the in-game stuff you have in SS:BR. Steam and Desura both have news feeds for stuff related to the game (Steam's is probably more likely to catch people's eyes, but I suspect that Desura users are probably more likely to care).

There are people who are willing to pay for your games but don't want to ever hear from you directly. Steam and Desura are pretty good places to catch customers like that if you want them.

Moving back on topic a bit more, bundles and sales are a way to potentially reach people beyond those that have existing interest, and you have absolutely no idea whether they have positive or negative predispositions towards your game (which can be a double edged sword).

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