Will Slitherine give Steam keys t customers losing iOS games

[Natus]

I figure I'm losing at least $40 of Slitherine product (not even counting the three Shenandoah games) when the App-ocalypse occurs this fall. Some Slitherine games that will become obsolete I've only bought in the past year or so. I would be very pleased to know that money was not wasted, and if Slitherine refuses to update the games, as is their prerogative, the least they could do is offer Steam keys of the respective games. That would be classy, and hardly a financial loss on Slitherine's part. Thanks in advance!

[zakblood]

please take a look at this thread,

http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtop ... 10&t=76866

thanks

[Natus]

That doesn't answer the question.

Once again, will Slitherine compensate its loyal customers by issuing them Steam keys for the iOS games that will be lost with the upgrade this fall?
Yes or No, and if no, why not?

Thank you for your attention to this customer service matter

[zakblood]

have passed on the information for admin eyes, as i can't answer for them

[IainMcNeil]

Hi Natus,

that's an interesting idea and one I'm not against at all. We always try to support customers as best we can unless someone pretty much makes it impossible like Apple! The technical problem is there is no way for us to validate if you have the iOS version. Apple never share any customer information with us at all. There are hundreds of thousands of iOS users out there so we can't have any form of manual processing or it simply would not get done.

We need to come up with some way to automatically validate if someone has the iOS version and issue them a Steam key. Let us have a think about it.

[Natus]

Thank you. I know the request seems quixotic. I think it could be a very reasonable solution that could create a lot of goodwill. After all, you and I want to be *playing* your games...the platform doesn't precisely matter, especially in this context where there's not much choice!

[IainMcNeil]

I've mailed Apple to ask if they'll let us send Steam keys to customers in some way. Will let you know what they say!

[donkeyfumbler]

Hi Iain,

Thanks for looking into this - I suggested the same thing in another thread and was posted this way. I bought BA2 for ipad (having bought BA and a couple of other games for the PC) not that long ago, but before it was clear that it was not going to work with IOS 11 and, to be honest, I have not even loaded it up before now (too many kids, too little time!).

I know you said that you have mailed Apple to ask if you can send Steam keys to customers, which would be great. However, having just loaded the game to check I can see that, in order to play multiplayer BA2 you have to register the game to your Slitherine account - surely that then is a way you can tell who has genuinely purchased the game on IOS and can then give them a Steam key if they request one (if Apple won't co-operate)?

As others have said, I hope you can do this. While I appreciate that this situation is not of your making to a large extent and that updating some of these games would be a lot of work for a small developer such as yourselves, this is a fairly small sector of the games market and many of these gamers on IOS will have bought your games on PC (and I'm sure you are hoping will continue to do so on both formats) and this would go a long way to making sure you don't lose goodwill but actually gain it instead.

Cheers.

[IainMcNeil]

For some games yes we could look at the log of people playing on iOS, but some games don't even have MP so it doesn't work for that. We'll see what we can do!

[donkeyfumbler]

Hi,

It's IOS 11 release day and it reminded me to come back here and see if there was any further news?

Cheers.

[IainMcNeil]

Unfortunately Apple have still not responded. They've ignored the requests.

I'll have a look at what we can tell from our logs.

[IainMcNeil]

Unfortunately we don't have any information about who is on iOS. The system doesn't log user information. We'll have to see if there is something else we can do.

[MesaDon]

I have many of you iOS games and if you can come up with a solution I personally would not want any thing that has to do with Steam. It is a sad situation but there are valid arguements for both Slitherine and Apple. I have come to accept the loss of games as it happens and is a fact of life with computer games. I have a cabinet full of Window games on DVD, CDs, and floppies that fail to work. Heck I still have old DOS discs and the ones for Windows 3.0. I think we all need to come into any computer purchase (including hardware) with the idea that someday it’ll be unusable with newer equipment or operating systems.

Excuse me as I step down from my soapbox.

[Chiefmagua]

I have 8 Slitherine games on my iPad of which only one works with iOS 11. That’s virtually all of my war games of which the Battle Academy variants are/were my favorites. Slitherine’s only previous suggestion for a solution was to not upgrade to iOS 11. Right.

**** poor support, and no more money from me.

Chief

[DonCzirr]

It’s just business:

$$$ from Battlestar Galactica + XBOX > Wargames on IOS

I can understand that.

On the other hand, BA2 has only been out for 3 years on IOS. Does that satisfy a vendor’s commitment to customers? I’m not aware of any broad convention or standard covering such a thing.

So, I guess it will come down to each customer’s opinion (given the stance taken) on the integrity of the company.

[pipfromslitherine]

Guys, we have answered this in considerable detail. The idea that rewriting major chunks of the game, because Apple have stripped out support in the OS, is 'support' three years later is absurd. The game got many free updates, additions, and fixes after release. Almost no other games allow cross platform play, or the downloading of mods. But yes, please question our integrity.

Frankly this kind of abuse certainly does nothing to make us want to keep making iOS games.

Cheers

Pip

[DonCzirr]

I don't think anything I said above should be construed as abuse.

It was a simple examination of what customers might expect (or not expect) out of their vendors.

You will sell what you sell and customers will judge you accordingly.

I generally respect Slitherine and think you're a good company.

However, I see no issue questioning some statements / stances when the initial responses do not seem satisfactory.

All of this should be done with civility however and never come to abuse or personal attacks.

[Chiefmagua]

Abuse?

The “real” method of abuse is to not spend money with poor ‘ol developers that forget that it was iOS gamers that got you the revenue to grow. That being said you can take you iOS ball and go home.

Thanks for the memories.

Chief

[CarlVS]

Abuse?

The “real” method of abuse is to not spend money with poor ‘ol developers that forget that it was iOS gamers that got you the revenue to grow. That being said you can take you iOS ball and go home.

For someone to come on this forum, and make this kind of comment towards a company that has developed and/or distributed games for mostly the Windows PC platform since 2000 (according to Wikipedia,) I only have one thing to say:

REALLY?!?!?

[Chiefmagua]

Yup. Read it again.