Steam ?

Someone mentioned Steam in Another thread  and I was wondering what are the benefits of buying software via steam or is that not what it's for?
I'm completely ignorant about steam but had thought it was just for gamers.
 
 
Steve

Perhaps it is best to only buy 'simple' things from Steam like games and synths.

I also have z3ta+2 on steam, no problems there I can moved the DLLs to where I like and they work without problems. But still if I had to do it all over again I would leave steam out of it for x3pe.

Twaddle they get to sell it to millions more guys (potentially) who wouldn't have known about it otherwise, I guess thats the reason anyways. I bought the base x3 on steam cos it was on a super deal and having been nowhere near cakewalk for a a looooong time I thought for the small change they were asking it was worth it to take a look. I took a look, liked it and started using it as my main daw so ended up upgrading all the way to PE.
 
Also I would be suprised if steam had anything to do with your server problem, steam isn't integrated into the apps you buy on it (or should I say it doesn't need to be) you can run x3 steam version without steam running (and the app itself is exactly the same too just the way it installs and the locations are different).

twaddle
I'm just puzzled as to what could be gained for a music software company to be using steam.
 

Advertising basically. Steam is the world's biggest videogame store currently. So getting on to Steam gets you the eyes of a lot of people. How many will buy? Dunno, Steam people are often real deal hounds, but that's the goal. Also there are a fair number of zealot types that will ONLY buy on Steam, no other platform is acceptable. Also Valve's CDN is very fast, if a bit flaky. Plus they take less of a cut than most retailers, usually like 30% rather than the 50% that is normal for a store.
 
In terms of the client itself, well it kinda sucks, and I say this as someone who owns about 300 games on Steam. There is no mechanism for update rollback, and Steam wants to run any time you run a Steamworks program. Now you can make sure that your program isn't wrapped in the Steam DRM and that won't happen, and of course you can give a license code for use on your own site that'll not need Steam. I've bought things through Steam and then activated elsewhere, like EA's stuff on Origin (their digital store).
 
I guess the auto universal update of Steam can be nice, but as I said there's no rollback. Also Valve offers zero customer support, they just kinda assume their stuff always works.
 
One thing that I suppose could be useful specifically with Steam, but would require integration with the client, is cloud saving. Each program gets a dedicated amount of space on Valve's servers they can store things in. Used for save games and configurations so when you resintall a game, everything is there. Could be used for BFD to save kits n' such. Not sure it would be worth the hassle though.

jjj.fcc
Hi, guys.
I have SONAR X3 Studio in my computer and would like to try the new interface, by installing the new STEAM EDITION.
My question is:
They can "live together", installed in the same machine? Or I will screw up with X3 Studio?
 

If I'm not mistaken, I believe all the X versions of Sonar (X1, X2, & X3) will work "together".....hopefully, someone else will chime in and confirm.
I just haven't had the need to use an earlier one (although I do see the icons on my desktop) after I got S-Plat....which is the best version.  

i have sonar and z3ta from steam. you can absolutely decide for an app what's installed (via the dlc) or updated (via the "keep updated" setting). advantages? regular sales (both the above cost me 20 euros each) and guaranteed re-download/install, all through a mature delivery mechanism
eta: you can run sonar without running the steam client

pwalpwal
 
also, posts on the steam forum tend to get official responses faster than here ;-)

Now that's very interesting....considering this is the official Cakewalk forum.   
Why is that?

Ok, thank you all...
Steam Edition is so cheap at this moment (90% off until 4th July). I think I'll buy it and see what happens. If it screw up X3, then I uninstall it...  
(and I'll come back here to tell)

Well... STEAM EDITION installed!
 
Good news: working fine, read my old plugins (dx and vst)*, nice visual interface, price out of this world (little more than 4 dollars...) and my old SONAR X3 Studio not affected at all (both can be used), although I didn't notice any difference (new plugins or visual additions) to it.
 
* some plugins, though, seems to be "exclusive" to X3 Studio (some prochannel stuff, maybe).
 
That's it! Thanks again! 
 
EDIT: more good news: I managed to insert Rapture Session and TH3 in X3 Studio, just by put their path on the plugins setup page and rescan. Rapture seems functional, but TH3 is demo.
 
EDIT: well... and now... some BAD NEWS... File-Export-Audio is not working on X3 Studio... (in Steam Edition is OK).