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

I had x3PE and a bunch of add ons on steam, my advice would be don't buy from steam. There is nothing "wrong" with the steam release but you have pretty much no control over what gets installed and what doesn't and if like me you then decide to upgrade to platinum via cakewalks own site then from my experience so far, its gonna be tricky to get your addons and stuff from steam tranfered to your cake account so you can use them in platinum.
 
That's not to say that cakewalk don't have a solution for this in the works but I have yet to hear anything other than "we'll look into it we can see that you purchased this stuff"
 
Overall buying direct from cake or any other store that drops the products directly into your cakewalk account seems like the best solution to me.

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

I actually use Steam on a daily basis, but only for gaming and purchasing games. Any audio related stuff (Sonar and even Softsynths sales), I prefer to buy it from a known audio related vendor. As Greeny stated, Steam takes control of the installation process (which is excellent for all my games as it automatically updates them without me having to do them manually) ,but I don't want that done with my DAW stuff. I like to keep them seperate and it has worked out very well.  

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.

Yeah it's not something I would want as I don't play games much but I'm beta testing for a well known company who shall remain nameless and I've had to install steam and download the beta that way which is unusual but I think they may be testing steam it's self as a future means of selling their software.
 
As it turned out it failed to install because the licence manager couldn't locate the server but I don't know if that was due to steam or not. I'm just puzzled as to what could be gained for a music software company to be using steam.
Automatic updating sounds like a pretty bad idea for music software as updates can often introduce instability and bugs for some users so I'm hoping they're just using steam for us beta testers.
 
Steve

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).

Got it working tonight so you were right Greeny, not steam at all.
 
I like the idea of fxpansion (the secrets out) being able to increase their sales to millions of users by using steam.
If these updates get installed automatically can they be rolled back for people who have problems?
 
 
Steve

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.

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?