Don't you want my money?

[simplex]

@Rachealica, Yes, and I'm saying that as a work-around, he can give them the $5 to buy it for themselves. It's not the same fun/surprise as getting the game directly gifted, but they own DS-only, so they can do it since he can't.

"I'm sorry I couldn't get you a Don't Starve Together beta key, but hey, here's 5 bucks. Happy Festivus."

But anyway, on topic. This is a Steam restriction, which insomony elucidated. Your reasoning for wanting to buy extra copies makes perfect sense, but Steam's rules are quite institutionalised and smaller dev teams, especially self published ones, can't really do much about it. We can't be sure without an official statemente, of course, but I think that if Klei could do something about it they would've.

[DevilsSlide]

I agree... the people I would have bought the key for already own DS, and I wanted to get them into DST early to play with me. I dunno the specifics of how Steam/Valve would configure that sort of thing though =(  It seems simple enough to me to do an if-then check, but there are probably many mysterious under-the-hood mechanics that we're just not privy to.

 

You would think it would be easy to do but I haven't seen Steam do anything like that. (That's not to say they haven't though) Then it probably becomes an issue of, how tradeable/giftable would it be?  Would you only be able to trade it to a person who owns DS or could anyone trade it, just it would only work with someone who owns DS? And with as "complicated" as that would be someone wouldn't read and find that the gift would only work if you previously owned DS, and they would complain that the beta they traded for doesn't work.

 

It seems they're will always be a way someone will be unhappy and Klei's forced to work within the box that Steam creates as the distribution system. Which I really dislike Steam but that's a long post in itself... (ex. if I buy a game, but later buy the game in a bundle with an expansion pack, why do I only get 1 copy of the game + the expansion? If I had bought that game on CDs, I'd now have 2 copies of the game + the expansion).

[Leezeebub]

Given the pricing of the bundles I dont see why they cant just add one which adds two giftable DSTs to your inventory and nothing else.

 

Vanilla DS costs £11

Frontier pack without discount is £15

Frontier pack with discount is £3.75 (but they could round it up to £4).

 

If we could buy two giftable DST keys for £4 they wouldnt lose anything, as we wouldnt be able to give away super cheap copies of vanilla DS and even if the DST keys ended up with non vanilla DS owners (which is already possible) they they would lose access once the beta ends.

[DevilsSlide]

Given the pricing of the bundles I dont see why they cant just add one which adds two giftable DSTs to your inventory and nothing else.

 

Vanilla DS costs £11

Frontier pack without discount is £15

Frontier pack with discount is £3.75 (but they could round it up to £4).

 

If we could buy two giftable DST keys for £4 they wouldnt lose anything, as we wouldnt be able to give away super cheap copies of vanilla DS and even if the DST keys ended up with non vanilla DS owners (which is already possible) they they would lose access once the beta ends.

 

If I'm understanding this thread correctly, once you have access to DST you keep access to DST, you don't lose it.  So theoretically if they let people who don't own DS buy early access keys for $5, they would lose out on additional revenue from either buying the completed (and full priced) DST when released at a higher price, or from having to buy DS bundled with DST, again at a higher price.

 

http://forums.kleientertainment.com/topic/45747-will-dst-remove-from-my-steam-account/

 

(props to Hellkitty for the link)

[Rachealica]

If I'm understanding this thread correctly, once you have access to DST you keep access to DST, you don't lose it.  So theoretically if they let people who don't own DS buy early access keys for $5, they would lose out on additional revenue from either buying the completed (and full priced) DST when released at a higher price, or from having to buy DS bundled with DST, again at a higher price.

 

http://forums.kleientertainment.com/topic/45747-will-dst-remove-from-my-steam-account/

 

(props to Hellkitty for the link)

 

Yes, the Don't starve Together is intended to only be accessible for those who buy or own Don't Starve. The fact that there are now keys that allow people to play Don't Starve Together without owning Don't Starve is just a bonus, and not intended for the final release - at least according to the roadmap.

[DevilsSlide]

I'm not sure what the roadmap is exactly or if it was ever updated, but I'm just going off that thread and where Seth says that originally it was meant to be temporary access but they changed their mind. http://forums.kleientertainment.com/topic/45747-will-dst-remove-from-my-steam-account/#entry582185

 

Granted sometimes it's hard to actually understand what's going on with some things between various forum posts, vague posts that could be interpreted in various ways, and of course things/roadmap always changing. So I'm just offering up my best extrapolation.

[Leezeebub]

Going just by that tread it does seem that DST access is permanent for everybody, which seems likes a bizarre and frankly silly move from Klei.

Oh well, it turns out my own problem has been solved as one of my friends had apparently signed up for the beta and forgotten about it, so we now all have keys