There hasn’t been a lot of good news out of EA lately, but here’s some: the company just launched a bunch of classic games on Steam. The new (old) releases include nine games in total, spanning franchises like Dungeon Keeper, Populous, and SimCity.
Here’s the full list:
Command & Conquer The Ultimate Collection
SimCity 3000 Unlimited
Populous
Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods
Populous: The Beginning
Dungeon Keeper Gold
Dungeon Keeper 2
Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri Planetary Pack
The Saboteur
I’m sure most of them have already been available on GoG for quite some time, I don’t know what took them so long to port them over competing storefronts.
Maybe they had an agreement with GOG? This is all personal speculation, but GOG was primarily known as Good Old (Ol’?) Games for a long time, as they would put that under their GOG acronym back in the day. It was essentially a storefront that primarily dealt with classics and keeping them available to consumers before they pivoted and started also focusing a lot on modern games. Maybe my memory is flawed and I’m completely misremembering the old GOG and they’ve always focused on modern games as well, so anyone feel free to correct me if that’s the case.
Anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised if GOG struck a deal with a lot of publishers for selling all their classics exclusively. On the flip side, it could also be that the publishers just didn’t care enough about their old offerings to put any effort into porting them into other storefronts. Now that retrogaming is much more ubiquitous than it once was, some bean counter pitched this idea in a mid-quarter profit seeking brainstorming meeting and here we are.
GOG doesn’t have the money to do exclusives like Epic Games.
I wouldn’t think getting exclusive access to 20+ year old games that are mostly obscure would cost very much, but who knows. It was just a theory either way.
Good point that old games mightn’t cost as much to exclusivise
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literally in the bloody article lmfao.
I didn’t see where it says why they took so long to add to Steam?
It’s a competitor, they only started using Steam since the profit is better than the pride.
Steam wins on market share. You’d think they would have started on steam if it was to make more money, or added them to Steam a long time ago. I’m sure their reasoning is sound, just curious what it was. Licensing deals, listing cost, whatever. Maybe they waited for all the true believers to get it on gog and now hope they’ll all buy again on steam for the achievements. By pride do you mean the Origin failure?
Steam takes a 30% cut of the profit last I read. EA tried to avoid this with Orgin to not pay that 30%. I assume Steam sales have to be pretty good VS Orgin numbers keep using Steam.
People hate using extra launchers, and EA has a reputation of being comic book villain evil. I assume any tiny bits of good will they get from customers is rare and this is low hanging fruit. People also love Steam to the point of not buying a game without it. The 30% cut probably seemed worth the trade for the wriggling masses running EA.
are already available through the classic game service GOG. But more choice is always a good thing. This is particularly true when it comes to making older games more accessible on modern platforms, something that’s becoming increasingly rare for all but the biggest titles.
They were on GOG, and it’s for more access to more people and compatibility.
Article was only a few paragraphs, I thought Reddit was bad for people not reading articles, fucking shit lmfao.
Maybe go back to Reddit if your replies are that toxic. I read that. It’s the author’s opinion that he’s happy it’s on steam now. It is not the answer to the question, so I thought maybe you had some insight or I misread something. I gave another user (you) the benefit of the doubt that maybe I missed something. Maybe you’re in defensive mode from Reddit. It’s not needed here
That’s not an answer to the question and your reading comprehension is bad if you think it is.
I read the article and it didn’t answer my question, so I’m not sure what are you trying to say.
are already available through the classic game service GOG. But more choice is always a good thing. This is particularly true when it comes to making older games more accessible on modern platforms, something that’s becoming increasingly rare for all but the biggest titles.
They were on GOG, more access to more people and compatibility.
The article isn’t that long and you missed that?
That’s not an explanation of why it took them so long.
It’s the article’s writer (not an EA representative, so it’s just the writer’s subjective opinion) saying “the games were already available elsewhere, but it’s good they are now available on Steam as well”.
Also, you should tone down your snarkiness.
EA’s launcher still requires internet access though, right? If so, you’re probably better off sticking to the GOG versions. I booted up Jedi: Fallen Order on a train, and EA told me “no”.
I don’t think these games require the EA launcher.
Maybe not. The disclaimers on the side of the store page appear to be different between these and some other EA games. I hate how hard it is these days to discern if a game has a stupid always-online requirement.
Can confirm at least on the C&C bundle there is no EA app requirement
That is so fucking annoying. How they gonna say you can’t play a game that you bought.
Ffs.
I was having similar issues with Red Dead Redemption 2 on Steam. Like RDR2 is still a great game but that DRM bullshit can go fuck itself.
Just FYI, it generally seems that none of these require origin or the EA app or any more than Steam as DRM.
I don’t know about these newly added games but I can launch Sim City 4 from Steam without Origin.
Looks like somebody is in need of cash 😂. But to be fair, these games were back in the day mighty good. It’s really a shame to see how both greed and ever growing ambitious killed creativity.
I own all of C&C on Origin, but I’d rather get a root canal without anesthetic than use their launcher. I paid Steam $10 instead.
Don’t you still need the EA launcher through steam though? I don’t want to buy the ultimate collection again if that’s the case
EDIT: I can confirm I just launched RA2 without the launcher after buying through steam. Halleluiah
It sort of seems like another shot across the bow at abandonware archiving.
I just picked a title at random- https://archive.org/details/DungeonKeeperGoldEditionUSAEnFrEsNlSvPl
As long as companies think they can keep making money from old games, they will keep trying.
I’m OK with them wanting to keep making money from it as long as they update it for compatibility with newer operating systems. Selling something they have completely abandoned us not cool.
Sure, but the abandonware version should still be archived and playable and the goal here is to make that impossible.
What makes you say that this is aiming to make that impossible? I picked up RA2 because it was cheap and I figured if I didn’t like the port (doesn’t work well, forces you to play on their application, etc) I’d just return it and so far it’s been good enough for me to use. The installation process was a lot easier than the original game and I was able to hop straight in and play. Haven’t had any issues with it yet.
So far I haven’t seen anything to suggest that this is anything but them catering to a different market that being the steam community.
There’s a reason why Nintendo keeps suing companies making emulators out of existence.
Yes I both am aware and agree that that would be acting against archives and the like. EA making these games available on Steam however is not the same as Nintendo suing emulators.
I always loved SimCity 3000. It was the first city builder I’d ever played.
I can still hear that smooth jazz playing and the sound of screams when I sent a robot and a tornado barreling through the city.
I honestly had no idea there was a SimCity 3000. Last one I played was SimCity 2000
Don’t skip over SimCity 2001-2999, you’ll be totally lost…
lol
Same here, Sim City 3000 and The Sims were my jam and I still listen to their soundtracks every once in a while, they’re so good. There was something truly magical about Maxis back then.
I really want a modern old school style city builder. I tried cities skyline but it was too complicated. Like parkitect is to planet coaster.
Skylines is complicated?!?
Fair enough I guess, have you tried citiesXL? Older and dead but even more of a city painter I believe.
Compared to Sim City 3000 and Sim City 4, Cities Skylines’ UI feels really convoluted to me.
If it needs origin I’m not interested
It does not
Populous The Beginning! I never played the other populous games but I have some very fond memories of this one. As a kid I just loved using spells to reshape the worlds and mess with the enemy AI. Dropping a volcano in the middle of their village and watching them go nuts was always so much fun.
I remember spending hours on the first level raising land across the entire planet to make a gigantic village
Simcity 3k unlimited on sale for 2 bucks?
i was just searching for my cds this morning! Fuck yeah i’ll buy it for 2 bucks!
edit
So excited over SC3KU for 2 bucks I missed Alpha Centauri, which is also two bucks! bought that too :D
edit again
Command and Conquer games are still way to expensive for how old they are, though. To bad.
You can get the whole ultimate collection for below 10 bucks
Huh, isnt showing up for me, had to view an individual games store page and just click add bundle to get it.
Yes it looks like each game is 10 bucks if you look at it from the store browser.
Used to play the crap out of some Populous (all of them) was a great game. Not giving EA any money though. Just get them on GoG so you don’t rent them.
Yeah I’d forgotten about Populous, used to play it on my Amiga back in the day. It was the first. RTS type game I played iirc.
Now do Black and White, please…
Damn, Populous was my go to game back in the day. So much fun
Can a bitch just get Sim Tower?! I miss that game the most from childhood…
Check out Project Highrise. Felt pretty similar to the nostalgia.
Or https://www.myabandonware.com/game/simtower-the-vertical-empire-3f2
This one and SimCopter took way more of my time than any of the other Sim games by a mile. I was especially surprised because SimCopter was full 3D and my old hardware could run it.
I don’t know how well a remaster of either would sell, but I’d buy them. SimCopter could even be a mobile game at this point.
Populous was so much fun back in the day
I wish there were more god games, especially more complex / ambitious / large scale ones. Like a mixture of god game, 4X, and cult simulator.
Added but not updated to work well on modern systems. Can’t play one of my favorites games (red alert 2) because it just isn’t built for it.
Like they could of invested some time to update it a bit so I can play games that’s not 640-480.
There is OpenRA. An open source engine to get those classic C&C games running on modern machines but it only supports C&C, Red Alert 1 and Dune 2000.
They are working on the next engine with Tiberian Sun currently under development.
If you’re interested in Dungeon Keeper, I highly recommend a similar project called KeeperFX. Play the game on modern systems, in higher resolutions, with game fixes as well.
Where is Themen Park™ Manager?
I want to play that again so badly and its not even in GoG (unlike another Theme Park, I didn’t play back then).
