The Telltale Steam split
Once upon a time, Telltale must have looked upon steam favorably as a gaming and distribution platform.
No longer is that true, at some point in time they must have decided its better to go their way and have followed in the footsteps of EA, Ubisoft and to a lesser extend R* and created their own DRM platform.
This means:
1. No more steam specific features like trading cards in Walking Dead S1
2. PC community will be split between steam, telltale drm, and drm free versions
3. All retail units and keys sold (e.g. Amazon, GMG) will not be redeemable on steam
Again, everyone loses, no one wins.
/sad day
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Telltale has always released games via their own website. You make it sound like this is a new development. I'm pretty sure that Telltale was releasing games via their website even before they started using Steam.
All their games have Steam achievements, even the new ones. Trading cards mean they have to come up with art assets and very few people care about trading cards anymore. So it's not worth the effort. People cared when trading cards first came out, so Telltale obligingly put them in S1.
Why is that a bad thing? More choice is good.
So buy from Steam if you want it on Steam.
You should not portray opinions as facts. Unless you are omnipotent OR you had access to Steam's internal database that showed declining interests in trading cards, I can not possibly see how you can back up those statements.
Quite the contrary, I've seen steam markets grew at phenomenal rates over the past years and astronomical prices being paid on steam card related items (it is common for niche profile backgrounds to be sold for 100+ USD)
That is true but only to a point. I do like sites like GoG that offers people options.
But, this is 2014 and not 2000 anymore. We live in a connected world where even single player narrative games are no longer just personal experiences. A concentrated community go a long way in enhancing these experiences. Imagine Xbox without live and PS without PSN but with a host of different propriety multiplayer and community components. Imagine X1 and PS4 friend lists are not shared across games.
If you have been a PC gamer for the past 20 years then you can remember there was a time where PC gamer had choices and each game were discrete little exes tucked away in folders. See where that got us in the first 5 years of the 2000s. Countless console exclusives were never to land on PC, even multiplatform games did not get a pc release. PC gaming was not dying then, it was dead. The only reason we are seeing a complete reversal of that process (MGS5 to DOA5, DR3 o Ryse...etc), not to mention the success story of indie games, is because of platforms like steam that can produce a critical mass of players that are willing to spend on not just the games themselves, but the value and the experience of having a community around it.
I am not posting at 4AM in the morning because of something a 5yo would already know. I am just lamenting the decision some publishers make which I see will bring about another dark age for PC gaming so soon after its resurgence.
Well, why else would Valve come up with that ridiculous auction event? Because people had a ton of unwanted cards that they were screaming to get rid of.
The rest of your post is nonsensical. You talk about how great Steam is, but say that it having competition will "bring about another dark age for PC gaming." Utter nonsense. I'm more fearful of what PC gaming will look like if Steam is its sole gatekeeper. Telltale is not even shying away from Steam. All their games are on Steam, don't force you to use Telltale's own DRM, and I've seen absolutely no indication that will change in the future. Personally, I don't like using Steam. I don't trust them and I think it's a clunky platform. Why should Telltale force me to use it? I think it's great that they give me the option of using their own, simpler system.
Telltale's website was actually one of the first avenues for digital distribution (they even used to sell third party games by other developers in the days before Steam became the most popular method of digital distribution). Telltale has sold games from their website since 2005 when Telltale Texas Hold'em was released (as a matter of fact, this game was released mainly to test Telltale's ability to digitally distribute games through their own store). Their store was opened way before Steam became the leader in digital distribution. In 2005, digital distribution was still in its infancy, as Steam only began in 2003, and didn't have nearly the foothold on the digital distribution market in 2005 that they have now.
Telltale hasn't stopped selling their games through Steam, and they won't for any future games. Likewise, they won't stop selling games at their own store, since it's been a successful avenue for them to sell games since they were founded (and it's been good for gamers too, as more often than not they've sold bonus DVDs for just the price of shipping at the end of the season to those who bought the game from their store, although this isn't always the case).
There's nothing wrong with choices on where you can buy games. You can buy all of their games through Steam (as a matter of fact, some of their games are available on Steam and are no longer available at the Telltale store). Or you can buy their games through the Telltale Store. A lot of Telltale's games before The Walking Dead are available on GOG.com too.