Would it be possible to add minetest to steam?

[ghost]

I can understand wanting a game on your favourite platform, but I'm not sure this is really a good idea. In particular, I'm a little worried that an official steam presence would cause players to expect mods via steam's platform--this could create a second ContentDB page that modders have to manage at best, or fragment the modding community at worst.

There's probably some visibility benefit to being on Steam, but the storefront has gotten very crowded so I wouldn't expect much of a boost from this. You have to remember that Steam isn't free to launch on either, it's not expensive but if there's no major benefit then the cost isn't really worthwhile.

Do you have a particular use-case that isn't covered by adding Minetest as a non-steam game to your own library? It would be helpful to hear more details about why you want Minetest on steam.

[niwla23]

I dont know anything about steam and not use it. I just like to have a bigger community

[benrob0329]

I dont know anything about steam and not use it

Then I don't think we need to be on Steam :-) Steam is it's own content distribution platform, putting our own on it's store would be counter-productive and would likely cause more confusion as to the nature of Minetest.

[SmallJoker]

It could motivate some more players to try Minetest. A downside is that they are unlikely to participate (much) in the forums and IRC, which are currently the only central places to exchange content. Minetest already distributes itself, and unlike proprietary games there's no need to worry about credit card details or the safety of personal information (unless downloaded from a non-official source).

[ChargingBulle]

I would be willing to have a look into implementing this. Can the issue be assigned to me?

I never published anything on steam but surely we can figure that out. Minetest is already better than most greenlight steam games.

[ChargingBulle]

Please re-open.

[RokeJulianLockhart]

With the advent of the Steam Deck, please reconsider this. Many people that have purchased it shall may like Minetest, but have purchased their console to play games, and are not technically competent. To ask them to learn how to utilise the command-line, plasma-discover or GNOME Software would prevent many, because they expect to be able to acquire it via Steam, which serves as a perfectly good content-distribution platform.

I believe that the presence of "http://store.steampowered.com/app/599390" demonstrates that early-access games, which Batte For Wesnoth obviously initially was, are able to be available via Steam without significant consequent problemacy, and much additional open-source software, as the presence of "http://store.steampowered.com/app/280680" and "http://store.steampowered.com/app/365670" demonstrate, have become available via Steam, and have received positive response to their presences.

[RokeJulianLockhart]

Additionally, to actively prevent people assisting Minetest, as @Rick-W-Storm obviously desires, without mere response, is slightly disingenuous.

[rubenwardy]

I'd be willing to put it on Steam after #6733 is done, making it more palatable for a general audience

[RokeJulianLockhart]

@rubenwardy, I utterly agree.

[ChargingBulle]

Can someone assign this ticket to @rubenwardy and/or me? I can look into this in 2022q3

[Iniquitatis]

I'd be willing to put it on Steam after #6733 is done, making it more palatable for a general audience

Exactly. Something has to be done about the overall presentation (the main menu is the most obvious and glaring issue) before putting the project on Steam, otherwise it might just drown in negative reviews, and therefore its reputation might get even worse than before the Steam release. Quite shortsighted to take a risk by ignoring such a basic problem, if you ask me.

P.S. Oh, and can I bikeshed a little about the project name? ;)

[ChargingBulle]

Something has to be done about the overall presentation (the main menu is the most obvious and glaring issue) before putting the project on Steam, otherwise it might just drown in negative reviews

That's correct. Also we need high quality game modes and perhaps curate them like GarrysMod (??) Minetest is very similar to Garrys Mod because both are essentially engines with this "do whatever you want" mentality. It would be really great if we could offer 4-5 really cool game modes out of the box and present them in a good way. A german minecraft influencer (Luca) played Minetest and compared it to Minecraft. He only played the Minetest game mode which is basically a development test enviroment and not a game (?)

P.S. Oh, and can I bikeshed a little about the project name? ;)

Please don't. This really rubs a bad spot for the core devs even though surveys suggest that a lot of people hate the "Minetest" name. In fact I was bothered by this so much that I created this ticket https://github.com/LibreBlockGame/GameToBeRenamed/issues/1 where naming suggestions can be discussed. Perhaps this project will re-package the Minetest engine into a more sellable version of itself, generating money for the core development. "LibreBlockGame" isn't a fork really. It's not a replacement.

See also: https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/11657

[ChargingBulle]

@SmallJoker please re-open this issue

[RokeJulianLockhart]

@Iniquitatis and @rubenwardy, Steam supports unlisted games. Consequently, to ensure that the process is possible, feasible, and desirable, I suggest that we submit Minetest to Steam before what you quote has been finalized.

[ChargingBulle]

Good idea! We need someone/something reliable to administer the steam page.

[ChargingBulle]

Special care needs to be taken when considering where/how steam revenue is collected. There are various things that can go wrong. Most having to do with unchecked greed.

Having a non-profit would be really great. Here in germany we have e. V. and gGmbH and Stiftung. Other countries have Foundations / ... It should be assured that all money is for the benefit of Minetest and its community. That needs to go into the foundation charter.

Perhaps there are organizations which help open source projects with their finance (FSF? FSFE?)

[RokeJulianLockhart]

I (and, I expect, @Ubiquity5) are happy to administer the Steam-page, but I imagine that more qualified people are available.

However, @Ubiquity5, does money need to be collected? This game surely should be free to purchase, unless hostage by Steam necessitates payment.

[rubenwardy]

Steam allows you to publish things for free. I don't think that selling Minetest ourselves is necessarily a good idea, having to deal with paid customers would be a lot of pain in terms of support and bureaucracy. It would also be asymmetric to the rest of our delivery platforms - we don't charge for Minetest on Google Play or our website

[ChargingBulle]

does money need to be collected?

doesn't need to. It would benefit the development costs. There are other open sources games which can be purchased via Steam (and downloaded via GitHub if you prefer not to help the development). e. g. https://shapez.io/

[Iniquitatis]

Semi-offtopic:

This really rubs a bad spot for the core devs even though surveys suggest that a lot of people hate the "Minetest" name.

Don't want to sound overly negative, but I'd argue that this is the worst thing that happens in open source projects: putting personal feelings above the project's success, which often leads to some very long-standing issues. I get it, we all are doing it just for fun in our spare time, but at the end of the day it's the project that brought us together, and I believe everyone wants the best for it. So ideally it should be put in the first place. If players hate the name, it's an obvious signal to act. Would it really be fine if a lot of reviews mentioned their dislike of that name? Also, think about potential newcomers who might be put off by it. Besides, changing the name is not as difficult as it seems:

1. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of creative people in this community who can come up with a more appropriate name.
2. It is not necessary to change the internals. For example, players most likely won't care if the repository is still called "Minetest", or that some source directory will be called like that.

[ChargingBulle]

I 100 % agree with you. Right now I read the room that change like this is not possessively and that this project uses the BDFL self-management structure. Changing this is nigh-impossible. It's in our human nature. It's celeron55 baby and they're 100 % entitled to keeping their own project close to the chest. Thanks to the license we're 100 % entitled to fork and do whatever we want with said fork.

Personally I think this problem can be resolved when full-time c++ developers can work on this game with less "grown" structure and without losing the openness of the issue tracker and forum while keeping all tech tech FLOSS. It's possible. But of course, full time devs don't grow on trees. Moneys needs to come from somewhere. Ideally some public education software funding(?). Really open for suggestions here. We don't need to sell the game on steam but it would be pretty cool if we could do that. Perhaps put this project on Kickstarter and only take the money when enough is raised to really hire devs and really have enough runway to learn the ropes and actively work on Shader/GUI/Branding.

IMO we can talk as much as we want about the name of the game Engine but please lets do it at https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/11657. Here's not the right place.