Using steam or not?

With the Alpha around the corner, some of us need to decide soon. Using Steam or the Uber store. As getting a Steam key is a 1-way operation, what do you guys going to pick? Why go for Steam or for the Uber store? Are there possible downsides to either options?

Consolidation of your games and Steam's Download/Update servers (which are pretty quick where I'm from)

Ubernet Provides the same service but it's servers and methods are... well, different to Valve's.

I'm Going to let Uber have a chance to get it working smoothly and if their patching service is painful, slow or crashes too often I'll move to Steam. If it's painless I'll just use the Steam Overlay.

But I'll only move to Steam after release. During Alpha and Beta, Ubernet needs testing, and I've payed to test.

Sticking with Ubernet for the foreseeable future.

I'm generally pretty critical of Steam, mainly for the reason of promoting healthy competition amongst digital distribution (I'm against monopoly situations).

Please consider adding "Maybe" option as I will decide after seeing how it works without Steam on my computers.

The main factors will be the non-Steam updater and other misc stuff. I wouldn't care about other Steam integrations such as achievements and "in-game Steam community".

Poll needs a Maybe

We're gonna need to use Ubernet regardless of steam during alpha and beta but I think I think feedback from both steam and non-steam perspectives will be useful. I already don't use steam though so I probably won't

I was thinking about the "Maybe" but there is only one of 2 options.. go for Steam or not, so I skipped the "Maybe".

Personaly I think I will use Uber although I am a big Steam user. I have the feeling I have more control over the game files and the server files which gives me more options to run a private server.

edit: Maybe Uber will release the server files independant of the game itself. So we can get the server files from Uber and play the game from steam?

They will need to do that anyway, how else should dedicated servers work?

Ubernet for the alpha, definitely. I bought my brother a beta key, and he's a big fan of Steam, so I may be shifting for the beta; assuming that the cross-platform gaming works without a hitch I'll probably stick to Ubernet though.

Thinking about it, testing the lobbying and matchmaking across platforms would actually be useful, so I think I will be sticking with Ubernet during the beta too

No. Maybe with a 2nd account I'll get at release, but before that I don't see any reason to add it to steam.

I think I will go with Steam, simply because I would hate to have yet another updater service running. For Alpha/Beta with frequent updates, Steam is quite comfortable, especially when you have multiple PCs, also the update servers have sufficient capacities.

Although I WILL get myself a DRM free copy of the game too once it has been released, and I don't care at all if that copy will be provided by Uber or if I have to get it from other sources. Not for myself, but for when I want to play the game on LAN parties and there are people who don't have the game themselves and are not willing to buy a full copy since they are not going to play the game apart from LAN parties anyway.

Steam all the way, it makes everything nice and easy, and I've always liked having all the extras Steam brings to the table. I've never had any problems with Steam, it works perfectly fine online and offline so I don't see any reason not to use it.

Other than you screw Uber out of testing their Download/Update service. During Alpha I really think everyone should stick to their service and choose to migrate to Steam on release if they still want to.

As mentioned before by others i'll go for the uber network during alpha&beta and may bind the release version to steam. as far as i understood, the release within uber's network could also be before steam early access?

and also as mentioned before: i payed to test, so i'm happy to do so

I will probably use uberstore and see how it is, it will also depend on how quickly the updates get pushed out to steam users as well. If there is no different in service then I would go with steam.

I'm gonna use uberstore.

Is the ristriction for test only or actual game? I think I am going to stick with Uber Store by the way...

Actual release too, since its a fundamental issue with how keys get assigned.

I don't mind using Uber for testing, even when we use steam we will use Uber servers to play right?

So for now, Uber, later when the game is released, maybe Steam, cause my games and friends are there...so they see when I will play PA and I can invite them.

For now, I want the pure vanilla PA Alpha experience... lol

Also, I won't be able to survive till the 7th of June, knowing someone is testing the alpha out there already...

I too will be using uber rather than steam. Me and my pals (whom have also plumped for a the $90 Alpha tester option) talked about this last night whilst playing Supcom. The only downside we could see would be a potential GPG net scenario whereby the game isn't hosted in the future and thus steam was the better option.

Why add DRM to a DRM free game? No Steam for me when it comes to PA.