iRacing Officially launched on Steam

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Duke
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iRacing Officially launched on Steam

Post by Duke »

iRacing Officially launched on Steam:
bsimracing.com wrote:Back at the beginning of 2013 the iRacing online racing service announced that they applied for Steam Greenlight. Steam Greenlight is a system that enlists the community’s help in picking some of the new games to be released on Steam. Developers post information, screenshots, and video for their game and seek a critical mass of community support in order to get selected for distribution.

After two years, iRacing is now officially launched on the Steam Digital Distribution platform and iRacing.com hopes that this launch will generate an opportunity to bring more members to their popular online racing system. In the near future new and existing members will be able to make use of the Steam features such as the Steam community overlays to connect to their forums, videos, friends etc.

For a 6- month membership you will be charged 36,99€ ($39.90USD). After that your Steam membership will be auto-renewed every 6 months for 50,99€ (~$59.99USD).

At this time, the iRacing Steam page might be a little confusing for potential customers who are not yet familiar with the iRacing business model. The iRacing Steam page contains a minimum of information about the cars and tracks included in the base pack, and this way newcomers might not realize that they are purchasing a membership instead of all the listed features advertised on the page.
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Re: iRacing Officially launched on Steam

Post by wobblysauce »

With all the crap that gets into Steam from Greenlight, it took iRacing some time to make it storefront.
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Re: iRacing Officially launched on Steam

Post by Duke »

Yes & even then it seems to me that is is more expensive on STEAM, unless I'm missing something?
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iRacing Officially launched on Steam

Post by NeilPearson »

its like USD 99 a year on the I racing site. unless they are raising their prices.

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Re: iRacing Officially launched on Steam

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Remember this, take note, pause and take a snapshot, this is the beginning of the end.
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Re: iRacing Officially launched on Steam

Post by AstrO »

Are they trying to target more casual gamers? This seems like an odd decision...

PS I still feel like the money I put into purchasing content in iRacing was wasted.

PPS Long live Assetto Corsa!!! ;)
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Re: iRacing Officially launched on Steam

Post by KNAPPO »

AstrO wrote:PS I still feel like the money I put into purchasing content in iRacing was wasted.
Couldn't agree more... :melt:
The only thing I use to enjoy was belting around a laser scanned Bathurst, but now Assetto Corsa is here I don't even load up iRacing any more. Still subbed till November this year as well.
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Re: iRacing Officially launched on Steam

Post by wobblysauce »

Wonder what the drop has been since AC has come around?

They have the data, being it was online only.
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Re: iRacing Officially launched on Steam

Post by DarrenM »

AstrO wrote:Are they trying to target more casual gamers? This seems like an odd decision...
Not sure why people think steam = casual. Same thing pops up every time it's mentioned on the iracing forum as well. Or did until someone posted a poll and over 90% said they had a steam account.

It's just a store. One with 10's of millions of customers to get exposure to. Every time they release new content or have a sale they can try to get on the front page and get massive exposure. If they were a boxed game I'm sure they'd want to get in ebgames so I don't think it's odd for an online distributed game to get into an online store. Main reason some devs don't want to go on steam is that steam takes a 20-30% cut of sales as far as i know.
wobblysauce wrote:Wonder what the drop has been since AC has come around?

They have the data, being it was online only.
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Those are compiled by a member by the way.
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Re: iRacing Officially launched on Steam

Post by Duke »

DarrenM wrote:Main reason some devs don't want to go on steam is that steam takes a 20-30% cut of sales as far as i know.
Yep good points Darren, I wonder if the sales cut is why the pricing seems out of whack compared to purchasing direct? But then there's no incentive to buy it via STEAM, well apart from the initial 6 month sub...

Interesting to hear some of you long term iRacing users (KNAPPO, Astr0, etc) comments too. As a new subscriber I have found iRacing enjoyable for pickup public server racing on default content.
Although the idea of pursuing a full season is a pretty big commitment. Also as someione else said in the chat thread, iRacing's indiosyncricies seems to require a lot more practice to get up to speed & to then maintain it. It's a trait I actually like but time constraints make it hard to justify my ongoing involvement with $R especially considering how good AC & our little league/community is becoming.
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Re: iRacing Officially launched on Steam

Post by DarrenM »

There are member run leagues on iracing as well. iRacing's biggest selling point is the huge pool of drivers and the ability to find good racing in decent size fields at most times of the day. Unfortunately they added the v8supercar which put a big dent in Aus participation in other series. Same happened in rfactor when the v8 mod was released.

All sims have their own driving style that you have to get used to. It takes me just as much work to get on the pace in AC as it does in iRacing and when doing both I'm slower in both. It's part of the reason I didn't get into LFS much since I was focused on rfactor at the time.
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Re: iRacing Officially launched on Steam

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From ISRTV: The launch has been described as a “soft launch” by iRacing, not promoting it too hard in case there are any bugs. Hopefully there aren’t any and a bigger “here it is!” can be released soon.
Below is a message from Dave Kaemmer, iRacing’s co-founder and CEO, from about a month ago explaining the importance of Steam to the current members and how the implementation will work:
The main reason I am writing this forum post is to convey that iRacing’s being available on Steam is a good thing. Our whole model, not to mention our business, works much better with critical mass. The whole system was designed for that. The centrally-based service, head to head multi-player system, data centers around the world, the race results captured since day one, license ladder, the skill-based racing splits, the various racing divisions, the private league sections and more will all improve as our membership grows. It has also been a major goal to bring new people into sim racing and make it into a much bigger “sport”. The existing hard-core sim racing niche is not all that large, the number of people that own racing wheels but do not know about sim racing and iRacing is much bigger by a significant factor. Reaching some of those people will contribute immensely to the iRacing service and create a whole new wave of sim racers. This was always designed and intended to be a community for all, from experienced sim racers and real world racing drivers, to race gamers and beginners. The idea has been that people new to sim racing can see how it differs from most driving games, and that they become keen to progress and get better. This has proven to be true, as we have many members who came to iRacing from console racing games, and who have risen through the license ranks to become very accomplished sim racers.

I should also mention that if you are an iRacing member and joined directly through iRacing.com, this will have no impact on your membership at all, nothing will change. You should continue to come directly to iRacing to sign in like you always do. Also if you are an existing iRacing member, do not create a new iRacing account on Steam because that would be a whole new account–you would not be able to access the content that you bought directly on your existing iRacing account and your racing history would also not be tied to any new account you create. However, if you join directly through the iRacing website but you are also a Steam member, or at some point in the future you join Steam, you will be able to use the Steam community overlays to connect to their forums, videos, etc. while in iRacing. In other words, iRacing members who have signed up directly through iRacing can use Steam functionality if they are Steam members even if their iRacing account was not purchased through Steam. That is another positive.

Launching on Steam is going to open up a fresh set of eyeballs on us. We will get one opportunity with most people when they research us. I would like to ask that you welcome these new members and for those of you already on Steam, please encourage others to join iRacing! If you are so inclined, you can be powerful advocates for us by providing positive feedback and reviews on Steam about iRacing. I would even ask that you consider joining Steam–it is free–to help provide positive feedback for iRacing. By embracing this and helping to promote iRacing you will be helping us to grow–not only will the racing be more fun because of better splits, but it will allow us to continue to invest more in all the features we have planned. Every year iRacing’s development spend has grown, and we want that to continue! iRacing on Steam is a great opportunity for the sim racing community to grow.

We sincerely thank you for being members and supporting us. I can promise you that we are going to continue to do everything we can to make iRacing better and better. An enthusiastic and growing membership is very important to that goal. As always, the best way to help us continues to be to encourage your friends, fellow racing and car enthusiasts, gamer buddies, etc. to come check us out at iRacing.com, to sign up and give virtual racing a try!
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Re: iRacing Officially launched on Steam

Post by pab »

KNAPPO wrote:
AstrO wrote:PS I still feel like the money I put into purchasing content in iRacing was wasted.
Couldn't agree more... :melt:
The only thing I use to enjoy was belting around a laser scanned Bathurst, but now Assetto Corsa is here I don't even load up iRacing any more. Still subbed till November this year as well.
Either of you guys are welcome at my place any time to help me get AC setup to feel good on my rig, last time I tried I was left convinced that I must be doing something wrong :)

I must admit, I haven't put any time into getting AC running since I got rid of my monitors and started using the Rift exclusively for racing, can anyone confirm whether it's possible to race with you guys online effectively with the rift now?
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Re: iRacing Officially launched on Steam

Post by DarrenM »

pab wrote:can anyone confirm whether it's possible to race with you guys online effectively with the rift now?
It's not. We still don't have a UI so you can't load setups etc, or even see what's going on in the session.

I've been doing the friday night fun races using virtual desktop but that just simulates driving on a huge monitor so it's still pretty shit. It's also blurry because it's doing the warp on 1080p. I plan to go back to iracing for competitive racing but I'm distracted by Elite at the moment.
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Re: iRacing Officially launched on Steam

Post by pab »

OK, I'll keep my eyes open for when the Rift is properly supported and give it a go then (I do need to try AC in the rift soon though, even if I can't race in it, just to see how it compares to iR on my rig now).
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Re: iRacing Officially launched on Steam

Post by wobblysauce »

Are you able to buy on site, and play on steam.. or is it a incompatibly build mix.
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Re: iRacing Officially launched on Steam

Post by DarrenM »

It's a standalone game so it doesn't matter where you pay for it. As far as I'm aware all you'd be doing is paying for the subscription via steam and running the base installer. After that you do everything via the iracing website.

Similar to how most free to play/mmo games on steam only install a launcher. You start that from steam then it downloads the actual game.
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Re: iRacing Officially launched on Steam

Post by Duke »

This might help explain what Darren means, this is direct from the iRacing members site, which is effectively the front-end to launching the sim. ;)
We just wanted to take a moment to welcome our new Steam iRacing members. We are very excited to be available through Steam and hope that you will find iRacing as fun as we do!

Here are a few things that we thought would be useful to new members, whether you are from Steam or not, these resources should help get you up to speed a little faster.
How To Videos – a series of How To videos that will help get you started in your iRacing career
Check out What’s Hot and get on track fast here
Driving School – our video based driving school, developed with the Skip Barber Racing School, provides valuable tips on going faster
Member Forums – a great place to meet fellow iRacers, discuss racing, get setups or paints, etc
Reference Section – a great resource when you have a question about iRacing

Once again, welcome to iRacing!
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Re: iRacing Officially launched on Steam

Post by wobblysauce »

Ok, some games go down the dual builds route.
Some play it safe on the merry-go-round, others go for the thrills of the roller-coaster.

ᕙ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ᕗ vs ლ(ಠ益ಠ)ლ

I have a joke for you. I have a prediction that you are going to walk into a bar, my prediction was wrong and your wallet is gone.
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