I too prefer Steam for any digitally purchased titles. I boycott Direct2Drive for their terrible support and history of flawed patch releases. I'm not familiar with Capcom's Digital River-backed service so I didn't try it.

However, you *can* make GamersGate vaguely tolerable. Puzzle Quest PC was initially only available via GG, so that was the first place I bought it. But like others, I had no intention of keeping their ridiculous software installed or putting it on a second computer just to install a game on my laptop.

Here's what to do:

1. You do have to temporarily install the GamersGate software. Sorry!
2. Log in, click Download for BCR, and then choose a folder. I used c:\users\techknight\Downloads\BCR
3. GG will then download temporary files to a subfolder of the one you chose. You can see from this screenshot that their server is very slow right now:

4. Once launch.dat is finished downloading, go ahead and click Install. After a short delay, the BCR installer will start.

5. That delay was GG extracting launch.dat into another folder as bcr_setup.exe. Make a copy of that file, then exit the BCR installer.



6. Write down your serial number from the GG interface, then exit GamersGate and uninstall their awful software.

7. Now you can run bcr_setup.exe anytime you want to install BCR, whether on your desktop, laptop, or newly formatted computer without having to jump through any hoops.

It's not as convenient as Steam would be, since you have to keep a backup of that file somewhere, but it's better than nothing. (And also better than supporting Direct2Drive)

EDIT: This is actually not so good... See my post here about trying to do a second activation on my laptop.

Both sides are to blame here, and as I'm sure its all about money.

But this is angering me, and many others as I can read here and on the Steam forums.  I was looking forward to purchasing this game and I do not want to deal with 10 different DD services.

Sven, I've read your posts before and you seem like a cool guy, and BCR seems like a great game, I am actually tending to blame Valve more for this than Capcom, but could you please elaborate on the situation a little more so your consumers can better understand the situation?

It sucks that it isn't coming to Steam. And seeing as how much I hate D2D. I will have to pass on the game.

You realise there are other options beyond D2D, right?

But none that are even half as good as Steam. And now you've gone and confirmed it: not in the forseeable future. Am I really supposed to expect that you didn't know this was going to happen until yesterday? Why did you have to let us get blindsided like this?

And you're seriously going to sit there and tell me that I can still expect Flock and AoB, huh? That's barefaced, Sven. Totally barefaced.

If this is the way Capcom are gonna act, then from my point of view, they don´t really need to bother with PC-versions.

1. They say they are gonna release it on Steam, and build up expectations.
2. They then come to the conclusion that they can´t release it on Steam, but they let people have to dig for information about why the game isn´t out on Steam.
3. They then think that a post in an old thread on this forum is the way to give customers the information. We all appriciate your effort to keep in touch with us customers, Sven. But the information should have been made available in other places also. Your answer here is the source for both Steam-customers and readers of sites such as Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
4. Then, we don´t get any good reasons for_why_it won´t be available.
5. Then we get recommendations to just get it somewhere else. I´m sorry, but thats not good enough for us who has choosen Steam as our default platform for DD-games. We don´t want additional installers, DRM and accounts for just one or a few games.

It some adjustment to go from boxed copies to DD games. One doesn´t want more adjustment for every single game one wants to buy.

We were promised a Steam version, and we are supposed to just be satisfied with "no, sorry, buy it somewhere else"?