Hi, I own this awesome and unique game of Sea of Thieves since September 2019 which I bought on Microsoft Store for my PC, I've just added 90 euros into my Steam Wallet and realized that it was a bit too much. As the game is now available on Steam and offers the option of linking my Microsoft account to my Steam account, I was wondering if it could be possible to buy ancient coins on Steam and use them in my Sea of Thieves which was bought on a different platform which in my case is on Microsoft Store. If you would happen to know the answer or to have tried the same thing, please let me know if it is possible or not.
Buying Ancient Coins with Steam while having a game copy bought on Microsoft Store
You need to own the game on Steam to activate coins bought through Steam, and the opposite is true if you buy them on the Microsoft Store. The coins don't get added to your account until you boot the game up with that store's client.
For example, I bought coins on the Microsoft Store. They do not appear when using the Steam client. If I start the Microsoft Store client, the coins get added to my account and THEN I can use them from the Steam client.
If you do not own the client for that store, do not purchase coins there.
@d3adst1ck said in Buying Ancient Coins with Steam while having a game copy bought on Microsoft Store:
You need to own the game on Steam to activate coins bought through Steam, and the opposite is true if you buy them on the Microsoft Store. The coins don't get added to your account until you boot the game up with that store's client.
For example, I bought coins on the Microsoft Store. They do not appear when using the Steam client. If I start the Microsoft Store client, the coins get added to my account and THEN I can use them from the Steam client.
If you do not own the client for that store, do not purchase coins there.
This seems very, very backwards. Steam and the Microsoft stores are just that: stores, not separate platforms. We should be able to link our Microsoft and Steam accounts and be able to download Sea of Thieves from our preferred provider; it doesn't affect Microsoft since we're still ultimately buying their game and buying their microtransactions.
@blam320 the microtransaction takes place when you boot that client up. As to downloading it from one or the other there is a difference. On the Ms store they get 100% on the steam store they get 70% irrc.
If you wanna download it and play from either platform you gotta own it on both.
Same example would be buying Call fo duty on the xbox but wanting to play it on my pc/ps4. They are just stores, but that's not how it works.
@captain-coel That's a completely different example. PC is a totally different platform to Xbox, so it makes sense that you'd need to buy the game a second time. Cross-platform play is a very new innovation (though I strongly suspect it could have been done sooner). Whereas you're buying a second copy of the game for the same platform if you want to use Steam vs the MS Store, which is counterintuitive.
@blam320 but you have to think of it as the same product from two stores. The stores are independent of each other. And digital purchases are added to the game upon launching.
@blam320 while at its basis it might look like that, however sadly it doesnt work like that.
when purchasing a software product you dont actually buy a product or a "copy" of that product, you buy a license to use that software product under (decently strict) specific circumstances and those can change between digital store-fronts, meaning also that usage rules are usually directly linked to the store you buy it from especially with clients like steam.
the terms and conditions change based on where you purchase the license from and there are decently big differences between steam and MS-store strictly based on that.
whilst in a perfect world we would be able to buy something like a digital license once and then download it from any store-front its available from, there is a reason this isn't going to work in at least the current way these digital store-fronts are governed.
When you have purchased a license trough the MS-store and they would allow you to use that to also get a license trough the Steam store for free it would actually cost MS/Rare money, because when selling trough Steam/Epic stores deals are made that simply state for each license sold trough their systems those store-fronts are entitled to X % of the retail price as a commision, this would mean that (in case of steam which usually demands 30%) you would get a free license to use it via steam so you would have to pay nothing but Microsoft has to pay Steam $ 11.99 (30 % of $39.99) even though they didnt charge you a dime.
so lets say the 10+ million people that purchased the game originally via ms-store now do that and you can see how a problem would start developing really fast.
@callmebackdraft said in Buying Ancient Coins with Steam while having a game copy bought on Microsoft Store:
When you have purchased a license trough the MS-store and they would allow you to use that to also get a license trough the Steam store for free it would actually cost MS/Rare money, because when selling trough Steam/Epic stores deals are made that simply state for each license sold trough their systems those store-fronts are entitled to X % of the retail price as a commision, this would mean that (in case of steam which usually demands 30%) you would get a free license to use it via steam so you would have to pay nothing but Microsoft has to pay Steam $ 11.99 (30 % of $39.99) even though they didnt charge you a dime.
This is wrong. Developers can request keys for Steam products for free. They do not get charged by Valve for this service, and this is how they are able to sell their own keys on their own websites or other sites such as Humble Bundle.
This is outlined in the Steamworks Documentation.
@d3adst1ck while that is true, however steam only gives those keys in limited quantities, they will never go for the following:
MS: "So yeah we want to be able to give all our customers that purchased the game previously on the windows store a key for the game in steam"
Valve: "Oh thats nice, how many copies did you sell their"
MS: "Well X million"
if you read the full page you will see that they will limit that ;)
@callmebackdraft It says that large key requests will be reviewed manually (likely to make sure it's not from a compromised dev account). It doesn't say it is limited. Depending on circumstances, it would be possible to migrate an entire userbase from some other platform to Steam if they wanted to.
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