Solution to disable Steamworks still coming
Studio Christmassteam_community_announcements
Hello, we hope you're all well.
We would like to first explain why it is taking so long to deliver an option to disable Steamworks. Despite being an incredibly cheap software, the studio supported the app for more than a year adding new features and improvements for free. Unfortunately, due to poor sales and Steam user reviews, staffs gradually left the studio one by one. Our sales could not support a single staff so we understand their decision and never fault them for leaving.
One major stress our studio had to deal with was the upset users complaining about Steamworks. Initially, we did not think this would be a major problem as it is an app sold on the Steam platform. It was something that is expected on all products on Steam, but because some of our users found it distracting, we eventually added a workaround at one point. However, this resulted many of AV software giving false positives, leaving even more bad reviews despite us noting it in various areas of the community. This frustrated a lot of developers who were already on the verge of quitting. We contacted Valve to allow us provide an option to disable in-game status via Steamworks API, but they told us there is no plan on adding such option. We spent months experimenting new methods to avoid false positives, but our Steam review rating kept going down with poor sales. This must have sealed the deal for the core staffs to quit as well.
Recently, a few core staffs returned on the promise of bringing the Steamworks toggle to drive better sales and work on new potential projects. They have recently finished developing a new working prototype to disable Steamworks, and we are working onto bringing that feature to Magic Borderless first as well. It has been thoroughly tested to be false positive-free, and it will remain completely invisible from the Steam status until it is actually being used (e.g. a configuration window is open).
Bad Steam reviews do more harm than good. For feedback, it is much more efficient to receive communication and support via the Steam forums as it provides a proper communication system to deliver a solution. If you had left a bad review in the past due to not having the option to disable Steamworks, please consider changing it to positive when we deliver the feature soon.
To those who still had faith in us and still remained to support us, we sincerely would like to thank you.
We're glad that we finally managed to find a solution to bring it to Magic Borderless.
Please stay safe,
Studio Christmas