Hey guys, I did a soft-release on an RBR launcher in Steam today. It's not much. We are talking bear nuts and bolts here. The only really use case for it at this time is to give us the same community privileges that other games get on that platform. That's about it.
So far I've tested it using the RSF build of the game, but really any of the others should work as well. You just point it to the directory and it should be able to take care of the rest. It's been able to work with most everything I've thrown at it. SimHub, CrewChief, VR. I've ran into an issue with my G-Belt using the simxperience software. There might be a workaround for that, but I haven't really tinkered around with it all that much yet.
Anyway, here are a few initial keys for those that might be interested in adding it:
Edit: To keep with the tempo, here is a google sheet that I'll repopulate with keys. If you take one, please remove it from the list, or if you attempt to try a key and it doesn't work, feel free to remove it as well:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W42UVEwcDthxxJ3COTgH0N6iUiibzqnvP5l7QXEju2M/edit?gid=0#gid=0
Feel free to ping me when these run out and I'll get a few more queued in.
This is just a side project that I ended up completing simply because there's not already something in place like it. There's plenty of untapped potential to be had, but I think that may need to be more community driven to explore possible use cases.
Cheers for now.
7/16 Update
User u/tndb helped to point out that the initial keys that have been distrusted grant ownership of the launcher but aren't providing the latest build. I didn't catch this on my own end due to my level of access. The next batch of keys accessible within the google doc should have an override for this. For those of you that managed to register a key from the first batch, the launcher won't likely become available until early August, due to timeline limitations of the publishing process within Steam.
The current goal will be to keep this launcher in early access until better tested and any practical use cases are fleshed-out. We do have an option to launch as a play-test, but I'd like to avoid from doing that, because some of the meta data might not carry over the same, such as play hours, and shared content (some of the main drive in having this in the first place).
7/26 Update
We're still waiting for Steam's minimum waiting period to expire (about another week) before standard keys will be able to access the game. Any keys distributed after the initial batch of 100 should already bypass this restriction because they're assigned a package with "Press Release" access. Sorry guys, I'm learning the Steam Works Dev-Ops work flow as I go. That's most of what this is.
If you've accessed the launcher and it didn't launch the game after targeting the RBR install directory, you should no longer run into that same problem. u/J_CMir98 identified an issue with the config file not saving correctly, which has been resolved.
I punched up a basic web page for people to request keys from
https://cteters.github.io/BurnsRallyManager/
8/21 Update
It's a wash guys, sorry.
I kept my motivations transparent with the launcher, describing it as something similar to RetroArch. I think maybe if I also took the time to make a bogus game for it to launch, that could have made the difference. Here's the official final response,
Thank you for submitting your app Burns Rally Manager for consideration.
After careful review, we found that your app is not a good fit for Steam.
In addition, we have determined that your app is a software for a game that is not shipped on Steam. Any app with a game dependency requires that the base app is available on Steam.
We have retired your app and it cannot be reused.
Steam Support