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Over the last year or two, I’ve publicly hemmed and hawed about upgrading from Command: Modern Air and Naval Operations to Command: Modern Operations. You probably know the score, but I’ll summarize again.

All else being equal, I’d rather buy direct from Slitherine/Matrix. In doing so, I’d also get a downloadable copy of the game, free from the shackles of Steam, along with my Steam key. It’s the best of both worlds. On the other hand, Steam’s storefront is easier to deal with and they offer more frequent and (occasionally) steeper discounts. As recently as this past fall, I passed on a Steam sale, deciding to wait for the annual Matrix Christmas sale to buy direct.

The season is upon us, but once again, the Matrix option comes up short.

As expected, the Matrix discount matches the Steam discount for the game. It’s 50% off in both places. From here, though, Steam makes it easy whereas Matrix makes it hard.

If you read my last post on this game, you might have noticed I was drawn in by the “tactical display” features of an additional software purchase called Tacview. I’d yet to fully commit to it but at least giving this a full consideration was a prerequisite to my purchasing decisions. So I searched on the Slitherine page for TacView. Nothin’. I switched to the Matrix website (to which CMO is actually branded) wondering if it wasn’t some kind of scripting/security related problem. Still nothing. I spent a good bit of time with this.

When searching the forums, I could see that there really was such a thing as Tacview and that people were actively playing with it. What finally worked was a search (not on Slitherine/Matrix but across the full web) for “buy Tacview advanced edition.” This showed me (result linked so you don’t have to suffer my fate) my error.

You see, Tacview is not a Matrix product and it is not sold through the Slitherine/Matrix website – for whatever reason. Apparently, the agreements that went into that arrangement precludes Matrix from even including a link to the developers site/storefront. I probably even knew this once although, if so, it wasn’t something that stuck in my mind. Two separate purchases through two separate companies. Got it.

Now Tacview is also discounted for Christmas. 40% for this one. That, too, is the same on both Steam and on the Tacview store. But here is the difference… On Steam, CMO + Tacview is considered a “bundle” and thus is eligible for Steam’s bundle discount, an additional 25% at the moment. On Matrix, they neither know nor care that I am buying the two together. For me, that comes out to an additional $20 off.

The remaining advantage of buying direct (above and beyond the dual Steam/non-Steam license) is that the Tacview add-on has a freeware version which comes with a 21 day trial period. Some of the online comments suggest that Tacview is more of a novelty – not quite worth the cost of a full-price game. It is really nice to be able to try before you buy. On the other hand, $20 to jump in sight unseen?

I’ll do it.