The promo read 'until April 1, 2027', which is a public promise tied to a review queue outside our
control: identity verification and the tax interview are in Valve's hands (they quote up to 30 business
days), and the store page and build reviews follow. If any of that slips, the date becomes untrue.
It now reads '30 days after the store page goes live — after that $99, locked for life', in the About
box and in commercial.md, so the claim cannot be wrong however long Valve takes.
Also recorded: the $100 Steam Direct fee is PAID (creator, 2026-11-05); a store page can be configured
once identity clears. The launch-price deadline no longer depends on Valve's calendar.
The docs described Steamworks onboarding as pending work. It is pending VALVE: the partner account
exists, identity verification is under review, and the tax interview is in their queue with a quoted
turnaround of up to 30 business days. No app IDs are assigned, no store page exists, and Release
entitlement therefore still fails closed — by design.
Distribution.md §2 becomes a status table plus the critical path computed from Valve's own published
windows (30 business days verification → fee/app IDs → up to 12 business days store review → page
public ≥2 weeks before release → up to 12 business days build review). Earliest realistic launch:
early-to-mid February 2027, leaving ~7 weeks before the 2027-04-01 launch price ends.
Nothing in this blocks the code; commercial.md, TASKS 54 and HANDOFF now say so instead of implying
Steam is an outstanding coding task.
Keep non-owner resolution choices visible but muted. Selecting one preserves the free tier and opens About; external navigation is only the explicit llamacasty.com link. Ref: https://streamlabs.com/desktop
Creator ruling 2026-11-01. One SKU, one price, Steam does the selling.
- Pro is a one-time Steam DLC on the free app: $79 introductory, $99 on a stated date, announced
where the price is shown and actually raised.
- The subscription is retired. The reasoning is in decisions.md: no service behind a monthly fee
(no servers, no cloud, no content), ~1-3 subscribers per 1,000 installs against 5-8% churn, and
it carried the most expensive code in the product.
- Polar goes dormant. Its customer-portal design is recorded, not built. The "freemium on Steam,
convert on Polar, Valve gets nothing" proposal is rejected: in-app purchases must use the Steam
Wallet, so it risks the listing to save ~$24 a sale.
- Entitlement collapses to `steamDlcOwned`. No lease, no key, no portal, no device limit; the
greyed tier opens the Steam store overlay, so every purchase stays inside Valve's own surface.
- The site publishes the model and links the store page. It takes no payment and hosts no binaries.
- The $400 lifetime died with the subscription it anchored. Founding 200 died with the coupons and
passes it needed.
Costs: $115 fixed year one; $79 nets $55.30 after Steam, so three sales cover the year.
The first half of surge day 1. One question, "may this session emit Pro output?", with
one method on the interface so nothing downstream knows which rail proved it.
SteamEntitlement reads the lifetime SKU the way Valve intends: SteamAPI.Init() then
SteamApps.BIsDlcInstalled(dlcAppId). Four different failure paths all resolve to the
free tier rather than to Pro or to a crash — no DLC id configured, no Steam client,
steam_api64.dll missing (a throw on first touch), and simply not owned. A copied folder
run without Steam is the common case, not an exceptional one.
NotConfigured() is the shipping default until Steamworks creates the DLC app; it answers
false without ever touching the native library, so today's builds behave exactly as they
did before this commit.
HasProOutput is now IsPremium || DeveloperMode || rail, with an internal EntitlementOverride
test seam (internal, because a public setter here is a licence bypass). Four tests: no id
reads false, no client reads false without throwing, the fake reports what a test sets, and
the view model takes its answer from the rail.
Steamworks.NET 2024.8.0 added; the native DLL still comes from scripts/steam-sdk.sh, so the
csproj change is three lines and no formatting churn.
The paid delta is output quality, so the rule needs to be measurable rather than a word:
921,600 pixels and 30 fps, fail-closed. Models/OutputProfile.cs is that rule as pure
policy — a permitted tier passes through untouched (Pro, or the free tier's own 720p30),
a disallowed one resolves to the best tier the budget allows and carries ITS bitrate, so
a capped user is never offered an 8 Mbps budget for a 720p frame.
Applied once, in BuildEncoderOptions. That is genuinely one place: the stream and the
local recording are two output blocks of ONE ffmpeg process fed by one EncoderOptions,
so there is no second encoder to forget. (commercial.md claimed "both encoders — never
two checks"; the code is stronger than the doc, and the doc is corrected.)
Developer override, as asked: a "Developer mode — all resolutions" checkbox in App
Settings, bound to MainViewModel.DeveloperMode, which feeds HasProOutput. It is not
hidden in a release build — Controls/DeveloperPanel's Page and Compile items are removed
when Configuration != Debug, and OverlayHost adds it at runtime inside #if DEBUG, so a
shipped exe has no BAML for it at all. The setter also refuses the value when
DevBuild.IsDevelopment is false, which is now the single source for that question (the
scoreboard partial had its own duplicate const).
Two traps worth their lines: a `const bool` dev flag makes `if (!Flag) return;` an
unreachable-code warning in one configuration or the other (CS0162), so DevBuild uses
static readonly; and a Condition on an ItemGroup is invisible to a test reading
item.Attribute("Condition") — read the parent.
Tests: 14 pass across OutputProfileTests, AssemblyIdentityTests and StorePackagingTests.
The invariant test is the one that matters: iterate every shipped tier under a free
entitlement and assert none emits more than the budget, so a future 4K tier fails here
instead of shipping to everyone. App builds Debug and Release at 0 warnings.
The site said "Coming soon to Steam" while the app docs still said direct download plus
winget primary with Steam parked. One of them had to move, and the creator's ruling is
Steam exclusive: a free app on Steam with the paid edition as a Steam DLC, and the
$10/month plan sold off-Steam by Polar.
Records the constraint that shapes the code, not just the prose:
- Steamworks requires in-app purchases to use the Steam Wallet (Microtransactions doc,
quoted in commercial.md), so the monthly is *stated*, never *sold*, inside a Steam
build; the lifetime is plain DLC bought on the store page and read with BIsDlcInstalled.
- Entitlement is `steamDlcOwned || polarKeyValid`, both resolving to one OutputProfile.
steam_api64.dll ships beside the exe and is a functional dependency, not the rejected
"IP protection" native DLL — without it DLC ownership cannot be read. Launched without
Steam, the app falls back to the free profile rather than refusing to start.
- Signing is moot: Steam installs never meet SmartScreen. Artifact Signing stays on the
shelf for the day a non-Steam download exists. Year-one fixed cost is ~$115.
- The exe rename must land before the first depot upload — Steamworks warns about
renaming a live exe.
Distribution.md is rewritten to SteamPipe mechanics (publish output, depot, steamcmd,
DLC wiring, clean-account purchase/refund test). product.md, decisions.md (a new
"Steam exclusive" entry with every dead vector), TASKS.md (Steamworks entitlement row,
Steam packaging row), ai.md, index.md and the TASK 48 banner follow. MyMistakes.md gains
the Steam rules that cost real time today: installs skip SmartScreen, updates are free,
the Wallet rule, and the recurring-billing caveat.
Four things derived this session superseded what the plan said twenty-four hours earlier,
and the docs are corrected where each one died:
**Licensing needs no server.** Polar's customer-portal endpoints authenticate on the key
itself plus the public organization_id; the org access token is only needed to create
products. Channel binding rides in `conditions: {channel_id}`, re-checked on every
validate — so the "claim page" (a hosted OAuth flow that wrote the UC id onto the key)
and the key database it implied are deleted. Device management, key rotation and
subscription auto-revocation are Polar's; four states, one lease, no callback endpoint.
**Signing is deferred until two subscribers.** It never removes the day-one SmartScreen
warning (EV's instant-bypass died in 2024), so buying it before revenue buys only the
publisher line. Renamed to Azure Artifact Signing, $9.99/mo Basic, and it requires a
paid Azure subscription. Year-one fixed cost drops from ~$135 to ~$15.
**The Store account is free.** Microsoft waived the $19 individual fee and removed the
$99 company fee in May 2026, which makes the Store the only zero-cost route to a
Microsoft-signed install — the free answer to SmartScreen, noted beside the paid one.
**Support is a filter, not a promise.** Email, best effort, no SLA, refunds on request
without argument; no training service, no helpdesk. A repeated question becomes a
training video on @llamacasty, which is content and monetization instead of a ticket.
GitHub issues on the releases repo are the deliberate friction.
Also settled: binaries live in a second Gitea repo (`llamacasty-releases`) push-mirrored
to a public GitHub repo — issues and assets public, code private, one publish direction
(a git mirror carries refs, not GitHub Release assets); `@llamacasty` is
standard-verified with intermediate features, so live streaming, >15 min uploads and
custom thumbnails work today and no SIM or ID is needed; and OAuth comes out of Testing
mode by publishing the app (100-user lifetime cap, no 7-day token death).
TASKS.md now opens with the four-day surge slice — artifact shape, output gate,
entitlement seam, real-machine day — because those are what the first public release
waits on. HANDOFF.md rewritten. MyMistakes.md gains the Polar recipe and the
"verify means three different things" entry. MARCOM.md gains the support→content loop
and the surface roles.
The commercial plan was spread over five documents written in five different weeks,
and they contradicted each other: product.md sold the Store, decisions.md called the
Store dead then re-opened, Distribution.md (736 lines) still described Polar as a
download host, MARCOM.md quoted "no subscription" next to a paid tier, and README.md
promised "free forever". An outsider could not tell what ships.
docs/ai/commercial.md is now the only place money is decided: free = whole app at a
921,600 px / 30 fps output profile covering the recording as well as the stream; Pro =
$10/mo or $400 lifetime through Polar, key bound to the buyer's YouTube channel ID via
a claim page, 2 activations, 7–14 day lease with offline grace, fail closed, never
downgrade a running stream; one portable zip + winget primary, Steam and the Store
parked; Azure Trusted Signing (~$9.99/mo), no EV; Founding 200 promo; ~$135/yr costs;
anti-piracy posture and what is permanently rejected.
Everything else now points at it instead of restating it:
- product.md — money sections replaced with pointers; packaging rewritten to
winget-first, Store parked; signing updated to Trusted Signing.
- decisions.md — graveyard with cause of death for free-forever, the Store ordering,
the updater, and the 2026-10-30 reversal of the quality-ceiling rejection.
- Distribution.md — rewritten to release mechanics only (artifact, GitHub Releases,
winget manifest, signing, checklist, takedown): 736 → 120 lines.
- TASKS.md — TASK 54 rewritten, TASK 48's route settled, TASK 10 superseded, five new
rows (entitlement seam, output-profile gate, licence UI, system messages, packaging).
- README.md — "free forever" replaced with the real split.
- capture.md — obs-backgroundremoval is GPL-3.0 and so licence-INCOMPATIBLE since the
proprietary EULA; the old "compatible" line was falsified by that change.
- TASKS/task-10, task-48, task-51, task-54 — superseded-banner at the top of each, so
none of them reads as current policy.
- HANDOFF.md — rewritten: plan settled, next code unit is the entitlement seam.
MARCOM.md and MONETIZATION.md (gitignored) were corrected in place: policy pointer at
the top of each, the flash removed from every live claim, the Polar fee break-even
corrected to ~$900/mo, and the projections flagged as written against a dead model.
gramps