[HN Gopher] Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating t...
___________________________________________________________________
Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam
Author : alexrustic
Score : 199 points
Date : 2022-02-22 19:21 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bethesda.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (bethesda.net)
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| Oh yeah... Bethesda had a launcher of their own... Totally forgot
| about it~
| mattlondon wrote:
| They don't mention it, but I hope this means that their titles
| will now be available on geforce now. IIRC the previous approach
| of pulling their titles from geforce now et al was due to
| "exclusivity" or whatever and trying to force people into their
| ecosystem.
| MikusR wrote:
| Microsoft has Xcloud. So it won't happen.
| adamrezich wrote:
| nice, about time. I wonder if e.g. Quake Champions would've
| flopped as hard as it did if it was just released on Steam at
| launch instead of moved there later. I had a ton of fun with it
| despite its controversial formula changes, and the soundtracks
| (there's two, you can pick one or both, the second one is by
| Andrew Hulshult) are really good.
| orliesaurus wrote:
| it didn't flop hard because of the platform that launched, it
| flopped hard because of a gazillion other reasons, including
| the poor UI, matchmaking queues, weapon balance, promotion etc
| FanaHOVA wrote:
| Pretty sure QC was on Steam at launch, it was on the Bethesda
| Launcher only during beta. Quake games are just too hard for
| most people nowadays, and the new stuff pushed away some of the
| old players. I enjoyed it but Live was still better, and with
| matchmaking being dead I just stopped playing it.
| jasonm89 wrote:
| TIL that there is a new Quake. I know what I'm doing tonight.
| adamrezich wrote:
| if you're not an uber-purist and/or you haven't had some good
| ol' deathmatchin' in awhile, you'll have a great time. the
| difference between QC and Q3:A/QL/etc. is that you pick a
| Champion character to play as, with unique health/armor/speed
| stats, as well as an ultimate ability. there's no
| restrictions on who can pick which champion (like Overwatch
| for example), and it's kind of like a "Super id Bros." as far
| as the characters go (still no Orbb though...). I played
| quite a bit of the game and while I tried some of the other
| champions, the default Ranger feels the most "right".
|
| the music is great too
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj21GFbEQog
|
| maybe I should reinstall tonight too...
| Hamuko wrote:
| I'm surprised that they're not migrating customer games to the
| Xbox store considering Bethesda is a subsidiary of Microsoft.
| pavon wrote:
| No kidding. The fact that they didn't even offer it as an
| option along-side Steam says a ton.
| Ekaros wrote:
| What I could actually guess is that they don't want sales
| there, but instead of subscriptions. Thus the games are
| already part of Game Pass so it might make more sense to move
| them to platform that players want. And those who want on
| their app, will pay monthly instead...
| kevingadd wrote:
| Players have spoken and a LOT of them prefer Steam.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Players should be saying they don't want "launchers" at all.
| They provide no benefit that couldn't be done a better way.
| haunter wrote:
| > They provide no benefit that couldn't be done a better
| way
|
| This is like the famous Dropbox comment
|
| "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system
| yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account,
| mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or
| CVS on the mounted filesystem"
| monocasa wrote:
| It's not. Complaining about something that only exists to
| strategically hedge against a competitior's dominance but
| just gets in the way at the user level is not the same as
| the infamous Dropbox quote.
| recursive wrote:
| > only exists to
|
| I've used the file verification and repair feature many
| times. It's also a convenient place to enumerate the
| games I have access to so I can download them on a new
| PC.
| monocasa wrote:
| Just because it has some useful features doesn't
| invalidate the fact that the only reason it exists to the
| management that's in charge of it is as a hedge against
| Valve. They don't care if it's a net win for their users
| or not until it gets so bad that people stop buying their
| games.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think there's plenty of room for pessimism when it
| comes to the games industry. But Valve has (when not
| occasionally making games which, let's face it, isn't
| very often these days) become a business dedicated to the
| business to selling games. It offers a platform that has
| provided several innovations for usability to consumers
| ahead of competitors (it isn't continuously playing
| catchup - they're proactively investing) and it provides
| a relatively low barrier to entry for publishing a game
| in a pretty visible manner. I'm not certain if you ever
| lived with Gamestop and EBGames as your main source of
| purchasing games but it was pretty much impossible for
| small devs to get noticed that way - so small devs ended
| up posting their games on the internet (which was quite a
| strong limitation in terms of size) or trying to get on
| various ShareWare/Demo disks that'd circulate with
| magazines.
|
| I'm sure this isn't the absolute best timeline, but it
| sure beats a land where Origin and UPlay successfully
| beatup Steam and we're all forced back onto walled
| gardens. And it seems sustainable, the second largest
| platform (IMO) out there is GOG which is owned and
| operated by CD Projekt Red - it seems like game studios
| see a lot of utility from owning a mostly open platform
| like this.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Steam is a real value add, enough that I use it for non-
| steam games.
|
| Not only with proton or the controller db, but save-game
| sync, multiplayer invites, their server browser, and
| everything being tied to my login.
|
| Even managing my game library on steam is pleasant! And the
| social features they have are.. actually pretty useful.
| Having a friends list of people who I game with is nice, as
| is the ability to have low friction conversations.
| snailmailman wrote:
| Another huge factor is the built in steam discussion
| forums. Any problems or questions with the game? There's
| a dedicated forum for every game, easy to access. Sure
| lots of games have their own forum or subreddit, but
| smaller indie games sometimes don't.
|
| I've even gone to the steam discussion forums for games
| that are on Steam but I own elsewhere.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Launchers are bundling roughly 4 main services into one:
| (a) automatic update, (b) storefront, (c) mod portal, and
| (d) social networking.
|
| The most important services are of course the first two,
| and in this sense, you can think of them as basically
| something like apt, but built with software that requires
| you provide proof purchase before downloading it. This
| helps explain why having to use multiple launchers provokes
| such frustration among users--it means you basically have
| two package managers running on your system.
|
| Maybe if software update were a part of standard OS
| services, it wouldn't be such an issue, but as it isn't [on
| desktops], another platform providing such services
| becoming popular for doing so shouldn't be surprising.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Dunno, I can log into Steam and still download and play any
| game I've ever bought with all sorts of features like
| global controller configuration and syncing saves between
| my desktop and laptop.
|
| What's the better way?
| [deleted]
| munk-a wrote:
| I personally disagree, I don't want to downplay the power
| of having stand alone applications - but having one
| application that can help me matchmake in games and helps
| keep all those games up to date while clearly (and non-
| obnoxiously) advertising new features or DLCs for those
| games. Steam does this things really cleanly and I don't
| want to return to the world where each application has to
| self-update whenever I launch it.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > They provide no benefit that couldn't be done a better
| way.
|
| Centralized software install/update, with a good CDN behind
| it, is a pretty huge advantage. Even if you don't care
| about any of the other features of the Steam launcher, that
| one alone is worth it. Having every publisher run their own
| download servers means they're much more subject to getting
| overloaded under heavy demand, or becoming permanently
| unavailable if the publisher goes out of business.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Nah, that is like using Linux without package manager. Sure
| you can do that, but manual work is considerable.
|
| And generally I think Steam staying alive is much more
| likely than random places serving stuff. Even if it were
| DRM free. Just looking at history quite many services have
| come and gone on PC.
| dtech wrote:
| A central place where you can always could download your
| purchased games, saves and mods and automatically installs
| patches is an enormous benefit.
| oblak wrote:
| And what would that "other way" be? Let me guess, another
| launcher, or simply no launcher, no updates, no "cloud"
| saves, etc.
|
| Downloading games off Steam is easier than pirating them.
| If that's not progress, I don't know what is. Definitely
| not the same with movies and music which tells me they
| don't want it to be that easy.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| > Definitely not the same with movies and music which
| tells me they don't want it to be that easy.
|
| It actually is, it's just called "streaming" instead of
| downloading*.
|
| For a very long time, Netflix was the go-to place for any
| movies, and piracy was on the decline. Now all the old
| media companies (who have even bigger god complexes than
| game studios) are doing the exact same thing everyone in
| this thread is discussing with alternate launchers, and
| creating their own streaming services. And piracy is
| suddenly back on the rise. Only time will tell whether
| this will play out the same way as the OP, or whether the
| flexibility afforded by inherently streamable format will
| allow them to succeed in splintering where game studios
| failed.
|
| *Two notes on this:
|
| 1) it's a benefit afforded by having a much more linear
| data format
|
| 2) despite what HN commenters may believe, it's only a
| small percentage of users that care about _owning_
| content rather than being able to conveniently _access_
| it)
| notjustanymike wrote:
| People always forget what a pain in ass it was to download
| patches before Steam existed.
| jcranmer wrote:
| With "just don't do it" being perhaps the most common
| solution.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| But then people forget that the bugs back then were just
| as bad as today, you would get crashes literally every 15
| minutes, and some were hilariously malicious - Pool of
| Radiance (late 90's version) would straight up nuke your
| C:\ drive if you uninstalled it from the non-default
| location.
| munk-a wrote:
| Especially when it came to mods - since auto-updating
| wasn't a thing mod devs were a lot more happy to tie
| their mod to a specific patch of the game and just refuse
| to support other versions. There's something to be said
| about this making modding more accessible since you
| weren't committing to long term support patches as the
| game evolved... but it also made things a royal pain.
| mastax wrote:
| Microsoft has been happy-ish to have their games on Steam for a
| while now. They probably would've gone all-in on the Xbox store
| if the windows store (backend) wasn't so shitty.
| belval wrote:
| The Xbox app is a masterclass in how not to design a user
| interface, it is clunky, the menus don't go anywhere, they
| mixed terminology (some places have "Add friend" others have
| "Follow friend"), users with multiple screens will find their
| game launching on the non-principal one, language is tied to
| the OS so if you want your games in English but your Windows
| is in French you have to change the OS-level language.
|
| I don't work at Microsoft, but if I had to guess there are
| several teams working on individual components and they lack
| a clear leader that enforce a global vision so it falls apart
| at integration time.
| hinkley wrote:
| All day long most of us are interacting with products from
| brands that we like while oblivious to the fact that these
| brands are owned by ones we make fun of or even despise. I
| don't thing anyone gets this big without realizing your
| shareholders prefer dividends over you stoking your ego by
| making sure everyone knows the money is going in your
| pocket, even if that means less money comes in.
|
| I don't think I've had Hennessy ever in my life, but they
| own my favorite Scotch and some friends' favorite scotch.
| They don't go bragging about it, they just collect the
| checks.
|
| Forgetting that Bethesda is owned by Microsoft is easier to
| do if it's not on XBox.
| snailmailman wrote:
| It's awful. A lot of basic stuff is just missing.
|
| I had an Xbox game pass trial. When it expired it closed
| the game I was playing. No message. When I tried to reopen
| the game nothing happened. None of my games worked. But
| most importantly, _it never told me why_. Nowhere in the
| interface does it communicate "your trial ended" or "hey
| resubscribe to game pass" or "you can't play games anymore"
| instead everything just stops working with no explanation.
| I was midway through contacting support when I pieced
| together that maybe the trial ended, and confirmed that _on
| their website_. That information isn't available in the
| desktop app.
|
| (This was over a year ago, hopefully it's fixed now?)
| marwis wrote:
| Also when you try to launch a game that was removed from
| gamepass you will get wonderful exception 0x00whatever
| instead of actual reason.
| lfowles wrote:
| Probably not. I was waiting for my gamepass subscription
| to expire last week so I could renew using the Xbox Live
| Gold upgrade. I was constantly notified that my
| subscription was _expiring soon_ , but never actually got
| a notice when it actually expired. All of my games still
| looked playable until I tried actually playing them.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| Windows store is really bad. The UI, the UX, the lag, the
| jank, all designed to spoil your day
| rightbyte wrote:
| I looked through the MS store yesterday to see what was
| there. There was lots and lots of nudity apps. Like bikini
| girls screen savers ... for real.
| zeusk wrote:
| and until a couple months ago, it was a crappy web app.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Steam is a web app.
| vultour wrote:
| I can't think of a single non-developer application by
| Microsoft which isn't absolute garbage. Skype (after the
| Microsoft "upgrade"), Teams, Windows Store, the Xbox
| apps... It's incredible that they are unable to produce a
| properly working application for their own operating
| system.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| Literally how is the windows store so bad! Sometimes I'm
| not signed in and don't want to be signed in (setting up a
| new machine for someone else). The flows are just horrible.
|
| On the mac the store makes things, in general, easier. On
| windows its comedy. I wonder how many folks like myself now
| just instinctively avoid it.
| arijun wrote:
| Perhaps they need it to work on Mac? Granted, it seems the only
| game they have that's Mac compatible is elder scrolls online...
| jmyeet wrote:
| Kill all the launchers. Ubisoft, Rockstar, Bethesda (RIP), Epic.
| I really hate these mediocre "me too" wannabe social network /
| launchers.
|
| I'm actually surprised this hasn't been rolled into the Xbox
| launcher, which still exists right (on PC)?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Thank you. I already have a "launcher" for my programs. It's
| called my computer's operating system. I don't understand why I
| should need to run a program just to have it run another
| program.
| dzqhz wrote:
| So you can conveniently buy, download and update certain
| programs.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| I imagine this probably means the eventual death of Battle.net as
| well. Honestly though, it's time. Battle.net was incredible back
| in the day, but now it's just another annoying launcher that
| segments my friends lists.
| enra wrote:
| Battle.net is probably the only launcher that is quite as
| reliable and high quality as Steam. One example is that you can
| start playing WoW way before the download or install is
| complete. Downside is that they have been really pushing for
| upsells in the recent years.
|
| All other launchers are garbage. Origin doesn't even render
| text properly on my 4k screen, and pretty much all of them
| forgets my login each week.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Battle.net when it was IRC was a great time.
| aparticulate wrote:
| The population of Battle.net is WAY bigger than the tiny
| fraction of players using Bethesda launcher. Hard to know from
| the outside but it's probably like 95%+ Steam even on their
| newest games. NexusMods, the largest Bethesda modding host
| rarely mentions the launcher even if mods are compatible.
|
| Battle.net on the other hand predates Steam and they made some
| of the most significant PC-only games of all time.
|
| Having said that, I think you might be right for a different
| reason. Blizzard will likely eat a massive amount of humble pie
| post-2021 and Steam releases would seem like a reasonable
| gesture of to restoring community goodwill.
| 015a wrote:
| Battle.net The Launcher doesn't pre-date Steam; it was
| released in the early 2010s. Previously, before Steam,
| Battle.net was a lot more nebulous, and would naturally have
| had less user lock-in. Games were individually distributed,
| and battle.net was more-so just an infrastructure-level
| system Blizzard used to coordinate online games, chat, etc.
| Even, IIRC, unified profiles weren't a thing until the early
| 2010s and the desktop app was launched; WoW was different
| from Starcraft, which was different from Diablo.
|
| That is to say, yeah Battle.net today has far more users than
| the Bethesda launcher, but it still predominately suffers
| from the "users don't want to be here, its just where the
| games are at" issue that the Bethesda & Rockstar launchers
| suffer from.
|
| I think it's likely that the Xbox acquisition will result in
| a sunset of Battle.net as well. It'll probably resemble a
| long-term plan like: deeper Battle.net/Xbox account
| integration to share purchases and social state, release of
| all titles on Steam & Xbox stores, forced migration of
| Battle.net accounts to Xbox accounts, deprecation of the
| Battle.net launcher; 2 years minimum, probably closer to 3.
| beeboop wrote:
| For context, battle.net the _service_ has existed since
| 1996. Back in the day it was just used for the multiplayer
| component of games like Diablo and Warcraft. I think it 's
| still meaningful to point this out because even if it
| wasn't a launcher like it is today, it was still a social
| media/communications platform which is a meaningful part of
| why people use certain launcher platforms/stores.
| rainonmoon wrote:
| Why would this have anything to do with Battle.net? There are
| not insignificant portions of the playerbase fully bought into
| that ecosystem (like... every World of Warcraft player, for a
| start.) The Launcher itself has been around for almost 10
| years; the network has been around for twice that. Bethesda's
| launcher on the other hand was always an afterthought.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| There's a lot more to Battle.net than most launchers. For one,
| it's really deeply integrated into like every Blizzard game's
| chat and friends system. It'd be hard to imagine Blizzard
| retooling World of Warcraft's chat to accept messages from
| Steam users, but at present players in WoW and say Heroes of
| the Storm can chat with each other inside the games.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I'm curious as to that one. As launchers go it's excellent, so
| I'm not sure if they want to get rid of it or expand it out to
| support more things - after all Microsoft, who can't even get
| app updates to work correctly in their own windows store on
| their own game launcher, just bought it along with a bunch of
| other stuff. I guess I should be annoyed that more non-blizzard
| stuff will end up on it, but boy oh boy has that particular
| ship sailed.
| BbzzbB wrote:
| Is there a technical reason why Steam is a such a force in the
| space? People, myself certainly included, often criticize Apple
| for taking 30% of developer revenue for merely existing in it's
| walled garden. Right or wrong, they control the ecosystem, so
| their ability to monopolize and heavily tax the App Store is
| unsurprising, they're exercising their pricing power as much as
| they possibly can.
|
| But how is it that on PC, where we have a mostly open field on
| which anyone can participate freely without a gatekeeper's
| blessing, Steam managed to consolidate so much of the gaming
| marketplace that even a titan like Microsoft is throwing the
| towel and bowing to Steam's cartelish 30%? I get that being the
| dominant two-sided marketplace of a given space is a strong
| network effect and moat, and consolidation is certainly
| convenient for users (I like having all my purchased games on a
| single account), but intuition tells me _Bethesda_ doesn 't need
| Steam's exposure to sell games or make new arrivals known (their
| announcement will go viral regardless), similarly to Riot,
| Mojang, Epic and co not listing on Steam. So I've always found it
| surprising they were dual listing their games in the first place,
| but the fact they're now entirely giving up on direct selling is
| a testament to Steam's might in the gaming industry.
|
| Is Steam's product particularly good and hard to reproduce from
| the publisher's PoV, even one backed by Microsoft, to the extent
| it is hard to compete against with something like Microsoft
| Store? Or is this just another case of being early enough to
| establish the initial brand and let the self-fulfilling network
| effect kick in - with the userbase acting like gravity to bring
| in more users and developers - until it's large enough that sheer
| force of habit/inertia makes it quasi-"indisruptible"?
|
| Either way, I found it fascinating how Valve turned into Steam,
| whether it was accidental or not, what a homerun pivot. Seems
| that is the way of the Internet, being first matters more than
| just about anything, having the superior product (not claiming
| there is one for game stores) is irrelevant if you're remotely
| late, it just won't matter how much cash you pour into a
| Microsoft Store or a Google+. My gut tells me Microsoft is
| salivating at the idea of buying out Steam, seems like a perfect
| fit for the conglomerate if it wasn't for the scrutiny it would
| bring their way while they are positioning themselves as the good
| FAAMG.
| kzrdude wrote:
| I think part of the reason is that Steam is pretty utilitarian,
| not selfish. Valve is actually pretty much a force for good and
| haven't tried to use any very dark patterns to make more money.
| Steam is nice and its developers care to make a program that
| works well.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| My 100 Croatian Lipa:
|
| Steam's value proposition is a single place to conveniently
| manage all my games, and it works very well as such. It's
| unobtrusive, comprehensive, manages installs, pre-requisites
| and updates nicely for me and then gets the heck out of the
| way.
|
| No publisher-oriented launcher has such proposition. In fact, I
| put forward that no publisher-made launcher has value
| proposition of _any_ kind for the consumer - why do I need
| Uplay, Origins, Bethesda launcher, any of them, let alone all
| of them? What purpose do they serve, other than an annoying
| mandatory layer? Why do I need Battle.net for the one game I
| play on there?
|
| Given the lack of positive value proposition, even seemingly
| minor annoyances are perceived as massive friction. For
| example, I find Microsoft's offers infuriating - I cannot
| understand their subscription tiers or services at all, they
| all have meaningless generic Xbox names that change every 6
| months to a different meaningless set of Xbox names, and
| completely mangle what one can expect as a PC owner, or Xbox
| owner, or both. I have no idea which Xbox-named offering or app
| does what and how they relate. It's like IBM naming everything
| "Watson". I inadvertently committed to a multi-month months
| subscription thinking one of the games I wanted is available on
| the cloud, only to discover I was completely mistaken - and it
| took me a WHILE to confirm that to my satisfaction. I don't
| know if they are confusing out of ineptitude or intentionally.
|
| Geforce Now, on the other hand, has a meaningful value
| proposition to me: it lets me play games on the cloud, on any
| of my devices, and when away from home. That has benefits and
| value to me that I can clearly understand. It's seamless, it
| provides clear value to ME, the consumer, and then gets out of
| the way.
|
| Same with GoG - it lets me download games DRM free onto my
| machine and save them for the upcoming apocalypse.
|
| Everybody else is just a pain in my kiester :-/
| slavik81 wrote:
| I own Mirror's Edge on EA Origin. I bought it shortly after
| release. I still have the box with the CD key. I can still
| download and install the game. However, I can't launch the
| game because I've exceeded the install limit of five copies.
| I need to run the deauthenticator utility on the computers I
| installed the game on, but that's not possible because those
| hard drives were wiped years ago.
|
| I generally trust Valve to treat me fairly, but EA, Ubisoft,
| Konami and Bethesda (ZeniMax) have not earned that same
| trust.
| ssl232 wrote:
| It's in this situation where pirating the game is 100%
| justifiable. You literally own it already.
| dartharva wrote:
| I have always wondered the same thing; Microsoft is one of the
| very few companies that is capable enough to resist Valve's
| dominance. I think all it boiled down to was that in this case
| Microsoft, by some miracle, actually managed to catch an
| accurate picture of the wants and needs of their consumers and
| realised backing down on their Xbox store can easily drive them
| away. They saw how the general trend of game launchers has
| mostly only served in making lives more difficult for gamers
| and decided they'd rather keep the status quo as it is
| comfortable to them for the time being.
| staticman2 wrote:
| For some reason none of Steam's competitors are willing to
| match their features.
|
| The Microsoft store was obviously not designed by the Xbox
| division and was hostile to gamers wanting to enable modding or
| customize the installation.
|
| Likely because Microsoft wanted a locked down app store to sell
| their Surface devices to schools and business.
|
| Steam does things like converting Ps4 and Nintendo Switch
| controller input to Xbox 360 input, offering forums where
| people discuss patches and mods, and other features Epic seems
| uninterested in offering for whatever reason.
| arka2147483647 wrote:
| My opinion:
|
| - Steam was first, and because of that;
|
| - They have all the features (both for users, and gamedevs)
|
| - They have all the Games
|
| - They have all the Users
|
| In particular, in the Gamedev side, Steam is not a Storefront,
| they are a platform, much like say, Xbox Live or PSN. For
| example Steam provides:
|
| - Friends
|
| - Leaderboard
|
| - Chat (Text and Voice)
|
| - Multiplayer/Network api, which handles routing and NAT punch
| through
|
| - Update/Install delivery globally
|
| - Savegame cloud sync
|
| - etc, etc
|
| Steam docs are actually public, so go take a look:
| https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features
|
| If you develop your game for Steam, then Steam does a lot of
| heavy lifting for you.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I think the user base and market demographics are why no one
| really complains on the publisher side. There's no other
| digital store on earth with more whale-like clientele.
| indymike wrote:
| > Is there a technical reason why Steam is a such a force in
| the space? \
|
| I'm not much of a gamer - but my five kids are, and I can see
| the difference. It starts with being multiplatform. Buy once,
| run on PC, Mac, Linux. Steam's promise isn't cheap
| subscriptions, or trendy titles. I can buy games with
| confidence and know they will run - even if school requires a
| Mac next year or the only machine around is Dad's Linux laptop.
|
| Steam also does a much better job of exposing new titles and
| player feedback. Shopping Steam is a better experience - even
| if it isn't as pretty. You know what you are getting when you
| buy, and the return policy seems fair enough.
|
| It ends with simply working better. For example, last night I
| loaded up Steam and some PC games from a XBox Live Ultimate
| subscription. The Steam games worked. None of XBox games would
| even launch... on a brand new Lenovo gaming machine on Windows
| 11. Eventually the Xbox app volunteered to fix the messed up
| installation and ended up leaving 130GB of disk filled with
| old, inaccessible downloads.
|
| Epic's store shows some promise, but there's a lot of rough
| edges where it installs some other studio's installer which
| installs the game. But, the free game thing is pretty nice.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| I could totally see Microsoft trying to buy Steam in the near
| future. Not only are they having Bethesda do pro-Steam moves
| like this and generally supporting Steam, but they have a
| personal relationship with Valve, as Microsoft is where Gabe
| Newell started his career. However Valve is still a private
| company and I can't imagine Gaben will want to give up his
| money faucet.
| ndneighbor wrote:
| For one: game developers might have extraordinary knowledge on
| their requisite game engines and shader programming but tend to
| loathe the type of logistical work required to deliver those
| games. Issues like managing and serving updates, DRM, and
| social features.
|
| Steamworks SDK was one of the very first companies to offer
| that functionality pre-baked into their offering "free" of
| charge when companies chose to list on Steam. After a while, it
| became the default over time.
|
| For many game companies, what usually happens is that initial
| investment is easy to go along with for the start when spinning
| up their game store (Origin, Bethesda.net) but eventually hard
| to maintain as it's hard to commit developers to maintain
| platforms.
| sgarman wrote:
| A lot of that functionality is really valuable to game makers
| and game players. Their controller API is top notch, same
| with save syncs.
| hendersoon wrote:
| Steam had the distinct advantage of being first, and they've
| built a rich storefront with tons of useful features. Forums,
| reviews, discovery queues, recommendations based on your
| purchases, bundles, curators, account security (steamguard),
| etc. Valve also built a development ecosystem with integrated
| (optional) DRM, achievements, leaderboards, stats, multiplayer,
| voice chat, controller support with full remapping and such,
| just a ton of stuff.
|
| As a _consumer_ , Steam is a much better platform than any of
| the alternatives. I prefer to buy games on Steam, all things
| being equal.
|
| As a dev studio, Steam takes 30% and Epic takes 12% (7% if you
| use Unreal engine).
| k12sosse wrote:
| I've also had dozens of games I own stop being sold on Steam
| - but I'm still able to download, install, and play them
| YEARS later. To me, that's good stewardship.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Thank goodness. Bethesda's launcher was uniquely awful in a
| number of unpleasant ways. Slow, prone to crashes, bad user
| communication, not suitable for use on small monitors. The worst
| of the launcher apps I have used - and there are so many!
|
| I remember when it was in vogue for every game maker to build
| their own launcher or even full Steam clone - when EA pulled all
| its new games from Steam to get people to use Origin, when
| Ubisoft forced uPlay on you no matter how you bought the game,
| and so on. Now, it seems like we're pulling back from that
| situation somewhat - a lot of EA games are back on Steam, for
| example.
|
| I wonder whether the experiment didn't work, or if it worked, but
| now the goals have changed again?
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| More than likely Valve has offered better deals to these larger
| companies to get them back in-house. It's very probable EA,
| Bethesda, Microsoft, etc. all have gotten more favorable terms
| now, by proving they were willing to leave Steam and roll their
| own launcher.
| Ekaros wrote:
| 30% from 0 to 10 million
|
| 25% from 10 to 50 million
|
| and 20% from 50 million on.
|
| They might have even better deals, but at some point 20% for
| handling everything and supporting payments with potential of
| fraud, chargebacks etc. in nearly every country should start
| look like not horrible deal. Remembering what the retail
| margins were back in the day when they needed to make and
| ship physical boxes...
| xxs wrote:
| >at some point 20% ... start look like not horrible deal
|
| Not, if you are Microsoft.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Pay 20% now, or be forced to spin out Xbox via anti-trust
| ruling in the future. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
| sbarre wrote:
| With the rise of the Epic Game Store, I think there's more
| competition in the launcher/store space and I bet the big
| publishers got better deals which removed the need for them to
| invest in the ongoing development and maintenance of their own
| stores/launchers.
|
| It can't be that cheap to maintain an app like Origin or UPlay
| and all the associated infrastructure, etc..
| Macha wrote:
| It's not just the store cut. From what I understand, a big
| part of the motivation of Origin was also to avoid having to
| compete, at least in consumer perception with the sales.
| Battlefield 3 at EUR80 while it was a year old looked
| terrible value when Borderlands 2 had dropped to EUR50 and
| was regularly 30% off despite being only a couple of months
| old.
| mjevans wrote:
| Intangibles are a major cost factor as well. Not just the
| servers, but an entire authentication and customer support
| infrastructure.
|
| Scammers are not an easy cost to estimate or an easy value to
| sell resistance against.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| Microsoft owns Bethesda, and has transitioned to primarily
| offering its games via Steam or via the Xbox app. I imagine
| that Bethesda is doing this to align with Microsoft; existing
| library through Steam (with potential to add them to the Xbox
| app if they join get added to GamePass, maybe), future releases
| through Steam and Xbox.
| [deleted]
| nimbius wrote:
| Occhams razor: Microsoft owns Bethesda, so one would naturally
| assume they would seek to kill off competition to the windows
| store, or any poor performers that arent driving the
| appropriate revenue.
|
| the worst part of the bethesda launcher was it existed as a
| cudgel for Todd Howard and others to effectively silence
| dissent during the launch of Fallout 76 in 2018 either by
| flogging it as an excuse to refuse refunds, or using the
| platform to outright threadlock and silence user complaints and
| criticism. the launcher directly contributed to the wholesale
| review bombing of virtually every bethesda title on Steam and
| even showed up in the class action lawsuits filed during the
| fallout 76...well...fallout.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think, honestly, that Microsoft is feeling pretty happy
| with how things are working with steam right now - they've
| probably only got to do a very minimal amount of work to
| integrate with the platform while internally they have MS
| Game accounts that tie everything together for any of the
| tracking needs they have. I'm sure they'd love to convert all
| of the MS Games users to their own store but they've managed
| to extract a whole bunch of unexpected business from AoE2 and
| other titles and they're probably hoping to minimize any
| damage to the ecosystem.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| As a matter of principle, I think digital delivery platforms
| benefit from competition, and we should not be locked down into a
| single monopolistic, stagnating platform.
|
| As a selfish consumer though, I _hugely_ wish we just had Steam
| and Netflix:
|
| The Origins and Uplays and Battle.nets of the world exist solely
| to make my life difficult, refusing to play my game when I want
| it due to obscure update required or forgotten password or old
| email account (especially when they are an overlay on top of
| Steam), and have zero repeat zero positively _zero_ benefit to
| myself as a consumer. It is blatantly anti-consumer, and not made
| with customer view in mind.
|
| (Gog.com gets a pass because it allows me to JUST download the
| game, with no launcher and crap, so essentially going into
| opposite direction from all publisher-owned platforms and
| provides a unique value proposition)
|
| Same for Netflix. It's fine. It's good. It's great! Over the last
| 5 years, proliferation of Disneys, Amazons, HBOs, Hulus, CBS All
| Access, Paramount Ultra Plus Exclusive Diamond Platinum... the
| whatEVERs, all they do is make me have to guess which service is
| content I want to play on. All they are, at any level, is "we
| want more money for less consumer convenience, and we think we
| can get away with it due to exclusive content lock-in we refuse
| to license to the convenient platform".
|
| I understand I'm supposed to vote with my money, but with
| exclusive lock-in that's difficult. My kid wants their Octonauts
| and their Stinky & Dirties, dammit :D
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| samtheprogram wrote:
| > As a matter of principle...
|
| It's not really a matter of principal though!
|
| > [the competing platforms] have zero repeat zero positively
| zero benefit to myself as a consumer.
|
| The reason Steam and Netflix are so good and continue to exist
| in such a good state is exactly because of the competition.
| However, because of exclusivity, licensing, ownership, et
| cetera, that also means you eventually may want to deal with
| said competition.
| p_j_w wrote:
| >I think digital delivery platforms benefit from competition,
| and we should not be locked down into a single monopolistic,
| stagnating platform.
|
| I agree with this in principle but I think it's only
| necessarily true when production and distribution are separated
| from each other. As it stands now, I don't see much actual
| competition or innovation in any of the streaming services, but
| rather the contrary: the experience is worse now than it was 10
| years ago. The only thing we have is a never ending arms race
| of new stuff to watch being kept exclusive (which you mention)
| while the UIs move backwards and prices creep up.
|
| What we have now is akin to the studio system and I don't see
| why it shouldn't be broken up in the same manner.
| asadlionpk wrote:
| This is promising news, considering Steam Deck is about to be
| released this week!
| TillE wrote:
| You can theoretically solve a lot of problems with crappy,
| multitudinous game stores - easier payments, lighter software.
| But the real question is: do I trust that I'll be able to
| continue downloading my purchases for the foreseeable future?
|
| I trust that Steam will be around for a very long time. I can
| download DRM-free installers from GOG. Everyone else? I don't
| know, I have much less confidence.
| legitster wrote:
| This is something blockchain would actually be very good at
| solving.
|
| Download a legal copy of the game from anywhere. No DRM, but
| your license key gets checked against the blockchain.
| dharmab wrote:
| You would need a separate CDN such as BitTorrent.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I just wonder how could duplicating the license key be
| prevented. First by small group and then maybe just stolen
| from someone. While also preventing loss of it with let's say
| device.
| nouveaux wrote:
| A game key could be considered a non-fungible token so this
| already works on a blockchain. Instead of recording a game
| key, you record the wallet public key. If you need more
| privacy, you can use Zero knowledge proofs[0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof
| Ekaros wrote:
| How would you prevent group of friends from sharing a
| wallet? Which I see as one thing to do, pool your money
| and buy each new game to new wallet... Then share the
| wallet's private key between all.
| mey wrote:
| The block chain may be able to validate a license to a copy
| of the game, but that doesn't encompass hosting/delivery of
| content. The actual content of NFTs, tiny PNGs, are still
| hosted behind a URL. Putting 60+GB AAA titles out there for
| all time isn't something a Blockchain itself can solve.
|
| I also don't know how IPFS people would feel if they became
| the CDN for commercial software.
| legitster wrote:
| I think it's reasonable to believe that third party CDNs
| would pop up in the world.
|
| The feature would be that it's structurally decentralized
| in a way that decouples content creators from delivery.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Torrents are a thing, but still I won't give my bandwidth
| for something I paid good money for. Just no.
| causi wrote:
| I expect we're less than five years away from seeing everyone's
| Stadia purchases evaporate.
| nimajneb wrote:
| Yea, I have it, although I haven't used it in a while and
| plan on cancelling. I made zero purchases on the platform
| though. I just play the free games.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| I've been saying from day one that Stadia should have offered
| a subscription service similar to what Microsoft is doing
| with Game Pass. I don't want to pay full-price for games that
| require someone else maintaining hardware, especially when
| they're not booking any recurring revenue.
| sbarre wrote:
| Google would have struggled to get a catalogue for their
| subscription I think, if only because they had to convince
| publishers (some that would consider Stadia to be
| competition) to put in work to get games running on their
| platform.
|
| I wonder if they tried the subscription thing first but
| then gave up and just went with the buy model as a least-
| worst choice at a point in the cycle where it was too late
| to back out of the whole endeavour.
|
| Stadia uses custom hardware so games can't just run on
| Stadia as-is, they have to be ported, which requires
| investment from the game's developers (or a porting shop).
|
| I have to imagine most publishers that Google approached
| expected them to foot some of the bill for that work, if
| not all of it.
| Gigachad wrote:
| The ideal solution would have been charging a fee to use
| stadia and then just letting people link their steam
| account in. You still buy the games at full price, Google
| still gets paid, and you keep the games after they shut
| down.
| sbarre wrote:
| The Stadia model was dead on arrival exactly because you were
| expected to pay full price to "buy" games that you would
| never actually own.
|
| With Google's reputation of killing products, and the hubris
| of thinking they could just waltz into the gaming space and
| be competitive within a year, it's no wonder that no one took
| them seriously and the product never took off.
|
| Other streaming services like GeForce Now (sp?) let you
| install games you already own on Steam and play them on a
| cloud computer, which is a much more attractive model I
| think.
| vlunkr wrote:
| It's pretty amazing the Stadia happened at all. From day
| one everyone predicted how it would die, and so far it has
| not deviated from that course at all.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Sounds optimistic, I'm thinking less.
| mFixman wrote:
| Why is a launcher even needed? Isn't it better to provide
| downloads and payments from their website rather than paying
| 25% of transactions to Valve?
| ajnin wrote:
| Steam is very convenient for users, many people won't even
| consider buying a game if it's not on Steam. I guess they
| have more potential sales this way.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >to provide downloads
|
| There are 2 problems with this.
|
| 1. You can't downloaded patches of game updates (with good
| ux). You would need to downloaded the entire game for every
| update which is bad.
|
| 2. You can't install the game to the system without a
| program.
|
| >and payments from their website
|
| Steam can provide less friction to make a payment since
| someone likely already has payment information attached to
| their account. A 25% cut is worth it if they can make more
| than 25% revenue than they otherwise would have made.
|
| There is also the marketing potential of being in the steam
| store. Gamers looking for a new game can see / find your
| game. You can see people on your friends list playing your
| game. You can see friends reviewing the game or getting
| achievements on your feed.
| simion314 wrote:
| >1. You can't downloaded patches of game updates
|
| And with Steam(at this moment) there is no way to tell it
| to "please don't update this game and let me play this
| version". You can disable the automatic updates but you
| won't be able to run a game from the launcher if you are
| not uptodate because the Play button is changed to Update.
| mannerheim wrote:
| Maybe if you're on Windows, but I've found Steam is pretty
| reliable on what games will work on Linux, and I figure I can
| probably get a refund if it doesn't (which I haven't even had
| to).
| res0nat0r wrote:
| Steam provides a massive CDN infrastructure, SDK / API
| integrations for all kinds of things, release manager etc.
| Plus just being on their ecosystem helps sales too. I
| personally can't stand any other game launchers and just wish
| I could get everything on Steam.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Among other things, Steam Workshop, seamless multiplayer, and
| automatic cloud syncing are substantial value-adds for many,
| many games.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Why is package manager needed on Linux? Isn't it better to
| download everything as source code and compile yourself?
| NullPrefix wrote:
| My package manager allows me to see the URL to download it
| and compile it manually. Does Steam/Bethesda/other game
| launcher allows this?
| notafraudster wrote:
| I mean, yes, you can add non-Steam games to Steam, which
| is the analogue here.
| shuntress wrote:
| Why is a package repository even needed?
|
| Managing a hundred different games from a dozen different
| sources is a pain.
|
| If we lived in some fantasy utopia with standardized identity
| authentication and easily-verifiable-cryptographically-
| secure-proof-of-purchase then maybe distributed content
| distribution could make sense.
| Ekaros wrote:
| DRM with NFT on distributed blockchain sounds like fun mess
| to solve. With DRM operating correctly and not allowing
| duplication of licenses and content being permanently on
| blockchain so game developer going bankrupt wouldn't kill
| it...
| mikepurvis wrote:
| The siblings mention some good ones, but another for Steam in
| particular is the console-like experience available via Big
| Picture mode. Not only is this a significant
| aesthetic/ergonomic step up from how you launch software
| directly from the desktop OS, but it's also able to do some
| niceties like automatically handling controller mapping-- for
| example, presenting your PlayStation or Switch pad to games
| as an xinput device (which is the universal standard for PC
| gaming).
| adamrezich wrote:
| we forget that before Steam, the digital downloads for AAA
| games scene was the wild effin' west. no idea if this ever
| changed but if you bought Spore at launch, you were limited
| in the number of times you could download and activate your
| purchased copy... and if you wanted more, you had to pay for
| it when the time came. without Steam we might still see
| various publishers imposing weird restrictions like this.
| dtech wrote:
| Even if Steam will be going away at some point, I bed an
| archival effort will start similar to what we've seen for
| Geocities etc.
| jka wrote:
| There's already at least one effort to gather a list of games
| that are no longer available* on Steam: https://steam-
| tracker.com/
|
| I wonder how many of those can be retrieved (and are
| playable) from archived copies?
|
| Edit: available meaning "available for purchase" (my mistake,
| thanks for the corrections)
| Ekaros wrote:
| Delisted means no longer sold. Unless developer does
| something shady those games can still be downloaded and
| played (any third-party DRM not withstanding)
| agilob wrote:
| How is "delisted" different from "purchase disabled"?
| dharmab wrote:
| Whether the store page is visible. A publisher might want
| to keep the page up to direct users to a newer title that
| deprecates the old one. Or they might hide a page if they
| no longer have rights. I also noticed that Prey (2006) is
| delisted to presumably avoid confusion with Prey (2017).
| Ekaros wrote:
| Store page is removed for example you can still see
| community hub: Duke Nukem 3D Megaton Edition
| https://steamcommunity.com/app/225140/
|
| On other hand purchase might be disabled by developer,
| but game page is still visible: https://store.steampowere
| d.com/app/210550/Angry_Birds_Space/
| agilob wrote:
| It says "Dead Island Riptide" is delisted, but I still have
| it in my library and still can install it, background image
| doesn't load. There is another "Purchase disabled"
| category, looks like it cant be bought anymore, but can be
| installed.
| dharmab wrote:
| Delisted usually means "purchase disabled and also store
| page hidden". Delisted is most common due to IP issues
| such as expired rights.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| I see this as is something that legislation could fix: digital
| licenses should be transferable between digital stores.
|
| If I buy a game in store X, and it's available on
| store/platform Y, I should be able to play it on both.
|
| Unfortunately, I don't think that's the case.
|
| I recently bought a Nintendo Switch, and although I'm happy
| overall, some games have very heavy limits built in (think: max
| number of units in games), and they're also available on
| PC/steam, but I would have to buy the games twice. I just can't
| get over myself to do that, I shouldn't _have_ to do it. At the
| very least make the license transferable! :)
| thfuran wrote:
| I think that has no sound legal basis but I also don't think
| that's practical. A launcher like steam isn't just a client-
| side application and I don't think it makes sense to compel
| some company to incur the costs of supporting their
| competitor's customers, which is what that would amount to.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Surprisingly, Disney figured this out for movies with their
| "Movies Anywhere" service, powered by something they call
| KeyChest. You create a "Movies Anywhere" account, and then
| link digital stores (iTunes, Prime Video, Vudu) to that
| account. All movies that you purchased from participating
| studios then appear on all of the linked stores.
|
| It actually works quite well. I can purchase a movie on the
| Roku Movie Store (powered by Vudu) and have it appear as
| purchased on my Apple TV with iTunes, and all of the big
| studios are members so not that many films are missing.
|
| You also now get a Movies Anywhere code in the box of most
| Blu-ray purchases, which works exactly like you would
| expect and appears on all the stores as if it were a Roku
| or Apple TV purchase. (Ultraviolet codes are grandfathered
| in if you have any of those.)
| thfuran wrote:
| I'm not saying that Disney should be precluded from
| undertaking that (and probably exchanging a lot of money
| with each of the integrated platforms). But I am saying
| that new streaming start up example.com shouldn't be
| legally obligated to--at no charge--serve traffic to the
| entire customer base of prime video, Netflix, Disney+,
| etc should they decide that they want to get their
| content through a third party that they didn't buy it
| from.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Gog did at one point have gog.com/connect service. Which
| allowed linking your Steam account and retrieving what
| games you had there. Then providing your copies on GoG.
| Still entirely doable and I think nothing stops
| implementing similar thing.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| Steam is an interesting case, because it actually allows
| others to sell games on their platform -- developers can
| generate an unlimited number of keys for Steam, and sell
| those on third-party key sellers. The biggest limitation
| that Valve puts in place is that the developer can't
| undercut the Steam storefront _only when selling those
| keys_ (ie: if a developer sets up their own storefront that
| doesn't use Steam keys, they can sell on that storefront
| without price restrictions).
|
| Moving outside of PC games, I think things get very hard to
| argue for cross-portability. Each platform has a unique
| (closed-source) tech stack, and that requires paying
| developers to write code to take advantage of the features
| available on each of those platforms. Since portability
| incurs measurable costs, it's hard to argue, for me, that
| users shouldn't bear some of the brunt of those costs. If
| legislation were already in place, such a price could be
| built in to the product.
| vlunkr wrote:
| I always thought it would be cool if a publisher managed this
| themselves. If you buy the game directly from them they give
| you download codes for every platform. Obviously the
| financial incentive is backwards, and stores might get angry,
| but I would love it!
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| The thing is: This has happened without legislation in a very
| related industry: First via Ultraviolet, and then through
| Movies Anywhere. Digitally-purchased movies sync between
| Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, Vudu, Comcast, Verizon, and
| DirectTV. Movies from Disney, Sony, Universal, and Warner
| Brothers all sync. Imagine the challenge of getting all these
| tech and entertainment competitors on the same page, and it
| happened.
|
| The problem, however, is Valve. Monopolies have no incentive
| to open up to sharing with outside entities. Steam likes to
| seem open with abilities to hand out keys and such and a good
| API, but the reality is it is all in service of keeping
| people locked to their platform. Meanwhile, GOG has shown a
| willingness to hand out licenses for games you own on Steam,
| Epic Games has talked about being open to such initiatives,
| etc.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| It sort-of worked for a while, now it is breaking down. The
| list of studios that fully participate is shrinking. The
| media giants are now locked in a battle to capture as much
| of the streaming market as possible. What a mess.
| mobilio wrote:
| In theory this sound simple.
|
| But in particle this bridge between stores is anti-GDPR and
| can be abused from some stores.
| TOMDM wrote:
| This sounds like it could produce nightmare scenarios for
| some platforms/consumers.
|
| Say I'm a publisher; I can sell my games for 5% cheaper than
| all the competing platforms and let my installer/store
| languish. All it needs to do is let people buy the game, and
| my competitors can do the hard work of actually distributing
| the game, updating it, supporting features like community
| pages, friend lists, steam workshop etc.
|
| People buy the game from me because it's cheaper, and the
| other platforms can pay the actual cost of supporting that
| license.
| aloisdg wrote:
| Fix price will solve that to. France did it for books. A
| kind of mfrp: Manufacturer's Fixed Retail Price.
| mastax wrote:
| Steam (and other stores, to a lesser extent) already does
| this voluntarily. There's an ecosystem of key sellers of
| various levels of sketchiness - greenmangaming, g2a,
| cdkoffers - check isthereanydeal.com. It's almost always
| cheaper than steam, and you get a steam key. Steam gets
| most of the upkeep cost, and none (?) of the revenue.
| TOMDM wrote:
| I'd hardly call 3rd party grey market key resellers like
| g2a something that steam accepts voluntarily.
|
| These keys are often stolen or pirated.
|
| The Steam subreddit has a page dedicated to it
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/wiki/dangersofkeyresellers
|
| The keys from these sites are frequently revoked after
| they're discovered stolen.
| flerchin wrote:
| g2a is a buyer-beware scamfest for sure.
|
| However, all of the sites listed at isthereanydeal.com I
| have tried are not that. It's not clear what the business
| model is, but they're absolutely depending on steam to
| deliver and maintain the content, and it's not clear that
| steam gets any money out of the transaction.
| belval wrote:
| Frequently is a bit of an hyperbole, a lot of my games
| come from g2a and I never had one be revoked. Most of the
| time it's just people buying games when they are on
| discount and reselling after the discount has expired.
|
| Bethesda games are a good example of that. You can pay
| 80$ for Skyrim VR or get it on g2a for 20$. This is just
| because the game is very frequently on sale for about
| that amount.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Pretty sure Steam is using early-Gmail accounting: the
| cost of the services they provide will continue to
| decrease, while the revenue per user (read: future,
| lifetime Steam purchases) will stay flat or increase.
|
| Consequently, it's good business to onboard them, even at
| an immediate loss.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| Our society is still learning about and adapting to digital
| goods. The end goal is obvious but unfocussed, we want
| digital goods to be treated like physical ones. But how do
| we get there? How do you craft laws to get that result and
| things still make sense? I'm not sure anyone knows that
| yet.
| nouveaux wrote:
| You can charge a small porting fee to compensate for this.
|
| In practice, I think this actually hurts the established
| guys. A big reason I prefer to buy on Steam is because the
| majority of my library is in Steam. A PC gaming library
| also has more longevity.
|
| In general, I would be reluctant to buy multi-platform
| titles on the Switch. If porting was available, I would buy
| certain titles on the Switch or pay to move it to Switch. I
| would then pay to move everything over to Steam if my
| Switch died.
| art0rz wrote:
| You can already do that with Steam[0]. They allow
| publishers to generate keys for free. You could sell the
| keys on your own store and skip Steam's 30%(?) cut while
| reaping the benefits of their software delivery
| infrastructure. There's a fair use policy[1] involved,
| though.
|
| [0] https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
|
| [1] https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3
| jabbany wrote:
| Ports are kind of special though... They require extra
| engineering so it seems unreasonable to require transferable
| license.
|
| Mandating transferable licenses across platforms means that a
| PC player who has no intention of ever owning a console
| device now has to pay for the engineering of the port (and
| vice versa for console players).
|
| On the same platform, OTOH, this seems like a decent idea.
| agilob wrote:
| PC games are a lot cheaper than console games, should I be
| able to buy for PS9 on PC and transfer to Xbox where the same
| game is for PS40?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| guiomie wrote:
| Origin needs to do the same, their integration with steam is
| awful.
| lrae wrote:
| No worries, Origin will be replaced soon... by the even more
| awful EA Desktop Client.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-02-22 23:00 UTC)