More and more major publishers are deciding to end their cooperation with Steam, promoting their own sales platforms and gaming environments instead. As a result, every publisher may soon get its own digital distribution platform – and that doesn't bode well for Steam.
An independent UK developer says it’s been forced to announce and postpone its game on the same day, and lay off more than half of its staff, due to the sharp downturn in investment in the games industry.
The armadillo returns.
I personally do remember Infogrames in the years prior to merger. They really did have a portfolio that stuck out and I enjoyed. I wonder what value they see in reviving it now though?
The good old days of Driver and Stuntman. Unfortunately both games are long gone.
Meta writes: "Xbox and Meta teamed up last year to bring Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta) to Meta Quest, letting people play Xbox games on a large 2D virtual screen in mixed reality. Now, we’re working together again to create a limited-edition Meta Quest, inspired by Xbox."
My answer is......
#1 lower Steam's commissions on per game sold (30% is too high, 15% would be more reasonable),
#2 Half Life 3,
#3 Left 4 Dead 3,
#4 Counter-Strike:GO 2.
Imagine how horrible it would be if every company moved away from Steam.
These are my reasons why I would hate it.
1) Bloatware. Having so many different launchers on my PC would be irritating. So many different updates, so many different UI's to navigate and get used to. They would be all over my PC and I would have shortcuts everywhere. It's messy and inconvenient.
2) Games no longer being in one place. I like my games being tied to one account, same goes with my achievements, the amount of hours I have put in, my friends, the community forums (Steam's is a bit of a cesspit though). Everything is there in one place and easy to get to. I like loading up Steam and clicking the play button on my games, it's as close to plug and play as PC gaming has ever been.
3) Prices and sales. I don't think anybody can deny it, you won't find better prices or sales than what we get with Steam. I'm not just talking about from Steam themselves. Humble Bundle and Fanatical do amazing sales on games for Steam. The prices of these games are often cheaper on release too and get discounted more often and sooner than any other platform. If all companies were to move everything away from Steam, I don't think things would be as good. Uplay and Origin sales are very poor, I haven't bought one game from their sales yet, It's just not tempting enough.
4) Tons of new accounts and passwords. The last thing I want to do is create more accounts and have more passwords, it's bad enough as it is.
5) Credit card, debit card, Paypal etc etc. I don't want to share any of this stuff with any more companies. It takes one account getting hacked for everything to go wrong, and with so many accounts holding your details, the more likely it is that this will happen.
If they all branch off and do their own thing, they will probably find themselves losing a costumer. I'm not signing up and creating multiple accounts just to play the odd game or two now and then.
Well I play a lot on pc, and to be honest if I can't buy the game on steam I normally avoid it. I just don't trust going outside of it. So in turn it will be mostly a skip or get on console. Pretty plain and simple.
I think it's more likely Valve will inevitably refocus their efforts back to software. Make Steam the ultimate digital platform for exclusives. That would easily be enough to mitigate any loses from third party publishers doing their own thing.
Hmmmmm don't think it's farewell to steam. Sure the big games may jump ship so that you gotta use their launchers, but tbh that makes complete sense for them to do. Why pay a distributer when you can do it yourself? But devs not part of big pubs will not be able to do this and they will stick with Steam. Also, Ubisoft does it's own launcher as well as steam, it's possible that's how other pubs will do it too.