tearsintherain
Member
The guy who posted on reddit about only 2 people online on launch day (it was his little brother that bought it) did post later that they did manage to get a refund on the game, so at least some good news.
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CONFIRMED: COD:IW & MWR - no crossplay support between Win10 Store and rest of PC
- Thread starter benny_a
- Start date
Maintenance
Member
Deepo back at the top.
Outlaw Torn
Member
I also bought the Windows 10 version, and right now the leaderboards are "Coming Soon" to hide any player count.
Infinite Warfare MP does have a small amount of activity. There were six players already ranked in the high 30s in the only lobby I was able to get into.
Modern Warfare is completely dead though, every time I tried to look for a game there was 0 people online.
Dunno, seems unlikely for them to bother at all considering the W10 userbase of the game is literally non-existent.
Head.spawn
Junior Member
So #2 guy got refunded... that leaves Phil Spencer?
Lime Blockade
Banned
It's actually Mike Ybarra, he just tweeted about playing the Windows 10 version of CoD. So no Phil Spencer here.
https://twitter.com/XboxQwik/status/794745912992014336
Rocket League can cross play between Steam and Xbox Live so I assume it's possible to do it. The question is Activision going to bother spending any more money updating the Windows 10 Store version to do that?
What makes you think that connecting matchmaking of a PS4 version and the PC version running Steamworks wouldn't take any additional effort? Because that would be the exact same thing.
Emperor Bohe
Member
What a boneheaded decision
It's actually due to Valve. You cannot use Steamworks and any other Steam* unless your game is sold on Steam and they get their 30% cut per sale.
Meanwhile, Microsoft lets you use UWP on Steam or wherever you want.. just like Win32, and you don't have to give them jack shit.
This has been an issue for other developers before, and it's completely intentional by Valve to help enforce Steam adoption.
Amusingly, when we had every game using Gamespy.. these problems didn't exist, because Gamespy didn't force you to sell your game via Gamespy Arcade to use the Gamespy backend. Gamespy also let you use third party clients to search for games and IM other people - something Steam STILL doesn't allow. The loss of Gamespy has been terrible for PC gaming.
LordRaptor
Member
I do think creating crossplay between PS4 and PC takes additional effort.
Why would you think I don't?
No, categorically not true.
There are games redeemable on Steam as Steam keys, that make full use of Steamworks features, and that are unavailable for purchase from the store itself.
You need a Steam client and Steam login to use steamworks features - obviously - but that is the sole restriction.
The statement you quoted has literally nothing to do with Steamworks anyway - if it had been a Gamespy enabled game, it would still take additional work for the UWA platform-within-a-platform- version to reach across the walled gardens moat and connect to the Gamespy featureset.
Pantaghana
Member
Do you have source or an example of this? Because games that I redeemed from retail keys (Valve got got 0% of the sale) have access to all of Steam's features.
Hell, I'm reading through the Steamworks SDK Access Agreement
My legalese is quite poor, but as far as I can tell, nowhere is it stated that you absolutely have to sell your game through Steam to use its features.
A lot of it is under NDA. You can't even start implementing Steamworks without talking to Valve first - there is no "just click this and download and implement Steamworks in your executable"
Valve gets money off retail keys, btw.
Also you aren't allow to generate infinite free keys, either. I've seen requests for keys being generated rejected - even for low triple digit amounts. There is no way Valve would ever let you just generate keys and keep all the money to yourself perpetually. They aren't giving away free hosting.
You can sell Steam games anywhere. However, you must still ultimately redeem the game on Steam and launch it via Steam. Ubisoft sells Steam games (and Origin games, go look, they're selling an exclusive BF1 bundle right now) right from their website, but you still need Steam and Origin to play them.
This is versus Gamespy, where a game could implement Gamespy's lobby and matchmaking system without ever needing someone to install the Gamespy metaclient itself.
And they will not let you sell a significant amount of keys for free before you have to start prepaying keys or just sending people straight to the Steam store page.
Pantaghana
Member
That contradicts everything I've heard previously, which is that devs/publishers are given their own key generators which they use themselves for retail and for selling directly from their own website. The only restriction being that the store page for the product itself has to be accessible, so you can't force people to buy retail and through your own site.
It must be US-only, because I can't see shit, so I'll take your word for it.
I still don't see how I'm locked out of features for games I've redeemed on Steam, but bought elsewhere.
LordRaptor
Member
You can begin implementing steamworks the second you've paid the greenlight fee.
Valve take no payment from retail key sales.
Valve will generate keys for you for any reason - this is how so many indie bundles exist.
You are either lying or are woefully misinformed about Steamworks.
They literally ARE giving away free hosting because attracting customers into the ecosystem is worth that expense.
Hilariously, you seem to be incorrect in about everything you claim. No, Valve doesn't get a single cent from keys sold elsewhere. This is a fact.
You can implement Steamworks if you've registered as a Steam dev. This is as simple as simply being on Greenlight.
Entering your game into the Greenlight process also mucks you up a lot if a publisher likes your game and wants to pick it up - Valve will block a game from leaving the Greenlight process and being published instead.
lol
This all depends on who you are and the popular ones like Humble Bundle switched to a non-key method long ago to stop resellers. It seems like it's easy, but HB only does games they feel worth carrying, which in turns means the games are known or at least semi-popular, which means Valve is more likely to allow keys/whatever for those games to be generated. It's cyclical.
I have at least one game I worked on on Steam, the lead on that game asked Valve for more keys to give away copies of the game and they said "nope", probably because it hasn't sold much on Steam.
No, they are not. Steam is barely free anymore. You'd be surprised how utterly nerfed a new account is these days without spending real money dollars on games or client MTs.
Either way, I've made it clear my opinion on Steam before, but Valve is just as much a first party/publisher as MS or Sony with how they deal with their store, and act as such in a lot of ways. I've just found it funny that they're portrayed as this benevolent giant when we had much more open and intracompatible PC gaming pre-Steam. For me to buy the marketing, I'd have to see Valve's Steamworks as an open source library with the ability to spin up your own homemade instances that the library can talk to without ever having to put pen to paper (or digisign)
Greenlight is openly being left to die, I wouldn't use it anymore.
Mass Effect
Member
Damn. I feel bad for anyone who wasted money on this.
Because you criticize UWP, when other platforms would require the same kind of effort to tie together. The game could be available on Desura or even standalone on PC (no client) as other buying options and we would have the exact same situation: More effort required, because none of these versions could utilize Steamworks without running through Steam (which they don't).
What is the key difference here that makes it reasonable to criticize Microsoft instead of Activision?
Diablohead
Member
I kind of doubt it for a few reasons, spending time doing so, working it out between xbox live servers and other formats, and pc to xbox cross play is hardly a thing since anything competitive seems to not be allowed, gears of war 4 for example.
If I wasn't so lazy I would make a terrible No Man's Sky reference/joke.
LordRaptor
Member
You don't need to be ON greenlight to have access to the Steamworks SDK and begin implementing Steamworks features.
You just need to be a registered developer, which literally anyone can be right this very second by paying the greenlight fee.
Or be a developer or work for a studio that has already been registered, or already has a developer relationship with Valve.
You're categorically wrong.
http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/retailsupport.php
That literally cannot be clearer.
I don't know how to break this to you... he lied to you.
Valve generate keys for whatever reasons you as a the registered developer wants them to.
Get the contact details for your account manager from this person, and contatc them directly and see for yourself.
Irrelevant.
Who fucking cares if a free account can't trade scam or spam messages at people?
Right, "I don't like steam" is completely irrelevant, but sorry to break it to you, Steam has been beneficial for both producers and consumers.
Gamespy offered matchmaking services - for a fee - and that's it.
Developers still needed to worry about Anti-cheat, hosting, secured online payments, CD key verification, DRM / anti-piracy measures, file checking and patching services, and all the other features that Steamworks offers - for free - in one integrated package.
If you can't see why anti-piracy or anti-cheat measures aren't fucking open sourced then I don't know what to say.
I honestly don't know what point you're trying to make, you're just throwing whataboutisms around.
You think Activision were going to release COD as a standalone .exe on Desura? LMFAO.
Humble Bundle gives regular Steam keys like anyone else. You keep being wrong about almost everything you post.Entering your game into the Greenlight process also mucks you up a lot if a publisher likes your game and wants to pick it up - Valve will block a game from leaving the Greenlight process and being published instead.
lol
This all depends on who you are and the popular ones like Humble Bundle switched to a non-key method long ago to stop resellers. It seems like it's easy, but HB only does games they feel worth carrying, which in turns means the games are known or at least semi-popular, which means Valve is more likely to allow keys/whatever for those games to be generated. It's cyclical.
I have at least one game I worked on on Steam, the lead on that game asked Valve for more keys to give away copies of the game and they said "nope", probably because it hasn't sold much on Steam.
No, they are not. Steam is barely free anymore. You'd be surprised how utterly nerfed a new account is these days without spending real money dollars on games or client MTs.
Either way, I've made it clear my opinion on Steam before, but Valve is just as much a first party/publisher as MS or Sony with how they deal with their store, and act as such in a lot of ways. I've just found it funny that they're portrayed as this benevolent giant when we had much more open and intracompatible PC gaming pre-Steam. For me to buy the marketing, I'd have to see Valve's Steamworks as an open source library with the ability to spin up your own homemade instances that the library can talk to without ever having to put pen to paper (or digisign)
Greenlight is openly being left to die, I wouldn't use it anymore.
Also , the lead of your game lied.
So your responses are someone I've known for almost 20 years now is a liar and "who cares", glad to be of help pointing out why this industry isn't all cherries and rainbows
The last one I redeemed a while back required me to click a link to activate on Steam. I never got an actual key. This was right after the resellers were all buying up Steam keys for a dollar and flipping them for regular price - 1.
However, it looks like they went BACK to regular keys after that, so I stand corrected on that piece of information.
The last one I redeemed a while back required me to click a link to activate on Steam. I never got an actual key. This was right after the resellers were all buying up Steam keys for a dollar and flipping them for regular price - 1.
However, it looks like they went BACK to regular keys after that, so I stand corrected on that piece of information.
You've been literally wrong in basically almost everything you claim so I guess you might just not understood whatever the lead told you. No, Valve doesn't get money from keys sold elsewhere, they won't stop you from generating keys for giveaways(there's literally hundreds of games that barely sold at all on Steam that managed to make giveaways with dozens of thousands of keys), it barely takes anything to implement Steamworks, hosting of your game is indeed free, among others.
LordRaptor
Member
They're a liar
You're a liar
Valve and all developers who have made use of their permissive key generation systems are liars
Those are the options.
And yes, given anyone can create a steam account in seconds, who cares if there are certain restrictions - like not being able to spam messages to other accounts - on a throwaway account that has nothing invested in it?
e:
It's particularly amusing you're complaining about Valves key generation policies in a topic about the fucking W10 appstore whose key generation policies are outstandingly shitty
"I put in a request for keys
they didn't approve it
"pretty cut and dry
k, go sign up and request 20,000 keys. I'll sit here and wait while valve lets you make 200,000$ off their backend and not want a cut of it. Note that officially, Valve does not discuss payment agreements publically. Some devs can get more keys than others. Not all of them have to give Valve the same cut and have a lower cut they pay to Valve. Just how the industry works in general..
Implementing Steamworks itself is not hard. However, the softness of the cuffs it comes with are up to interpretation, I guess. (Same as the ones that come with Windows 10 store.. Xbox / Live.. PS/PSN... etc.. did you know Microsoft set the pricepoint for your game on XBL, for example? And that they could put it on sale without expressly asking you beforehand?)
Anyway, I'll gladly supply proof to Bish. Just remember it all depends on which side of an NDA you're on and some of them are intentionally used maintain business upper hands publically.
Well, Win10 store is turdbuckets, We're talking about the store who's first iteration allowed all game keys to unlock all other Games For Windows games
That shit was understandable in the offline era, but an online store should not have a universal key algorithm, lol . You're literally just better off not using Win10 store at all. I just assume it's going to end up like Apple's desktop store... used to deliver first party software.
LordRaptor
Member
Even assuming for a second this is true - that you have to pay Valve in some form for keys, and they explicitly restrict key generation in return for payments; how does any of the following work?
- devs selling their own keys directly from their own webpages (such as recent complaints about G2A by devs who were being hit with fraudulent purchases)
- third party retailers that sell CD keys; if valve take a cut, and the retailer takes a cut, where are the profit margins coming from? How are they undercutting steam itself?
- Pay what you want indie bundles; if there is a cost involved to key generation, how can you buy multiple games from multiple developers for 1 penny? If key generation is restricted, how can these bundles exist when they cannot anticipate demand in advance?
- F2P games; if there is a per-copy cost associated with putting a game on steam, how do the logisitics of a F2P game work? The more people playing the more money it costs the developer?
Somebody is lying about key generation and per key costs.
Deductive reasoning based on available evidence suggests it is not Valve.
Ok I think you're just trying to dodge my argument at this point. I'm talking about the fact that connecting the Steamworks-supported matchmaking between Steam and any other platform would always take extra effort. Be it standalone, Desura or UWP. Just like with PC-console-crossplay (maybe not as severe). All these would face the same problem we have right here, yet you pick out UWP and act like it was part of the problem and I fail to see why.
LordRaptor
Member
How am I 'picking out' UWP? You're seeing what you want to.
MS wanted a separate platform.
It doesn't connect to a more popular platform without extra work. That's a side effect of MS getting exactly what they wanted.
People are mad at Activision for not putting in extra work to connect the two platforms, and its not Activisions job to do that.
As I've said all along, W10 appstore COD is a fully functional game, with full parity of features with every other platform edition.
The problem is that UWA is extremely unpopular, so the platform userbase is tiny.
Unpopularity of a platform is the owner of that platforms responsibility.
e:
I still don't know what point you're trying to make by bringing up PSN or Desura.
You are allowed to do this. The amount of keys you'll likely sell via your own site will be really small (because your actual Steam Page must always be visible, most will discover it via that), or if you're a big publisher, you've cut a check for a batch amount.
If we're talking about stores like Target and so on: Publisher prints off a bunch of boxes, cuts Valve a check for that fixed amount of boxes. Retailer then buys that stock and tries to sell it. Usually if it's under full price later on they've taken a loss or are running break even..
As I said before, Valve decides when keys will be allowed to be generated for free. If you're in a position to be included in a bundle, you are more likely to get approved for the free keys.
Valve makes their cut off every in-game purchase. You are not allowed to sell DLC on a Steamworks game without making it purchased via Steam, so you can't launch a F2P game on Steam but then push all the MTs through your own backend and keep Valve's cut to yourself. F2P Games that exist on both Steam and not-Steam have separated purchasing and if you're on Steam you can't buy stuff with the same account on the non-Steam side (ex Spiral Knights)
If you mean absolutely 100% free games, yes that's also possible, but since not every dev can afford that habitually, those types of releases will be the exception and not the rule, so Valve can absorb the hosting on those financially.
LordRaptor
Member
The amount of keys you or I might sell will be small, yes.
What about the amount of keys Paradox Interactive will sell?
They pay a bunch of money at a guesstimate how much they will sell directly?
Really?
While Valve are wilfully misleading people as to there being no activation cost per key?
But nobody has challenged that?
...
Really?
No, we are talking about Retailers that deal exclusively with digital only products and sell keys directly to consumers based on demand.
Sites like GMG, the Humble Store, Gamersgate, Amazon, or Nuuvem.
How do those economics work?
Where do the profit margins come in that those sites can sell for cheaper than Valves storefront does, while making their own profit margins and still paying a valve cut.
Please.
Explain the economics of that.
Use a hypothetical $50 game to explain the cuts that are made and where.
The economics of F2P games are such that ~3% of a userbase subsidise the remaining ~97%, and they work on volume - the more people playing, the more likely that product becomes profitable, because 3% of a million people nets more revenue than 3% of 100 people.
Those economics no longer work if there is a flat cost per user - volume becomes a liability, as costs will scale linearly.
And what about actual free games on Steam?
Vlambeer are paying Valve money for every user of Super Crate Box, without even any possibility to pay money towards it?
How doe that work?
How are Vlambeer so rich that they can afford to do that? Why would they do that?
This is all based on non-NDA deductive reasoning of publically available information.
FWIW I also have a valid and current Steam developer login and access to their SDKs and T&Cs, andlI am still telling you that you are 100% wrong.
You missed the part in the quote snip where I point out 100% free games are going to be an exception on Steam due to economics, so Valve can absorb them right now. The vast majority of people wanting to place content on there want to do so because of access to paying customers.
If Steam had people putting free games on it left and right, I'd guarantee you Steam would be ad-supported, just like every other free-downloads-focused website.
also re: Vlambeer, Super Crate Box was the usual putting-a-free-game-out to get recognition, they now release paid releases.
I'm just seeing what I'm reading and it was kind of obvious.
What does Microsoft have to do with this? I haven't seen them cry about it. The players are to ones crying about it (or laughing, rather, most of them anyways) and rightfully so. If you're offering the game someplace else, it isn't too much to ask for to give players the ability to at least play with all other PC players. And of course it's Activision job to do that, who else is supposed to do it? We're talking ingame implementations here and games like Street Fighter are doing the exact same thing I'm asking for here (way easier in this case I guess, seeing how finicky Sony seems to be in this matter).
The point is that if Activision had decided to release the game standalone or on Desura (I don't even know Desura lol, but who cares) instead of the Windows Store, we could have made the same thread because the problem would still persist. It wouldn't connect without extra work. It doesn't matter that UWP is unpopular, what matters is that releasing on two different platforms could always bring up this problem. Why would you then blame the platform holder instead of the company releasing their game on different platforms when players say that playing by themselves was bollocks.
Maybe it's actually harder to pull off in this case? Even if it was, I sure as hell haven't seen anything that proves that was the case. But if you're arguing that this is too much to ask off Activision, some kind of proof is necessary.
LordRaptor
Member
Steam is a platform that offers a number of useful features - achievements, matchmaking, DRM, CDN, etc. It is popular with customers, it is free to implement for developers.
MS don't want to support that platform, because they want to push their own platform. They have built a 'wall', because they want people using the MS solution not someone elses solution.
Activision are true neutral.
They put the same feature complete game on both platforms.
There is a userbase problem with one platform that the other does not have, so people have started demanding that Activision do extra work to bridge those platforms, and MS joined in by saying it was Activisions choice not to do that extra work.
But no extra work would have been required if MS hadn't built that wall for their own reasons.
See, and that is questionable, which is why I'm asking for proof. You are talking about a 'wall', but does it even exist (in this case)? Or is it just the fact that whatever other platform you choose can't implement Steamworks and therefore would obviously require extra work to connect with the Steam version?
If yes, then this 'wall' is pretty natural and not inherent to the Windows Store. You could also make the argument that if they knew they were going to release on multiple platforms on PC, picking Steamworks was a really lazy choice if they didn't bother to connect the two.
MS do not allow steamworks games on W10 store.
Furthermore, this was clearly a last minute acquisition, so suggesting that Activision just rework their network infrastructure completely shortly before launch doesn't make any sense.
Steamworks requires Steam if I'm not mistaken. So it's 'MS do not allow Steam games on their store', which is kind of reasonable if you ask me.
Also if we assume that their matchmaking actually works, they must have reworked something.
Doesn't seem reasonable at all. Uplay manages to sell steamworks games just fine.
LordRaptor
Member
So its still Microsofts problem to solve that customers want Steamworks and Developers utilise Steamworks, not Activisions.
e: to your edit
On PSN, Sony provide APIs that handle achievements, user profile, networking and matchmaking, patching, DRM, DLC and CDN.
On X1, MS provide APIs that handle achievements, user profile, networking and matchmaking, patching, DRM, DLC and CDN.
On Steam, Valve provide APIs that handle achievements, user profile, networking and matchmaking, patching, DRM, DLC and CDN.
On W10 Appstore, MS provide APIs that handle some of those things.
To make cross platform play, developers require additional work to make these different APIs talk to each other.
Its not Activisions problem that the product they sell that expects mature APIs and a large enough userbase to make multiplayer worthwhile, and UWA can't handle that by itself, nor is it their 'fault' that they didn't go an extra mile to connect the W10 appstore to Steam, whereUWA version would benefit, and where the UWA version is always going to sell a pittance.
look at it this way;
If Activision released a WiiU port of the latest COD, and there aren't enough players on the WiiU for multiplayer to work well - is it Activisions fault they don't add crossplay with Steam to hide the shortcomings of that platform?
origin and humble store do as well
I really don't follow the logic of someone that says only big or popular games can easily get approved for steam key generation. It's like they have never been on a bundle site that wasn't Humble Bundle.
Here you go
https://www.bundlestars.com/en/games?page=1&types=bundle
Dozens of bundles of steam keys the overwhelming majority of which are for games you have never heard of.
Here you go
https://www.bundlestars.com/en/games?page=1&types=bundle
Dozens of bundles of steam keys the overwhelming majority of which are for games you have never heard of.
To be fair, requests for a particularly large amount of keys do need to be manually approved by Valve. I'm not a dev, but from what I understand, it's a formality designed to prevent miffed developers/publishers from generating ridiculous amount of keys and giving them away via Google Docs or whatever because they're annoyed at Valve for some reason. Beyond falsifying why you need the keys, the only other reason such a request would be denied is that it pertained to DevComp keys rather than beta testing or retail keys. The DevComp flag automatically registers the applicable sub to the developer accounts then-associated with the app and so the only circumstance in which such keys would need to be generated is when additional accounts are brought into the fold. Valve, obviously, can of course see how many accounts are associated with a given app and so DevComp key requests that are abnormally high are going to set off red flags.
Steam games. They use Steam afaik, not just Steamworks. It's not about 'managing', but allowing it. I think allowing 3rd party DRM clients was one of the worst things Valve has ever done with their store, but it's only natural that other stores like Origin, uplay or whatever want a piece of the cake so they won't say no. Obviously Microsoft want a piece of that cake too, but I think in this case they've made the right decision. Of course that means 'no Steamworks', but I wouldn't want to buy a game in one store, only to have to use a second client from a second store to actually play the damn thing (looking at you, GTA).
They could just sell masked Steam games on their store like the others do and it would obviously make Steamworks work, but I respect that they want to do their own thing, just like I do for publishers like EA and Ubisoft for their own games, even if it's the ultimate nuisance.
Why would you want Steamworks as a customer. I want a game to do the things Steamworks offers, through whatever means necessary. So Microsoft have to provide something similiar, which they seemingly do. So do EA with Origin, and Ubisoft with uplay (at least for themselves). I want only one account, not two like described above. I imagine most people only want to have one launcher.
What you fail to see is that regardless of the split - be it as pitiful for the Windows Store as it is right now or actually something like 50/50 between WS and Steam - the player base would be split and that in itself is unacceptable. And that is 100% on Activision. If they want to deliver their game through multiple stores, then they should make the effort to have all players play with each other. If a store makes that impossible right out of the box, then why even bother selling there.
Consoles have always had segregated communities, so that's not nearly the same thing. Although it is pretty stupid in general that console players can't play with each other, regardless of individual player count. It means you better buy the same console as your friends even for games like CoD or Fifa or prepare to have to play by yourself. Kind of stupid.
EA doesn't sell Origin games on Steam, with the quasi-exception of Crysis 2 ME, but even after all this time I still expect that to change eventually. I also feel that Microsoft's push has come years too late and it will soon meet PC gamers halfway with a Ubiesque approach (while the games will still be UWP apps and so engender no small amount of criticism, at least the WinStore's own issues will be a non-factor).
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