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[a multicultural team of v]

I find it interesting that given all of the discussion that has been going on for the past week, I don't think I have seen Steam brought up even once. Which is surprising, because I think they are in for a very rude awakening in the next few years.

Let us assume that 1) streaming/subscribing/renting is the way the industry is going, and 2) that the key differentiation will be which service has exclusive developers/games on it. I think both of these are fairly basic assumptions given what has occurred this week.

What the hell does Steam do? Steam exists to sell games other companies have made. Their own game catalog consists of like 4 franchises, and the biggest ones like Counter-Strike are free-to-play, meaning that they have no benefit to a paid streaming service. So what do they do? Does Valve start buying up developers? Not only are they not suited for the upcoming streaming landscape in terms of potential exclusive games, but the more other streaming companies buy developers, the less games that Steam will even have to sell. How many copies do you think Skyrim sold on Steam?

And yes, I know that right now there are Microsoft games on Steam. But Microsoft didn't buy Bethesda for $7.5 billion to give Steam a cut of future sales forever. And besides, the current happy path from Microsoft's perspective (Gamepass) means Steam won't get a sale anyway.

 

[DonJuanSchlong]

Steam ain't worried about consoles or streaming. They have the biggest, best store for digital content. The most thriving VR market of games compared to anyone else.

 

[lastmessiah]

Don't know. Things are gonna get interesting.

 

[renzolama]

Surely Steam is destined for collapse any day now

 

[Laptop1991]

That's the concern of a lot of PC gamers me included, will we be tied to the W10 store with this deal, i hope not, although other users have been saying MS allow their games on Steam, which i hope continues, otherwise it will just be like Xbox with MS in full control.

 

[Graciaus]

I think you underestimate how little a lot of people on PC care about things outside of Steam.

 

[Tesseract]

valve will be fine once the source 2 sdk is finished and brought to light with terms befitting indies

rest of steam seems fine, snappier page transitions would be nice

 

[Atrus]

Steam has a massive footprint full of people who like owning games and a model built off of long purchase windows and discount games that are tied to their ecosystem.

If they wanted to implement a complementary GaaS service, they could follow suit any time they wanted to.

The difference is that many game companies like making money at the moment and don’t have the capacity or see the need to burn billions of dollars.

 

[a multicultural team of v]

Steam has a massive footprint full of people who like owning games and a model built off of long purchase windows and discount games that are tied to their ecosystem.

If they wanted to implement a complementary GaaS service, they could follow suit any time they wanted to.

The difference is that many game companies like making money at the moment and don’t have the capacity or see the need to burn billions of dollars.

It is going to be hard to own a game on Steam when it isn't sold on Steam. That is the future they are going to have to deal with.

And they can't really just follow suit whenever, because they don't have any games to sell in that format. They would have to negotiate with every single publisher - which they can do, but making those deals exclusive would be pricey.

 

[Pejo]

Kinda makes me wish SteamOS would have taken off. It'd be fun to see them make cheap Steamboxes and dip their toes in competing vs. consoles.

 

[Silvawuff]

I don't think Steam cares. It's like a force of nature and will just exist and do what it does, regardless of what anyone else thinks or does.

 

[aries_71]

In my opinion they should get some agreement with GeForce Now or get swept by the winds of time.

 

[SuperColourful]

Surely Steam is destined for collapse any day now

it must collapse
i don't like how it have all PC market for decade i think

 

[LazyParrot]

Microsoft buys Bethesda and people act like all devs and publishers are about to get bought out and tied to subscription services

 

[Esca]

I'm still trying to figure out who this market is that wants to stream their games. It feels like something that is being pushed but without demand

 

[Rikkori]

Steam is too big to both care & ignore. People want to sell on PC? Better put it on steam, else you risk missing out on a huge chunk of players. Likewise because of this Steam themselves don't have to worry about "exclusives" and other stuff. In the end they'll all come back. They're just focused on making the service the best available and that will sell itself - that's always been Valve's philosophy.

Besides, if you listen to GabeN you know that their sights are set on VR & other alt-entertainment models, not this flat display stuff. Which makes sense - just like how Google/AMZ/MS are chasing the cloud because it's a new unmonopolised market, so too is Valve after a new one. There's just no real growth for the PC market to tap, it's all very slow to expand now.

 

[MrS]

Pivot to Smithing?

 

[Stuart360]

Steam has something like 180mil regular users, they will be fine.

 

[Laptop1991]

It is going to be hard to own a game on Steam when it isn't sold on Steam. That is the future they are going to have to deal with.

And they can't really just follow suit whenever, because they don't have any games to sell in that format. They would have to negotiate with every single publisher - which they can do, but making those deals exclusive would be pricey.

That's true, the last 3 games i bought Rage 2 , The Outer Worlds and Doom Eternal, none of them on my PC are on my Steam, and with Epic keeping new titles off constantly, i don't know when my next game will be, Cyberpunk on GOG and Valhalla on Uplay.

 

[a multicultural team of v]

Kinda makes me wish SteamOS would have taken off. It'd be fun to see them make cheap Steamboxes and dip their toes in competing vs. consoles.

That would have actually been extremely interesting, because they would then not only be competing against Xbox, but Windows itself.

That is a fight I would like to watch while eating popcorn, that is for sure.

 

[ACESHIGH]

I just wish they used that money to develop single player non vr games.

 

[DESTROYA]

It’ll be fine like it’s been for years.
If anything PC gamers don’t like streaming services because of lag and latency issues and we all know a lot of PC gamers demand only the best performance that can only be had with native hardware.
Steam will keep on steaming

 

[Pejo]

That would have actually been extremely interesting, because they would then not only be competing against Xbox, but Windows itself.

That is a fight I would like to watch while eating popcorn, that is for sure.

I think the strength of the library would be make/break. Not many games run on Linux unfortunately, and I doubt big pubs would waste the resources to make it work. That's probably why it never really went anywhere besides just a cool idea.

 

[DocEbok]

steams working on weird stuff https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/cloudgaming. Don't know where that will end up or if they will add other services?

 

[DonJuanSchlong]

Man these concern threads must be a way to C O P E or something? Steam isn't going anywhere, and won't be forced to change their practices due to console space.

Edit: if anything, more console players are moving to PC now than ever.

 

[Tesseract]

Man these concern threads must be a way to C O P E or something? Steam isn't going anywhere, and won't be forced to change their practices due to console space.

thank the gods, pc is set to control the spice

 

[JCK75]

Steam ain't worried about consoles or streaming. They have the biggest, best store for digital content. The most thriving VR market of games compared to anyone else.

Wasn't Steam one of the first to offer streaming? I mean they made you use your own hardware to host but still.

 

[ResilientBanana]

Steam just do

 

[Three]

Steam ain't worried about consoles or streaming. They have the biggest, best store for digital content. The most thriving VR market of games compared to anyone else.

Wait until games aren't released on steam but exclusively on a streaming service. EEE.

 

[a multicultural team of v]

Man these concern threads must be a way to C O P E or something? Steam isn't going anywhere, and won't be forced to change their practices due to console space.

Edit: if anything, more console players are moving to PC now than ever.

Is everyone just purposefully avoiding the fact that these streaming providers are purchasing studios, studios that currently sell games on Steam, to create exclusive content for them? Like how can you say with a straight face that no Bethesda games on Steam is something Steam is just perfectly fine with?

 

[MiguelItUp]

Steam is gonna keep Steaming. They're not concerned, nor do they have any reason to be. They already have a great platform and a bunch of supporters.

Considering what they've done with streaming, remote play, big picture, the controller, etc. I'm sure we may some new things from them, but there's no reason to rush into it. They have no need to.

 

[DonJuanSchlong]

Wasn't Steam one of the first to offer streaming? I mean they made you use your own hardware to host but still.

Yeah, for local streaming. I don't see server-client side streaming to really take off on PC anytime soon. It's not like buffering 1080p@30/60fps. We are used to 100+fps, and that just won't work with streaming at the moment.

Is everyone just purposefully avoiding the fact that these streaming providers are purchasing studios, studios that currently sell games on Steam, to create exclusive content for them? Like how can you say with a straight face that no Bethesda games on Steam is something Steam is just perfectly fine with?

Do you have any sources that these games are going to be exclusive? It's cool to speculate and all, but strictly looking at facts, MS is selling a boatload on steam, with several games in top 10 for months. I can see Microsoft shutting off Sony from it's games, but not PC. It wouldn't make sense at all.

 

[DESTROYA]

Is everyone just purposefully avoiding the fact that these streaming providers are purchasing studios, studios that currently sell games on Steam, to create exclusive content for them? Like how can you say with a straight face that no Bethesda games on Steam is something Steam is just perfectly fine with?

Uhhh ......MS has said themselves that all console games will also come to PC so how can you say with a straight face that they won’t ?

 

[Atrus]

It is going to be hard to own a game on Steam when it isn't sold on Steam. That is the future they are going to have to deal with.

And they can't really just follow suit whenever, because they don't have any games to sell in that format. They would have to negotiate with every single publisher - which they can do, but making those deals exclusive would be pricey.

Steam has about 100 million active monthly users and a library of over 32,000 games. It has a far bigger ecosystem than Microsoft does.

Losing a couple of game releases is no different than not having Blizzard games on the platform.

Steam may have to negotiate licence deals but it’s backed by a massive library of games players can tap into. Is a subscription model any different than selling your game for a couple bucks during a sale for some vendors? Offering a complementary service in addition to game ownership may feed the niche that renting games currently represents and creating rent to own options merely expands their reach.

Not everyone has to mimic the Netflix model of burning money and hoping you succeed.

 

[yurqqa]

Never owned Xbox (I’m Sony+Nintendo+PC kind of guy) and even preferred GOG to Steam to actually own the games without DRM.

And now I bought gamepass for PC and feel that it’s at least great alternative to torrents to try the game before buying in my collection. But I feel it’ll get better and better, so for some kind of games it’ll be enough to just play it on Gamepass and that’s it.

So with GOG, EGS and Gamepass I don’t think Steam future is that trouble free. They did a mistake when they stop making games.

Of course there are lot of blind fanatics who are knee deep in Steam ecosystem, but think it’s their free choice. People often forget what free choice is when they have all the decisions are made for them.

It’s great that PC has lots of choice - it’s still the most open platform.

P.S. The only issue that I play on PS4 and Switch most of the time as there are simply more quality games for my taste and portability is a king.

 

[diffusionx]

Steam, PS5, and Switch represent the "current model" of vidya. MS and Amazon represent the "new model." Ultimately, we will see what happens.

Is everyone just purposefully avoiding the fact that these streaming providers are purchasing studios, studios that currently sell games on Steam, to create exclusive content for them? Like how can you say with a straight face that no Bethesda games on Steam is something Steam is just perfectly fine with?

MS is selling all their games on Steam right now, there's really no reason to think anything will get pulled off Steam ever.

So with GOG, EGS and Gamepass I don’t think Steam future is that trouble free. They did a mistake when they stop making games.

?? They made and released a game less than six months ago.

 

[Knitted Knight]

A lot of competition from big pocketed companies is starting to emerge. Nothing to worry about now but it's all about who wins the "next best thing" contest. The sweat from Steam fanboys pretending everything is cool is amusing.

 

[V4skunk]

Steam is pc gaming.
It really is as simple as that and everything else is a fraud, except for gog.

 

[manfestival]

clearly nothing compares to the might and power that is microsoft now. They have game pass + bethesda+ xbox live + microsoft + video games. Steam or Sony cannot touch them at this point!

 

[ACESHIGH]

Selling an elder scrolls pc game without being able to modify the game files does not seem like a recipe for success.

MS already understood that on pc we HATE their UWP format.

 

[Codswallop_]

If you want you can stream some of your Steam games using nvidia GameStream (anyone remember this still exists?), but the selection is pretty limited. I'd love to have access to the entire library on any device. Steam Link is nice, but it involves needing a PC running everything and I run into control problems with a lot of older games.

 

[wolffy71]

I find it interesting that given all of the discussion that has been going on for the past week, I don't think I have seen Steam brought up even once. Which is surprising, because I think they are in for a very rude awakening in the next few years.

Let us assume that 1) streaming/subscribing/renting is the way the industry is going, and 2) that the key differentiation will be which service has exclusive developers/games on it. I think both of these are fairly basic assumptions given what has occurred this week.

What the hell does Steam do? Steam exists to sell games other companies have made. Their own game catalog consists of like 4 franchises, and the biggest ones like Counter-Strike are free-to-play, meaning that they have no benefit to a paid streaming service. So what do they do? Does Valve start buying up developers? Not only are they not suited for the upcoming streaming landscape in terms of potential exclusive games, but the more other streaming companies buy developers, the less games that Steam will even have to sell. How many copies do you think Skyrim sold on Steam?

And yes, I know that right now there are Microsoft games on Steam. But Microsoft didn't buy Bethesda for $7.5 billion to give Steam a cut of future sales forever. And besides, the current happy path from Microsoft's perspective (Gamepass) means Steam won't get a sale anyway.

Why would you stream games to ur pc tho? Its inherently a console and then some. As long as theres 3rd party games out there steam should have a place in the market. Id say they are more likely to make a streaming service themselves of some sort.

 

[yurqqa]

?? They made and released a game less than six months ago.

I had to think real hard before I remembered.
I guess they even made a great game, but as 99% of Steam users I can’t play it (I own PSVR and at the moment 2 VR sets is too much for me).

 

[Keihart]

Steam it's already working on streaming...which games would they stream? i don't know, but i think they would even keep doing very well by only selling indies and whatnot.

 

[yurqqa]

clearly nothing compares to the might and power that is microsoft now. They have game pass + bethesda+ xbox live + microsoft + video games. Steam or Sony cannot touch them at this point!

Yeah. They are clearly out of touch.

 

[DonJuanSchlong]

I had to think real hard before I remembered.
I guess they even made a great game, but as 99% of Steam users I can’t play it (I own PSVR and at the moment 2 VR sets is too much for me).

Just sell that outdated PSVR and get something quality. You'll never go back.

 

[zeorhymer]

EA caved in and went back to Steam. I think they'll be fine.

 

[manfestival]

Yeah. They are clearly out of touch.

When Halo Infinite comes out it is going to destroy everything. Better graphics than crysis, better system than $ony could ever put out, and best multiplayer experience to date. Microsoft is leagues ahead of all and it is the king of next gen.

 

[yurqqa]

Just sell that outdated PSVR and get something quality. You'll never go back.

I’ll wait for wireless. I hope PSVR 2 could be wireless and I have my hope for Sony r games - I have a feeling they still believe in it.

 

[a multicultural team of v]

Uhhh ......MS has said themselves that all console games will also come to PC so how can you say with a straight face that they won’t ?

Microsoft's store is on PC too though. PC doesn't have to mean Steam.

Listen, I don't want there to a streaming or subscribing only future. I am just wondering what happens when it does.

Do you have any sources that these games are going to be exclusive? It's cool to speculate and all, but strictly looking at facts, MS is selling a boatload on steam, with several games in top 10 for months. I can see Microsoft shutting off Sony from it's games, but not PC. It wouldn't make sense at all.

By this logic, why would Microsoft ever want to let you subscribe for games via Gamepass when they could just sell them? Gamepass wouldn't even exist if Microsoft selling a boatload of games on Steam was their future.

Steam, PS5, and Switch represent the "current model" of vidya. MS and Amazon represent the "new model." Ultimately, we will see what happens.

Pretty much. I would say fun times ahead but one of the two futures I don't want lol