That would be nice, but at least they're doing the HD remasters/remakes thing.
Looking forward to Diablo 2 that isn't an eye piercing graphical mess.
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There is now a Bethesda.net launcher (a la Origin, Steam, uPlay, Battle.net, etc)
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
That would be nice, but at least they're doing the HD remasters/remakes thing.
Looking forward to Diablo 2 that isn't an eye piercing graphical mess.
What do you mean?
You don't need to use this, though.
Jibbajabbawockky
Member
Is it really competition for Steam though?
If it's just a repository for mostly Bethesda published games and maybe a handful of other ones, is it really competing with Steam or just a more locked down way for Bethesda to cash in on their PC games? For myself, Steam just offers way more features than just being a basic storefront or digital library. You've got the Workshop, In Home Streaming, Big Picture Mode and so on.
I know the numbers would never be made public but you look at a game like Battlefront on PC and how quickly that's dried up and I have to wonder how that game would be doing if it was available on Steam? PC games seem to generally have a lot longer sales tail than your typical console games yet for games stuck on something like Origin, you have to wonder if that lack of visibility hurts those games long term. Like, I enjoyed the Sims 3 for what it was but completely forgot that the Sims 4 ever came out until recently since Sims 4 isn't anywhere on Steam. On the off chance I'm playing something like Dragon Age or Battlefield on Origin, its probably through a Steam shortcut. And then you have something like Mirror's Edge- I probably won't get it at launch but am still maybe sort of interested in it. But chances are after the launch buzz wears off I'll totally forget about since it'll never catch my glance when I fire up Steam.
I voted GoG Galaxy because as far as I'm aware, it's completely optional. Although, I hate that the back button on my mouse doesn't work in it.
I use Origin too (it's really not that bad) and of course I'll never leave steam, but man... I really hate uPlay.
I get that uPlay is supposedly better than it used to be and it's been a long while since I've put up with it, but I don't install/play/buy any games that force me to use it just so it can stay off my computer. I don't care if I'm being a baby about it.
Opening a Store that only sells their own games is not competition to a Store that sells games from thousand of different companies. They will also pale in comparison in terms of features, will generally be a buggy mess because its Bethesda.
And of they go the exclusive route (which they won't. Bethesda can't afford to skip Steam ), thats the very opposite of competition, and it holds exactly zero advantages to the consumers, since everything would be held down by a single entity that wouldn't ever have a incentive to improve because they would be the only ones carrying their games.
johnthehero
Banned
They'll probably pull their games from Steam to sell exclusively through their shop/app.
"Oh, you won't play TES6 because it's not on Steam? Cool story, bro."
"Oh, you won't play TES6 because it's not on Steam? Cool story, bro."
But I don't understand, why they need a launcher you can just download the game from an online store and play it. Why need a launcher?
I just assumed they were going to sell games from other publishers too after seeing 'Developer' (battle.net doesn't have that from what I remember).
I don't know, I really don't have a problem with it either way.
CosmicQueso
Member
Usually the clients are conceived by marketing and CRM teams. Sales generally doesn't like these because the revenues don't hit their bonus structures. But I hear what you're saying.
Azure Phoenix
Member
Oh boy, another client with a totally separate library and friendlist - just what I always wanted. I sure hope Papa Bethesda will be able to protect me from downloading malware by only letting me buy pre-approved TESVI mods from their store in the future.
Add this to the ever growing pile of PC clients/stores I'll never be downloading/buying from, I want everything kept in one place.
FleetingFlowAir
Member
I can't wait for TES6 to be Bethesda.net/3rd Party Client exclusive so I'll have to make yet another account. This all worked so well for Sims 4.
Heck, I already made an account since that's required for Fallout 4's in-game mod menu.
Heck, I already made an account since that's required for Fallout 4's in-game mod menu.
This isn't true.
Steam keys can be generated for any game at no cost. They can sell a Steam key outside of Steam and get 100%, while Valve gets 0%. This is why there are so many Steam key selling stores, which can take their own standard 30% like any store
This is why lots of devs use the Humble Widget on their site, or companies like Paradox encourage you to buy their game directly from their site where they get 100% vs Steam where they get 70%
Bonfires Down
Member
Can't really blame companies for wanting to create their own clients. 30% is way too large a cut for DD vendors. It should really be 10-15%.
Crap should've voted GOG.
I voted Battle.net instead because at least they never were even on Steam, so it's not like they got it right then got it wrong, they simply lived in their own little world the whole time!
I also am kinder to them because you needed a battle.net account with WoW anyway and like with Half Life and Steam I was able to redeem old Starcraft and Diablo 2 codes with it to ensure I never needed to worry about the discs again, although in that case you don't download through the client.
I voted Battle.net instead because at least they never were even on Steam, so it's not like they got it right then got it wrong, they simply lived in their own little world the whole time!
I also am kinder to them because you needed a battle.net account with WoW anyway and like with Half Life and Steam I was able to redeem old Starcraft and Diablo 2 codes with it to ensure I never needed to worry about the discs again, although in that case you don't download through the client.
The thing with this though, is that when selling a Steam key... despite making 100% of the money on this particular sale, you are still directing your customers to someone else's store, where they will likely buy all your other stuff in the future, leaving you with the 70% instead (unless you plan to consistently and substantially undercut, which kinda defeats the point).
It would be like, instead of going into an Apple Store and buying an iPhone... you go into an Apple Store, and they sell you a code for an iPhone that you can redeem at Walmart (we'll have to imagine that somehow Walmart can infinitely reproduce iPhones). The next time that customer wants a new iPhone, they'll probably just buy it from Walmart instead seeing as that's who's providing it anyway. Most publishers aren't ready to make the leap EA did and simply sell their stuff exclusively via their own store... but simply selling Steam keys would accomplish far less in regards to clawing that 30% back over time.
Gemüsepizza
Member
Really funny seeing people surprised and confused by this, asking "why". Why on earth not? Why would they be happy with the 70% cut they get from the Steam store? They have incredibly popular games. It's absolutely logical for them to have their own store.
Valve fucked up by sticking to their 30% charge. I wouldn't be suprised if even more companies will move away from Steam. If I had to guess, Activision and Square Enix could be next. Activison Blizzard already has a working client/infrastructure for Blizzard's games. They could integrate Call of Duty into it. And Square Enix also has some popular PC games with Tomb Raider and Deus Ex.
Imo the future for Valve is looking grim. They will lose more and more market share. I mean it's not only companies like Bethesda which are creating their own client. They will also face heavy competition by Facebook with their Oculus Store. And what will they do, if at some point in the future, most big companies might not be on Steam anymore? That's their main business. Develop video games? Not really one of their strengths in recent times.
Valve fucked up by sticking to their 30% charge. I wouldn't be suprised if even more companies will move away from Steam. If I had to guess, Activision and Square Enix could be next. Activison Blizzard already has a working client/infrastructure for Blizzard's games. They could integrate Call of Duty into it. And Square Enix also has some popular PC games with Tomb Raider and Deus Ex.
Imo the future for Valve is looking grim. They will lose more and more market share. I mean it's not only companies like Bethesda which are creating their own client. They will also face heavy competition by Facebook with their Oculus Store. And what will they do, if at some point in the future, most big companies might not be on Steam anymore? That's their main business. Develop video games? Not really one of their strengths in recent times.
Dance Inferno
Unconfirmed Member
If you consider that they're saving a 30% commission on literally every single game they ever sell on PC worldwide, then yeah, I bet it makes financial sense.
breadtruck
Member
Poll doesnt contain Steam. Poll is a sham.
It'd be pointless if it included Steam, because everyone would obviously vote for Steam
breadtruck
Member
Gemüsepizza;202316231 said:
Every single digital download store has the 30% charge. The only single exception is the Humble Store. 70/30 cut is a industry standard.
And lol, CoD would be a massive failure if they tried to have it on battle.net. Shit already dies fast as shit as it is.
They quite literally aren't, no.
Dance Inferno
Unconfirmed Member
How so? Ubi doesn't pay a 30% fee when they sell games through uPlay but they do when they sell through Steam. So yes, they do save money.
OmegaDL50
Member
The Bethesda.net app is mainly going to be used more so for the Modding stuff for the console versions of Bethesda games going forward, as I glossed upon in an earlier post I made in this thread.
Probably won't be used much for PC game distribution of their software lineup but more so for a interface for modders to access the centralized database to upload their mods for PS4 and XB1 owners.
Probably won't be used much for PC game distribution of their software lineup but more so for a interface for modders to access the centralized database to upload their mods for PS4 and XB1 owners.
Ubi could sell Steam keys for their games and pay a 0% fee.
Audioboxer
Member
At this rate bonzai buddy will be coming back to the PC.
Yet another launcher no one asked for.
Yet another launcher no one asked for.
Gemüsepizza;202316231 said:
sure, their marketshare will diminish over time. but chances of it being big enough to forcast steam's future as "grim" is still low. even without the big publishers you still have more than half of releases still available through steam. also i'm not sure bethesda, square enix, et al are willing to pull the trigger on client exclusivity quite yet. it's up in the air at this point
they have their stake in the ground already. millions of people with libraries of 100+ titles already on steam, people logging in every day checking new releases and sales... it'll take at least a decade to pry people away in significant numbers
I recall this being mentioned in some coverage about the multiplayer side of the new Doom. This will be "your tool" to share and download maps, even reviewing them and check the opinion of other players. But it seems they went the extra mile for adding the store features.
What i hate the most of this multi client shit, it's the fucking mess of having so many in-game overlays and notifications. They can be turned off sure, but sometimes you have to track a looong menu list to deactivate them.
What i hate the most of this multi client shit, it's the fucking mess of having so many in-game overlays and notifications. They can be turned off sure, but sometimes you have to track a looong menu list to deactivate them.
This is a completely different point to what I was mentioning. Regardless, this isn't always true when there are incentives provided to continue engaging with the other sites. Paradox is a great example. Free dlc for EU4 just for signing up to their forums where most communication happens along side their store. Bonuses included with purchases on both Steam and Paradox, encourage further use of their site and forum. While paradox still engage with Steam and it's forums, the majority of info redirects to their site, where they have fostered an absolutely awesome community and provide all kinda of brilliant updates, interviews, competitions, collaborations, streams and all sorts. It drives me and so many others to their site, far better than many folks attempts to cut out specific services and communities in favour of their own alone, and indeed it does drive sales through their site to an extent, where they emphasise how much it benefits them.
Point being, cutting out communities has been shown not to work well at all. Those that start out on their own have had some success and some failure depending on what they sell and how good their products are. In the current state of things though, for many, games are simply not visible enough outside of Steam for those that want to only engage with that. Clients of poor quality or with single use, that interact poorly with other services that many attempt to use them through, ends up giving a bad reputation to such a client, and more and more complaints as we already see with stuff like Uplay. 30% is the industry standard. The real differences is that on PC you can actually compete / challenge dominance thanks to the open system
CraigerGamer
Member
Of course we are going to continue purchasing Bethesda games (well most of us anyway). They are one of the biggest publishers in gaming. But that doesn't mean we cant be annoyed by it all.
DeathSparks
Member
Well this can't be that bad right?
The creation kit for Fallout 4 is actually kinda neat.
The creation kit for Fallout 4 is actually kinda neat.
Well, the reply you made to the previous poster claimed that what he/she stated wasn't true. It was though. A game sold on their own store is worth more than a game sold on Steam. Even if they sold Steam keys, it would still be worth more to them than it would be if the same game was bought on Steam. A sale of the game on their store that isn't a Steam key is even more valuable, because not only do they get 100% of the price, but it also helps work towards not paying Valve 30% on the next purchase, by not sending that customer to Steam to actually receive the game.
Now sure, they can try to come up with other means of incentivising the user to buy from them... but that requires concessions that they simply don't need to make otherwise. Why give away free DLC, just to try and get that money back? That's leaving money on the table still, because you otherwise would have sold that DLC also... it's pretty much a different means of offering a price cut (except in your example, they actually give this advantage away too Steam as well anyway). All the other community stuff you refer to is applicable whether or not they sell on Steam. Those things have nothing to do with the store or the sale itself. EA doesn't care about trying to tell its customer base about how much a direct sale benefits them. The average Battlefield customer won't give a shit, and will buy it off Steam anyway. These sort of initiatives make sense for smaller desvelopers/publishers/games where the average person buying them is more interested and invested in the success and wellbeing of those that made it... but saying that this works for Ubisoft selling The Division, is like suggesting these publishers hit up Kickstarter to fund a new Burnout. The number of people that care isn't going to make any business sense.
The reason why most won't do what EA does (yet), is because so many gamers are trained to shop only on Steam, and so they're worried about potentially losing more customers than the 30% would balance out. It's for this reason however, that it doesn't really make sense for them to sell Steam keys, because it simply continues to train customer to shop on Steam instead. Smaller development studios will probably not have a choice anyway, lacking the ability to create and sustain their own distribution platform, and make it visible enough for customers to find. Larger publishers like EA, Ubisoft, ActiBlizzard and the like don't have this problem... after all they are publishers... it's what they do. In the digital space however they've been paying someone else to do a job they're more than capable of doing themselves.
If your point is that these dedicated launchers and storefronts have been shown not to work... then you're going to need to provide some evidence of that beyond "people on the internet complain". That's like suggesting microtransactions, season passes, persistent online etc doesn't work because we all complain about those things too. They don't give a shit it the numbers are working out. And considering we keep seeing new launchers and storefronts appearing, and basically none reversing course, it would seem that it actually is working well for them. If it wasn't they'd drop them and go back to how things were before.
Reselling Steam keys makes a lot of sense for companies that basically act like the digital equivalent to Gamestop. Where without the Steam keys, they'd simply have no product, and so no business. It makes far less sense to sell a Steam key of a game you yourself created.
Basically, this...
..sums up why they won't care.
thatsthejoke.jpg
LUFTRAUSER
Banned
All these launchers are defeating the purpose of game clients like Steam that, in my mind anyway, helped PC gaming to become as popular as it is today in the first place. I think if this trend continues the market is going to crash.
I avoid playing games with launchers like this -- other than Steam, of course -- so I guess I'll just add Bethesda's games to that list. Oh well.
I avoid playing games with launchers like this -- other than Steam, of course -- so I guess I'll just add Bethesda's games to that list. Oh well.
grandwizard
Member
I can see this being a launcher that pops up when you launch their games from Steam. But come on guys, they're not going to get off Steam. Skyrim alone has sold over 10 million copies on that platform.
DeathSparks
Member
Exactly right now it's more of a showcase to create mods for games until they use the service to launch other games by them which is fine, the creation kit for Fallout 4 is good and preforms just as well as Skyrim's did
Yep. They can't afford to skip Steam, especially considering 1) the time they take between new games and 2) they have no multiplayer heavy hitters they can iterate anually or semi anually. Shit, even EA can't do it with anything that isn't a mainline Battlefield. (Titanfall, Hardline and Battlefront, all bombas)
vasametropolis
Member
It may seem a little odd as Steam is the only thing I want installed, but maybe if the big publishers exit Steam Valve will have to actually make a game or something.
DeathSparks
Member
I don't think they will leave steam out, that would be a huge misstep and would result in a ton of loss sales just from users that stick to a specific launcher. I don't see this being the case and thinking more of it will act like Uplay when you launch a game from steam and it runs this client in the background.
