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There is now a Bethesda.net launcher (a la Origin, Steam, uPlay, Battle.net, etc)
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
texhnolyze
Banned
Square Enix is next.
It's amazing that they haven't done so. They already have their own store for years.
If this keeps up I swear somebody is gonna create a launcher launcher
Open launcher select launcher to launch the launcher then via the launchered launcher you launch your games launcher to finally launch the game with the launcher launcher keeping all of your launchers.
They'll be more launching then a bunch of Katushas in a battle
It could also be a basis for the paid mod system, why worry about the Steam backlash when they can automatically have that stuff on their own launcher?
Open launcher select launcher to launch the launcher then via the launchered launcher you launch your games launcher to finally launch the game with the launcher launcher keeping all of your launchers.
They'll be more launching then a bunch of Katushas in a battle
It could also be a basis for the paid mod system, why worry about the Steam backlash when they can automatically have that stuff on their own launcher?
Spiritwalker
Member
That's cute, but no thanks. Battle.net is probably the only launcher I like.
GhostTrick
Banned
Because most people already have 99% of their games on Steam. No one wants to deal with more and more launchers.
michaelius
Banned
Not a problem for me since I haven't bought their game since New Vegas but amount of launchers is getting ridiculous.
Nocturno999
Member
Surprised that Epic's launcher is getting so few votes.
Other stores could be better. Gamers have been putting all their eggs in one basket for too long.
GhostTrick
Banned
The thing is, the other baskets are bad.
It's hard to trust Ubisoft with Uplay which is a lackluster client, EA with Origins which is forcing exclusive, on a old and bad looking client, with previous declarations hostile to sales.
Other stores could be better, they're not. I dont get that kind of thinking. Waiting for other to be on par. There's a reason why people put all their eggs in one basket. It's because this one is reliable. And you better wish this one keeps holding when all your eggs are inside.
MrTroubleMaker
Gold Member
MikeE21286
Member
Another store layer for us to work through :/
I just hope they still release their games on Steam in the future.
I just hope they still release their games on Steam in the future.
It's all about having a direct line of communication with your customers. You don't get that info from Steam but you do get it when someone signs up for the uPlay service.
There was a time when people hated the current beloved basket.
I wanted to stay that it might also just be them being egotistical and thinking THEY need their own separate service, but maybe I wasn't too far off. Maybe what's wrong with that thought before was them as a whole feeling that way, but rather you have an exec or two who sees Steam numbers and wants to make their own thing to do that, ignoring whether or not that makes sense, and their argument convinces the rest to go with it. It makes sense for GOG Galaxy because they were well established as an online storefront anyway, and Blizzard was investing in their online services for a long time so it's basically just feature adding. But the likes of EA and Ubisoft doing it came off as them deciding they were big enough publishers that they should be doing their own thing, and Bethesda wants to party with them so may have decided that was one reason to go into this.
AcceptableGhost
Member
People bringing up the "it is more competition!" angle are really obnoxious. Origin/uPlay/this/RockstarSocialWhatever are NOT competition for Steam. They do not and will not compete with Valve on client features or library. They get their features up to the bare minimum because it does not matter, they know their client is mainly for their games and services. They have little to no impetus to improve, their client has developed to the point where it has fulfilled its purpose (which is not competing with Valve as a store). It has been years and it is pretty obvious none of these clients are going to even TRY to bring meaningful storefront client competition.
Having your own client isn't necessarily even a bad thing. Few people complain about Battle.net or various service based games clients. But people don't make the mistake of saying that these are competing with Steam. uPlay exists largely in the same territory as Battle.net but Ubisoft's games do not warrant a client and for most gamer's - it just exists to be an annoyance after buying a Ubisoft game on Steam.
GOG is probably the only people actually TRYING to meaningfully compete with Steam. They have a unique selling feature (DRM-free, client optional installs). They have a decent sized library of games (>1000). They are working on improving their client (although progress on that has been a bit slow?). Hell, GOG's company even makes games... and they sell them on Steam without requiring GOG! Now that is competition!
Having your own client isn't necessarily even a bad thing. Few people complain about Battle.net or various service based games clients. But people don't make the mistake of saying that these are competing with Steam. uPlay exists largely in the same territory as Battle.net but Ubisoft's games do not warrant a client and for most gamer's - it just exists to be an annoyance after buying a Ubisoft game on Steam.
GOG is probably the only people actually TRYING to meaningfully compete with Steam. They have a unique selling feature (DRM-free, client optional installs). They have a decent sized library of games (>1000). They are working on improving their client (although progress on that has been a bit slow?). Hell, GOG's company even makes games... and they sell them on Steam without requiring GOG! Now that is competition!
nobody's exiting Steam
well, EA did, but I still don't understand the logic behind that.
EA is like a bully, they think they can push people around.
ElRenoRaven
Member
Can't blame you. There are only 2 launchers I use. Steam & Battle.net. I don't even bother with origin anymore. I figure if they don't put their games on steam I don't need em.
AcceptableGhost
Member
They want every game they put on PC other then mainline Battlefield games to bomb hard. The idea of Mirror's Edge Catalyst selling sub 100k exclusively on Origin gets them really excited.
As a positive at least EA can't complain about sales on PC anymore.
Go ask the Unravel devs how happy they were to be Origin-exclusive.
Also, why the fuck would i want to mess with any other client now that Steam refund in ingrained? Another bad, under-featured client isn't any kind of competition i'd want. Hopefully they won't pull games out of Steam and hopefully their revenue slides even if they'll just try to push it alongside Steam.
Also, why the fuck would i want to mess with any other client now that Steam refund in ingrained? Another bad, under-featured client isn't any kind of competition i'd want. Hopefully they won't pull games out of Steam and hopefully their revenue slides even if they'll just try to push it alongside Steam.
OmegaDL50
Member
The PS4 and XB1 versions don't use Steam Workshop for mods because they don't use Steam.
Bethesda tying the creation kit to the Bethesda.net app makes sense in this case because of console mods now.
It be a different scenario entirely if modding was still only available for the PC version, but since the PS4 and XB1 doesn't use the Workshop as a database for obtaining mods, or does the PSN and XBL stores share a database either, Bethesda made a solution to cover both platforms.
This is a store that doesn't seem to give any benefit to customers, though. Fragmenting their libraries, friend lists and forcing them to install a new program only to play a specific publisher's games doesn't sound like my idea of good competition.
Sure they could. Truth is, they aren't.
Ricerocket
Member
Steam and BNet are the only launchers that seem worth it. What I like about BNet is that there is global chat with friends between all the games they have and nowadays each game has content added to another one of their games (D3 Season 6 has Overwatch wings, WoW has a pet from other games, etc)
The rest is just simply a launcher to load their games... I don't care about that, it's actually a burden.
The rest is just simply a launcher to load their games... I don't care about that, it's actually a burden.
That was over ten years ago. If you have a new client, you're not competing with Steam as it was ten years ago, you're competing with Steam as it is now.
OmegaDL50
Member
Exactly, Any relevant company making software don't create applications with the expectations of 10 year old software creation tech.
You release a piece of software in 2016, then it will judged comparatively to other similar software models of 2016.
The only difference is the userbase. Something that has existed for years had that long term advantage to build up an established userbase, as opposed to something released this year which has yet exist on the market for a prolonged period of time or have ample time to grow.
charlequin
Banned
Because it's not a substitutionary good. Literally nothing Zenimax can ever do will make Bethesda.net a product that can fill the role of Steam; they'll never have other major publishers, they'll never spend effort on carrying indie titles or providing value-added platform features. To compete with Steam, someone has to offer a product that can actually be selected as an alternative to Steam -- by offering a plausible choice for purchasing, for distribution, or for infrastructure -- as GOG, Humble, and GreenMan each do.
Launching this type of proprietary client is much more akin to an attempt to tweak the distribution chain. It isn't built around competing in the sense we mean (attracting sales by offering a better service or product than the alternative), it's about trying to improve margin by changing the steps between their company and the customer getting their hands on the end product (the game). That's a legitimate part of managing a product business, certainly, but by default it's not going to actually result in any benefit to the customer.
Any marketing professional who thinks the best way to get a "direct line of communication" with their customers is to introduce an entirely unnecessary, superfluous step into their product that inconveniences and irritates the user should honestly think about a new career.
Yes, and that time was a decade ago, when the status quo was manually downloading game patches from websites or FTP servers, home broadand penetration was in the 40% range, and people still had serious arguments about whether buying things on the internet via credit card was ever going to be mainstream. Steam created a new market segment in that environment, which is why it's ludicrously successful now; someone else trying to do the same thing a decade later is not at all in the same situation.
Fahzgoolin
Banned
Don't worry, the community will fix it.
Rygar 8 Bit
Jaguar 64-bit
THIS MADNESS MUST END!
abracadaver
Member
I hope DOOM does not use this. I want Steam achievements
It's doesn't have to be "substitutionary good" in order to be classed as competition. A Nintendo console is probably never going to be "substitutionary good" to a PlayStation, but (at least I'd hope) nobody's going to claim that it's not competing with PlayStation and Xbox. Even the bloody WonderSwan competed against the Gameboy, and Windows Phone competes against iOS. In some cases they'll only compete in small areas that they intersect. Competition doesn't mean having a direct clone of the competing product.
We've done this dance in the past regarding Origin before... and as I said back then, if I have a small boookstore with a limited selection of books, and a huge Waterstones opens up on the same street I'm on, then they're my competition even if being equivalent to them is impossible for me. Every time I sell a book they also have in stock, I'm taking a sale from them, and vice versa. I don't have to pose a serious threat to be competing with them. Even with completely exclusive items this is still true. There isn't anything on the menu at McDonalds that I can buy at Burger King. Would it be better for the consumer if I could buy a Big Mac from Burger King, or Uncharted on Wii U... sure... but that's not the point. Competition very commonly results in fragmentation. It's pretty much the defining cause of it in nearly all cases.
Of course they don't, because they also don't give a shit about their craft; this a literal means to an end of just getting more money to sit their tushes on. I've had Origins since 2011 and even now it is still a bare bones experience. Who the hell is going to expect a company like this to give a two-bits of a shit about my user experience?
How? You think this is just about us worrying about getting games? Because the Storefront has evolved beyond that.
Wowfunhappy
Member
So if Steam no longer had the big game releases, you think it would still be such a central destination? Seems to me the storefront is the main attraction.
Alternately... is there something about these clients I just don't understand?
Look, I hate Steam, just as I hate Origin (albeit less because Origin's interface isn't crap) and UPlay and all the others. I like GOG but only because their client is optional. The only thing I want in my gaming life is the ability to click on a game and play it, and as far as I'm concerned all of these clients are just unnecessary bloatware that gets in my way. I don't need a gaming social network.
So, what I'm saying is, it's perfectly possible I'm missing something.
afternoon delight
Member
If this becomes the default for future releases then the DOOM GOTY edition will be an easy last purchase as far as I'm concerned, as I'm a big fan of open modding.
Edit: On second thought, an Obsidian-led Fallout would have me return.
Edit: On second thought, an Obsidian-led Fallout would have me return.
Chubzdoomer
Banned
I'm genuinely shocked Activision hasn't already pulled this shit, especially with CoD.
Chief_Mitch
Member
God... Not another one. I'm happy with Steam, and i dont mind Battle.net at all. (and it actually makes my life easier so i dont need to use authenticators all the time!)
But the rest of them i just do not want on my PC at all. The Origin system was getting better but then i had a debacle of trying to get into contact with customer support for like 2 months and removed it and all its games from my PC on principle. And uPlay has come a long way but its still just extra rubbish i really dont want or NEED on my system.
But the rest of them i just do not want on my PC at all. The Origin system was getting better but then i had a debacle of trying to get into contact with customer support for like 2 months and removed it and all its games from my PC on principle. And uPlay has come a long way but its still just extra rubbish i really dont want or NEED on my system.
Auto-Reply
Member
No thanks, as always, don't even show up with your own store/client if it is not as open as Steam or even GOG.
If they did wouldnt it somehow just be on Battle.net? Being as they are owned by the same company.
You're missing GOG Galaxy and Battle.net. And of course everyone on Windows 10 has the Windows Store.
BoosterDuck
Banned
I love how uplay is leading the poll
it's the bestest
it's the bestest
Mithos
Member
If you want to play Hearthstone you have to install the Battle.net launcher. GOG Galaxy's completely optional though.