Is Steam going to be okay without activision/bethesda?

Like there games used to be big hitters on steam and now it seems like there doing the blizz store and the bethesda website.

Is steam okay or are things looking bad for them?

btw i'm steamer or a steam guy as they say so yeah i like having all my games in one spot to launch from

Steams infrastructure is too good, and too established to be challenged. If anything, it's just another annoying sign-up no one wanted, that will ultimately hurt their sales.

Competition is good, of course. But these chumps ain't interested in delivering a quality service. Just like EA wasn't with Origin. Or Microsoft with GFWL.

Call of Duty hasn't been that big on PC for a long time now.

Bethesda going away from it will be a big change since they heavily integrated with Workshop support. I think that will have more of an impact on Bethesda than Valve/steam though.

Steam will be fine though it is slowly turning into a platform for indie and mid-tier games as other big publishers move away from it

Steam will be okay on it's own.

Steam will be fine.

It's Bethesda that will struggle with this move. Any PC games they release now will probably flop.

I can only speak for myself, but I'm far less likely to buy something if it's not on Steam. Origin and Uplay stuff I only buy when it's dirt cheap because I hate dealing with those services.

My go to is Steam but I also use Origins. I too like my stuff in mainly one place. I think Steam is too big of a platform to be effected by this.

I'd wonder if Acti/Bethesda are gonna be okay, rather than Valve. Steam is heavily ingrained into PC culture.

Dumb move on their part

i like having my games all in one client, i HATE having my games scattered across different services, as do many other people.

So whatever future games Bethesda release i wont be buying.

oh shiz that sucks for bethesda's wallet maybe they can maintain a steam presence with the single player games on steam and still have their own store too

OP is asking whether Steam is going to be okay without Call of Duty and a Destiny.

Yah!

When EA started taking their stuff off and went to Origin only, I stopped getting EA games (not like there was much of a reason to anyway though).

When Ubisoft started making all their games launch UPlay, I pretty much stopped buying them. I'll make rare exceptions though, since they're still available on Steam itself.

Ever since I quit WoW a decade ago, I never felt the need to play anything on Blizznet.

So in conclusion, anyone that bails on Steam is unlikely to get much business from me in the future. Same way companies bailing on Netflix to make their own streaming service are now on my don't-give-a-shit list. Fragmentation of content across multiple services only serves to annoy customers and cause an uptick in piracy or alternative sources. To be fair, I was ticked off about Half-Life 2 needing Steam way back in the day too. Having a whole platform for one fucking game? But once they took off and got everything under the sun in one place, and my library grew and grew, the advantages became obvious. Splitting everything up again after so long is not advantageous to anyone, customer or publisher. Who would want to download a Bethesda.net app on their PS4 or XBox, then download games and start it through that instead of it just being on PSN or XBL? Steam won PC distribution long ago, and unless someone else reaches that level of offerings, then exclusivity will only hurt individual companies. GOG seems to be about the only decent (and somewhat superior) competitor to Steam.

I don't give a crap about Steam. It's sole purpose to me is it's required for me to play a game (just like the other clients). Not interested in its "other" features.

GoG is the best. No DRM client, period. It wouldn't make much difference if Bethesda left. It's one less reason for me to use Steam.

Na, it has no DRM but it's feature are pretty bare-bones compared to Steam. It's game selection as well (though some not on Steam) is comparative limited as well, partially because developers would rather protect their products.

Features like cloud-saving, built in streaming, family sharing, game guides, workshop, steam controller templates etc... objectively improve the experience for a wide range of users.

Valve is holding HL3 just in case Steam ever loses so many publishers that the service is at risk. On that day, we'll see the one game for which many PC gamrs have pined after for millennia.

Well seeing as Bethesda is done making Dishonored games, I doubt I'll buy many more games from them.

Activision is still releasing games on Steam, Call of Duty is hardly a big loss.

I heard that they put COD on battle.net so they could avoid the negative reviews from angry PC gamers (who are tired of getting a lazy console port time after time) and don't have to suffer mass refunds.

More than likely removing Steams 30% cut

I mean, I don't think it's a GOOD thing for Steam, but as someone who has rapidly lost interest in those two the could probably leave PC entirely at this point.

Now that I said that, watch the next TES be an epic return to Morrowind form

Yeah of course that's the biggest motivator for EA, Blizzard, Activision and Bethesda for not going forward with steam.

As a consumer though I'm fine with 30% of the profit going to Valve, because they clearly put that money back into developing Steam.

Microsoft Store, battle.net, Uplay, Bethesda whatever, ... aren't anywhere near 30% as practical as Steam is.

The hit to their revenue is probably less than 1%

They are selling sooo many games from so many publishers. And Activision's Blizzard was never sold through Steam in the first place.

GoG may not have the bells & whistle from Steam but you can't denied it's DRM is what makes the client far much better. Some of it's games selection is limited but if I see the same game available between Steam & GoG, I'm buying it on GoG. But still, I prefer to use Steam but I'm good at using more clients service then just Steam all the time. Hell, GoG is the only place your able to get Wing Commander as an example of using GoG.

yes it does hurt it. however steam is free. so im pretty sure anyone who owns a PC will have it alongside origin/blizzard/uplay etc...

it means slightly less traffic for steam but the fact that its free and the amt of games on there are insane. it will still be the 1# PC client.

Bethesda launcher is prolly one of the worst things ever.

This is what I thought instantly when I read the title of thread.

The barebones, the better it is to me. I prefer to run just the game itself. I don't mind local saves only. They never got lost like Steam did for my Metro: Last Light saves.

I dunno, will you be okay emerging into sunlight from your parents' basement?

More competition is better.

Does Bethesda client will come with mod support so modders can fix their broken s***t ?

Nahh steam probably gonna lose a bit of revenue mainly from TES and Fallout but the biggest loser here is gonna be Bethesda

Some of those features are on GOG ( cloud saving , game guides and honestly who the hell needs family sharing when you can just copy your game on a USB and give it to a friend ) and i'd rather lose a bit of convenience of the steam workshop in favor of DRM free games

Bethesda took that course for 2 big reasons:

1. They didn't want the negative votes because they took a cheap, shoddy engine and created a half-assed experience.

2. They didn't want people to refund it.

Steam will be fine. Bethesda is just a small drop in the bucket.

If they integrate mod support, it'll be paid.

Honestly, Steam Workshop is one of the best things ever. All these barebones launchers that don't offer 1% of what Steam offers can go and **** off.

Bethesda will come back to Steam just like they got rid of the payed mods when shit hit the fan.

I use family sharing/streaming alot. e.g. The laptop I'm on now, with a 940m, is decent enough, can play games like REmake and Prey at lower settings barely hitting 30, but when the more powerful PC is just in the other room, streaming is the better option.

Steam guides come in useful as well. For example currently playing Spinter Cell, I was unware these existed.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=464988984

Aside from stupid games like Two Worlds that demanded registration details before allowing you to play,, can't say DRM has even been an issue, The only thing I dislike is how much resources Steam itself takes up. Aside from that i'm better with it than without it.

My kids and I play vastly different games. So, no family sharing. We're better off with our own separate Steam accounts. Between Wiki game guides and YT, I'm set when it comes to guides and info.

You could just buy them on your account and use family sharing.

-

Another lovely feature i the ability to categorize games. As someone who is extremely rich, my gaming collection is both impressive and extensive.

Owning multiple controllers, including lovely hand-crafted fighting-sticks, pc gaming with a history of shitty ports could have been problematic, Big Picture allows instant configs for games that didn't even originally support controls. This includes the ported of the likes of GOG Galaxy, where terrible Dotemu ports like Samurai Showdown, that has absolutely no mapping ability and keyboard only, allowed the user to furiously jerk their joystick, regardless of a terrible company ruining multiple SNK games.

Steam will be just fine. Heck, it could do with a bit of a slap in the face every so often. Maybe force Valve to actually make some games again

Acitivision blizzard will do ok despite itself as they've built up their brand names over decades.

Bethesda will likely hurt the most because their launcher is sorely lacking in features. It doesn't even have a friend list or chat so nobody is going to be having it running all the time like they do with steam, battle.net or origin. Their games are going to have 0 exposure to players like they would have if they stayed with steam.

Steam is the go-to place for shitty Indy games and half baked early access games that PC gamers love to waste money on.

It’ll be fine.

Whoa whoa whoa... are they seriously backing off the Steam platform? Why in the goddamn fucking hell would they do that? Do they even remotely understand how much money they've made off of Steam sales of Skyrim in the past 7 years?

What platform are they moving to? Don't tell me they are releasing their own steaming pile of shit launcher with no features and garbage DRM?

As well as a bigger selection of AAA(Budget) games than each consoles.

Steam will be fine. Activision will probably take a sales hit instead because many people only buy games off of steam and gog to avoid all of these different services.

I don't need to categorize games. I know the games I play. A simple alphabetical order in my GAMES folder will do.

Windows 10 Direct X also handles my control schemes (Logitech Extreme 3D Pro, XBox 360 controller, mouse/keyboard) just fine, both with recent games and DOSBox. Why duplicate effort twice?

lol Hermits buy games?

@Rockman999: they pirate them and then pretend they play on max settings.

That's exactly what everyone is doing (Uplay, Origin, Bethesda, Battle.net, Microsoft, ...)

They think that cutting out Valve's 33% cut is easy, but really they just end up screwing over games with their barebones software (basically DRM) that offers nothing that Steam offers.

They only look at the drawbacks of being on Steam, they don't really see the benefits...

Yeah there are advantages. I like more competition but at the same time I am always logged into Steam/GoG and only use the other services sporadically. So I will never see their deals, their limited time unlockables or events, etc...

It's just too much to keep up with if I have to regularly check the other ...6? services.

Does the Pope shit in the woods?

Steam is beyond antiquated and has needed a huge renovation for a good decade. Valve is one of the laziest companies in all of gaming though, so it's about time they sit in the hot seat and feel some serious pressure to stop being lazy and step their game up.

Yeah there is a point where you can't keep track of everything anymore, and Steam is well established (plus, its constantly ahead of the competition thanks to Valve) that most people just buy on that.

Origin, Uplay, Battle.net and soon the MS store for me will be used to launch my games ... and that's it.

and yet it is the best and most feature rich across all platforms

Doubt steam will care much, definitely Bethesda that will hurt the most from this!

Personally I am very happy about this, at it will mean I will stop picking up all their crap games every time there is a sale, and then only play them for 2-3 hours...

More like he's asking wether Steam will be ok without Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, Overwatch, Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo.

I mean, Steam will definitely be ok since their too big to go down. They've survived without having juggernauts like FIFA, Battlefield, etc for quite some time now, but still, these IPs are some heavy hitters IPs that will have some minor impact on its monopoly. I mean, before GOG and Origin came out, Steam had a monopoly in the PC market. Now that they arent receiving many juggernauts IPs we start seeing more and more people creating accounts on other PC digital stores. Personaly I have an account on Steam, Origin, UPlay, GOG and Battle.net. If Steam had some of these IPs mentioned I wouldnt care for others. So yeah, this definitely hurts Steam even if minimaly

maybe this will hurry them into making HL3, ya know, making their own exclusive IPs instead of relying on someone else's