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Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

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Re: Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

#91

Post by nouveaux »

Ekaros wrote: post #82
legitster wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something blockchain would actually be very good at solving. Download a legal copy of the game from anywhere. No DRM, but your license key gets checked against the blockchain.

I just wonder how could duplicating the license key be prevented. First by small group and then maybe just stolen from someone. While also preventing loss of it with let's say device.

A game key could be considered a non-fungible token so this already works on a blockchain. Instead of recording a game key, you record the wallet public key. If you need more privacy, you can use Zero knowledge proofs[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof

Re: Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

#93

Post by Ekaros »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #81
ivraatiems wrote: post #52

Thank goodness. Bethesda's launcher was uniquely awful in a number of unpleasant ways. Slow, prone to crashes, bad user communication, not suitable for use on small monitors. The worst of the launcher apps I have used - and there are so many! I remember when it was in vogue for every game maker to build their own launcher or even full Steam clone - when EA pulled all its new games from Steam to get people to use Orig…

More than likely Valve has offered better deals to these larger companies to get them back in-house. It's very probable EA, Bethesda, Microsoft, etc. all have gotten more favorable terms now, by proving they were willing to leave Steam and roll their own launcher.

30% from 0 to 10 million

25% from 10 to 50 million

and 20% from 50 million on.

They might have even better deals, but at some point 20% for handling everything and supporting payments with potential of fraud, chargebacks etc. in nearly every country should start look like not horrible deal. Remembering what the retail margins were back in the day when they needed to make and ship physical boxes...

Re: Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

#94

Post by 015a »

aparticulate wrote: post #64
ramesh31 wrote: post #27

I imagine this probably means the eventual death of Battle.net as well. Honestly though, it's time. Battle.net was incredible back in the day, but now it's just another annoying launcher that segments my friends lists.

The population of Battle.net is WAY bigger than the tiny fraction of players using Bethesda launcher. Hard to know from the outside but it's probably like 95%+ Steam even on their newest games. NexusMods, the largest Bethesda modding host rarely mentions the launcher even if mods are compatible. Battle.net on the other hand predates Steam and they made some of the most significant PC-only games of all time. Having sa…

Battle.net The Launcher doesn't pre-date Steam; it was released in the early 2010s. Previously, before Steam, Battle.net was a lot more nebulous, and would naturally have had less user lock-in. Games were individually distributed, and battle.net was more-so just an infrastructure-level system Blizzard used to coordinate online games, chat, etc. Even, IIRC, unified profiles weren't a thing until the early 2010s and the desktop app was launched; WoW was different from Starcraft, which was different from Diablo.

That is to say, yeah Battle.net today has far more users than the Bethesda launcher, but it still predominately suffers from the "users don't want to be here, its just where the games are at" issue that the Bethesda & Rockstar launchers suffer from.

I think it's likely that the Xbox acquisition will result in a sunset of Battle.net as well. It'll probably resemble a long-term plan like: deeper Battle.net/Xbox account integration to share purchases and social state, release of all titles on Steam & Xbox stores, forced migration of Battle.net accounts to Xbox accounts, deprecation of the Battle.net launcher; 2 years minimum, probably closer to 3.

Re: Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

#95

Post by legitster »

mey wrote: post #85
legitster wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something blockchain would actually be very good at solving. Download a legal copy of the game from anywhere. No DRM, but your license key gets checked against the blockchain.

The block chain may be able to validate a license to a copy of the game, but that doesn't encompass hosting/delivery of content. The actual content of NFTs, tiny PNGs, are still hosted behind a URL. Putting 60+GB AAA titles out there for all time isn't something a Blockchain itself can solve. I also don't know how IPFS people would feel if they became the CDN for commercial software.

I think it's reasonable to believe that third party CDNs would pop up in the world.

The feature would be that it's structurally decentralized in a way that decouples content creators from delivery.

Re: Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

#96

Post by Ekaros »

nouveaux wrote: post #91
Ekaros wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wonder how could duplicating the license key be prevented. First by small group and then maybe just stolen from someone. While also preventing loss of it with let's say device.

A game key could be considered a non-fungible token so this already works on a blockchain. Instead of recording a game key, you record the wallet public key. If you need more privacy, you can use Zero knowledge proofs[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof

How would you prevent group of friends from sharing a wallet? Which I see as one thing to do, pool your money and buy each new game to new wallet... Then share the wallet's private key between all.

Re: Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

#97

Post by dharmab »

agilob wrote: post #63
Ekaros wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delisted means no longer sold. Unless developer does something shady those games can still be downloaded and played (any third-party DRM not withstanding)

How is "delisted" different from "purchase disabled"?

Whether the store page is visible. A publisher might want to keep the page up to direct users to a newer title that deprecates the old one. Or they might hide a page if they no longer have rights. I also noticed that Prey (2006) is delisted to presumably avoid confusion with Prey (2017).

Re: Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

#98

Post by mattlondon »

They don't mention it, but I hope this means that their titles will now be available on geforce now. IIRC the previous approach of pulling their titles from geforce now et al was due to "exclusivity" or whatever and trying to force people into their ecosystem.

Re: Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

#99

Post by dharmab »

legitster wrote: post #70
TillE wrote: post #5

You can theoretically solve a lot of problems with crappy, multitudinous game stores - easier payments, lighter software. But the real question is: do I trust that I'll be able to continue downloading my purchases for the foreseeable future? I trust that Steam will be around for a very long time. I can download DRM-free installers from GOG. Everyone else? I don't know, I have much less confidence.

This is something blockchain would actually be very good at solving. Download a legal copy of the game from anywhere. No DRM, but your license key gets checked against the blockchain.

You would need a separate CDN such as BitTorrent.

Re: Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

#100

Post by monocasa »

haunter wrote: post #17
kgwxd wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Players should be saying they don't want "launchers" at all. They provide no benefit that couldn't be done a better way.

> They provide no benefit that couldn't be done a better way This is like the famous Dropbox comment "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem"

It's not. Complaining about something that only exists to strategically hedge against a competitior's dominance but just gets in the way at the user level is not the same as the infamous Dropbox quote.
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