Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

bethesda.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 404 posts

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

#131

Post by k12sosse »

hendersoon wrote: post #120
BbzzbB wrote: post #114

Is there a technical reason why Steam is a such a force in the space? People, myself certainly included, often criticize Apple for taking 30% of developer revenue for merely existing in it's walled garden. Right or wrong, they control the ecosystem, so their ability to monopolize and heavily tax the App Store is unsurprising, they're exercising their pricing power as much as they possibly can. But how is it that on P…

Steam had the distinct advantage of being first, and they've built a rich storefront with tons of useful features. Forums, reviews, discovery queues, recommendations based on your purchases, bundles, curators, account security (steamguard), etc. Valve also built a development ecosystem with integrated (optional) DRM, achievements, leaderboards, stats, multiplayer, voice chat, controller support with full remapping an…

I've also had dozens of games I own stop being sold on Steam - but I'm still able to download, install, and play them YEARS later. To me, that's good stewardship.

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

#132

Post by xxs »

Ekaros wrote: post #93
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

>at some point 20% ... start look like not horrible deal

Not, if you are Microsoft.

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

#133

Post by p_j_w »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #116

As a matter of principle, I think digital delivery platforms benefit from competition, and we should not be locked down into a single monopolistic, stagnating platform. As a selfish consumer though, I hugely wish we just had Steam and Netflix: The Origins and Uplays and Battle.nets of the world exist solely to make my life difficult, refusing to play my game when I want it due to obscure update required or forgotten…

>I think digital delivery platforms benefit from competition, and we should not be locked down into a single monopolistic, stagnating platform.

I agree with this in principle but I think it's only necessarily true when production and distribution are separated from each other. As it stands now, I don't see much actual competition or innovation in any of the streaming services, but rather the contrary: the experience is worse now than it was 10 years ago. The only thing we have is a never ending arms race of new stuff to watch being kept exclusive (which you mention) while the UIs move backwards and prices creep up.

What we have now is akin to the studio system and I don't see why it shouldn't be broken up in the same manner.

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

#134

Post by arka2147483647 »

BbzzbB wrote: post #114

Is there a technical reason why Steam is a such a force in the space? People, myself certainly included, often criticize Apple for taking 30% of developer revenue for merely existing in it's walled garden. Right or wrong, they control the ecosystem, so their ability to monopolize and heavily tax the App Store is unsurprising, they're exercising their pricing power as much as they possibly can. But how is it that on P…

My opinion:

- Steam was first, and because of that;

- They have all the features (both for users, and gamedevs)

- They have all the Games

- They have all the Users

In particular, in the Gamedev side, Steam is not a Storefront, they are a platform, much like say, Xbox Live or PSN. For example Steam provides:

- Friends

- Leaderboard

- Chat (Text and Voice)

- Multiplayer/Network api, which handles routing and NAT punch through

- Update/Install delivery globally

- Savegame cloud sync

- etc, etc

Steam docs are actually public, so go take a look: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features

If you develop your game for Steam, then Steam does a lot of heavy lifting for you.

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

#135

Post by uejfiweun »

BbzzbB wrote: post #114

Is there a technical reason why Steam is a such a force in the space? People, myself certainly included, often criticize Apple for taking 30% of developer revenue for merely existing in it's walled garden. Right or wrong, they control the ecosystem, so their ability to monopolize and heavily tax the App Store is unsurprising, they're exercising their pricing power as much as they possibly can. But how is it that on P…

I could totally see Microsoft trying to buy Steam in the near future. Not only are they having Bethesda do pro-Steam moves like this and generally supporting Steam, but they have a personal relationship with Valve, as Microsoft is where Gabe Newell started his career. However Valve is still a private company and I can't imagine Gaben will want to give up his money faucet.

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

#136

Post by slavik81 »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #123
BbzzbB wrote: post #114

Is there a technical reason why Steam is a such a force in the space? People, myself certainly included, often criticize Apple for taking 30% of developer revenue for merely existing in it's walled garden. Right or wrong, they control the ecosystem, so their ability to monopolize and heavily tax the App Store is unsurprising, they're exercising their pricing power as much as they possibly can. But how is it that on P…

My 100 Croatian Lipa: Steam's value proposition is a single place to conveniently manage all my games, and it works very well as such. It's unobtrusive, comprehensive, manages installs, pre-requisites and updates nicely for me and then gets the heck out of the way. No publisher-oriented launcher has such proposition. In fact, I put forward that no publisher-made launcher has value proposition of any kind for the cons…

I own Mirror's Edge on EA Origin. I bought it shortly after release. I still have the box with the CD key. I can still download and install the game. However, I can't launch the game because I've exceeded the install limit of five copies. I need to run the deauthenticator utility on the computers I installed the game on, but that's not possible because those hard drives were wiped years ago.

I generally trust Valve to treat me fairly, but EA, Ubisoft, Konami and Bethesda (ZeniMax) have not earned that same trust.

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

#138

Post by dartharva »

BbzzbB wrote: post #114

Is there a technical reason why Steam is a such a force in the space? People, myself certainly included, often criticize Apple for taking 30% of developer revenue for merely existing in it's walled garden. Right or wrong, they control the ecosystem, so their ability to monopolize and heavily tax the App Store is unsurprising, they're exercising their pricing power as much as they possibly can. But how is it that on P…

I have always wondered the same thing; Microsoft is one of the very few companies that is capable enough to resist Valve's dominance. I think all it boiled down to was that in this case Microsoft, by some miracle, actually managed to catch an accurate picture of the wants and needs of their consumers and realised backing down on their Xbox store can easily drive them away. They saw how the general trend of game launchers has mostly only served in making lives more difficult for gamers and decided they'd rather keep the status quo as it is comfortable to them for the time being.

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

#139

Post by ryandrake »

jmyeet wrote: post #130

Kill all the launchers. Ubisoft, Rockstar, Bethesda (RIP), Epic. I really hate these mediocre "me too" wannabe social network / launchers. I'm actually surprised this hasn't been rolled into the Xbox launcher, which still exists right (on PC)?

Thank you. I already have a "launcher" for my programs. It's called my computer's operating system. I don't understand why I should need to run a program just to have it run another program.

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

#140

Post by marwis »

snailmailman wrote: post #103
belval wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Xbox app is a masterclass in how not to design a user interface, it is clunky, the menus don't go anywhere, they mixed terminology (some places have "Add friend" others have "Follow friend"), users with multiple screens will find their game launching on the non-principal one, language is tied to the OS so if you want your games in English but your Windows is in French you have to change the OS-level language. I d…

It’s awful. A lot of basic stuff is just missing. I had an Xbox game pass trial. When it expired it closed the game I was playing. No message. When I tried to reopen the game nothing happened. None of my games worked. But most importantly, it never told me why . Nowhere in the interface does it communicate “your trial ended” or “hey resubscribe to game pass” or “you can’t play games anymore” instead everything just s…

Also when you try to launch a game that was removed from gamepass you will get wonderful exception 0x00whatever instead of actual reason.
Post reply on HN