Fallout 76 will not launch on Steam

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That's probably not the best idea to pull when Steam has the biggest player base and you want the biggest sales on launch week..

This has been a speculation of the new batch of Bethesda games. None of the games have Steam pages yet. I assume Bethesda wants to keep Valve's 30% and launch on their own platform.

Bethesda spends millions on ads that bring people to its games whether they're on Steam or not. Some can argue Steam does nothing for that 30% when  you're as large as Bethesda that Bethesda couldn't just do itself.

Ouch, what if Doom Eternal is next.

Are you trying to tell me you don't want to use the Bethesda.net launcher?

Clearly you're out of your minds.

I'm not a crazy fan of steam but I much rather not have 4 different digital "services" to play 4 different games. Steam give them a bigger cut and just earn your lazy money.

Give us HL3.

4 hours ago, MrGlide said:

Ouch, what if Doom Eternal is next.

Quake Champions was originally only on Bethesda's platform but moved over to Steam.

Fallout Shelter was also only on their platform at first but came to Steam.

There's reason to believe Fallout 76 will start on theirs and come to Steam later, and even if it doesn't, I still think it's likely Doom Eternal will launch on Steam.

1 hour ago, Chezza said:

I'm not a crazy fan of steam but I much rather not have 4 different digital "services" to play 4 different games. Steam give them a bigger cut and just earn your lazy money.

Basically.

DOOM Eternal, RAGE 2 and Starfield all have giant Launcher Bethesda download buttons on their sites. My guess is that Bethesda is indeed moving away from Steam. Which is dumb.

7 hours ago, MrGlide said:

Ouch, what if Doom Eternal is next.

If it is, I'll take it without complaint. It's ultimately a small price to pay for getting to play the sequel to one of the best games of 2016.

Why do people act as though a game not getting released on Steam is somehow the end of the world?

Bethesda's Launcher does not let you change the installation directory of whatever game you install on it, you would have to re-install the whole thing to just change it, and they're constantly updating it, It's a very Bandwidth Hungry piece of software sometimes you don't even use it yet it still somehow eats your bandwdith, you don't have control over how much Bandwidth the Launcher uses, for every download or update it does, with Steam you get every feature you might ask for and don't have worry about Bandwidth or about updating the client every 2 days.

Bethesda Launcher is garbage.

1 hour ago, MFG38 said:

Why do people act as though a game not getting released on Steam is somehow the end of the world?

Because it's a massive pain in the ass having a bunch of different launchers. I heard titan fall 2 was great, literally didn't pick it up because no steam release.

1 hour ago, tempdecal.wad said:

It's a very Bandwidth Hungry piece of software

most of the launchers seem to do this. I really wish there was a better solution to have all of our games in one place without dealing a plethora of memory eating launchers. There has to be a better way.

Yeah the idea of bringing games to an uncommon place is just baffling, Bethesda Launcher hasn't enjoyed a lot of publicity like Steam, it's like the developers refuse to pay small fees that are nothing compared to how much they're going to earn for their titles.

Steam is just way more convenient and stable than anything else. If the game is good I'll pick it up anyway but some companies try to push their own 'Steams' and it's just not necessary.

But we still don't know if it's just a F76 thing or will it affect all future Bethesda-published games, I guess we'll see after QuakeCon.

Probably all of them, as that's the way every previous "vanity Steam" created by a major publisher has worked. I expect ZeniMax to lose a huge amount of money from this because they don't have thousands of other developers and publishers to pay fees and have to support it entirely on their own. Just a reminder that while they want you to think they're the only people capable of running a business, most executives are really dumb and have no particular expertise or qualifications. Those who don't know, manage.

I never liked Steam honestly, I find GoG to be a god send. I wonder if Bethesda are doing this because Steam didn't agree to their paid mods thing and the fact that their masters gained a lot of money from the last lawsuit. I lost faith in Bethesda long ago so I have absolutely no interest in any of their future games.

1 hour ago, Woolie Wool said:

Just a reminder that while they want you to think they're the only people capable of running a business, most executives are really dumb and have no particular expertise or qualifications. Those who don't know, manage.

This is absolutely true.

I'm not buying until it comes to GOG anyway.

(And even then, I'm not really interested in Beth's Fallout series anyway.)

I'm not a fan of Steam but this is yet another of these "What are they thinking?" situations.

The entire gaming industry apparently seems to be hell-bent on losing their customers. Nobody wants to install all this bloatware just to play games. Steam mostly gets away with it because it is the biggest supplier out there and the most mature platform.

I wonder how far they can go before the majority of players really says "No, thank you!"

Meanwhile I stick with all those classics I can still play without being at the industry's mercy and their DRM shit.

I miss the days you didn't need stores and launchers. Just buy a game, install it, play it.

16 minutes ago, Jerry.C said:

I'm not a fan of Steam but this is yet another of these "What are they thinking?" situations.

 

The entire gaming industry apparently seems to be hell-bent on losing their customers. Nobody wants to install all this bloatware just to play games. Steam mostly gets away with it because it is the biggest supplier out there and the most mature platform.

I wonder how far they can go before the majority of players really says "No, thank you!"

 

Meanwhile I stick with all those classics I can still play without being at the industry's mercy and their DRM shit.

 

 

 

The trick is if they all make everything shitty at the same time, you won't have any alternative but to install "all this bloatware". The majority of players could only say "no thank you" by drastically cutting back their consumption of video games in favor of some other hobby, but so many of them have bought into the gamer identity that attempting to do so would trigger an existential crisis because they've defined their identity and self-worth in terms of consuming video games.

1 minute ago, Dragonfly said:

I miss the days you didn't need stores and launchers. Just buy a game, install it, play it.

...you sure about that?
 

12 hours ago, MrGlide said:

Ouch, what if Doom Eternal is next.

You'll have to install the Bethesda Launcher, that's what.

I wish TotalBiscuit was here to expose the bullshit...

30% out of millions earned is a ton. Even 10% after negotiations is still a lot. No surprise many bigger companies are moving away to their own launchers. 

11 hours ago, Pegg said:

30% out of millions earned is a ton. Even 10% after negotiations is still a lot. No surprise many bigger companies are moving away to their own launchers. 

And as usual the suits only factor in the positive effects but ignore the negatives, like people saying "not on Steam - no sale!"

And of course the costs running such a service.

15 hours ago, Woolie Wool said:

but so many of them have bought into the gamer identity that attempting to do so would trigger an existential crisis because they've defined their identity and self-worth in terms of consuming video games.

Sad, isn't it?

15 hours ago, Woolie Wool said:

The trick is if they all make everything shitty at the same time, you won't have any alternative but to install "all this bloatware". The majority of players could only say "no thank you" by drastically cutting back their consumption of video games in favor of some other hobby, but so many of them have bought into the gamer identity that attempting to do so would trigger an existential crisis because they've defined their identity and self-worth in terms of consuming video games.

 

...you sure about that?
 

One Sierra game and from the 80s which happened to have copy protection is not a good example here, not every game company did this and yes there was a time like Dragon Fly said and the only requirement then was imputing the CD Key from the box and running the CD, but of course not every game required the CD in the drive.

1 hour ago, Avoozl said:

One Sierra game and from the 80s which happened to have copy protection is not a good example here, not every game company did this and yes there was a time like Dragon Fly said and the only requirement then was imputing the CD Key from the box and running the CD, but of course not every game required the CD in the drive.

But this kind of "copy protection" - to ask for information from the manual - was quite common in the 80's and early 90's. In fact, I hardly remember a time when games came entirely without some form of verification. Doom and a few other games from the same time period were a notable exception. But this ended as soon as checking for intentionally malformed CD images became a thing.

Remember this?. In reality the gaming industry has always had a tendency to treat their customers like shit. This started long before the PC became gaming capable and probably will never end.

On 8/6/2018 at 9:30 PM, MrGlide said:

Ouch, what if Doom Eternal is next.

Supposedly it too won't be on Steam. Find me a Steam page for it. Best I can find: https://steamcommunity.com/app/379720/discussions/0/3051633726587344761/

16 hours ago, DooM_RO said:

I wish TotalBiscuit was here to expose the bullshit...

All he did with Doom 4 was expose there were no review copies. It's as if Bethesda spent millions of dollars to advertise it and they didn't need an unaffiliated Youtuber to promote it.

17 hours ago, Pegg said:

30% out of millions earned is a ton. Even 10% after negotiations is still a lot. No surprise many bigger companies are moving away to their own launchers. 

Finally someone who understands the (possibly) real reasons behind this.

Have you guys forgotten good ol' EA (*vomits*), Ubisoft and Epic Games? And Blizzards own online service?

Valve charges way too much for little value. Sure there's the big customer base on steam, but all EA fanboys need Origin. And so do

all who play Fortnite, WoW etc. Only exception is Ubi, but you need to link your steam account to uPlay. And the fanboys are gonna take

everything that the publishers stuff down their throats. So will you when DOOM Eternal is coming.

I don't think this is a bad thing, because it creates competition and maybe Valve will drop those ridiculous fees of 30% down to 10-15%. That's fair I'd say.

Then we'd see a possible return to Steam. But given that the invention of Origin etc. had no influence, I don't hold high hopes.

On the other hand it could simply be the case of DRM. Steam's own DRM is weak and using custom launchers provides a much bigger challenge for

crackers. Especially when using DENUVO/VMProtect combined. The number of cracked games using Origin/uplay has lowered constantly over the last years, so it might very well be that as well and not only the profit.

Mind you that all games using such DRMs will be useless some day, once the Denuvo servers shutdown. Like my original retail copies of

GTA III/Vice City/San Andreas/IV/Mass effect I-III have become useless on Windows 10 due to M$ preventing the execution of SecuRom (Denuvo predecessor, same Company) games.

Thankfully I don't really care about videogames anymore, but it's still sad to see what's happening. I'd love to buy games and never be dependent on some launchers.

Some games like DOOM III even had built in updaters, that was convenient.

That's going to completely kill my hype for Doom Eternal. No chance in Hell (pun intended, definitely) that I'm installing another shitty client.