Square Enix may launch their own version of Steam

[PrincessFrosty]

I argued that we'd end up here quite some time back. I personally picked steam because it was clearly the best, and Valve are privately owned which means the future of steam seems more bright than any of the competitors.

Game library clients are no different to say mobile phones, to me I need 1 mobile and it ought to be able to call all the networks, same I shouldn't need 20 apps running on my PC just for me to pick what game I want to play, one is enough. If you think you're stealing market share from Valve then you're mental. Btu whatever, each to his own.

I now basically boycott any games locked to specific platforms, the only exception I've made is for R6 Siege which I happen to really like.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Sigh. No Squenix I'm not going to use your store. GoG + Steam + Origin + copy protection from UPlay is my limit. No more.

Better add Windows Store to that list for Microsoft games...ugh

 

[cmdrdredd]

It isn't more cost effective. If you were a game maker would you not want your product on as many storefronts as possible to reach as many people as possible? These companies trying to 'take control' and limit it to just their own sites are short sighted and thinking they'll get some huge money grab by doing this by giving them more 'front space' while really they are just limiting themselves. There is a lot of cost behind what Steam does and to the scale that Steam does it. There is practically zero reason for Square to set up their own at this point. They don't even have the PC catalog to really support it. Maybe they won't remove their stuff off Steam - and this is more of a Uplay scenario, but that isn't a good idea either and will alienate potential buyers if they don't get it right early on.

This is where I feel EA Access is somewhat relevant to the conversation. Now they do have Origin Access but I'll differentiate the EA Access that is on XBox One by saying that Sony declined to allow it on the PS4 because they wanted all the games in a central location and they would rather work with EA or any company to offer discounts to people via PSN+ instead of a second subscription to a service out of their control. How long until Square or someone else decides that in order to get any discounts on a game, you have to subscribe to their service and use their client? That's what I think Sony was avoiding there, but obviously Microsoft went the other way for the Xbox. This can happen on the PC too because you have Origin Access which is basically the same thing. You will not likely see many discounts outside their paywall unless you go through CDKeys etc. In fact I did just that, I got ME Andromeda+DLC for $33 on CDKeys.

Lets not forget also how long Origin was a huge problem and wouldn't work correctly too. Square doesn't have the best track record for game clients and updates etc. I think this is just a big joke that I need 5 different accounts to play my PC games.

 

[ImpulsE69]

ME3 will never be on steam. Neither will andromeda. seems like such a small price to pay, but to each their own.

I'm the same way. As soon as Origin said they were doing this, I said, well, guess no more Origin games. It's a principal. The reason it will continue to get worse is the 'small price to pay' mentality. Same with any other thing that starts off as a little annoying and progresses to downright infuriating. Their games aren't worth having a stand alone client trying to break into somethign that already was working fine. Welcome to the 'one client one game' scenario in the next 5 years.

 

[cbrunny]

I'm the same way. As soon as Origin said they were doing this, I said, well, guess no more Origin games. It's a principal. The reason it will continue to get worse is the 'small price to pay' mentality. Same with any other thing that starts off as a little annoying and progresses to downright infuriating. Their games aren't worth having a stand alone client trying to break into somethign that already was working fine. Welcome to the 'one client one game' scenario in the next 5 years.

to me, what you call "worse", I call "two more clicks"

 

[cmdrdredd]

It really is an inconvenience to have more than one client for your games. An inconvenience can be labeled as a worse situation to be in.

 

[cbrunny]

It really is an inconvenience to have more than one client for your games. An inconvenience can be labeled as a worse situation to be in.

not disputing that. just saying that i think the "price" is so minimal that i can take care of it with two clicks.

 

[ImpulsE69]

it's more about the oncoming onslaught of private clients needed just to play a game. A centralized location is always preferred. Steam already takes an insane amount of time to load if you don't have it running...etc. Most clients also feel that if you have them running you just have to have them loaded on startup too. Basically..it's heading down a road that will become very annoying.

 

[Rifter]

it's more about the oncoming onslaught of private clients needed just to play a game. A centralized location is always preferred. Steam already takes an insane amount of time to load if you don't have it running...etc. Most clients also feel that if you have them running you just have to have them loaded on startup too. Basically..it's heading down a road that will become very annoying.

i couldn't agree more

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

it's more about the oncoming onslaught of private clients needed just to play a game. A centralized location is always preferred. Steam already takes an insane amount of time to load if you don't have it running...etc. Most clients also feel that if you have them running you just have to have them loaded on startup too. Basically..it's heading down a road that will become very annoying.

Not to mention if you don't have each one loaded, when you finally want to go play that one game and launch the special snowflake store launcher for it, bam, 5GB+ patches to apply.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Not to mention if you don't have each one loaded, when you finally want to go play that one game and launch the special snowflake store launcher for it, bam, 5GB+ patches to apply.

Origin hit me with this when I wanted to play mass effect. It didn't take a huge amount of time to update but it restarted twice because I guess it updated twice? All before I even entered the key to redeem the game and begin that download.

If it were up to me we would have one store and all games would have to be offered on that store. Yes just like a console. It's just so much easier to have my library in one spot and I don't need to install and update anything extra.

 

[Aikouka]

Speaking of launchers, Destiny 2, which was announced as coming to the PC, will be using Blizzard's Battle.Net launcher. To a degree, I don't mind this as much since I like the Battle.Net launcher. My only complaint about it is that if you leave it running during a GPU driver update, the launcher will crash. Although, I find the launcher works fine because it is still somewhat quaint. It's really designed for a smaller set of games where each game gets a somewhat large icon on the left side. If you get too many games, you get a scroll bar, which isn't unheard of, but it is a bit crazy to have a scroll bar with only say.... 10 games.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Maybe it's because it has been around forever and isn't complete crap, but I don't mind the Blizzard Launcher either - and actually now that I think more about it, it has to do more with those tend to be multiplayer games and clients for multiplayer games were always around and made things easier. It's these single player only games that it is over kill on.

 

[Aikouka]

Maybe it's because it has been around forever and isn't complete crap, but I don't mind the Blizzard Launcher either - and actually now that I think more about it, it has to do more with those tend to be multiplayer games and clients for multiplayer games were always around and made things easier. It's these single player only games that it is over kill on.

I think it depends on whether it's just a tacked-on aspect (just handles updates and launching), or if it's a full-fledged Battle.Net integration. The latter would make it a bit more like World of WarCraft where you can see your friends across games and handle invites and such.