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By better systems, I hope you are also including, to name a few: Remote Play, Remote Play Together, Game Streaming, Screenshot capture, Controller API that also

by rawbot 5y ago

By better systems, I hope you are also including, to name a few: Remote Play, Remote Play Together, Game Streaming, Screenshot capture, Controller API that also works in Desktop, a project to help Linux compatibility with zero effort from the game devs. I think people just consider Steam as a store, but it has become much more than that.

junon 5y ago
Never got as far as Remote Play or Game Streaming but would have been trivial for us to do so given the backend infrastructure we had already written. Game overlays and capture were working fine, and the controller API was designed to support any number of controllers (Steam's support is great but their interfaces are subpar, in our opinion). We were also able to pull from a well known database of controller configurations and device IDs, which really made this a non-issue. Linux compatibility was fine as far as the client went (all of our code was cross-platform and not webkit frames or the like). The client even ran on Android and iOS. If you're referring to Steam's Proton, we really didn't want to touch that area for a while. But we had much better systems for searching for new titles, including those that worked well on the system and also matched all of the criteria (tags and whatnot). Our social system was also designed to support "cross-talk" between different marketplaces (Steam, GoG Universe and Epic) but we never got as far as building out any client functionality - just the initial blackbox proof of concepts. The store aspect was indeed just a smaller part of it, though it was complicated in its own right. The project was a great idea and we were executing well on it. Lots of cool new tech was developed for it. But nobody we talked to wanted it - including publishers, users, investors, or even friends. It didn't matter how compatible we made it, the fact that we didn't push you to re-buy games, etc. We wanted to make an non-shitty experience for gaming and the market simply said "no".
- lobocinza 5y ago
  Have you approached Valve?
  - junon 5y ago
    We definitely thought about it, but decided against it. We've re-used a lot of it in some other endeavors we're working on so we don't really want to share the IP.

by rawbot 5y ago

junon 5y ago

Never got as far as Remote Play or Game Streaming but would have been trivial for us to do so given the backend infrastructure we had already written. Game overlays and capture were working fine, and the controller API was designed to support any number of controllers (Steam's support is great but their interfaces are subpar, in our opinion). We were also able to pull from a well known database of controller configurations and device IDs, which really made this a non-issue. Linux compatibility was fine as far as the client went (all of our code was cross-platform and not webkit frames or the like). The client even ran on Android and iOS. If you're referring to Steam's Proton, we really didn't want to touch that area for a while. But we had much better systems for searching for new titles, including those that worked well on the system and also matched all of the criteria (tags and whatnot). Our social system was also designed to support "cross-talk" between different marketplaces (Steam, GoG Universe and Epic) but we never got as far as building out any client functionality - just the initial blackbox proof of concepts. The store aspect was indeed just a smaller part of it, though it was complicated in its own right. The project was a great idea and we were executing well on it. Lots of cool new tech was developed for it. But nobody we talked to wanted it - including publishers, users, investors, or even friends. It didn't matter how compatible we made it, the fact that we didn't push you to re-buy games, etc. We wanted to make an non-shitty experience for gaming and the market simply said "no".

lobocinza 5y ago
Have you approached Valve?
- junon 5y ago
  We definitely thought about it, but decided against it. We've re-used a lot of it in some other endeavors we're working on so we don't really want to share the IP.