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As a gamer though, why would I want to play any of these developers' games through the browser instead of Steam?

kaetemi 5y ago
Yep. I don't see this game-in-the-browser thing taking off anytime soon for anything serious. Player retention, and immersion, are terrible. Casual 'adware' games, maybe.
hunterb123 5y ago
To try it out? Also to play or check in on a friend's computer or a public computer. The ease of visiting a game like a website is sometimes preferred, depends on the game. There's a game where the web client is mainly used to view streams of other players (instead of streaming video they mirrored the same packets they received/sent to your web client)
astlouis44 5y ago
It's a bigger deal for developers, as they don't have to give up 30% to Steam, and they can directly distribute to their end users on their own site by embedding. Not to mention instant cross-platform availability across PC/Mac/Android and iOS. Even Xbox supports WebGL2 via the new Chromium Edge they shipped on there recently.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  To detriment of players experience, because neither Web 3D APIs are a match to native hardware capabilities.
warvstar 5y ago
No downloads and the ability to easily and quickly jump into the action, especially useful for multiplayer or social games.
- sheepdestroyer 5y ago
  You're maybe not saving the game to disk, but you still have to download it. At least the assets you're going to interact with. And if you want to play again, then you keep the game/assets in a browser cache somewhere and there's not much difference with downloading and installing the game, in terms of bandwidth/diskspace
  - JoeyJoJoJr 5y ago
    Of course, but from the user’s perspective this is all transparent. Parent comment is talking from the UX perspective.
zamalek 5y ago
A single player title? Yeah, no thanks. However, think of the convenience of joining your friends on a web-based Minecraft-like game. And then hyperlinking to another server with some in-game mechanic. This is something I'm really interested in doing open source, once WebUDP is more mature.
mrec 5y ago
Aside from what others have mentioned, the browser's sandboxing makes it a lot more appealing to try out small indie/hobbyist casual games on a whim. Like the Flash game aggregators of old, or maybe itch.io today.

Yep. I don't see this game-in-the-browser thing taking off anytime soon for anything serious. Player retention, and immersion, are terrible. Casual 'adware' games, maybe.

hunterb123 5y ago

To try it out? Also to play or check in on a friend's computer or a public computer. The ease of visiting a game like a website is sometimes preferred, depends on the game. There's a game where the web client is mainly used to view streams of other players (instead of streaming video they mirrored the same packets they received/sent to your web client)

astlouis44 5y ago

It's a bigger deal for developers, as they don't have to give up 30% to Steam, and they can directly distribute to their end users on their own site by embedding. Not to mention instant cross-platform availability across PC/Mac/Android and iOS. Even Xbox supports WebGL2 via the new Chromium Edge they shipped on there recently.

pjmlp 5y ago
To detriment of players experience, because neither Web 3D APIs are a match to native hardware capabilities.

warvstar 5y ago

No downloads and the ability to easily and quickly jump into the action, especially useful for multiplayer or social games.

sheepdestroyer 5y ago
You're maybe not saving the game to disk, but you still have to download it. At least the assets you're going to interact with. And if you want to play again, then you keep the game/assets in a browser cache somewhere and there's not much difference with downloading and installing the game, in terms of bandwidth/diskspace
- JoeyJoJoJr 5y ago
  Of course, but from the user’s perspective this is all transparent. Parent comment is talking from the UX perspective.

zamalek 5y ago

A single player title? Yeah, no thanks. However, think of the convenience of joining your friends on a web-based Minecraft-like game. And then hyperlinking to another server with some in-game mechanic. This is something I'm really interested in doing open source, once WebUDP is more mature.

mrec 5y ago

Aside from what others have mentioned, the browser's sandboxing makes it a lot more appealing to try out small indie/hobbyist casual games on a whim. Like the Flash game aggregators of old, or maybe itch.io today.