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Sunsetting the Bethesda.net launcher and migrating to Steam

• CppCoder 5y ago
  The annoying part with Steam is, almost every time I start it, it is downloading a few hundred MB large update. This makes absolutely no sense to me. * first of all they could reduce the patch size * second, what need is there to update a launcher this often, why not pull the required info from some online database This thing is wasting internet traffic without any apparent good reason.
  • 1_player 5y ago
    You probably open it pretty infrequently (or you're on the beta branch), because I open it daily and updates happen once a month if ever. It'd be the same if you were to open Chrome once a month and it wasn't autoupdating itself in the background. Steam doesn't have an autoupdate background process like Chrome does.
• Hamuko 5y ago
  I'm surprised that they're not migrating customer games to the Xbox store considering Bethesda is a subsidiary of Microsoft.
  • WorldMaker 5y ago
    One thing I'm seeing here is that Bethesda is trying to migrate everything including Save Files where they can. (Which great for them, that sounds like the right thing to do.) A migration to Steam may be technically easier for some of those things. Save files can be weird in Xbox games/Microsoft Store games. In particular, I think the Xbox Store has a much smaller portion of the "Creation Club" mods than Steam, and that may have been a strong motivator. More cynically, this seems a "games generation" where Microsoft is trying to "win PC gamers back" by being very Steam friendly/Steam forward in their PC releases and strategy. There's a lot better PR for Microsoft here if Bethesda migrates everything to Steam, and it may just be for those PR reasons.
  • kevingadd 5y ago
    Players have spoken and a LOT of them prefer Steam.
    • kgwxd 5y ago
      Players should be saying they don't want "launchers" at all. They provide no benefit that couldn't be done a better way.
      • vorpalhex 5y ago
        Steam is a real value add, enough that I use it for non-steam games. Not only with proton or the controller db, but save-game sync, multiplayer invites, their server browser, and everything being tied to my login. Even managing my game library on steam is pleasant! And the social features they have are.. actually pretty useful. Having a friends list of people who I game with is nice, as is the ability to have low friction conversations.
        • snailmailman 5y ago
          Another huge factor is the built in steam discussion forums. Any problems or questions with the game? There’s a dedicated forum for every game, easy to access. Sure lots of games have their own forum or subreddit, but smaller indie games sometimes don’t. I’ve even gone to the steam discussion forums for games that are on Steam but I own elsewhere.
      • hombre_fatal 5y ago
        Dunno, I can log into Steam and still download and play any game I've ever bought with all sorts of features like global controller configuration and syncing saves between my desktop and laptop. What's the better way?
      • munk-a 5y ago
        I personally disagree, I don't want to downplay the power of having stand alone applications - but having one application that can help me matchmake in games and helps keep all those games up to date while clearly (and non-obnoxiously) advertising new features or DLCs for those games. Steam does this things really cleanly and I don't want to return to the world where each application has to self-update whenever I launch it.
  • mastax 5y ago
    Microsoft has been happy-ish to have their games on Steam for a while now. They probably would've gone all-in on the Xbox store if the windows store (backend) wasn't so shitty.
    • cuteboy19 5y ago
      Windows store is really bad. The UI, the UX, the lag, the jank, all designed to spoil your day
      • zeusk 5y ago
        and until a couple months ago, it was a crappy web app.
        • jay_kyburz 5y ago
          Steam is a web app.
          • zeusk 5y ago
            Not the main app, only the storefront and the community pages - they're trash too.
            • account42 5y ago
              Nah, steam itself has been migrating from VGUI to CEF.
      • tempnow987 5y ago
        Literally how is the windows store so bad! Sometimes I'm not signed in and don't want to be signed in (setting up a new machine for someone else). The flows are just horrible. On the mac the store makes things, in general, easier. On windows its comedy. I wonder how many folks like myself now just instinctively avoid it.
      • rightbyte 5y ago
  • arijun 5y ago
    Perhaps they need it to work on Mac? Granted, it seems the only game they have that’s Mac compatible is elder scrolls online…
  • pavon 5y ago
    No kidding. The fact that they didn't even offer it as an option along-side Steam says a ton.
    • Ekaros 5y ago
      What I could actually guess is that they don't want sales there, but instead of subscriptions. Thus the games are already part of Game Pass so it might make more sense to move them to platform that players want. And those who want on their app, will pay monthly instead...
• TillE 5y ago
  You can theoretically solve a lot of problems with crappy, multitudinous game stores - easier payments, lighter software. But the real question is: do I trust that I'll be able to continue downloading my purchases for the foreseeable future? I trust that Steam will be around for a very long time. I can download DRM-free installers from GOG. Everyone else? I don't know, I have much less confidence.
  • causi 5y ago
    I expect we're less than five years away from seeing everyone's Stadia purchases evaporate.
    • nimajneb 5y ago
      Yea, I have it, although I haven't used it in a while and plan on cancelling. I made zero purchases on the platform though. I just play the free games.
    • ascagnel_ 5y ago
      I've been saying from day one that Stadia should have offered a subscription service similar to what Microsoft is doing with Game Pass. I don't want to pay full-price for games that require someone else maintaining hardware, especially when they're not booking any recurring revenue.
      • sbarre 5y ago
        Google would have struggled to get a catalogue for their subscription I think, if only because they had to convince publishers (some that would consider Stadia to be competition) to put in work to get games running on their platform. I wonder if they tried the subscription thing first but then gave up and just went with the buy model as a least-worst choice at a point in the cycle where it was too late to back out of the whole endeavour. Stadia uses custom hardware so games can't just run on Stadia as-is, they have to be ported, which requires investment from the game's developers (or a porting shop). I have to imagine most publishers that Google approached expected them to foot some of the bill for that work, if not all of it.
• adamrezich 5y ago
  nice, about time. I wonder if e.g. Quake Champions would've flopped as hard as it did if it was just released on Steam at launch instead of moved there later. I had a ton of fun with it despite its controversial formula changes, and the soundtracks (there's two, you can pick one or both, the second one is by Andrew Hulshult) are really good.
  • jasonm89 5y ago
    TIL that there is a new Quake. I know what I'm doing tonight.
    • adamrezich 5y ago
      if you're not an über-purist and/or you haven't had some good ol' deathmatchin' in awhile, you'll have a great time. the difference between QC and Q3:A/QL/etc. is that you pick a Champion character to play as, with unique health/armor/speed stats, as well as an ultimate ability. there's no restrictions on who can pick which champion (like Overwatch for example), and it's kind of like a "Super id Bros." as far as the characters go (still no Orbb though...). I played quite a bit of the game and while I tried some of the other champions, the default Ranger feels the most "right". the music is great too https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj21GFbEQog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj21GFbEQog maybe I should reinstall tonight too...
  • FanaHOVA 5y ago
    Pretty sure QC was on Steam at launch, it was on the Bethesda Launcher only during beta. Quake games are just too hard for most people nowadays, and the new stuff pushed away some of the old players. I enjoyed it but Live was still better, and with matchmaking being dead I just stopped playing it.
    • adamrezich 5y ago
      the "beta" was more of an "early access" though. completely agree though it definitely did split the difference between being appealing to new and old players and kind of floundered as a result. I had a blast though just playing Ranger.
• ramesh31 5y ago
  I imagine this probably means the eventual death of Battle.net as well. Honestly though, it's time. Battle.net was incredible back in the day, but now it's just another annoying launcher that segments my friends lists.
  • SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
    I'm curious as to that one. As launchers go it's excellent, so I'm not sure if they want to get rid of it or expand it out to support more things - after all Microsoft, who can't even get app updates to work correctly in their own windows store on their own game launcher, just bought it along with a bunch of other stuff. I guess I should be annoyed that more non-blizzard stuff will end up on it, but boy oh boy has that particular ship sailed.
  • rainonmoon 5y ago
    Why would this have anything to do with Battle.net? There are not insignificant portions of the playerbase fully bought into that ecosystem (like... every World of Warcraft player, for a start.) The Launcher itself has been around for almost 10 years; the network has been around for twice that. Bethesda's launcher on the other hand was always an afterthought.
  • EamonnMR 5y ago
    Battle.net when it was IRC was a great time.
  • aparticulate 5y ago
    The population of Battle.net is WAY bigger than the tiny fraction of players using Bethesda launcher. Hard to know from the outside but it's probably like 95%+ Steam even on their newest games. NexusMods, the largest Bethesda modding host rarely mentions the launcher even if mods are compatible. Battle.net on the other hand predates Steam and they made some of the most significant PC-only games of all time. Having said that, I think you might be right for a different reason. Blizzard will likely eat a massive amount of humble pie post-2021 and Steam releases would seem like a reasonable gesture of to restoring community goodwill.
• ivraatiems 5y ago
  Thank goodness. Bethesda's launcher was uniquely awful in a number of unpleasant ways. Slow, prone to crashes, bad user communication, not suitable for use on small monitors. The worst of the launcher apps I have used - and there are so many! I remember when it was in vogue for every game maker to build their own launcher or even full Steam clone - when EA pulled all its new games from Steam to get people to use Origin, when Ubisoft forced uPlay on you no matter how you bought the game, and so on. Now, it seems like we're pulling back from that situation somewhat - a lot of EA games are back on Steam, for example. I wonder whether the experiment didn't work, or if it worked, but now the goals have changed again?
  • Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    > I wonder whether the experiment didn't work, or if it worked, but now the goals have changed again? I think Steam has a big first mover advantage, like a user's default browser or text editor, always on or starting up, while the others were an extra step that users only did when they had to. The recurring sales and frequently updated offerings of games and updates on Steam's home page is also a plus; Origin was static, Epic is minimalistic, Steam is more of a proper website with a load of different angles - sales, recommended games, new / early access games, updates, and jazzy graphics if they have a big sale on. The other launchers are purely functional.
  • jeffwask 5y ago
    Epic Game Store was the nail in their coffin. They all wanted to have their own Steam and rake in all the revenue directly but didn't want to invest the time and effort to build a platform like Steam. Valve virtually stopped making games to focus only on Steam. I feel like watching EGS hit the market, the difficult road it is to build a true Steam competitor for them, and how long before it will actually be profitable was a reality check for everyone else. Like using AWS over Bare Metal, somethings are worth paying someone else to do for you.
  • ocdtrekkie 5y ago
    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.
• guiomie 5y ago
  Origin needs to do the same, their integration with steam is awful.
  • lrae 5y ago
    No worries, Origin will be replaced soon... by the even more awful EA Desktop Client.
    • Octopodes 5y ago
      Origin is a pile ... how could the replacement possibly be worse?!
    • JohnWhigham 5y ago
      I don't know about that. The fact that they released a bunch of EA games on Steam (most notably recent Battlefield games) made me think they're about to sunset Origin. But that was a couple years ago at this point so who knows
      • lrae 5y ago
        They just recently updated it. (https://www.ea.com/ea-app-beta https://www.ea.com/ea-app-beta) Doubt they'll drop it, but who knows.
• mattlondon 5y ago
  They don't mention it, but I hope this means that their titles will now be available on geforce now. IIRC the previous approach of pulling their titles from geforce now et al was due to "exclusivity" or whatever and trying to force people into their ecosystem.
  • MikusR 5y ago
    Microsoft has Xcloud. So it won't happen.
• BbzzbB 5y ago
  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 PC, where we have a mostly open field on which anyone can participate freely without a gatekeeper's blessing, Steam managed to consolidate so much of the gaming marketplace that even a titan like Microsoft is throwing the towel and bowing to Steam's cartelish 30%? I get that being the dominant two-sided marketplace of a given space is a strong network effect and moat, and consolidation is certainly convenient for users (I like having all my purchased games on a single account), but intuition tells me Bethesda doesn't need Steam's exposure to sell games or make new arrivals known (their announcement will go viral regardless), similarly to Riot, Mojang, Epic and co not listing on Steam. So I've always found it surprising they were dual listing their games in the first place, but the fact they're now entirely giving up on direct selling is a testament to Steam's might in the gaming industry. Is Steam's product particularly good and hard to reproduce from the publisher's PoV, even one backed by Microsoft, to the extent it is hard to compete against with something like Microsoft Store? Or is this just another case of being early enough to establish the initial brand and let the self-fulfilling network effect kick in - with the userbase acting like gravity to bring in more users and developers - until it's large enough that sheer force of habit/inertia makes it quasi-"indisruptible"? Either way, I found it fascinating how Valve turned into Steam, whether it was accidental or not, what a homerun pivot. Seems that is the way of the Internet, being first matters more than just about anything, having the superior product (not claiming there is one for game stores) is irrelevant if you're remotely late, it just won't matter how much cash you pour into a Microsoft Store or a Google+. My gut tells me Microsoft is salivating at the idea of buying out Steam, seems like a perfect fit for the conglomerate if it wasn't for the scrutiny it would bring their way while they are positioning themselves as the good FAAMG.
  • m4rtink 5y ago
    At least in some circles Steam gets bonus points for Linux support and actively contributing to various related open source projects, such as Wine and various GPU drivers and tools. Sure, thats needed for Steam Deck these days, but other vendors basically not support Linux at all, let alone contribute back!
• NikolaNovak 5y ago
  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 password or old email account (especially when they are an overlay on top of Steam), and have zero repeat zero positively zero benefit to myself as a consumer. It is blatantly anti-consumer, and not made with customer view in mind. (Gog.com gets a pass because it allows me to JUST download the game, with no launcher and crap, so essentially going into opposite direction from all publisher-owned platforms and provides a unique value proposition) Same for Netflix. It's fine. It's good. It's great! Over the last 5 years, proliferation of Disneys, Amazons, HBOs, Hulus, CBS All Access, Paramount Ultra Plus Exclusive Diamond Platinum... the whatEVERs, all they do is make me have to guess which service is content I want to play on. All they are, at any level, is "we want more money for less consumer convenience, and we think we can get away with it due to exclusive content lock-in we refuse to license to the convenient platform". I understand I'm supposed to vote with my money, but with exclusive lock-in that's difficult. My kid wants their Octonauts and their Stinky & Dirties, dammit :D
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  • samtheprogram 5y ago
    > As a matter of principle… It’s not really a matter of principal though! > [the competing platforms] have zero repeat zero positively zero benefit to myself as a consumer. The reason Steam and Netflix are so good and continue to exist in such a good state is exactly because of the competition. However, because of exclusivity, licensing, ownership, et cetera, that also means you eventually may want to deal with said competition.
    • Macha 5y ago
• asadlionpk 5y ago
  This is promising news, considering Steam Deck is about to be released this week!
• jmyeet 5y ago
  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)?
  • ryandrake 5y ago
    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.
    • dzqhz 5y ago
      So you can conveniently buy, download and update certain programs.
      • Hjfrf 5y ago
        Those could be a package manager and a web page. Microsoft did this to themselves by not having a standard package manager installed by default.
        • judge2020 5y ago
          The Microsoft Store on Windows exists. They just aren't going to start letting you download full games without paying, so the Store still ends up mediating licensing, which publishers aren't too keen on. But the Microsoft Store is pretty bad; ie. I still cannot install games to my second ntfs hard drive due to some weird error, so I don't use it.
    • baby 5y ago
      Have any of you used steam?
  • JohnWhigham 5y ago
    They do it because Steam's 30% cut is ludicrous.
• LoveMortuus 5y ago
  Oh yeah... Bethesda had a launcher of their own... Totally forgot about it~
• tester756 5y ago
  I love when I run game that I purchased on Steam and it opens yet another spyware game launcher client
• camdenlock 5y ago
  First reaction: oh cool. Later: … oh NO. If Microsoft is anchoring one of its largest gaming properties to Steam, then what are their eventual intentions for Steam & Valve? :(
  • Strom 5y ago
    Valve is not a public company and Gabe Newell seems pretty happy with Valve. I can't really see him wanting an exit.
    • judge2020 5y ago
      This was a concern in 2018 as well, and Newell dispelled it[0]. Newell supposedly holds >50% private equity in Valve[1], so he's the final say. 0: https://gagadget.com/media/cache/9b/6f/9b6f3304b05c9c98449dbcaf74871626.jpg https://gagadget.com/media/cache/9b/6f/9b6f3304b05c9c98449db... 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2012/03/07/valve-gabe-newell-billionaire/?sh=73521d6a6d19 https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2012/03/07/valve-gab...
• cheshire137 5y ago
  Oh thank god.
• didip 5y ago
  Gotta say, Microsoft is an amazing acquirer (in recent years). Unrelatedly, it got me thinking... What if Microsoft bought Yahoo and Docker?
• shp0ngle 5y ago
  Does... does that mean that battle.net... wait is it Blizzard launcher now? I don't remember... will also be gone and going to Steam?
• shmerl 5y ago
  How about releasing more games on GOG? Quite a lot are still missing there.