fallout Fallout 76 won’t be on Steam because Bethesda wants a ‘direct relationship’ with players

[The3rdWalker 1,271]

If you tuned into the Fallout 76 panel during QuakeCon Saturday via Twitch, chances are you saw a lot of people in chat typing variations of “No Steam, no buy.” They were reacting to news that Fallout 76 won’t be available through Steam, and you’ll need to use Bethesda’s own launcher to play the

game. Bethesda’s vice president of global marketing Pete Hines addressed the issue in a Q&A session with members of the press later on at QuakeCon. He said the decision has to do with the fact that Fallout 76 is an online game, more in the mould of ‘games-as-a-service’ than Bethesda’s traditional single-player titles like Skyrim and Fallout 4.

 

“We’ve done online games before, we’ve done some games-as-service,” Hines said. “And with [Fallout] 76, it was just really important to us to have that direct relationship with the customer, that didn’t involve somebody else.”

 

Hines says having PC players all using the Bethesda.net client to play Fallout 76 will give Bethesda a better ability to address issues that inevitably crop up in an online game, and they won’t be caught flat-footed by updates from third party software or architecture like Steam.

 

“If there’s a problem, if there’s an issue, it’s on us. There’s no guessing,” he said. “There’s no, ‘oh, well somebody else updated something and now our thing doesn’t work and we have to wait to fix it.’”

 

“It’s our game, it’s our problem, and we can talk to you directly,” Hines said.
While Hines didn’t mention it during the Q&A, another benefit – for Bethesda, at least – is that running Fallout 76 through Bethesda.net means the company won’t need to fork a share of sales profits over to Valve.

 

But Hines said the move will make it easier for Bethesda to provide customer service, since they’ll be dealing one-on-one with customers and their accounts, rather than through a third party.

 

“We want to make sure, on PC, that we are providing the best level possible,” he said. “I’m positive we won’t get it all right, but I’m also positive that we know that we’re the ones who will have to fix it and do whatever we have to, and not be influenced by anybody else.”

The Fallout 76 release date is set for November 14, and it will be available on PC exclusively through Bethesda.net.

 

https://www.pcgamesn.com/fallout-76/fallout-76-not-on-steam?amp

[The3rdWalker 1,271]

So sifting through their bullshit. This is directly related to the cut (~30%) developers pay steam to host/ sell their games, plus it appears they will not have to issue refunds through their own system. (EU should murder that) If the game bombs on their platform you better believe it will silently pop up on steam and you won't hear about it ever again. 

[J4MES OX4D 10,033]

They will lose more in overall sales restricting the game to their own platform than if they sold it through the Steam Store and that's even after Valve's 30% revenue cut.  I will never install the Bugthesda Client - it's bad enough having Steam, Battlenet, Origin, uPlay and a load of other standalone launchers for individual games without having another one especially one from Bethesda. I bet it's just because they want to push paid mods for their future games and as Valve abolished this shortly after implementing it ages ago after a huge backlash; they realise that they can only make money from base game sales and most Bethesda games are 50% off barely 6 weeks after launch now and that's sod all after Valve have also taken their share.

[phil bottle 9,754]

They're all doing it now, so I'll not bother singling out Bethesda. Bethesda has always produced decent games but I'd never trust them any further than any other big company.

 

It does make me wonder about the future and the use of dedicated or private servers. Just hope this game is going to be as good as I think it will.

 

I'm a sucker for this genre.