Ehh... Good riddance?

Well, one things for sure, they sure ain't going to come here!

They merged in 2008, it is the same company, then part of Vivendi. the official name is Activision Blizzard. In 2013 Activision Blizzard split off from Vivendi and is now an independent company.

^ I think this is what it's really all about with the trend towards the base game itself merely being the "enabler" of much higher micro-transaction revenue. Eg, if a surprise hit like a new Fortnite makes $2bn in MT's, a 30% cut from not having your own store-front is a "lost" $600m. With half the "Games as a Service" visions currently flying around, expect more market fragmentation of AAA multi-player games in future.

Who in their right mind is actually looking forward to Fallout 76? Seems to me like a Fortnite-style game designed purely for 14 year olds.

I think it's more a case of Activision Blizzard (ActiBlizz for short, the holding company of many studios, including Activision and Blizzard) saying "Hey, we own you so put games from one of our other studios in your launcher even if they are from a completely different portfolio for cross-promotion. K, thanks, bye."

I definitely lost even more interest when the lead designers example of the exciting emergent gameplay they're hoping to see from the multiplayer aspect was a guy coming out of nowhere training a bunch of mobs onto you while you're fighting something else.

I'm sure that looks great on a twitch stream/youtube video for some laughs but it's absolutely not what I want my gaming experience to be. No one has been able to deliver decent anti-griefing measures yet. I have little to no faith Bethesda with it's 0 experience will magically be able to do it.

Not going to happen. Fallout 76 will also be released on Steam. Perhaps not on Day 1, but a bit later, sure. There are so many 'No Steam No Buy' fanboys and girls that not releasing on Steam equate to a big loss in sales. No company will risk that. The big ones with game production budgets in the tens or even hundred millions least of all.

But in the end I really don't care. It doesn't matter via which DRM-infested store games that I'm not going to buy are released. Steam, Origin, Uplay etc. are all interchangeable and as long as a game isn't released completely DRM-(and client)-free, I'm not going to buy it.

Wouldn't it be just that... Blockbuster?

That's the best idea of the year. CDPR should literally do that. And they should also pull all of their currently-released games off of Steam and make them GOG-exclusives henceforth.

They're halfway there already because unlike most other games GOG doesn't have to use Steam keys, which means every other retailer but Steam was selling GOG versions of the game. The only place to get Witcher 3 for Steam, was on Steam, and that's going to be for the full recommended retail price GOG sets, no discounts.

It was pretty funny seeing all the people trying to trade a (probably cheaply obtained) GOG Witcher 3 for a Steam one, since value wise they weren't anywhere similar, the Steam one was in much higher demand, but there simply weren't options to get it cheaper than it was in the store.

the point being is that some of the big ones with "game production budgets in the tens or even hundred millions" ARE already doing it (i.e. EA and Activation Blizzard). If it is a "killer app", then it makes sense to bypass thirdparty sellers (such as Steam and gOg) too keep the 30%.

The very low number of devs who favor GOG doesn't bode well at all for GOG getting a lot of good new games when they are first released. GOG is gonna have to change that, or else us customers are going to continue to suffer with getting fed a few scraps here and there, while the majority of good games remain unavailable on GOG.

Why do only 7% of devs like GOG the most?

Far less than Itch. I just can't believe it.