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Absolutely stupid question.

That is like saying "Will the sky fall on humans some day?"

Is this new Fallout some kind of online multiplayer game, for the most part? Then it would make much more sense for Bethesda to keep it on their own service/client. Not that different from Gwent not being on Steam either, or Team Fortress 2 being Steam-only.

It's just their website, epicgames.com. It's not surprising you missed it, since it was irrelevant until the rise of their F* game (I don't even want to mention the full name here). They have Shadow Complex there, the new Unreal Tournament which might get canceled because of the F* game, and there was also Paragon, which was already cancelled because of F*.

And to answer your second question, yes, Fallout 76 is multiplayer only game.

In a sense, I suppose I do! See, for folks like me, if a game requires a DRM or a client (which is a form of DRM, phoning home bullcrap), then it might as well not exist to me. Effectively, it does not exist to me, and though I admit that yes in a literal sense it is a thing that exists in reality, it is of wholly negative value. In an ideal world, my belief would totally just rest here at this point: give me DRM-free, I don't care what you do with your money as long as I have DRM-free. Easy and nice, right?

The problem is that by folks like you who have been supporting DRM like Scheme, you have imo ruined the gaming marketplace, contributing to the downfall of gaming, specifically by supporting lack of ownership, game as service, and increasingly online-based gaming, all of which kill game preservation. By supporting Scheme over the years (particularly a decade ago or so) and making Scheme into what it is, folks like you are largely the reason *why* "those games won't be coming here either". Had things gone differently from folks like you, those games *could've* come here. Thanks!

P.S. If anyone deprives you of your games, it certainly won't be GOG customers who by and large just like to buy their game and be left alone. Rather, it will be your beloved monopoly rental service. Oh nevemind, there is an "offline" mode, yes I am sure that will work forever and not require re-logging in, just ignore anyone who has trouble with this and it has 100% success rate.

Are you still posting

Ha! Good luck with either of those strategies not backfiring on them if they try. They would be a good way to convince their current customers to stop doing business with them, and it's unlikely they will get many new customers out of it. Any game with 'always online' like diablo 3 is a no go for me, and the same is true of all the pc gamers I know. I don't think they realize just how many customers they lost on that game by restricting it like they did.

I agree about Steam's quasi-monopoly being problematic, but what these publishers are trying to do is entirely motivated by their own interests and I don't see the advantages for the end user. Depending on one's interest in AAA games, and different game genres, you're already at 5-6 different clients now. There's Steam, Galaxy, EA Origin, Uplay, Battle.net, Rockstar Social Club(?), Bethesda's Launcher... Then there's additional clients for more niché genres, such as BigFish games, or various strategy series, and I'm sure I forgot a few more. It's a mess, and it's only going to get worse, if this trend continues. I just fail to see how you could defend this as a positive development. Further fragmentation of the market and player base also eliminate most of the advantages such clients could theoretically bring. I don't mind that publishers are trying to be less dependent on Steam/Valve, but ideally they should provide their customers with options and incentives, rather than trying to force them into even more clients and storefronts they don't want.

Why do people keep saying this? The movie studios all agree to a common format every time an upgrade comes out, the current one being Ultra HD 4k Blu-ray, which all studios use. Even on digital all the studios banded together to stop fragmentation and tie all the different streaming platforms together using Movies Anywhere. I don't get this comment at all, they're doing the exact OPPOSITE of what this thread is about.



Competition drives innovation and consumer benefit. That's the essence of capitalism. Using Steamworks is actually "forcing them to use" something as well, so I don't see much difference there. Them having their own systems, and being able to sell their keys on all sites that will offer them (Amazon, GreenMan, etc.) allows for more competition and innovation than everyone simply using Valve's client, which has been the case for a decade.

Because you're talking gibberish, and I'm talking streaming and VOD services.

For example, Disney is soon going to launch its own platform, and their movies will not be avaible digitally anywhere else.

That's the theory, yes. But at least so far, that's not what they're doing. They're not attracting customers to their store/platform by providing a user experience that is superior to Steam, they're doing it by artificially limiting the availability of their games. They're not actually doing anything that is beneficial to their customers. And yes, Steam isn't optional either ( at least for most games on the platform ), but one mandatory client is still preferable to 3, 5 or a dozen of them, especially when all the other clients/platforms tend to be inferior.

It's not like I personally have any attachment to Steam/Valve, but if the big publishers, such as Bethesda or EA want to win me over, this isn't the way to do it. Ideally, they'd have to provide a similar service as GOG: Provide an optional client for game updates, social features etc., but also offer DRM-free back-up installers, so I'm not dependent on their platforms. Better yet, also offer DRM-free physical releases, similar to what CDPR did with Witcher 3.

But all they're doing is build a dozen new versions of Steam, with the same limitations for the customer, and sans most of the advantages, such as the huge selection of games.

The way I see it, Steam is here to stay, for better or worse. Even if all these major publishers try to do their own thing, most gamers will still keep Steam as their main gaming client and store, and only use the others as secondary/temporary alternatives. What exactly could they provide which Steam cannot? Valve even has the funding to finance their own exclusive AAA/ AA games, if it comes to that.

They also have a launcher that you can download called Epic Launcher.

And yes, it seems that Epic could rename themselves "The F game studio". I hate how they abandoned pretty much anything else to milk that cow for all it's worth. I don't even understand why that game exploded so much...

#BringBackUT

Just a theory of mine, but I think Huniepot Studios got rejected for Huniecam, which then they don't want to release newer games here. I was reading their twitter feed at one point and they took a few joking shots at GOG and apologized, which makes sense, but if you look at the history of GOG and tensions between devs, I get the feeling that it was a BNAP ("sorry, not sorry") scenario. Maybe I'm just reading way too deep into this, but the reason itch.io is beating GOG is because GOG gets butthurt pretty easy, and GOG is a bit overly picky when it comes to curation. Don't get me wrong, Huniecam Studio looks like absolute mobile-game garbage, but it's also priced that way. Even they admitted on their twitter (using humor) that no one wanted it: they treated Huniecam Studio as a sort of lesser, weaker Huniepop. I get the destinct impression that 90% of the fun is the trailer (and 90% of the trailer is the comment at the beginning), and 10% is the feeling that you're playing something that could be dirty, but once you start it, you just stop. Still, I could imagine them being a bit insecure about releasing Huniepop 2 on GOG in the future if GOG rejected them at some point, which most likely occured.

Huniepop, however, always seems to do well on sales. I've always joked with my girlfriend about getting it since most sales it's been present it goes on for 69% off (the only game that is so, while other games are 70% off), and then it usually lands in the top 10 sellers for the week or however that thing works. It's the game that no one wants to admit playing, but clearly everyone does. And i'm not even going to get into the demographics i'm hearing and the implications. I'm really beginning to think that the devs are woke to some things that most people are completely unaware of.

If you're doing the whole F2P thing, you don't need steam for DRM. If you have always online games that you want to be able to shut down and take from the customer, you don't need steam (even though we all kinda suspected this was the motive for steam, and definitely the big danger of steam, which is why we're here on GOG). Steam and mobile devices primed the market, now everyone's making their big move, with Bethesda being the first one to openly admit this (outside of MMOs, which Bethesda has one of those as well).

Now that we're willing to see that far, my prediction next is to go full MMO: the big problem people usually have with MMOs is how "cheap and crappy" they are, but since we're slowly warming up to them, I think companies are going to try to push their own MMOs in the long term, since the thing that makes games sell right now is youtubers (especially RT, who got famous from Halo, but now makes other games famous) and communities (Monster Hunter, for the most part, has been carried by people not wanting to play with randoms, and Minecraft was definitely popular because of the modularity and the multiplayer, and notice everyone's building multiplayer now, even if it might not make sense, like with Stardew Valley).

People "deal with" steam to play the games they want. People can play games using other clients just fine, and not care that it's not Steam. Usually your people who play "causal things" like the Sims are the people that are afraid of "things being different," whether it be the OS, the client, or whatever. Sure enough, they're using a different client. Yeah, I don't forsee anyone being particularly loyal to steam as a customer, except really young people who don't remember what it was like before Steam, but they'll find out really quick and "switch" anyway. Oh, and certain super derpy boomers who only let their grandkids use steam 'cause "everything else gives me viruses."

We kinda already had that before steam, actually: launchers. All a client is is the CD launcher that's made a little more modular. Still advertises their other games and everything. I think, realistically, we'll see one for every pub in the long run, not just a few major companies. Hosting downloads of your own games yourself is pretty cheap and easy, actually, and if you get DDoSed, customers are usually pretty chill over it (aside from a few), 'cause the industry's been kinda craptacular towards customers, lately, anyway. Even Nintendo gets away with having their servers down on release day. It's just something we've become acustomed to.

And every client will have it's fair share of annoying bugs and "features" (like advertisements on startup or something like that).

GOG will be stuck with old games and small time pubs (who just don't have the money for widespread hosting that they predict they'd magically need), so gog will be forced to change it's tune on curation. It'll be then that the dev dreams of itch.io overtaking gog occurs, since itch.io is already humble. Not sure how Humble will do, though.

Honestly, it's been apathy, not support, that has allowed DRM to be what it is. People just don't care about their rights for a game they "know" they won't have nostalgia for in 10 years. They don't care that they won't be able to play it again. They're happy knowing that for the next 5, when they do care, it'll be available.

Look up: apathy. Look at mobile games markets. I'm awaiting the great awakening of the sheeple, but everyone keeps waiting for that, and the great wait has been going on for thousands of years. I don't believe people are right when they say "people are dumb," but instead it's quite clear that people like to be asleep, since that doesn't make them question their world views.

Makes more money to provide them with what they want mixed with the poison, like how you stick animal medicine in their food bowl. Customers are willing to pay repeatedly for something, so therefore they want to make an environment where that'll happen.

The idea behind capitalism is that people are going to be greedy, so why are we bothering to deny it to be? The problem with capitalism, is that it makes the fault assumption that the customers will remain vigilant: the price of freedom. However, we are rich enough, to buy such luxuries, that we "let things slide." The overton window is constantly being pushed, whether it be in politics, economics, or whatever. DRM aside, people should expect better optimization in games, too, but they don't. Business software today requires gigs of RAM? WHY? But it's ok, you bought the new rig anyway, 'cause you have the money to splurge on it.


I do agree, it is strange, but at the same time not really. I'm more worried by the lack of fragmentation: it's almost like a guild at this point. Oh, wait, it actually is tied to a guild or two. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

The problem wouldn't exist if the consumer were vigilant.

As for funding their own games: remember that's how they got started. They left gamedev for a reason: steam and these APIs are a major pain in the bottom to maintain. Bigger companies shouldn't have a problem, and the open source steam_api ripoff that i've been talking about now (as a replacement for galaxy) will come on it's own as the smaller companies want free of steam, which they already do.