Ubisoft comes crawlin' back to Steam
Ubisoft comes crawlin' back to Steam
After years of running exclusively with Epic, Ubisoft has had enough.
Until I hear that they have dumped the requirement to log into Ubisoft Connect or Uplay or whatever they are calling it noe, then Ubisoft will remain dead to me.
Makes me sad. I really enjoyed the Assassin's Creed series and have waited for Shadows for what feels like a decade now.
Every time I go to play an old Ubisoft game I get to some stage in launching where I remember “oh right this is why I stopped bothering to play”
Especially painful on steam deck. If you get it working, it adds a good minute to the launch time
Considering the president that rocket league set, I would agree.
Precedent.
Despite the best efforts of major publishers including Activision, Electronic Arts, Rockstar, Bethesda, and others, not to mention the far better deal offered to developers by Epic, Steam is more dominant than ever—and in the end, they all came crawlin' back.
They're all crawling back because they did not give it their best effort. They just wanted the full 100% of the sale revenue without doing the hard parts. To be fair to EA, for the first few years, it looked like they were actually going to try.
its more or less that yes. they saw the money but not the time and effort to get users to use your platform.
and its not like impossible, as long as you can create games people will play and stay at itll work (e.g Riot), but they legit put such little effort in the launchers that it was creating a negative user experience, and never put in the money to make it better.
Yep same thing with all the streaming services, just taking the Netflix money was probably a better move for a lot of these services.
Eh, it's so easy to hop between streaming services that I don't have the same hangup there. You subscribe for a month, watch what you want to watch, cancel, and then go to the next one. You can always resubscribe later. When you buy a game on a given storefront, you're stuck with their feature set forever.
As a user there simply was/is no incentive to use other stores when the game is the same price. There has to be a reason for me to buy somewhere else.
As much as I agree the 30% cut can be a bit steep, I do appreciate that part of it is going into ongoing R&D like Steam Deck and Proton benefiting the whole gaming industry. I'd like to think of it like Valve are investing into PC innovation similarly to the way Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo do for their new consoles.
But unlike valve the console R&D is limited to the consoles themselves. Valve is working to improve gaming for Linux in general and foster a more open and consumer friendly console system.
If you have to choose an evil monopoly hell bent on world domination and bloodshed you might as well choose steam at least they are owned by a private individual instead of a hive mind distilled from the pure greed of capitalism.
A big part is going to buying yachts as well so Valve and Newell could 100% afford to charge a lot less than 30% and still do just as much r&d
To the downvoters: I hurt your feelings by saying that multibillionaire bad? :( Their money comes from your pockets, wake the fuck up.
https://luxurylaunches.com/transport/gabe-newell-luxury-yachts.php
Lemmy loves to shit on billionaires, until it's one they think they like.
AFAIK it falls to a lower percentage if you sell more copies. As to why I dont mind the fee as a consumer; valve invests its earnings into linux gaming and does cool shit like that. I can't remember the last time i aplauded ea or ubisoft or epic for doing something like that. Oh yeah.. it was never. Id sooner applaud Microsoft for investing into a non lucrative venture like accessible gaming accessories. But they aren't on the same playing field.. so from them, I'd expect it.
If i were a developer, I'd let valve eat the 30%. The amount of customers they bring to the table, deal with chargebacks, host the files. That shit isn't free. Epic has to take such a low amount because they don't have as many users and can't produce such sales numbers and don't have to deal with as many chargebcks and don't have to waste as much bandwidth hosting the files.
Doesn't matter if the game is on Steam or on Epic if it's a shit game.
Well, I bought FC5 for 10. It was still a rip off, but put that shit on sale and make something back.
Ubi actually makes some great games. Give Anno 1800 a shot.
When you make a trash launcher, people tend to ignore it. Who knew?
You could create the best launcher in the world and people would ignore it because they don't want multiple launchers and their library is already centralized on Steam.
Maybe.
But until there's an alternative that isn't outright disrespectful with how complete and utter dogshit it is it's hard to say that for sure.
Inertia matters. But so does the fact that no one has bothered putting the work in to not be a trainwreck.
Guillemot said the same thing in a subsequent trading update call with analysts.
So stockholders demanded it lol
I'm really starting to worry about steam. There aren't any good alternatives that seem to be hitting mainstream. Not to mention every now and then the shop gets ever so slightly worse and more spammy looking. Steam was a god send when it first launched and I'd hate to see it become what it replaced
Im not sure what you mean.
Itch.io and GOG are great alternatives.
GOG is awesome. I only get games from them.
Not to mention every now and then the shop gets ever so slightly worse and more spammy looking. Steam was a god send when it first launched and I'd hate to see it become what it replaced
Was it a godsend? I thought everybody hated it initially. And I feel like it's only got better over the years as they've added more features.
there are alternatives, but when you take shitty games (at least crippled games) and pack them into another client that also requires you to sign up, again, is it worth the effort? the games aren't worth at that point in my opinion.
"Gabe was quoted as saying, 'Yesss, another yacht for me!'"
Edit: Oh sorry, when he's our billionaire he's cool, right?
Your name contains the name gabe.
Who is bending to corporate interests NOW??
Uh, excuse me, but Gabe buys submarines thankyouverymuch
Steam getting better isn't linked to anyone becoming a billionaire. That sentiment sounds like people can't stop looking for things to blame Valve for.
Is it too difficult to accept that every single company failed in competing with Steam? I'd say they didn't even try their best (especially Epic). Must've assumed that just serving a website with a web app is all they needed to get as rich as Gabe.
Preach brother, fuck all billionaires!
