Valve’s Steamworks SDK is now available.
This gives developers access to all the gubbins that goes on in Steam, for free, to enormously aid development. Valve explain the features it offers:
“These include product key authentication, copy protection, auto-updating, social networking, matchmaking, anti-cheat technology, and more. The features and services available in Steamworks are offered free of charge and may be used for both electronic and tangible versions of games.”
Of course it also means that Valve get more games on Steam, and greater ubiquity, and will eventually take over the universe. Them or Google. And we, their willing subjects, seem pretty fine with this. I mean, once we thought it would be Microsoft. Brrrrr.
Obligatory quote from the press release, from Jason Holtman, Valve’s director of business development:
“In working with developers on the pre-release SDK, our focus has been on making it as easy as possible for them to integrate Steamworks into their games. They get access to these tools and services in a proven, scalable, and simple to work with package that has already been deployed to millions of gamers worldwide.”
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Kadayi, very briefly, because I really don’t think I need to go into the specifics for obvious reasons:
Putting your faith in EA to handle how your games are played is simply not an acceptable contingency plan. You are right, someone big would buy Steam up, but it would be the person with the most money looking to make the most money, not the person who wanted to continue or preserve Valve’s legacy and ethos.
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What KillahInstinct says seems to fit in with how I would see Valve doing it, provided they weren’t sucked in by the lure of a phat buyout.
The point is not that EA would buy up Valve and Steam, in the event of unforeseen bankruptcy disaster, it’s that someone would, and whomever did such at thing isn’t going to piss off 15 million PC gamers by flicking an off switch overnight saying ‘bye bye Steam’ Sure they might well decide to wind Steam down or replace it with their own system, but in doing so they’d have to tie up the loose ends accordingly, for both gamers and publishers using the service (think of the lawsuits).
They’d do what the hell they want with it, screw up in some big way and kill off whichever part of it was costing them the most. They’d probably shove in a shitload more adverts, and they’d almost certainly overflood Steam’s market with shouty EA product advertising and drown out all the indy games that Valve have been so good and selfless in promoting.
Back on topic, if it looked like people were playing old Valve games more than new EA games, I wouldn’t be surprised if they would look to pull the plug sooner rather than later. This would cost them bandwidth and I can’t see how they’d get these games making money unless they stuffed it to the gills with advertising. I’m sure they’d keep Steam, but that doesn’t mean they’d have to keep supporting Valve games if they weren’t somehow making money.
Either way we’d lose.
Reply to Crispy
And if the earth fell into a black hole…
@ Crispy
The only way legitimately to play Halflife 2 is with Steam, so odds that EA would pull the plug on the life support without warning and with the entire worlds gaming press likely to jump on their backs forever as a result, is beyond the realms of paranoid delusion. Seriously, see beyond the EA hate for once….