Bethesda return to Steam with Rage 2, Doom Eternal and Fallout 76
No need to Rage over another password
Bethesda are backing down from plans to make Rage 2 and other upcoming games exclusive to their own launcher, announcing today via Twitter that they'll all be sold on Steam. Confirmed headed back to Valve's storefront is Rage 2, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, VR spinoff Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot and (most importantly) Doom Eternal. The move will be partially retroactive as well, with Fallout 76 confirmed for a Steam release "later this year", although no date has been nailed down for that yet.
Few would argue against this move. While I personally don't have much issue with having another launcher on my desktop, Bethesda have a far narrower library than on Uplay or Origin. That, and I apparently have hit the limit of passwords that my squishy human brain can remember, because I've reset my Bethesda account password almost every time I've had to use the launcher. While the games were to be exclusive to Bethesda's launcher, they were listed on many stores including Humble, GamersGate and Fanatical, with some offering steep discounts on them already.
I'm curious as to what led Bethesda to this decision. While it could be entirely due to internal forces (Fallout 76 sales impacted by leaving Steam behind, perhaps), it's not a huge leap to wonder if a deal was struck with Valve. Without any further details, any further speculation would be pointless. I'm personally just glad that all of my Doom games will be able to live together under the same ceiling once more, even if I'll need to look at upgrading to a bigger SSD to house them all. Nice as they can look, megatextures are the ultimate in hard-drive hogging technology.
A Steam store page is up now for Rage 2, with Doom Eternal, the Wolfenstein games and Fallout 76 hopefully not far behind. All Bethesda's games will still be (optionally) available on their own launcher, but it thankfully is no longer a requirement. Rage 2 launches on May 14th and costs £40/€60/$60.