Fallout 76: Bethesda confirms to PC Gamer that it will not be on Steam at launch

Kyougar said:

Yes, we have many ecosystems, and there comes a point when you say: "You know, I don't need to add another launcher, I can skip that game."

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I get it, just saying most people don't care. The US especially is a huge consumer based culture. Just like many consume from more than one streaming content ecosystem as they too have expanded as content owners realize they can have their own.

If you want to play that game or watch a certain series a new launcher or service app won't stop the majority and it's a lot easier than having to get a new console for instance.

People who lock themselves into one ecosystem and people who refuse to engage with one no matter what are edge cases. I have friends who refuse to use steam for whatever reason, Valve is not worried about them.

Good. it will be easier to ignore that travesty named fallout.

tuxfool said:

Yeah, but those launchers weren't bloated systray apps, they were little more than a few buttons. Steam gets somewhat of a pass because of all the features that come with the bloat.

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People hated Steam early on, but eventually it became the established standard, added tons of great features, steam sales became a meme and it was well liked. Then everyone else wanted a piece of the action.

"Competition is good" is what I've been hearing since before Origin launched and now we basically live in the slippery slope arguments that people made on forums in 2011. Almost nobody has stopped using steam and moved to other services, now everyone just has 6+ clients installed with most of their library in one place except the annoying exclusive ones. Boy I'm so happy we have all this competition. My experience is so improved

Clear_Strelok said:

And there was also this:

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I wonder if this has much to do with publishers gearing their games to the service model and subsequently their platforms back to a mix of the free to play service model and subscription access model like what Origin Access has provided (or Epic on Android, or to a smaller extent the mobage/gree/enza services in Japan)

Good... I've been trying to avoid Steam.

There's also historical context that's important to understand coming into this. The only reason Steam has a perceived monopoly is because they were forced to provide a lot of amenities and convenience to fight piracy. They felt that if they could make their service more convenient and more fun than just straight up torrenting a game, that they could be successful, and they were right. I do not think that Steam is perfect (in fact I had to rebuild my categories because Steam lost them aaargh), but it grew from buggy mess to a mostly stable content-rich pro-consumer experience, and they did that out of necessity.

So if Bethesda isn't coming into it with the same mindset, then Bethesda.net is going to be a dropoff or letdown by comparison. They're introducing their service into a market where piracy has largely already been conquered by convenience, so they don't necessarily realize how much work it is to build up trust and a good relationship with a PC game enthusiast. They didn't have to fight for that. When you take your product off of Steam, and the established relationship with that userbase, then you're almost starting the battle over from scratch against piracy. So the Bethesda.net client is going to have to get much better as a client and as a service if they want to win that battle.

Origin fights against piracy by offering the Access service. What sort of amenity or promise can Bethesda make to steer people away from the easiest most convenient path (besides having FO76 phone home... but hackers could work around that).

massoluk said:

Good... I've been trying to avoid Steam.

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Yes you will have a much better experience in a client without refunds and broken social system

MattWilsonCSS said:

There's also historical context that's important to understand coming into this. The only reason Steam has a perceived monopoly is because they were forced to provide a lot of amenities and convenience to fight piracy. They felt that if they could make their service more convenient and more fun than just straight up torrenting a game, that they could be successful, and they were right. I do not think that Steam is perfect (in fact I had to rebuild my categories because Steam lost them aaargh), but it grew from buggy mess to a mostly stable content-rich pro-consumer experience, and they did that out of necessity.

So if Bethesda isn't coming into it with the same mindset, then Bethesda.net is going to be a dropoff or letdown by comparison. They're introducing their service into a market where piracy has largely already been conquered by convenience, so they don't necessarily realize how much work it is to build up trust and a good relationship with a PC game enthusiast. They didn't have to fight for that. When you take your product off of Steam, and the established relationship with that userbase, then you're almost starting the battle over from scratch against piracy. So the Bethesda.net client is going to have to get much better as a client and as a service if they want to win that battle.

Origin fights against piracy by offering the Access service. What sort of amenity or promise can Bethesda make to steer people away from the easiest most convenient path (besides having FO76 phone home... but hackers could work around that).

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I honestly don't think they are even gonna make a go of it. The launcher is completely barebones. Most things you click on just open your internet browser. No friends list, chat or any social features.

I think their plan is maximize profit from the first few months of sales then put the game on steam for another spike when sales have died down. I don't think they care to challenge steam at all as much as gain some exclusivity before caving.

massoluk said:

Good... I've been trying to avoid Steam.

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Enjoy playing your social online only game in a barebones launcher with crappy/non-existent social features and connection issues.

I predict a bomba

Doesn't bother me. I hardly use the Steam social features. I do all my voice chatting through Discord or in game. I set up a Discord server for all my friends, and we just coordinate multiplayer sessions in that chat room. Steam is great, but it doesn't bother me when games are exclusive to other launchers.

Honestly, it means I'll probably forget about it and never end up buying it.

I only remembered to buy Fallout 4 once I'd finished Xenoblade Chronicles X because I got a Steam recommendation for it in the Steam Store and impulse bought it.

I'd probably still have never played it otherwise.

guess i wont buy it then!

I don't see a problem. I already have a handful so what's one more? And it's fun for variation. I love Steam and I love uPlay, so more the better.

Ryna said:

Enjoy playing your social online only game in a barebones launcher with crappy/non-existent social features and connection issues.

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BernardoOne said:

Yes you will have a much better experience in a client without refunds and broken social system

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Yo, I don't use social system at all. Locking yourself to just Steam is really backward thinking. I shouldn't say "good" in my original post, more correctly, I should say I'm glad I don't have to lock myself to Steam to get a new game.

If Bethesda server croak, it's doesn't matter if you had it on Steam or not anyway

Sad a about the launch wars. I have more faith in steam working in the next 20 years than Bethesda giving support.

Fernando said:

guess i wont buy it then!

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I love this attitude. It's the antithesis of what PC gaming should be.

Steam has some great user-facing features (such as Big Picture, controller remapping, curation) but its social and backend features are so, so outdated. Steamworks was....good....in 2007 when it launched, as its only real competition was XBox 360-era Live. It took Steam over a decade to release even a marginal update to the Friends experience (which just premiered the other week). In the meantime, Discord, XBL, and PSN have all leapfrogged it.

When is the last time clicking on a friend and choosing "View Game Info" provided anything of value to you? When was the last time you hit "Join Game" on a friend on Steam and it worked seamlessly? How you seen how useless their implementation of voice chat is?

Valve rested on its laurels after Portal 2, content to skim 30% off the top of everybody else's games while pumping out marginal content updates to DOTA 2 and CS:GO. Now the chickens are coming home to roost as the biggest games are leaving Steam in droves. Overwatch, Destiny 2, Battlefield, and now Fallout will be on other services. Ubi Soft is still using Steam as a way to backdoor uPlay installs, otherwise it would pull its games too. This should be a wake up call to Valve, letting them know they need to actually compete again.

Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

Clear_Strelok said:

I posted about it last page:



And there was also this:

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Is ESO on Bethesda's own backend? That's the part I'm most nervous about to be quite honest.

Tenck said:

Understand what? I've been on steam since 2007 and have no problems downloading another launcher.

I've got 777 games on steam by the way.

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well, maybe you are satisfied with having multiple launchers on your PC, but some of us other PC gamer's aren't. I enjoy all my 3'000+ games on one launcher.

Guess I won't be getting this one. Unless humble bundle features it i guess.

Akronis said:

Because I don't want to install 5 different launchers to manage my games.

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Then be like me and cut out ones like Origin or Battle.net.

Admodieus said:

I love this attitude. It's the antithesis of what PC gaming should be.

Steam has some great user-facing features (such as Big Picture, controller remapping, curation) but its social and backend features are so, so outdated. Steamworks was....good....in 2007 when it launched, as its only real competition was XBox 360-era Live. It took Steam over a decade to release even a marginal update to the Friends experience (which just premiered the other week). In the meantime, Discord, XBL, and PSN have all leapfrogged it.

When is the last time clicking on a friend and choosing "View Game Info" provided anything of value to you? When was the last time you hit "Join Game" on a friend on Steam and it worked seamlessly? How you seen how useless their implementation of voice chat is?

Valve rested on its laurels after Portal 2, content to skim 30% off the top of everybody else's games while pumping out marginal content updates to DOTA 2 and CS:GO. Now the chickens are coming home to roost as the biggest games are leaving Steam in droves. Overwatch, Destiny 2, Battlefield, and now Fallout will be on other services. Ubi Soft is still using Steam as a way to backdoor uPlay installs, otherwise it would pull its games too. This should be a wake up call to Valve, letting them know they need to actually compete again.

Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

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I agree Valve needs to update Steam it's such an outdated POS

but they haven't been doing that lately because their 'competition' are all barebones low-effort DRM tray icons
the only ones that actually have features are GOG and Origin and they're still lightyears behind Steam

They can do whatever they want, it's their game but from a consumer perspective, having multiple clients/accounts is very annoying.

Admodieus said:

I love this attitude. It's the antithesis of what PC gaming should be.

Steam has some great user-facing features (such as Big Picture, controller remapping, curation) but its social and backend features are so, so outdated. Steamworks was....good....in 2007 when it launched, as its only real competition was XBox 360-era Live. It took Steam over a decade to release even a marginal update to the Friends experience (which just premiered the other week). In the meantime, Discord, XBL, and PSN have all leapfrogged it.

When is the last time clicking on a friend and choosing "View Game Info" provided anything of value to you? When was the last time you hit "Join Game" on a friend on Steam and it worked seamlessly? How you seen how useless their implementation of voice chat is?

Valve rested on its laurels after Portal 2, content to skim 30% off the top of everybody else's games while pumping out marginal content updates to DOTA 2 and CS:GO. Now the chickens are coming home to roost as the biggest games are leaving Steam in droves. Overwatch, Destiny 2, Battlefield, and now Fallout will be on other services. Ubi Soft is still using Steam as a way to backdoor uPlay installs, otherwise it would pull its games too. This should be a wake up call to Valve, letting them know they need to actually compete again.

Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

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Never ever had a issue clicking joining game, and the voice chat works fine. Seems also pretty silly thing to bring up when no one else has dony any better tbh. Like, have you actually looked at the Bethesda launcher? That fucking thing has a worse friend system than Steam had 10 years ago. Shit like Battle.net still hasn't figured out international friends list.

Like, there's not a single PC game client that is even remotely close to Steam in any functionality.

Things I love: Games not being on Steam
Things I hate: Games being on one of like 2 dozen, publisher-specific launchers

I wish we could go back to every game just launching from a god damned executable on your PC, but now that game publishers know they can package games with their marketing/ecommerce software to a captive audience, there's no going back. This is one of the multitude of reasons why I'm absolutely jaded by and actively avoiding AAA gaming for the last couple years.

That said when TES 6 eventually drops Bethesda can put a fucking microchip under my skin I don't even give a damn, so fuck me, right?

Yeah I'm for a true competitor to Steam but that's not what Bethesda.net's launcher is going to be.

A true competitor would have to come from someone with no skin in the game as a publisher. Someone without a conflict of interest.

Admodieus said:

I love this attitude. It's the antithesis of what PC gaming should be.

Steam has some great user-facing features (such as Big Picture, controller remapping, curation) but its social and backend features are so, so outdated. Steamworks was....good....in 2007 when it launched, as its only real competition was XBox 360-era Live. It took Steam over a decade to release even a marginal update to the Friends experience (which just premiered the other week). In the meantime, Discord, XBL, and PSN have all leapfrogged it.

When is the last time clicking on a friend and choosing "View Game Info" provided anything of value to you? When was the last time you hit "Join Game" on a friend on Steam and it worked seamlessly? How you seen how useless their implementation of voice chat is?

Valve rested on its laurels after Portal 2, content to skim 30% off the top of everybody else's games while pumping out marginal content updates to DOTA 2 and CS:GO. Now the chickens are coming home to roost as the biggest games are leaving Steam in droves. Overwatch, Destiny 2, Battlefield, and now Fallout will be on other services. Ubi Soft is still using Steam as a way to backdoor uPlay installs, otherwise it would pull its games too. This should be a wake up call to Valve, letting them know they need to actually compete again.

Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

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Preach it brother, so much talking down to people who have been PC gaming for so long and understand what "open platform" actually means, which is people like us

New programs, new applications, fractured ecosystem and different options, some games here, some games there, that's always been part of the experience. PC gaming is ever changing. The people who want Steam now and Steam forever "just wait for more improvements on Steam" is literally the anti-PC demagoguery nonsense that we don't need.

Just don't need that shiz, I can't believe PC gamers are getting up in arms about competing programs, like they forget how good PC gaming is now compared to what it used to be, and on top of that think that somehow restricting it and making Steam releases a requirement for PC is a GOOD thing, lmao!

potatohead said:

Preach it brother, so much talking down to people who have been PC gaming for so long and understand what "open platform" actually means, which is people like us

New programs, new applications, fractured ecosystem and different options, some games here, some games there, that's always been part of the experience

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You're arguing for lack of options tho

The increasing amount of shitty launchers and other PC gaming tomfoolery is a big part of why I went back to console.

Just wanna hit download and then play my games when they're done. Do not have any more patience for any more extra steps to get there. Minor or not, it adds up.

potatohead said:

Preach it brother, so much talking down to people who have been PC gaming for so long and understand what "open platform" actually means, which is people like us

New programs, new applications, fractured ecosystem and different options, some games here, some games there, that's always been part of the experience.

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It's always been part of the experience if you've only been PC gaming since Windows XP. In the MS-DOS days, games were a hassle to set up but they weren't on proprietary services.

BernardoOne said:

You're arguing for lack of options tho

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You're arguing for Steam stealing a piece of every PC gaming pie, tho.

We could go in circles. You don't understand what PC gaming is if you think it is games on every digital distribution platform. That's not what it is. That's not open. That's extra regulations and requirements that developers have to adhere to. At some point it's too much.

Companies have a right to try to tailor their own experience. That's what open platform means. Publishers and developers getting the chance, for better or worse (obviously in your opinion worse), try something that is not mainstream.

And the fact you guys think this is a weakness of PC gaming is fucking alarming as fuck.

MattWilsonCSS said:

It's always been part of the experience if you've only been PC gaming since Windows XP. In the MS-DOS days, games were a hassle to set up but they weren't on proprietary services.

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Yea about the time the internet took off that companies had the opportunity to do more than give you more than CDs and a CD key for installation. Or your games came on god damn floppy disks.

Yea, past the dark ages. Definitely want to go back to that shit.

I love how people against this idea keep responding to me instead of the ten other people also saying this is fine. Have another circular conversation with someone else please.

Admodieus said:

I love this attitude. It's the antithesis of what PC gaming should be.

Steam has some great user-facing features (such as Big Picture, controller remapping, curation) but its social and backend features are so, so outdated. Steamworks was....good....in 2007 when it launched, as its only real competition was XBox 360-era Live. It took Steam over a decade to release even a marginal update to the Friends experience (which just premiered the other week). In the meantime, Discord, XBL, and PSN have all leapfrogged it.

When is the last time clicking on a friend and choosing "View Game Info" provided anything of value to you? When was the last time you hit "Join Game" on a friend on Steam and it worked seamlessly? How you seen how useless their implementation of voice chat is?

Valve rested on its laurels after Portal 2, content to skim 30% off the top of everybody else's games while pumping out marginal content updates to DOTA 2 and CS:GO. Now the chickens are coming home to roost as the biggest games are leaving Steam in droves. Overwatch, Destiny 2, Battlefield, and now Fallout will be on other services. Ubi Soft is still using Steam as a way to backdoor uPlay installs, otherwise it would pull its games too. This should be a wake up call to Valve, letting them know they need to actually compete again.

Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

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Preach it, bro.

bullshit arguments

if you guys REALLY supported open PC platforms you'd want Bethesda to put the game on Steam AND Bethesda Launcher for more options
but since Bethesda wants that 30% cut they're not doing it at launch

potatohead said:

Yea about the time the internet took off that companies had the opportunity to do more than give you more than CDs and a CD key for installation. Or your games came on god damn floppy disks.

Yea, past the dark ages. Definitely want to go back to that shit.

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You just tried to True Scotsman when you're relatively a babby with PC gaming. You probably haven't even had a turbo button on your PC!!!! Or dialed into Prodigy....

or played one of Moraff's garbage shareware games

AfropunkNyc said:

build a decent library of games on a platform you owned for more than 5 or 6 years and then you will understand.

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Meh, I have a lot of games on Steam. But I'll still get a game on Origin or whatever else if I can't get it on Steam. I get it though, but not everyone feels that way.

MattWilsonCSS said:

You just tried to True Scotsman when you're relatively a babby with PC gaming. You probably haven't even had a turbo button on your PC!!!!

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Puhlease I turboe'd that 133 mhz to 166 mhz for Tib Sun.

Don't give me that shit :D

(And it still ran like shiteee)

Not surprising at all. The big publishers are all going to be ditching steam eventually.

BernardoOne said:

Yes you will have a much better experience in a client without refunds and broken social system

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Refunds don't really have anything to do w/ the client does it? I can use Steam all day long but if the place I purchased the Steam key from does not offer refunds I'm SOL. Or am I wrong?

potatohead said:

Puhlease I turboe'd that 133 mhz to 166 mhz for Tib Sun.

Don't give me that shit :D

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Like for me, open doesn't mean Steam or Bethesda.net. Open is being able to not be tethered to anything other than the operating system. I get what you mean by your definition of open platform, that Windows is open to the point where Bethesda can launch their own service. But for me, the most open is DRM-Free.. so FO76 is definitely not going to count in that regard, as it will be online-only for sure.

And when I think about a competitor to Steam, I wouldn't expect it from a third party publisher that specifically breaks away from Steam. I'd want it to be a new face entirely.

CountAntonius said:

I honestly don't think they are even gonna make a go of it. The launcher is completely barebones. Most things you click on just open your internet browser. No friends list, chat or any social features.

I think their plan is maximize profit from the first few months of sales then put the game on steam for another spike when sales have died down. I don't think they care to challenge steam at all as much as gain some exclusivity before caving.

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Agree with this. They can reap all Day 1 sales without giving that 30% cut to Valve, then open it up when sales die down. I takes years and years to get a service even to a basic level of competence and they probably know this.

potatohead said:

You're arguing for Steam stealing a piece of every PC gaming pie, tho.

We could go in circles. You don't understand what PC gaming is if you think it is games on every digital distribution platform. That's not what it is. That's not open. That's extra regulations and requirements that developers have to adhere to. At some point it's too much.

Companies have a right to try to tailor their own experience. That's what open platform means. Publishers and developers getting the chance, for better or worse (obviously in your opinion worse), try something that is not mainstream.

And the fact you guys think this is a weakness of PC gaming is fucking alarming as fuck.Yea about the time the internet took off that companies had the opportunity to do more than give you more than CDs and a CD key for installation. Or your games came on god damn floppy disks.

Yea, past the dark ages. Definitely want to go back to that shit.

I love how people against this idea keep responding to me instead of the ten other people also saying this is fine. Have another circular conversation with someone else please.

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Or maybe you havent been playing on PC long enough.
Yeah, me too I love another client just for the sake of it. Even though it's a a barebone one.

LiQuid! said:

That said when TES 6 eventually drops Bethesda can put a fucking microchip under my skin I don't even give a damn, so fuck me, right?

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This right here is what every content owner knows. At the end of the day content rules. Platform features are nice to have but most are there for the content. It's always been that way.

They know they can capture most people with one game. That's all they need. Universal apps like discord make the need for social integration less important. Basically people will sacrifice to experience what they perceive as good content.

I remember downloading the Epic launcher years ago to try the beta of the latest Unreal Tournament and that thing was barely an application lol.

I'm not sure how improved it is now but I'm sure it's nowhere near as feature rich as other PC launchers.

Yet Fortnite is huge.

From a development standpoint it can be tricky. No one is going green light ramping up a team to add features to a platform or launcher with limited users.

Admodieus said:

Join Game

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About 8 hours ago. Wife did it though and she doesn't play games =p. Also I do it when playing the forest with friends.
I guess it helps to have people playing similar games or games in general for that feature to be viewed as valuable to you.
I also don't browse the store page, most of my finding news games is via the activity feed. I also checked friends profiles to see what they playing if anything new.

MattWilsonCSS said:

Like for me, open doesn't mean Steam or Bethesda.net. Open is being able to not be tethered to anything other than the operating system. I get what you mean by your definition of open platform, that Windows is open to the point where Bethesda can launch their own service. But for me, the most open is DRM-Free.. so FO76 is definitely not going to count in that regard, as it will be online-only for sure.

And when I think about a competitor to Steam, I wouldn't expect it from a third party publisher that specifically breaks away from Steam. I'd want it to be a new face entirely.

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Agree in that interpretation of open it is definitely not.

There are certainly varying degrees of open. For example a lot of Linux gamers aren't huge fans of Steam because it means adding a drm station to a wildly open and open source platform.

And I think that is pretty noble of them, obviously it limits their games options however. But valuing the platform like that isn't a bad thing. Certainly using PC as a platform for gaming through Windows is a more commercial approach but again PC gaming gives you the option.

GhostTrick said:

Or maybe you havent been playing on PC long enough.
Yeah, me too I love another client just for the sake of it. Even though it's a a barebone one.

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Then don't play the game.

You don't have the right to play every game exactly how you want it. Sorry but that's life. 1st world problems and shit.

I honestly don't give a shit about this game, but I do give a shit about what PC gaming means to me and it certainly isn't about tying everything down to Steam. Hell to the no. PC gaming is a free for all and better for it.

Everyone is just talking in terms of the view and choice of the user, which is narrow minded. Because lacking choices for the publisher and developers will lead to less choice for users later.

Which is fucked up. The publishers and developers play just as equal a role in the health of PC gaming and their ability to not only do what was done before is important. I'm sorry so few people see that.

Nothing is stopping FO76 from coming to Steam if they want to release it there in the future. But that's Bethesda's choice and I'm sorry but users have to respect that and stop only thinking about diversity and choice in PC gaming realm as just a narrowminded and egotistical view.

PC gaming sucks if games have to release on Steam. Full stop.

potatohead said:

You're arguing for Steam stealing a piece of every PC gaming pie, tho.

We could go in circles. You don't understand what PC gaming is if you think it is games on every digital distribution platform. That's not what it is. That's not open. That's extra regulations and requirements that developers have to adhere to. At some point it's too much.

Companies have a right to try to tailor their own experience. That's what open platform means. Publishers and developers getting the chance, for better or worse (obviously in your opinion worse), try something that is not mainstream.

And the fact you guys think this is a weakness of PC gaming is fucking alarming as fuck.Yea about the time the internet took off that companies had the opportunity to do more than give you more than CDs and a CD key for installation. Or your games came on god damn floppy disks.

Yea, past the dark ages. Definitely want to go back to that shit.

I love how people against this idea keep responding to me instead of the ten other people also saying this is fine. Have another circular conversation with someone else please.

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I'm arguing for actual options, something g you to be extremely against for some weird reason while pretending to care about "openess".
If you actually gave a shit about options you would be for them to release it on every store possible and actually give consumers a proper choice, promoting actual competition.

potatohead said:

Agree in that interpretation of open it is definitely not.

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Alright then we're cool.

I know I'm the only one pushing this but I still would worry about giving Bethesda my payment info mostly because I don't know that I can trust them to keep their shit secure. I love their games, I loved Prey, but BGS makes buggy games that need more time in the oven, and if we extend that to the client... buh. If I were to buy the game for PC I'd probably buy it from a retail store even if it's just a code in a box, so that I don't have to fret about a data breach.

potatohead said:

Preach it brother, so much talking down to people who have been PC gaming for so long and understand what "open platform" actually means, which is people like us

New programs, new applications, fractured ecosystem and different options, some games here, some games there, that's always been part of the experience. PC gaming is ever changing. The people who want Steam now and Steam forever "just wait for more improvements on Steam" is literally the anti-PC demagoguery nonsense that we don't need.

Just don't need that shiz, I can't believe PC gamers are getting up in arms about competing programs, like they forget how good PC gaming is now compared to what it used to be, and on top of that think that somehow restricting it and making Steam releases a requirement for PC is a GOOD thing, lmao!

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Steam has the best features so I want it on Steam. Now if you are gonna tell me it's just gonna be an executable I can put on a desktop and be done with fine but it's not. It's yet another crappy launcher that adds zero benefit to me the gamer. This is not about being against having more options it's about being forced to constantly use inferior ones when something much better already exists.

Good for them. I hope more developers of big games can do the same, and we get to the point where smaller and smaller developers aren't as dependent on hoping their games don't get buried in some poorly curated storefront while they give away a big chunk of the profits from their hard work.

Admodieus said:

I love this attitude. It's the antithesis of what PC gaming should be.

Steam has some great user-facing features (such as Big Picture, controller remapping, curation) but its social and backend features are so, so outdated. Steamworks was....good....in 2007 when it launched, as its only real competition was XBox 360-era Live. It took Steam over a decade to release even a marginal update to the Friends experience (which just premiered the other week). In the meantime, Discord, XBL, and PSN have all leapfrogged it.

When is the last time clicking on a friend and choosing "View Game Info" provided anything of value to you? When was the last time you hit "Join Game" on a friend on Steam and it worked seamlessly? How you seen how useless their implementation of voice chat is?

Valve rested on its laurels after Portal 2, content to skim 30% off the top of everybody else's games while pumping out marginal content updates to DOTA 2 and CS:GO. Now the chickens are coming home to roost as the biggest games are leaving Steam in droves. Overwatch, Destiny 2, Battlefield, and now Fallout will be on other services. Ubi Soft is still using Steam as a way to backdoor uPlay installs, otherwise it would pull its games too. This should be a wake up call to Valve, letting them know they need to actually compete again.

Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

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Because no one else takes 30%.
Call me the day someone seriously competes feature wise and then you'll have a point. Because everything you wrote is pointless at the very moment no publisher is actually competing on price nor features... But just making a game exclusive to a launcher.

Even though I do believe it'll release later, since it seems to be an online focused game.
Other SP titles from Bethesda are still releasing on Steam, such as Wolfenstein II Youngblood.

Complicated said:

Good for them. I hope more developers of big games can do the same, and we get to the point where smaller and smaller developers aren't as dependent on hoping their games don't get buried in some poorly curated storefront while they give away a big chunk of the profits from their hard work.

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Me too, I hope we get back to the old days (or console today) where indies cant release a game without a publisher, while still giving away a "big chunk of their profits" (aka 30%, which every plateform does but whatever).
I know, let's just ask some indie devs about releasing games on these good curated platforms such as GOG.
I'm sure Assault Android Cactus dev or Cook Serve Delicious dev were really happy to either get a no or zero answer at all when they wanted to sell their game and make money from their hard work.

Good, Valve's monopoly has gone on long enough, and Steam hasn't been a decent client in ages. If this trend continues with other companies, hopefully it'll be the overdue wakeup call Valve has needed for years.