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Facebook Teams Up With Unity To Create a Gaming Platform To Rival Steam (betanews.com)
Facebook is now shifting its attention back to capturing the gaming market. The company said Thursday that it's working with game engine Unity to build a dedicated, downloadable desktop gaming platform. The social juggernaut added that it is also broadening the Facebook.com experience for gamers. BetaNews reports: Facebook is starting to take gaming far more seriously. Not content with funneling the likes of Candy Crush through its servers, the social network is now joining forces with the company behind the Unity game engine to create its own desktop gaming platform. The aim is to tap into not only the millions of gamers that are already on Facebook, but also to gather more from the PC-gaming community. It's a new venture that very clearly treads on the toes of Steam, and is likely to cause ripples in the gaming world. The scope of the work between Facebook and Unity Technologies is quite wide. It will bring together Unity's 2D, 3D, VR and AR development platform with Facebook's own game development tools. While Facebook is currently associated with very casual gaming, hooking up with an established serious player in the field means we're likely to see the social network appealing more to hardcore gamers.
Farmville on every platform!
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Don't want.
-Glorious PC Master Race
Like when Facebook had games and eventually took over all the ad space the developers had to finance their games?
Like when they suddenly banned all their developers from billing their own customers?
Like when they were giving away facebook credits and making developers pick up the tab?
For some reason I think I'll give this a big ol' pass.
You'd have to be pretty dumb at this point to think Facebook wouldn't steal all the profit.
Any venture that is based on trust will ultimately fail when facebook is involved. They squandered the trust of users a very long time go.
Besides the fact that Unity is going to join up with them, isn't this already available now? Personally, I still use GOG whenever possible as they have my respect for not crippling games with DRM.
It's all well and good that they want to try, but they've got several factors working against them:
1. Facebook is already synonymous with casual Bejeweled clones and management timesinks
2. Unity is known mostly as a cheap engine for middling-to-low tier casual games and a few indies
3. They simply don't have the library
Number 3 is what will hurt them the most. As it stands, Steam's got a massive library of titles including the latest & greatest as well as loads of classic games. Unless Facebook plans to tap some big name developers to create exclusive content for their platform, most people aren't going to stop using Steam/Origin/Battle.net for their games. And even then, if people actually wanted it, most games already have facebook integration crap anyway.
Unity seemed alright until this. The very last thing I want in the digital world is Facebook anything. Just replace "Facebook" with "spyware/adware" and you have a much clearer picture of what it actually is.
There goes Unity. It has been fun while it lasted.
Look forward to getting interrupted gaming by an advert :)
Hahahahah
Good luck with that. If there's one thing Facebook does not comprehend it's the hardcore gaming market. Steam and social media are not the same thing. Gamers aren't into social media. Gamers don't desire Farmville, they don't want microtransactions every 5 seconds, and they damn sure don't want your shitty ads inserted into their experience or their mom interrupting their session with a new wall update.
Trying to compete with actual gamers (Steam) in their own market is going to end up an embarrassing spectacle that will only screw over the poor fools that actually invest in the service during the 4 years that it will operate.
Why should they bother? They've got this golden goose that makes them boat loads of cash and they have to do literally nothing to rake it all in. Have you ever looked at the failed abortion that is Greenlight? They don't give even the tiniest fuck that it's filled to the brim with absolute shit and that the shit is leaking into the main catalog.
Still, even with as much as Steam and Valve suck, a FB run gaming platform will be worse. I suppose it'd be curated, at the very least. But FB hates its users and will kick them in the teeth in every way they can and the users will keep coming back for more.
Why do people willingly sign up to a multilevel marketing company? It's absurd.
I barely use facebook as it is and am vehemently opposed to the data scraping and such it does for everything that is put on their servers. I'll be damned if I'm going to let them datamine my gaming habits too. At least with Steam it seems they categorize and time, "You like FPS's? RPGs? you might like these..." and reviews note time played. Beyond that, they don't care.
I can only imagine what sort of crap Facebook will add in the name of "features" for this sort of thing.
I just want to point out that Facebook does have a 'real' game studio now with published titles and many more in the pipeline. Further they have John Carmack and Abrash in-house. Love or hate Facebook, they now have to tools to make some extraordinary moves in gaming. We are way beyond Farmville here. This is a big announcement.
Good-bye
What he ^ said. Plus we have alternatives to Steam, but they have proven that even EA and Ubisoft cant do a better job than valve, as Origin and Uplay are synonymous with garbage.
Why should they bother?
Same reason StarCraft 2 has Facebook integration: Facebook's product are the idiots it tricks into using the service and people say a lot of things in online games. That depth of conversation is a huge amount of insight into people for them to analyze, package and sell to the governments and marketing agencies of the world.
If nothing else, at least Steam doesn't start with the giant pile of user data to enthusiastically tie to whatever abortion of a 'gaming platform' they end up rolling out.
Steam has certainly made strong attempts to add 'social' to the basic buying-games process; but it remains an afterthought. Facebook is likely to make it so exciting and mandatory that it'll make Google's attempt to ram 'plus' down the throat of every user of anything remotely connected to them look like a gentle suggestion.
Dammit. I like Unity a *lot* and it is very handy to have around for fun and experiments. FBook snapping it up sucks, I don't want their hooks in my hobbies.
There's value in having all your games on a single distribution platform, and I'm already annoyed by having to put up with Origin and UPlay. Adding another crappy little distribution platform is not going to help anyone but maybe Facebook.
facebook has done a good job of destroying user trust, so i don't think people are looking to become more entwined with them than they already are. it's one thing to betray users when you have a leading platform and people are being to driven to rely on you but it's quite another to be known as betraying users when you are trying to build a new platform.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
There have actually been a lot of competitors in this space. EA dropped Steam in favour of Origin, and of course MS is pushing the app store. So far though, Steam has been the top dog, likely in part because they offer the best service (note I won't say perfect service, as they still have issues, but still a lot better than the competition). Steam has also made progress is offering more features, such as the ability to play games from a non-logged-in account on an authorised PC (with a different account logged in).
Their "consoles" don't seem to be making huge headway, but the Steam platform itself I expect will be going strong for some time now.
...before I will ever use any Facebook service. Ever.
please don't insult garbage as it can be useful. Origin is probably more like a disease infected lethally radioactive anal probe. I am sure more apt analogies can be made.
Sure bring on the competition, it will be a good for Steam. I'd prefer a third party but we all know by now that capitalism devolves to a dual monopoly. Facebook will be the Microsoft of the online gaming world, and Steam will be the Apple.
But, I need to log into Facebook to play a game? They already want me to log in to post comments on news articles, to participate in the local railroad club or RPG community, or increasingly to gain access to assorted websites. They want Facebook to be the "universal login to the internet." I can swallow logging into Steam, because they don't have their slimy tentacles connected to everything else.
So nope, I won't play. Gaming is not that important to me, and I certainly don't need TWO Steams eating my hard disk and chugging CPU cycles.
Google is intrusive enough but somehow they don't feel as skanky as Facebook. Google is an over-eager octopus, but Facebook crosses the line into hentai. In theory they are the same thing and I should be equally concerned with both, but they sure don't feel the same. Maybe it's Zuckerberg's smarmy grin.
Why should they bother? They've got this golden goose that makes them boat loads of cash and they have to do literally nothing to rake it all in. Have you ever looked at the failed abortion that is Greenlight? They don't give even the tiniest fuck that it's filled to the brim with absolute shit and that the shit is leaking into the main catalog.
Yeah - I gotta admit there have been MANY times I've longed for a search filter that would either filter OUT "Indie Games" or filter to ONLY "AAA Titles".
I have no problem with indie games being out there. I understand many people like them and that's great - I just would like to be able to narrow down my shopping experience to keep things focused on the types of games I want to play.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
When you consider that facebook has taken steps to force more ads on their users despite knowing that users don't want them and will actively go out of their way to reduce them, I wouldn't trust them.
Facebook also changes users settings very often. Just one small example, I have to reset my feed back to newest first on average 3 times a day, and that's not the only setting they screw with, though the others are either less frequently, or I don't notice it as often. Because of that, I wouldn't trust them.
Their platform isn't as stable or concise as it might appear to a single use as they 'test' different components on different uses, and don't tell anyone what version of which component they have. This would be horrible in a store platform, so I wouldn't trust them.
Facebook has done social/psych experiments on the users without their knowledge or permission. Though it may have been useful to some segments of science, it still was inappropriate and is a further violation of trust, so obviously, I wouldn't trust them.
The long and the short of it is that Facebook can't be trusted.
A store platform by a company that has ethics as low as Facebook should be trusted even less as that deals with your money.
This is likely to be a disaster in the making.
In a perfect world, game developers would make the best games they could and sell directly to the player via open source software and hardware platforms. No Xbox/Sony gatekeeping, no Steam/Origin/FB middleman. Just the developers and the players.
One can dream...
My favorite game is "Luddite Quest 2: The App of Truth"
Valve has good marketing, and a halfway decent implementation. Origin and Uplay have absolutely horrid implementations and treat their customers like crap. So you just need something else with a halfware decent implementation and some marketing. The snag comes when these platforms try to be exclusive platforms, as most users aren't going to deal with multiple accounts much.
GOG is decent as a competitor I think. But most of their marketing comes from email, as you don't need anything from GOG as a launcher. Steam pops up the ads in your face and many if it's games require using its launcher. I suspect if Facebook gets this going it will be even more mandatory to use its launcher than even Steam. But competition is good.
As long as FB maintains their real name policy, FB integration is a deal breaker for pretty much anything with me.
Now Valve will be punished for SteamOS and Vulkan.
Microsoft doing what it does best: leveraging monopoly influence.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Soandso has asked you for more gems in Team Fortress Facebook Edition!
nope nope nope nopity nope
I can't wait to hear the rant Tim Sweeney goes on when he hears this. The only gaming store he hasn't insinuated is evil is Steam, and that's probably because he knows that's a loosing battle. I wonder how much money Epic has spent to develop their Epic Games Launcher.
In that case be patient and look up specials and bundles, buy old games cheap enough and you don't care they clutter up you library with the bundle of fun games in there as well. So many games, just so many, games and so little time. The trick is to buy ten to twenty at a time on the bug sales, spending what you would for just a couple triple A bug ridden new releases (buying late means much fewer bugs, let the over eager pay through the nose to be bug testers), independent, old must finally bug free triple A and you escape the all to frequent lies of paid for reviews (witcher 3 being the best/worst example of scammy reviews), or paying top dollar for crap, rather than a few dollars as a meh experiment. Steam won by being cheap and having lots of titles and keeping those old titles alive. M$ died in games because they purposefully killed old games to try to force people to buy new ones, not one M$ game I own is still capable of running, not one, all purposefully broken by M$ with no fixes (I have not bought a M$ branded game for years nor will I ever).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
What he ^ said. Plus we have alternatives to Steam, but they have proven that even EA and Ubisoft cant do a better job than valve, as Origin and Uplay are synonymous with garbage.
"UPlay!" - No you don't. You log in three times and then it crashes.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Yeah, Greenlight is a bit of a sad case. The idea is good -- let gamers vote for the games they like and hopefully prevent developers from sinking a buttload of money into a dud -- but it definitely didn't pan out.
And in retrospect, I'm not sure it really could pan out. It relies on people judging games based purely on hype and pre-release screenshots (that may or may not even still be recognizable in the final game.)
Beyond just Greenlight though, I'm happy that they've been adding a wider range of games to the service. It would definitely be a bonus if the search and suggestion features were updated to handle the extra breadth but generally speaking, I don't mind skipping over a bunch of extra crap if it means finding a gem that I otherwise wouldn't have ever heard of.