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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.