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Facebook Officially Announces Gameroom, Its PC Steam Competitor (techcrunch.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the all-in-one dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: After losing mobile gaming to iOS and Android, Facebook is making a big push into playing on PC with today's developer launch of its Gameroom Windows desktop gaming platform. After months of name changes, beta tests and dev solicitation, Facebook opened up the beta build for all developers and officially named it Gameroom. The app is openly available for users to download on Windows 7 and up. Gameroom let users play web, ported mobile and native Gameroom games in a dedicated PC app free from the distractions of the News Feed. Gameroom will have to fight a steep uphill battle again Valve's Steam platform, which has well over 125 million active users, with millions actually playing at any given moment. Facebook will need to convince developers that Gameroom will share its social network's massive reach and is therefore worth their while. Then it will have to persuade gamers that a more social experience is worth diving into a new platform. If Facebook succeeds, there are plenty of potential benefits to owning a gaming destination. Facebook announced the launch and name change from "Facebook Games Arcade" today at Unity's game development platform conference. Unity 5.6 shipping next year will allow devs to export their games directly to Facebook Gameroom, as well as to the WebGL standard. Facebook's director of global games platform, Leo Olebe, touted how Facebook will feature new games in the Gameroom to give developers a leg up.

6 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Facebook is poisoned brand with gamers by sinij · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is dead on arrival, as Facebook is poisoned brand with gamers. They might attract casual Facebook gamers, Farmville and the like, but they already have these.

    1. Re:Facebook is poisoned brand with gamers by Shoten · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is dead on arrival, as Facebook is poisoned brand with gamers. They might attract casual Facebook gamers, Farmville and the like, but they already have these.

      Indeed. My first thought after reading this was, "There's no way I'm going to let those privacy-rapist cunts get their hooks into any part of my life...and Steam works just fine."

      --

      For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
    2. Re:Facebook is poisoned brand with gamers by tripleevenfall · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm sure that, as with any new FB feature, we can all expect a tidal wave of unwanted notifications and invitations soonly.

  2. Because by Luthair · · Score: 5, Insightful

    PC Gamers have had such a glowing response to EA's Origin and Ubisoft's UPlay.

  3. Sign me up! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just what the world needs.

    Another platform where you pay and pay and pay, and have zero rights post-purchase as a consumer. They don't like you? Your account goes poof, and everything in it. Business not doing so well? Servers shut down. What can you do if any of this happens? Absolutely nothing, because the EULA inevitably says "Service not guaranteed" and/or "We can disable your account for absolutely no reason at all".

  4. It will be oculus users only option by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You can be sure this is to capture more oculus exclusives and force people to use this platform to play them.