Fallout 76 has a lot to prove when deciding to leave Steam behind

Fallout 76, Bethesda’s newest Fallout title, won’t launch on Steam in September. The game will be released exclusively on the Bethesda Launcher, a platform similar to EA Origin and Ubisoft UPlay. The game will probably never make it to Steam, although we don’t have confirmation of this for now; The game Fallout Shelter also spent a large part of the time on Bethesda’s launcher before deciding to jump to Steam. But it’s just a port of a mobile game, and Fallout 76 is a game that is receiving the expectations of many gamers this year and there will certainly be quite a few gamers who will “nag” about it. the inability to purchase the game on Steam.

The reason behind this is to give Bethesda full control over its game, as well as receive full profits. Like Apple, and most other digital markets, Valve will take 30% of the revenue. But Bethesda really needs to prove a lot with Fallout 76 if they believe this is the right decision for their game.

Steam is full of convenient functions, for example, you can easily right-click on your friend’s profile and click “Join game”. Games that integrate the Steamworks network API make it easier and faster to play together than ever before, eliminating the redundancy of the past. Fallout 76 is a multiplayer game, and it will require us to create an additional list of friends to play with. If jumping into a first match with “teammates” requires more than one step compared to Steam, that will certainly affect the user experience quite a lot, especially gamers who stick with Steam.

This is the first major online game from Bethesda Game Studios the company has ever made, and the launch of these types of games is often not smooth, even for publishers named year old. Even Diablo 3 from Blizzard had a failed launch. Server stability, multi-region support, performance and tickrate… there’s a lot of work the company has to accomplish, and Steamworks includes quite a few development tools for these. Of course, a lot of developers have done it without having to depend on Steam. But it’s been a key factor in Fallout 76’s success as a multiplayer game, and the burden will now rest on Bethesda’s shoulders.

While we gamers all love the games that Bethesda has to offer, it must be admitted that the company’s games have quite a few bugs and that would be completely unacceptable in an online game. Fallout 76 won’t have a long beta – the game will go into beta in October and will be released on November 14 of this year – but hopefully that brief time will help Bethesda fix the problem. fix all serious problems

No one will care if you use hacks in Skyrim or Fallout 4. While you can get pretty much everything you want in those games, however, using these types of cheats in online games can be seen as a bit of a stretch. one of the taboos. This is an issue that Bethesda has never had to deal with before, nor will the company have the option to use the Steam VAC anti-cheat tool.

Thankfully, there are plenty of other anti-fraud services out there on the market that Bethesda can use, unless the company decides to take it all in. Either way, Bethesda will have to continually strengthen its anti-cheat system as newer versions of cheats and hacks come out, and have a system in place to patch those vulnerabilities. players abuse them.

Steam Workshop is a convenient way to download mods. But not every game can be used, forcing gamers to look to tools like Nexus Mod Manager as well as “headaches” when trying to solve compatibility issues of these mods. Bethesda has said that the company will commit to mod support for Fallout 76, but that won’t happen until after the game’s launch. If Steam Workshop isn’t an option, Bethesda would best prepare something better for players.

There’s a lot of potential here. Mod support through Bethesda’s launcher would be a great solution, providing cross-platform console support for mod creators, and even complete paid mods, with easy installation and delivery. Freeform like Steam Workshop.

But at the same time this can also lead to many pitfalls. Maybe Bethesda will decide to approve all mods, or just allow mods through something like the Creation Club, making uploads limited. This probably won’t come as a surprise for multiplayer games, but at least we should get an impressive interface from these mods.

One of Steam’s main advantages over consoles is that the system’s backend makes patching easier. This is certainly true considering the age of Xbox 360, when patching a game was slow and expensive. The console has matured over time, but Steam still makes updating games very easy, and many developers have raved about this backend tool.

In theory, one of the biggest advantages that Bethesda has when deciding to use its own launcher is that they will have full control over their product. That also means that they can and must roll out better updates in a shorter amount of time.

Over the years, Valve has made some big additions to Steam like Big Picture and the recent chat client, but those updates are often slow and infrequent. Using a launcher of its own will allow Bethesda to make quick changes based on user feedback, but also note that Bethesda’s development team cannot match Steam, a giants in the gaming industry.

Hopefully, with its own launcher Bethesda can perform well and complete this stage.

Now, Bethesda’s launcher appears to be designed as a storefront to buy the company’s titles instead of managing them. In most launchers, there is a clear distinction between the gallery interface and the store interface, with the current design of Bethesda’s launcher still not having its own gallery interface. Icons for the main titles will be displayed next to the skins window whether you own them or not. There is no way to separate what you own and what you don’t. While not a bad interface, it is quite annoying to not have the option to view my game library. Now, Bethesda’s launcher feels more like a store than anything else.

By PC Gamer