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In a recent interview with PC Gamer, Valve president Gabe Newell said the company has no plans for a game subscription service on Steam, but might work with partners to bring theirs to the platform. "I don't think it's something that we think we need to do ourselves, building a subscription service at this time," Newell said. "But for their customers it's clearly a popular option, and we'd be more than happy to work with them to get that on Steam." There is some precedent for this as EA Play, EA's subscription service, came to Steam in 2020.

More and more launchers are also dying in favour of releases on Steam. Just a few days ago, Bethesda announced it would close down its own launcher and move its games to the Steam storefront. Microsoft has also been doing this for years with their titles, but Game Pass games are still only playable through the Game Pass app on PC. If Microsoft is able to bring Game Pass to Steam in the future, it would be one step closer to consolidating all of PC gaming within Steam's ecosystem.

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[Deleted member 532471]

Valve kind of rocks

 

[LoggerMan]

Why make your own subscription service when you can take 30% of other people's subscription/streaming services.

I wonder what Valve's future really is. I think Steam will become increasingly niche and just a secondary market for PC games. A 30% cut seems way too high when Valve don't make the hardware and don't provide any frameworks for developers to make their games, unlike Apple/Nintendo/Xbox/PS. Maybe the Steam Deck is a way to rectify this but I can't see Steam Deck becoming all that popular.

 

[64bitmodels]

I wonder what Valve's future really is. I think Steam will become increasingly niche and just a secondary market for PC games.

what makes you think that????? it's the most popular games storefront and it doesn't seem to be losing steam (heh, get it?) anytime soon

 

[Clydefrosch]

isn't humble basically the steam game pass?

 

[wiiando]

Good, I don't want another glorified game rental service where you can't actually keep games.

You don't own anything with any online service, even with your steam game library, if steam ever goes down or disappears or bans your account your games are gone.

 

[the_randomizer]

You don't own anything with any online service, even with your steam game library, if steam ever goes down or disappears or bans your account your games are gone.

That's that DRM cracks are for. Digital rights management be damned.

 

[lordelan]

It's not about streaming. Well, streaming is one part of game subscription services, but Game Pass for example, while it does support streaming through xCloud, by far the most appealing aspect of it is being able to download and install games and run them locally, so you are not required to have a fast internet connection just to play a game, and you don't have to deal with the hiccups, lag and high latency from being far away from the nearest servers, or from servers being overloaded. And it gives you access to a huge selection of games for a relatively low cost. I think this is a great way to discover new games to play and if you play a wide variety of games, you get a lot of bang for your buck compared to having to buy each of those games. Steam has the largest selection of games out of any of the storefronts so an official game subscription service from Valve could offer a much wider range of games than what Game Pass offers, which would be awesome.

Ah yeah, forgot about that aspect. Fair point.

 

[subcon959]

Valve kind of rocks

That's all Gabe, I'm not convinced the company would stay that way if he ever left.

 

[LoggerMan]

what makes you think that????? it's the most popular games storefront and it doesn't seem to be losing steam (heh, get it?) anytime soon

Because things have changed a lot since their business model started. Blackberry was at the top of their game and dominated the market when the iPhone came out too. Circuit City was at the top when Amazon first started selling electronics online. Physical books were selling better than they ever had before when the Kindle was first released. Valve makes a lot of profit per employee, so they are very top heavy with their owner and operator compensation. When the ability to pay Gabe and co as much as they are used to starts eroding, what happens to Valve? What even is Valve anymore other than a digital video game storefront, too many eggs in one basket.

 

[saralucano]

honestly, I don't think it will ever happen! They have no interest in doing so.