Now and then the exclusive game discussion pops up, because someone thinks it would be a good idea to lock games to a platform. Here we go again.
This time the culprit is PCGamesN in an article titled "The Steam Deck is missing an important element – exclusives". Respectfully, I thoroughly disagree and think exclusive games are ludicrous and anti-consumer due to the very nature of them being exclusionary.
While their article touches on an important bit: games taking better advantage of the Steam Deck uniqueness directly, and personally I do think developers should spend a little more time ensuring gamepad support is top-quality at release, along with text and UI scaling at a minimum — exclusives are just bad and I don't want them on Steam Deck. Valve developers clearly feel similarly.
Here's my full reply on the subject:
Direct Link
If you can't currently watch the video above here's the gist of it:
The Steam Deck is built on an open platform, with tons of open source and Valve pays a ton of open source developers. It’s not locked to anything, has a full desktop mode and you can install stuff from other stores. Heck you can even throw Windows on it if you really want to.
The only reason for exclusives is to pull people away from other platforms and try to lock them in, exclusives are anti-consumer. Look at what Epic games do, it’s to pull people directly away from Steam. Sony does it with their exclusives to pull people away from Xbox, Microsoft is going to do it with Bethesda and Activision Blizzard to pull people away from PlayStation and you get the idea.
The Steam Deck presents some of the best elements of a PC as a platform being so open, in handheld form. Why the hell would we want to bring over some of the worst parts of traditional consoles to it?
Exclusives aren’t good for gamers, by their very nature they’re exclusionary. No one should want them or celebrate them. Games are a form of art, we should want more people to be able to appreciate them. Oh, you don’t have a Steam Deck or can’t afford one? Well that’s a shame you can’t play exclusive game X or Y ya a loser. Can you imagine that? Oh I can, fanboys can be really terrible and I don’t want to hear that about it.
What we should do is celebrate things like Microsoft, Sony and more being on Steam and putting previously exclusive games up for more people that way, not the opposite.
The Steam Deck is doing well too. We know from a good while ago it hit over a million shipped, and that’s well before the expansion into Asia. It doesn’t need exclusives. It already has a decent amount of power at an affordable price, along with a well established company backing it. Reviews are still flowing in from all angles across web articles and YouTube of more people getting it and singing its praises.
I can’t help but laugh in a way. Valve presents an open platform, and some come along and want something locked to it. Seems so senseless. It feels like console fanboy zealot level thinking.
Even crazier still is what the Steam Deck represents: an extension of the PC platform. Why would we want a Steam Deck exclusive game? Part of the point is a portable library that you can swap between your PC and your Steam Deck for. It kills such a wonderful part of what makes it great. While that aspect of it is not something everyone will make use of as not everyone has a gaming PC, it is a selling point still and a good one, it would ruin a whole lot of goodwill I imagine for Valve too. Even their little example game Aperture Desk Job works outside of the Steam Deck.
So no, the Steam Deck doesn’t need exclusives or any special games. I’ll disagree until the end of time with anyone trying to get others to entertain such an absurd idea.
What it does need is different: A little more attention from developers would be welcome for the uniqueness it offers but let’s not go down the exclusive road. Ensuring gamepad controls on PC work properly at release, testing on smaller screen sizes and resolutions for text clarity, along with text and UI scaling controls at minimum is what we should want and what reviewers need to look at — the kinds of things that make a game go from rough to great on Steam Deck and improve them for everyone on PC too regardless of Linux or Windows there. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I found text on a PC game too small with no way to scale it up, it’s worse again for the Steam Deck. I want to see a lot more attention there.
The Steam Deck and the open nature of it helped me fall in love with gaming all over again. I have games from Steam, Epic, GOG, emulators, cloud gaming and more on mine. Let’s not try and break apart the very foundation it’s been built upon.
Anyway that’s what I think, what do you think?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
OTOH, if I have a PC and a Steam game comes out exclusively for the Deck, I would be pissed. But ofc, Valve could add extra features in a non-exclusive, that only work on a Deck. I'd be fine with that.
In a perfect world, I agree at 100% that exclusives are anti-consumers. But pragmatically there are still some arguments that do weight in the scale in favor of exclusive (which, again, I am not fond of).
Let's start with the performance. I agree that it is doable to develop a game that runs perfectly on all the modern platforms, but the resources needed to develop such a game engine is enormous! If you really want the best out of each platform, you need specialists who are extremely expensive. You could argue that modern game engines do the heavy lifting for you. Which is true, but they won't do the huge amount of QA that will happen because of the various hardware to support (especially on PC).
Then there's a mere question of money. When Sony proposes you millions of dollars to develop your game exclusively on their platform, as a director of your studio, you need to balance the pros and cons of accepting this money vs being cross-platform. Most of the time, the money proposed is thought so that you don't seem to lose much. The fact that you receive money right now for your game, and not in a few year when it will finally be released, that you will receive support from the platform manufacturer, that the platform manufacturer will also advertise your game, etc. These are real things offered to the devs when they sign their exclusivity contract.
And finally, the two points above together: by accepting to be exclusive, you have money from the start, you reduce the amount of platforms to support, which allows to have better performance and reduce your QA budget.
To sum up, if you remove the player from the equation, exclusives is a win-win situation for the studios and the platform manufacturers. Also a lot of games would never have been finished or have known the same hype if Sony or Microsoft wouldn't have supported them.
So I agree that from a player standpoint, exclusives are not a good thing (and I agree that players actually _wanting_ exclusives seem completely ludicrous to me). But from a dev standpoint, exclusivity has its perks.
Last edited by Creak on 28 December 2022 at 4:32 pm UTC
Quoting: gbudnyThere’s been a game on Steam before that only had a Linux build. It’s not a hard requirement set by Valve. The point is: why? Exclusives are bad.Quoting: TheSHEEEPIt's not that I couldn't imagine some dev that is in love with the Deck for some reason creating a game specifically made for the Deck's somewhat unique input system.
Or that Valve would fund such a thing.
Might be fun, but if that ever happens, it'll be a gigantic rarity and the dev will get a lot of flak if they don't also enable it on normal PC platforms.
I want to see bundles with games for:
- Windows/Linux/Mac
- Windows/Mac
- Windows/Linux
- Linux/Mac
etc.
Valve should stop require rights to publishing a Windows version if a company want to sell only a Linux version.
Comandante Ñoñardo Dec 28, 2022
You can choose to wait for to play it on your favourite platform (with the bugs fixed and dlc's released ) or purchase the times exclusive device and play THAT game on day 1 release.
Reading some comments got me thinking. Console games are often tailor-made and optimized for specific target hardware. But the Deck is almost the inverse, where it's instead the console rather than the games being tailor-made and optimized to run target games. Steam Input, Performance Profiles, Proton, it's all just stuff to get the console to conform to the games expectations rather than the game being forced to conform with the console expectations.
This has all kind of been the reality for PC gaming since forever, but seeing a console take this approach is fascinating.
Last edited by Botonoski on 28 December 2022 at 5:20 pm UTC
Really, Steam Deck can't show its true potential as long as devs continue to make software for other platforms and Valve continues to promote the use of a translation layer.
Alternative Games was porting games to Linux for 12 years.
Quoting: Liam DaweThere’s been a game on Steam before that only had a Linux build.
I remember that later, this game was ported to Windows, but they first released the Linux version.
Voltley was released in 2009, and they never ported it to Windows.
Quoting: Liam DaweIt’s not a hard requirement set by Valve.
You can ask Clive Crous, and Thomas Frieden about it. I remember that even a lawyer fron Hyperion couldn't make a deal with creators of Gorky 17.
Quoting: Liam DaweThe point is: why? Exclusives are bad.
They are bad for some users because they have to spend more money on two or three different versions of the game. On the other hand, exclusive games give almost everyone a good reason to keep Linux on your hard drive.
Steam allow users to buy a game for few operating systems. In this case, they can have some fun with Linux, and they can easily go back to Windows. They don't have to worry that they have games for Linux in their closet on a CD or a flash drive.
Exclusive games are good for some Linux publishers because they can earn more money.
Last edited by gbudny on 28 December 2022 at 6:18 pm UTC
There will never be "a game made solely for Steam Deck as an exclusive". It's just absurd. SteamOS is already being distributed to OEMs. However, certain game genres will be arguably played better on a Steam Deck form factor. Not for the hardware, for the experience for example. Indie games, soulslike games or not so demanding games overall.
That includes anything from Nintendo Switch to Ayaneo/GPD and Steam Deck. In my case, I would go for Steam Deck because it's just a brilliant machine to tinker with.
Quoting: GuestWould Valve even do deals with publishers to only launch on Steam and lock those games to Steam indefinitely? To somehow lock games to the Deck?No they don’t do that.
Quoting: BeamboomTechnically, you don't need an exclusive for that. All you need is to develop for Deck first. No reason a game couldn't still run on other things, just less efficiently--which if you'd written it for Steam Deck, would probably be OK for medium to high end gaming PCs, for instance.Quotetheir article touches on an important bit: games taking better advantage of the Steam Deck uniqueness directlyWhen software is tailor made for one specific hardware, it enables the developers to write a lot more effective code. This is why the consoles can perform as good as they do. Just look at the PlayStation and the incredibly smooth and visually stunning experiences they can deliver there year after year on hardware that's nothing compared to a modern pc. The difference is staggering and a very strong demonstration of how exclusive code CAN perform.
And who doesn't want the most out of the hardware they have purchased?
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