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.
1. They're selling plenty anyway. And I think plenty of their sales are to people who also have (PS, Xbox, Nintendo thingies). Exclusives are a tool for getting more sales in a zero sum game, in which you have to pull people away from the competition in order to sell. That does not seem to be the Steam Deck experience; they are selling successfully without exclusives and indeed largely without peeling people away from consoles, the Switch etc. Given that a few posters have pointed out the major efforts and expenses involved in creating an effective "exclusives" regime, how is it worth it if they're not in the situation exclusives are supposed to solve?
2. For Valve, Steam Deck is part of the Steam ecosystem, more than it is a thing in itself. Steam Deck exclusives per se would be cutting off their nose to spite their face. The Steam Deck increases the value of your Steam library by giving you more places and ways to play the games in it. And it increases the value to developers of putting their games on Steam (yeah, sure, because the Deck is open you can play games from other platforms on it, but that takes a bit of work and at the very least, an active choice--where the Steam library is Just There). And while Steam doesn't do exclusives either, for practical purposes Steam has tons of exclusives--all the thousands of games that have never found it worth their while to go on any other site--and now with the Steam Deck, the reach you get from just releasing on Steam has expanded, reducing the incentive to bother with other stores and platforms by a little more.
Exclusives for just the Steam Deck and not the rest of Steam would break all that. They would reduce the value of players' Steam library, reduce the reach of the Steam ecosystem, instead of increasing it. It would be a really stupid move.
Quoting: BrokattWhen Valve eventually does a wide release of SteamOS 3.X it will lower the bar of entry to DIY PC's and HTPC's. It could lead to a renewed interest in a hobby that's dying out. Or maybe that's just an old fools wishes and it's smart phones, games streaming tablets and predatory pay2win crap that are the future.Well, if you're an old fool, then so am I!
One would hope that something like the Steam Deck/SteamOS, and the value it offers, would have a chance against the anti-consumer nature of predatory mobile-game money-sinks!Quoting: Purple Library GuyThe Steam Deck increases the value of your Steam library by giving you more places and ways to play the games in it. And it increases the value to developers of putting their games on Steam (yeah, sure, because the Deck is open you can play games from other platforms on it, but that takes a bit of work and at the very least, an active choice--where the Steam library is Just There).So it's basically like the Action GameMaster, except done right, and it actually got manufactured.
Philadelphus Dec 29, 2022
Quoting: Purple Library GuyAnd while Steam doesn't do exclusives either, for practical purposes Steam has tons of exclusives--all the thousands of games that have never found it worth their while to go on any other site--and now with the Steam Deck, the reach you get from just releasing on Steam has expanded, reducing the incentive to bother with other stores and platforms by a little more.Yeah, PC (and thus the Deck) already has more exclusives than any console in history has ever had. How many (tens of) thousands of games out there can only be played on PC?
Now, I'm all for making things available on multiple platforms and giving people more Choice™, but I must admit I wouldn't mind seeing some games come out on Linux first with the Windows and Mac ports released some time later.
Quoting: Liam DaweQuoting: 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.
IMO, it's important to distinguish between a game running only on one platform vs being exclusive to that platform (even though _literally_ it means the same). The subtle difference is that with exclusives, the devs are contractually obliged to exclude other platforms. Otherwise if your expertise is only on platform X and you release a game only on that platform, it's not really an exclusive, it's just what was in your power to do.
So, why would I hypothetically release a game only for Linux? Because I don't have windows or mac, and I have no expertise in Android or the consoles. There's nothing wrong with that. You could wish that were not the case as a user, and ask me nicely to port my game, but you can't consider me a terrible person for it.
Quoting: Liam DaweI don't think the argument has much merit of locking to a single platform for any kind of performance benefit that you suggest. Optimization doesn't mean it needs to be exclusive. Optimization at the lower end can benefit the higher end too, and generally it does.
We do not need to think, assume, suppose or guess anything: The proof is in the pudding.
Just fire up a Playstation exclusive (of any generation really - I only have experience in PS, but I would assume it's the same on Nintendo too, maybe even Xbox), play it, then compare that to a PC game, and do a side-by-side comparison of the hardware VS experience.
I dare say one is of a very prejudice mind if the difference does not appear as striking. The amount of performance the console exclusive is able to squeeze out of the measly 300 euro console is *ridiculous* compared with the PC that in sheer hardware spec (and five times the price!) should run in circles around the console.
While that same blinding difference is *not* as apparent on multiplat games built both for PC and consoles.
I am sure exceptions exist, but if we paint with a broad brush. As a general rule, generally speaking.
I mean, of all arguments AGAINST platform exclusiveness - of whom there are many and legit - I would say this is the ONE major argument for having a game designed specifically for one hardware stack. And I honestly think it's totally fair game to admit so, while still being against exclusivity. Because the arguments against may still outweigh this advantage.
Last edited by Beamboom on 29 December 2022 at 7:23 pm UTC
Quoting: BeamboomQuoting: Liam DaweI don't think the argument has much merit of locking to a single platform for any kind of performance benefit that you suggest. Optimization doesn't mean it needs to be exclusive. Optimization at the lower end can benefit the higher end too, and generally it does.
We do not need to think, assume, suppose or guess anything: The proof is in the pudding here. Just fire up any Playstation exclusive (of any generation really - I only have experience in PS, but I would assume it's the same on Nintendo too, maybe even Xbox), play it, then compare that to a multiplat game on PC, and do a side-by-side comparison of the hardware VS experience.
I dare say one is of a very prejudice mind if the difference does not appear as striking. The amount of performance the exclusive title is able to squeeze out of the measly 300 euro console is *ridiculous* compared with the PC that in sheer number game should run around in circles around the console.
While that same blinding difference is *not* as apparent on multiplat releases.
I mean, of all arguments AGAINST platform exclusiveness - of whom there are many and legit - I would say this is the ONE majr argument for having a game designed specifically for one hardware stack. And I honestly think it's totally fair game to admit so, while still being against exclusivity. Because the arguments against may still outweigh this advantage.
Let me explain why this argument doesn't work. FYI, I was a graphics engineer on Shadow of the Tomb Raider with a focus on PS4. You're absolutely right, knowing the exact GPU, and access to PS4 tools, I could do magic that made things faster on PS4 in a way that is unimaginable on Vulkan on desktop for example. So your assumption is correct, knowledge of hardware can lead to optimizations.
Your conclusion is not correct however. None of the optimizations I or anybody else made required the game to be exclusive. There were just #ifdefs, and the game was released on xbox and PC too.
TL;DR, optimization for specific hardware and exclusivity to said hardware are orthogonal
Quoting: ShabbyXYour conclusion is not correct however. None of the optimizations I or anybody else made required the game to be exclusive.
Hey, cool to hear from you!
It doesn't REQUIRE it to be, no. I am merely stating the benefit of focusing on one hardware stack, and maximise the utilisation of the chipsets and capacities therein with no consideration of other hardware configurations. And that, in effect, typically implies platform exclusivity. Or ports (a whole other chapter to discuss).
Or do you disagree with that the titles developed for one specific hardware (typically console) as a general observation outperforms the multiplats?
Last edited by Beamboom on 29 December 2022 at 9:47 pm UTC
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me