Good news if you plan to dive into Diablo 4 with the Steam release coming on October 17th, as it has been Steam Deck Verified. There's some bad news if you already purchased it on Battle.net though.
For Diablo 4 being Steam Deck Verified, this means everything should just work out of the box directly from Steam and Valve's Diablo 4 verification was done on Proton Experimental. It already worked pretty great on Steam Deck anyway, as I showcased previously.
The bad news? Well, if you were hoping to simply transfer your Battle.net purchase over to Steam, it's a solid nope. Even though Steam keys cost developers / publishers nothing, Blizzard aren't going to provide you with one. As mentioned on X (formerly Twitter) by Adam Fletcher, the Global Community Development Director on Diablo, in reply to a user asking about having to buy it again Fletcher replied: "Yes. Two different store fronts run by two different companies."
Why don't some publishers do this? The reasoning is pretty simple really: Valve take a cut of all sales on Steam, including DLC and micro-transactions. So if you purchased directly before, publishers will want to keep you there so any extras you purchase don't get a cut eaten by Valve.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: TrinexxI'm with Liam on this one. Sure, it gives up a bit of potential immediate revenue--but then those people are in the tent and you're going to have their ongoing stream of purchases. And Valve tends to take the longer view like that.Quoting: Liam DaweQuoting: EhvisBack at ya, you're assuming something that neither of us actually know. I'm just coming from the side of: we know Steam keys are already a thing and have been for a long time, and it would be to Valve's benefit to do it and would take little effort from Valve.Quoting: Liam DaweWhile Valve generally limit key generation, I've no doubt they would work with bigger publishers on this.
That's quite the assumption. Valve hasn't shown much of a will to bend to publishers. They've let them leave steam because the publishers didn't get what they wanted.
Publishers are allowed to generate up to 5,000 keys without question, but anything beyond that has to be approved on a case-by-case by Valve. Considering the number of copies Diablo 4 moved, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Valve rejected a request for bulk keys; that's a lot of potential money from second-time buyers to give up.
Quoting: TrinexxQuoting: Liam DaweQuoting: EhvisBack at ya, you're assuming something that neither of us actually know. I'm just coming from the side of: we know Steam keys are already a thing and have been for a long time, and it would be to Valve's benefit to do it and would take little effort from Valve.Quoting: Liam DaweWhile Valve generally limit key generation, I've no doubt they would work with bigger publishers on this.
That's quite the assumption. Valve hasn't shown much of a will to bend to publishers. They've let them leave steam because the publishers didn't get what they wanted.
Publishers are allowed to generate up to 5,000 keys without question, but anything beyond that has to be approved on a case-by-case by Valve. Considering the number of copies Diablo 4 moved, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Valve rejected a request for bulk keys; that's a lot of potential money from second-time buyers to give up.
When Bethesda shut down their own launcher you could migrate your library to Steam. Blizzard (now Microsoft) could easily work with Valve as well and just unlock the game in people's accounts. It's not like this costs any money and it's more customers/users for Steam.
williamjcm Oct 14, 2023
Quoting: kuhpunktWhen Bethesda shut down their own launcher you could migrate your library to Steam.That's the thing. Unlike Bethesda.net, Battle.net as a store/launcher isn't shutting down, at least not in the near future. Should it shut down, though, there is indeed a possibility Valve and MS/ActiBlizz would setup a game transfer system to prevent people from losing their libraries, just like what happened for Beth.net.
Last edited by williamjcm on 14 October 2023 at 4:27 pm UTC
CanadianBlueBeer Oct 14, 2023
I was really really disappointed with D4.
redneckdrow Oct 17, 2023
Quoting: PhlebiacQuoting: redneckdrownever dated... virtue of having the full use of only one arm
There must be at least one inappropriate joke there...
Walked right in to that one, didn't I?
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