Pete Hines Confirms Bethesda May Still Release Future Games on Steam
Among the announcements that have emerged from QuakeCon 2018 is one particularly interesting one about the future of Bethesda games. Bethesda recently announced, in a surprising move, that the studio will not be launching Fallout 76 on Steam for its PC release. At present, every other Bethesda game is available on Steam. Instead, Bethesda will be launching the game on its own platform; Bethesda.net. However, this decision may not indicate a trend for the future.
Bethesda Games on Steam
Pete Hines, Bethesda’s Vice President of Global Marketing, spoke to IGN during QuakeCon about the decision. Asked to clarify details concerning the move away from Steam, Hines made one thing very clear; “We did not announce ‘all future Bethesda games will not be on Steam,'” he stated; “that is not what we said. We said ‘this game will be available exclusively on Bethesda.net.'”
According to Hines, Bethesda has yet to make a decision regarding its other titles and whether they will launch on Steam. That includes Doom Eternal. Hines stated that the reason why Fallout 76 is abandoning Valve’s platform is because of; “the kind of game it is – it’s an online, ongoing game”. Hines clarified that when Bethesda launches games on Steam, the company can’t always be sure of players’ contact details, and so it is harder for the company to contact players. By launching on Bethesda.net, however, the studio will be able to keep track of those details.
“We have found very good successes in having those direct relationships with customers,” he explained; “and not been able to see those same benefits when we work through somebody else. And so, specific for Fallout 76, we are going to try this because we think it will give us the best chance to do right by our customers”. It makes sense for Bethesda to try something like this with Fallout 76. Much about the upcoming game is experimental; Bethesda is incorporating online multiplayer in a core franchise title, including micro-transactions, and so on. Fallout 76 may well be considered to be something of a testing bed for future Bethesda games by the company. Of course, there’s also the matter of being able to avoid paying Valve a 30% cut on every copy of the game sold on Steam.