Gregory's Server
@firecat @EU_Commission most people have grown accustomed to having everything they own in one launcher, while those AAA launchers only have their published games. It makes sense from a logical standpoint to pick the option that covers the widest of bases, which does not incentivise sales of those non AAA published games to sell on AAA launchers, unfortunately.
I can see that Valve has made agreements to integrate these launchers into Steam, but I don't know where they've made deals to make *exclusives* for Steam - maybe they've agreed to modifying the profit share in order to get their competition to return, but *exclusive games* is not something I've seen from them. Their approach is that they don't need to, as they believe in their libertarian ethos of free trade (and are also the market leader). They notably declined to make an exclusive deal with Microsoft, unlike every other distribution platform, for 10 years, as they believe they don't need to use (explicitly negotiated) exclusivity.
@firecat @EU_Commission and as for the launcher integration, Valve's approach is one of two paths publishers can take. The other is basically selling a game key that prompts you to download the respective launcher of that publisher and manage your game launching and features through that. Many publishers take this approach, to the chagrin of gamers (why exactly do I need to sign up to *another store account* with *another full fat launcher* to manage a handful of games they publish? It wastes resources, it's obnoxious, it's another vector of my data being taken, it's another layer of DRM, it's another thing that often breaks because publishers do not invest in the UX required for gamers to see them as comparable to Steam, etc.). It has an interesting implementation on EGS though:
If you buy an EA or Ubisoft game there, they basically give you keys on their respective launchers. The difference is that Ubisoft doesn't require the EGS launcher to play those games afterwards (the ⭐ standard), but Origin *does.*
@firecat @EU_Commission and as for the launcher integration, Valve's approach is one of two paths publishers can take. The other is basically selling a game key that prompts you to download the respective launcher of that publisher and manage your game launching and features through that. Many publishers take this approach, to the chagrin of gamers (why exactly do I need to sign up to *another store account* with *another full fat launcher* to manage a handful of games they publish? It wastes resources,...