
What if Valve brought Steam to mobile? - asronline
http://ammaar.me/what-if-steam-had-mobile-integration
======
johanneskanybal
What an awkward thing to say in this space but Steam is for curating quality
products whereas mobile gaming on google play/app store is mostly about
selling absolute garbage to punters. When Steam eventually does mobile their
own way they'll blow them charlatans out of the water.

~~~
gabemart
Gaben has made it pretty clear that Steam's role as a curator is not something
he wanted, and not something that will continue in Steam's future.

> "One of the worst characteristics of the current Steam system is that we've
> become a bottleneck. There's so much content coming at us that we just don't
> have enough time to turn the crank on the production process of getting
> something up on Steam. So whether we want to or not, we're creating
> artificial shelf space scarcity.

> "So the right way to do that is to make Steam essentially a network API that
> anyone can call. Now, this is separate from issues about viruses and
> malware. But essentially, it's like, anyone can use Steam as a sort of a
> distribution and replication mechanism.

> "It's the consumers who will draw it through. It's not us making a decision
> about what should or shouldn't be available. It's just, you want to use this
> distribution facility? It's there. And customers decide which things
> actually end up being pulled through. So Steam should stop being a curated
> process and start becoming a networking API."

[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/186168/Gabe_Newells_visio...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/186168/Gabe_Newells_vision_for_Steam_More_choice_more_democracy_less_Greenlight.php)

~~~
pjc50
_It 's not us making a decision about what should or shouldn't be available_

We have that, and it's called "installing from the developer's website".

Allowing everyone on Steam would be a mistake; driving down the minimum
quality of games makes it harder to discover and reward the best games.
Steam's success so far has been in quality _and_ discounts.

~~~
dtech
Quality hasn't been a selling point for Steam for a couple of years, they
pretty much allow anything on there.

Gaming critic Jim Stirling has a youtube channel dedicated to this, e.g. Air
Control
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYArgbWVtGc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYArgbWVtGc))
was a famous example. Day One: Garry's incident
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjTa_x3rbJE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjTa_x3rbJE))
was another trainwreck which got famous because the dev filed false DMCA
claims to take down negative Youtube videos.

Both of these and many more were on steam for $30 or so

------
fit2rule
I firmly believe that Valve is in a great position to be a hardware company.
All they have to do is realize that hardware is the only thing that matters,
and get their properties on as much hardware as possible.

Imagine, if indeed Valve brought Steam to nothing but the OpenPandora/Pyra
game consoles:

[http://openpandora.org/](http://openpandora.org/)

In fact it could be a momentous thing for Valve to get behind this effort and
add Steam to the open repo. It'd blow open the doors on Android and iOS and
move Linux - as an embedded operating system platform - into the stratosphere.

Valve+Pyra (or something similar) = new masters to follow.

Just my opinion. Before all the 'hardware nay-sayers' get started, think about
this: the Pandora happened, without Valve. Irrespective of commercial success
(yet), the Pandora/Pyra community is positively _thriving_ as an emergent
platform. Linux, and a very open atmosphere, is at the core of why this works,
at small scales; and also why it can scale, too.

What would the Pyra be like if gaben gave, like, a million bucks to people
like EvilDragon and notaz and the rest of the Pyra team, and said: "kids,
gimme 100,000 Pyra devices, and we'll put Steam on them for our customers" ..

Frankly, it could happen. I wish it would! Frankly it'd be the kind of bold
move that would make sense to me, were I in a position to direct a few bucks.
The thing is, whether Valve arrives on Steam or not, things like the culture
which produced [http://repo.openpandora.org/](http://repo.openpandora.org/)
are going to happen, regardless. May as well be a player, homie ..

~~~
ekianjo
Could happen, but I don't see it. They have cold feet when it comes to making
their own Steambox hardware (they retracted on their initial intentions to do
so) and in that sense I don't see them actually moving towards making their
own hardware anytime soon. Even if I agree it would be a great idea.

------
rquirk
Don't Apple and Google have clauses in the developer contracts that prevent
distributing a store from within their stores? It'd have to be Humble-Bundle
style side-loading on Android, which is not ideal, or simply "unpossible" on
iOS.

~~~
giancarlostoro
This is what's keeping them from doing the same. They could always fork
Android, but then you end up with Amazon Kindle Fire. Although... If the
Ubuntu phones get anywhere it could be part of that ecosystem if Ubuntu makes
it so, but who really knows at this point, it's too early to tell. It's much
too complicated when Steam is it's own App market, and it would not provide
much revenue for other companies, or incentives if you will?

~~~
rquirk
There's the steam box I suppose. A steam handheld would be pretty cool. I love
the 3DS, but it is underpowered and the games are hella expensive. A good
alternative with a controller and lots of reasonably-priced indie games would
be great.

~~~
ekianjo
The upcoming Dragonbox Pyra could be a great Linux portable machine running
Steam (provided they provide ARM runtimes + ARM recompiled versions of games).

~~~
giancarlostoro
This is probably another issue. They definitely haven't started to deploy ARM
version of games yet, even though there's numerous games that are 'ARM'
compatible. Although, any game coded in Java and similar frameworks could in
theory already run on top of arm versions of said frameworks I suppose.

------
Htsthbjig
Well, this is obvious for Valve. They created the first successful online
store and they want it everywhere, but Apple and Google do not.

You are competing against Apple and Google Play online Stores.

If they support Steam they would be making the platform a commodity(as Steam
does not care about the platform), this is something Apple can't let happen,
or just replace Google Play as the gatekeeper for Android(as steam already
knows how to sell commercial titles).

Steam's response to online stores have been to create the Steam machine, that
probably will extend over mobile devices in the future(using wifi playing
first, creating devices on their own later).

Remember that real Linux needs to get to tablet-phone space, with efforts like
Ubuntu's Unity it will soon. Valve will be the first to benefit from it(as
steam machine is very similar to ubuntu).

~~~
ekianjo
> Ubuntu's Unity it will soon

Is there any device that will be released anytime soon ?

~~~
Htsthbjig
[http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2014/02/image-bq-aquaris-
ubuntu-p...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2014/02/image-bq-aquaris-ubuntu-phone)

There are companies working on tablets too. I probably know a couple of
companies working on this but I can't talk about it. :-D

It is almost a prototype now. In a couple of years I will consider using them.

The most important thing right now is improving and stabilizing the graphic
system with Wayland and Mir.

------
rkachowski
It's very apparent that XCOM (the game referenced in the article), even in the
Steam version was very much designed for touch screen use. The game requires
no continuous input or precise input that a keyboard + mouse would provide,
and as such is ideal for tablet devices.

The same can't be said for most games. It's not really a case of steam
directly making their library available to mobile audiences, it's the lack of
appropriately designed content.

IMO most virtual joypad style games on mobile devices offer a terrible user
experience, and the majority of touch input focussed games wouldn't be as
successful for a PC gamer audience.

------
chrisBob
The problem is the controls. There is a big difference between a touch screen
and a keyboard/mouse. Unfortunately few mobile developers get this.

~~~
ido
I think a lot of mobile developers "get it", it's just a very challenging
problem to solve.

------
quarterto
What could really knock this one out of the park is In-Home Streaming. Why buy
an nVidia Shield and a high-end GTX graphics card when you can stream to the
iPad you already have?

~~~
asronline
Oh for sure, similar to the way OnLive were doing it. I'd call this feature a
game changer.

Edit: added this to my blog post quoting you.

~~~
andybak
OnLive are still around. I fired it up to play Mafia II the other day.

------
0x0
Apple would never allow this, it competes against their App Store, their Game
Center, and would probably also fall under the rule against "app curation /
collections" apps.

~~~
asronline
So, I don't think Apple has a policy against social platforms within games.
EA, for example, has Origin in FIFA. However, a custom Steam game store would
only be possible on Android.

~~~
0x0
Ah okay. They used to have wording about not allowing functionality that
"duplicates" built-in features...

------
jheriko
maybe this article should be: what if apple and google weren't draconian dicks
with their app stores?

maybe valve and apple could reach some kind of agreement anyway, but the real
blocker there i see is that steam fundamentally violates the app store
requirements because apple don't want anyone to sell anything unless its
through their app store.

google i'm less sure about, i'm not up to date with the latest dev
requirements, but i suspect they have introduced similar things recently.

however... cross platform integration is something that developers can do
anyway i don't see any reason why savegames can't be shared if the api is
based on normal current network technology and is platform agnostic. an
obvious example would be a rest api interface to a server for save games -
such an api can be used identically across all platforms, although gamedevs
might want something lower level and less filled with cruft than a TCP/IP
connection with HTTP over the top, even those constraints aren't very
prohibitive... UDP communications work fine across everything, and the good
ol' BSD sockets/Winsock are easy to work with cross platform so long as you
respect things like using network byte ordering and don't rely on exotic
socket options.

------
ZeroGravitas
I think this has always been part of the plan. When encouraging people to port
to Linux/Mac OS X they made reference to the fact that the work would
translate to mobile too.

------
k__
What should be?

Humble Bundle is on mobile and it's not much different.

I can buy games, install and update them.

------
shaurz
Humble Bundle already have a head start on them in mobile.

------
tempodox
So would that let Steam compete against Game Center only or the whole App
Store? Not that we couldn't use competition there, but Apple won't let that
happen voluntarily.

~~~
asronline
I definitely think they can compete against Game Center with this. I know I'd
pick Steam over Game Center any day given that I game on my PC a lot. However,
the App Store is a tricky one on iOS because of the restrictions Apple
imposes. It's possible on Android. But on iOS maybe you'd have offers like get
the promo code for the mobile version of the game via Humble Bundle or
something? Not so sure.

------
jedanbik
What if folks developed better Game Center apps?

------
Steko
A more plausible scenario has Google buying Valve/Steam and making a play for
the Windows App market (and perhaps the Mac market as well).

~~~
zyx321
That is not a plausible scenario at all. Gaben made it clear he's never going
to sell out, and generally makes fun of people for suggesting it.

~~~
Steko
It's not like we haven't ever seen people swearing they won't sell out and
then selling out later because of changing circumstances. When push comes to
shove will he really lay off half of his employees?

Fundamentally Valve is two companies and Steam's chances of conquering the
world and remaining independent don't seem great to me. Business today is
great and they have many users who love them.

They are however, ultimately an extra middleman on an increasingly irrelevant
platform that they don't control. They're also about to enter another market
with fading relevance against established players with much deeper pockets.
That's not a bet-the-company move but, if it's a mild initial success, it may
spiral into something like it. That could be worse than if it flopped out of
the gate as Valve may end up issuing lots of stock to support growth in the
cutthroat console world, where the competition spends billions on subsidizing
hardware, marketing and gaining exclusives and is also facing growing pressure
from Android and iOS. Yes Steam has millions of avid fans today. Ask Sega,
Nokia, RIM and others how long that lasts in the hardware world.

