Tuesday, November 26th 2024
Rumor: Ubisoft Wants Valve To Disable Steam Player Count API Fuelling SteamDB
Steam is highly valued by many gamers, not only for being a fairly inexpensive, easy way to buy and manage games, but also because it provides statistics on player count and play times, via tools like SteamDB, which are a neat way for gamers to see how the community is participating in games before buying them. According to a post on the FandomPulse Substack, however, Ubisoft has taken issue with Valve's player statistics.
The Substack post quotes Ubisoft insiders who claim that the game developer and "other companies" want Valve to disable or restrict the APIs used by tools like SteamDB and Steam Charts as a direct response to the disappointing performance of Star Wars Outlaws. This news also comes ahead of the early 2025 launch of Assassin's Creed Shadows, which has already caused significant apprehension as a result of game previews. The claims also mention that Ubisoft seeks to control the narrative of its games and potentially present a rosier image to its investors. If Ubisoft has its way, the gaming industry would lose even more transparency, since tools like SteamDB are often used by game journalists to evaluate the popularity and commercial success of games.
According to SteamDB, Star Wars Outlaws only managed to sell around 45,000 units on the PC platform, and other sources say that it only managed to sell around 1 million copies in its first month, falling well short of the profitability mark for a AAA game.
Sources:
FandomPulse Substack, Star Wars News Net
The Substack post quotes Ubisoft insiders who claim that the game developer and "other companies" want Valve to disable or restrict the APIs used by tools like SteamDB and Steam Charts as a direct response to the disappointing performance of Star Wars Outlaws. This news also comes ahead of the early 2025 launch of Assassin's Creed Shadows, which has already caused significant apprehension as a result of game previews. The claims also mention that Ubisoft seeks to control the narrative of its games and potentially present a rosier image to its investors. If Ubisoft has its way, the gaming industry would lose even more transparency, since tools like SteamDB are often used by game journalists to evaluate the popularity and commercial success of games.
"Ubisoft and other companies want to pressure Steam to stop the tracker from giving out info they want to keep to themselves... They want to be able to present findings to investors so they can make it sound good."It should be noted that, while this sort of behavior would not be surprising from a large corporation in the modern gaming landscape, the claims are also unverified, putting this squarely in rumor territory.
According to SteamDB, Star Wars Outlaws only managed to sell around 45,000 units on the PC platform, and other sources say that it only managed to sell around 1 million copies in its first month, falling well short of the profitability mark for a AAA game.
57 Comments on Rumor: Ubisoft Wants Valve To Disable Steam Player Count API Fuelling SteamDB
Well Ubisoft the cure to that is to not make crappy games.
I really hope that Valve/Steam give Ubi the giant middle finger
Never even care to try ea's Star Wars games...
Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy are legendary, nothing compares to those from the current games .
Wish if been redone with modern game-engine with love and care, just like Black Mesa been made with Half-LifeObviously they think they are entitled to our money.
The whole entertainment industry is trying very hard to control the narrative, reviews etc.
Movie and TV industry on streaming largely doesn't publish their viewership numbers, at least not in a way they could be verified. And the independent viewership estimates are now frowned upon and questioned. The same is with review sites like imdb and Rotten Tomatoes, whatever the reasons for editing or deletions of negative reviews are.
So I think gaming industry won't be the exception here, and publishers will sooner or later achieve their goal of controlling the information on how successful something is or isn't.
UNITE THE CLANS!
"Yo Buddy close your business, so I can sell your inventory at my store to your former customer base"
edit: on second thought, it's probably a good idea if this never happens though because it might make Steam a monopoly, so yeah that would not be good as government would try to break it up, as government is trying to make google sell chrome right now
Yes gog will certainly give up its no-drm principles just so their already available at steam games get "higher" sales. And Epic for sure will give up their entire revenue and Market power + experience with the unreal asset platform so that they can have the 8 games they made in the last 10 years on steam. Opposed to having exclusive deals with hundres of developers...
This doesnt even hypothetically make sense
I kinda doubt that Ubisoft actually wants to commit fraud.
and I wouldn't include GoG in this, I do understand their principle is different from all the others
The whole entertainment industry is doing it. Amazon has the most expensive TV show on earth, allegedly, with most viewers ever, allegedly. Independent viewership estimates put "The Boys" in front of "Rings of Power", with tenth of it's budget. And what did Amazon say? "Our internal numbers don't reflect that". And suddenly there were bunch of articles on how Nielsen Ratings and other independent viewership estimates are dinosaurs from the cable TV times and unfit to measure modern viewers.
Do you recall time when every game developer cried at Steam and wanted to create their own platform (launcher)? EA moved out of Steam, Ubisoft, Bethesda, Blizzard, Epic did. They even stopped selling their games through Steam. After some time they reconsidered and started selling games on Steam again. They finally realized cost of platform popularity and CDN importance. Well, It's nice to have more places where your goods get sold, right?
Btw, does any other launcher than Steam have voice chat implemented that can work for hours? I don't give a damn about having voice chat in games, I want to have it on OS level and don't want to install additional stuff (Team Speak, Ventrilo, ...).
Kudos to Valve for supporting Linux and teaming up with Archlinux developers!
Unfortunately, when it comes to games, GabeN can't count to three ... :-(
If there is information elsewhere and your company presents a rosier picture then it's up to the investor due diligence to see through it. If the only information is only through your company then you can't mislead people.
It's not necessary to outright lie.
I love Ubisoft games, but I don't love Ubisoft. Every game that I love is something they purchased (and ruined) from another Dev. And not something they created by themselves.
Or maybe something they created so many years ago, is not the same company anymore.