We’ve all heard about Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass service. No matter if you like it or hate it, it’s been a success. It represents value for money for gamers and now we hear stories of Sony planning a similar model. Moreover, Microsoft has a deep pool of games in the service. This service includes Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass.
For the PC side of Xbox’s ecosystem top PC games availability is slowly increasing. However to access the PC Game Pass catalogue, you need access to the Microsoft Store . Wouldn’t it be nice if there were more options for gamers. So let’s bring Gabe Newell to the equation.
Gabe Newell, His Input On The Matter
Everyone knows he’s the Valve president. He has something to say on the situation thanks to an interview with PC Gamer. Newell said Valve has no plans to go and rival the Microsoft service but is open to having PC Game Pass on its platform. This is what he had to say,
“I don’t think it’s something that we think we need to do ourselves, building a subscription service at this time. But for their customers it’s clearly a popular option, and we’d be more than happy to work with them to get that on Steam.”
One point to keep in mind is these are very early discussions and it doesn’t guarantee the service coming to Steam.
“We’ve talked to people there quite a bit about that topic. If your customers want it, then you should figure out how to make it happen. That’s where we’re at.”
There Are Some Issues To Resolve
PC Game Pass working with Steam gets complicated as some releases have a different version of the game appear depending on the platform or one version is worse. Jez Corden wrote about this and gave examples.
“The Ascent for example supports NVIDIA DLSS on Steam, but not on the Microsoft Store. This is probably something to do with the game being ported from the Xbox version to Xbox Game Pass for PC, but that doesn’t excuse the fact players on Xbox Game Pass for PC are ultimately getting a worse experience. I’ve also found bugs in various other games. Pillars of Eternity, for example, is completely broken on Xbox Game Pass for PC, with floating objects moving between screens. I’ve actually worked directly with Obsidian to get this fixed and troubleshot in the past, but the bug persists even to this day. The same bug does not exist on the Xbox or Steam versions of the game, which is intensely frustrating.”
Football Manager 2022 has editors on Steam that are officially licensed by the developer. The Microsoft store does not have these available. Ultimately for these talks to come to fruition, one thing needs to happen. That’s both parties agreeing to the financial side of things. Would you welcome Steam going in this direction? As always we’d love to hear from you about this news.
