Steam for Android and ios(in europe)

[dr.kuhne]

Just so customers don’t have to buy games likeGeometry Dash for example for two different platforms.

[Cathulhu]

That doesn't make sense as no game on Steam is capable of running on Android or iOS.
Steam sells PC games. Valve is not interested into the mobile market. They experimented with mobile games, but those were ... unsuccessful and discontinued.

[aiusepsi]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Cathulhu:

That doesn't make sense as no game on Steam is capable of running on Android or iOS. Steam sells PC games.

There’s lots of games on Steam that are on iOS. Death Stranding just came out on iPhone, for example. And there’s older stuff like Rome: Total War. That’s just two examples off the top of my head without looking anything up.

Those are very clearly PC games too.

[Anonymous Helper]

Diposting pertama kali oleh dr.kuhne:

Just so customers don’t have to buy games likeGeometry Dash for example for two different platforms.

What incentive would Valve have for developing mobile store and developers and publishers to put their mobile games in that store if people could get the games for free just because they owned the games on PC? They are all in the business of making money and porting to mobile costs a lot of money you know. Only way it could happen is that Steam's mobile store would be separate from PC games store and you'd have to buy everything you wanted to play on the mobile store regardless what you owned on Steam's PC game store.

Diposting pertama kali oleh aiusepsi:

Those are very clearly PC games too.

They are not. They are either versions build ground up to mobile platform or ported and optimized to work on limited hardware of mobile platform. No PC game can be run on mobile platform as is.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Diposting pertama kali oleh dr.kuhne:

Steam for Android and ios(in europe)

Just so customers don’t have to buy games likeGeometry Dash for example for two different platforms.

You would still be buying the game for 2 separate platforms either way. One for Steam and one for mobile.

You can play Android games on PC with the Google Play (beta) app on PC.

[Cathulhu]

Only a small selection though. Most games are not available on Google Play PC Beta.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Cathulhu:

Only a small selection though. Most games are not available on Google Play PC Beta.

Geometry Dash Lite is available on the Google Play PC (beta).

[nullable]

Diposting pertama kali oleh dr.kuhne:

Just so customers don’t have to buy games likeGeometry Dash for example for two different platforms.

When you want to play a game on two different platforms you're usually gonna have to buy it twice.

If the publisher wants to give you a free mobile copy, they can. It's not Valve's role to manage multi-pkatform issues. And Steam isn't a mobile games platform. And they're not going to become one for the reasons driving your suggestion.

[aiusepsi]

Diposting pertama kali oleh nullable:

When you want to play a game on two different platforms you're usually gonna have to buy it twice.

If the publisher wants to give you a free mobile copy, they can. It's not Valve's role to manage multi-pkatform issues.

Diposting pertama kali oleh Anonymous Helper:

What incentive would Valve have for developing mobile store and developers and publishers to put their mobile games in that store if people could get the games for free just because they owned the games on PC? They are all in the business of making money and porting to mobile costs a lot of money you know.

These were the sort of arguments people used before there were Mac and Linux versions of Steam.

Diposting pertama kali oleh nullable, in an alternate past universe:

If the publisher wants to give you a free Mac copy, they can. It's not Valve's role to manage multi-pkatform issues.

Diposting pertama kali oleh Anonymous Helper, in an alternate past universe:

What incentive would Valve have for developing a Linux store and developers and publishers to put their Linux games in that store if people could get the games for free just because they owned the games on Windows? They are all in the business of making money and porting to Linux costs a lot of money you know.

Turned out that getting the game on one platform meant getting it for all platforms just made sense for everyone. And it went from being a 'feature' that they gave a name to (Steam Play) to being just the normal expected state of affairs, so much so that they recycled the name "Steam Play" to mean something else (using Proton).

Diposting pertama kali oleh Anonymous Helper:

They are not. They are either versions build ground up to mobile platform or ported and optimized to work on limited hardware of mobile platform. No PC game can be run on mobile platform as is.

Someone should tell Digital Foundry that their comparison of the iPhone and PS4 and PC versions of Death Stranding is total nonsense, because it's clearly not the same game /s

Yeah, porting is a thing which needs to happen, but you also need to port a Windows game to Mac for it to work. And until the recent(ish) advent of Proton, you needed to port a Windows game to Linux for it to work. And they're still the same game which needed only a single purchase across all platforms.

And porting from Windows to Linux is significantly more irritating than doing a port from Linux (on desktop) to Android. Because, for one thing, Android is built atop the Linux kernel.

As regards limited hardware: the Steam Deck has limited hardware compared to a desktop PC, but that doesn't mean games have to be radically reworked in order to work! Games just work with lower settings. And ports of less demanding indie games or older PC games to mobile platforms don't have to make concessions for visual fidelity at all.

[Tito Shivan]

Diposting pertama kali oleh aiusepsi:

These were the sort of arguments people used before there were Mac and Linux versions of Steam.

And they still hold true. I cannot use my PC licenses of Destiny 2 in my PSV, for example.
Mac and Linux versions still belong to the same 'platform' (Personal Computer gaming)

Your simil would be more akin to having the same license work on Android and iOS.

[Crazy Tiger]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Tito Shivan:

Your simil would be more akin to having the same license work on Android and iOS.

And it can. But that's entirely dependent on the game dev/publishers. Many card and board games have, for example, that DLC licenses are tied to in-game accounts. It requires getting the base game on a platform, then logging in on the in-game account gives access to all the DLC bought on other platforms.

Thing is, that this is entirely a game dev/publisher thingy. Even if Valve made a Steam for mobile versions, it doesn't mean the games on it will also magically become playable on mobile. If Valve sets it up in a way that a mobile version has be bought alongside the PC version, they can.

Ultimately, though, it's something that'll get pushed from developers/publishers. Many of those just gave the Mac and Linux versions alongside Windows versions. So many, that it became a default. If they consider it valuable, they'll do it.

Personally, I think it's best if Valve would simply focus on PC gaming. They're spread on things to work on in recent years doesn't really provide lots of stability to Steam as it is. Let's have them focus on Steam for PC more.