Bethesda Clarified the Reasoning Behind Fallout 76’s Steam Avoidance
Bethesda’s Pete Hines spoke at QuakeCon 2018 about how Fallout 76 isn’t coming to Steam at launch. In particular, he assured that the move doesn’t mean the publisher isn’t going to release future games on steam.
“We did not announce ‘all future Bethesda games will not be on Steam,’” he said. “That is not what we said. We said ‘this game will be available exclusively on Bethesda.net.’”
In regards to Doom Eternal coming to Steam, Hines says the company still isn’t sure.
“We haven’t decided on anything else, this is specific to Fallout 76 given the kind of game it is — it’s an online, ongoing game,” he continued. “[Doom Eternal] may or may not, but it hasn’t been decided on anything else yet.”
Hines claims that Fallout 76 isn’t coming to Steam primarily to give Bethesda more control over players’ online experiences.
“We feel like the best way for us to provide the best experience and service to our customers is to be dealing with them directly, and not through someone else,” he said.
“There are some different things that have happened or have come up where having everyone work directly with you does make things a little easier in terms of talking to your player base, having them talk to you,” he added. “I am 100% sure I know whose fault it is and whose problem it is when you’re having an issue with the game: it’s ours.”
Hines said that working with other platforms has been a problem for Bethesda in the past, particularly when it comes to communicating with players.
“We have found very good successes in having those direct relationships with customers, and not been able to see those same benefits when we work through somebody else,” he said. “And so, specific for Fallout 76, we are going to try this because we think it will give us the best chance to do right by our customers.”