Bethesda made waves last week when it was learned that the upcoming multiplayer experience Fallout 76 will not be available through Steam and will instead release through Bethesda.net for PC players.

This past weekend at QuakeCon, Bethesda’s Senior VP Pete Hines spoke with IGN and said that despite this being the case with Fallout 76, the publisher isn’t opting to avoid Steam altogether with their future releases. “We did not announce ‘all future Bethesda games will not be on Steam. That is not what we said. We said ‘this game will be available exclusively on Bethesda.net,'” Hines clarified of the move.

When asked more specifically about an upcoming release such as DOOM Eternal and its potential to arrive on Steam, Hines went even further by saying, “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. [DOOM Eternal] may or may not, but it hasn’t been decided on anything else yet.”

Hines went on to say that there could be potential for Fallout 76 to one day come to Steam, but he couldn’t give a direct answer one way or the other. He also said that Fallout 76 is a unique case for the publisher and they believe that they can best serve their audience by “dealing with them directly” rather than using another provider.

Despite more publishers opting to move towards releasing their games exclusively through their own providers, it’s interesting to hear that Bethesda likely isn’t going to be doing this with their games in the future. Besides, Steam is the biggest marketplace for PC games around. If you want to maximize your potential for sales, it’s probably always going to be a good idea to release on that service.

Posted: Aug 14, 2018 7:50 am
Related Forum: PC Gaming Forum

Source: https://www.dualshockers.com/bethesda-clarifies-stance-steam/