Valve would be delighted to be able to offer the PC Game Pass on Steam. Will this become reality?
In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that video games are evolving, consuming themselves more and more as a service. Many initiatives have enabled this, including streaming from the cloud or subscriptions like the PC Game Pass. On this subject, Valve would be more than glad to help microsoft to offer the latter on Steam.
Valve would be happy to offer the PC Game Pass on Steam
The big boss of Valve, Gabe Newell, was recently interviewed by PC Gamer. The opportunity to know his opinion on a certain number of subjects around video games in general. And to the question of whether Valve had an interest in offering a service similar to that of Microsoft “I don’t think it’s something we should be doing ourselves, designing a subscription service now. […] But for their customers, it’s clearly a very popular option, and we’d be more than happy to work with them to bring it to Steam.”
As Gabe Newell continued on the subject, however, it became pretty obvious that the PC Game Pass won’t be coming to Steam for some time, if it ever does, but the two companies have already had discussions regarding this possibility: “We spoke to people there about it. […] If your customers want it, then we should figure out how to make it possible. Here is where we are.”
Will this become reality?
So there’s always the possibility that PC Game Pass may never come to Steam, but Microsoft already has a precedent it could follow, so to speak. Indeed, in the summer of 2020, the publisher Electronic Arts had made its EA Play subscription service available on Steam. With precision, as The Verge reminds us, the entire EA Play offer is not available on this platform and the 30% commission charged by Valve on transactions could be a subject of dissension in possible negotiations between both parties.
Microsoft, for its part, had already expressed some interest in this project, wanting to offer Steam on theapp store of Windows 11. Last June, Panos Pany declared that Valve would be “very welcome” on the platform. The future will tell whether this rapprochement will happen or not. To be continued !