Gabe Newell - VR Exclusives Bad For Everyone

We've all thought about it with some dread: the idea of VR-exclusive games. This could impact RPGs in the next few years. Gabe Newell has chimed in on the question.

Now Valve frontman Gabe Newell has weighed in on the matter through an email posted to the the Vive subreddit, in which he was asked whether Valve ever considered doing the same thing for its Vive headset. (Newell confirmed with us that he did in fact send this email.)

“We don't think exclusives are a good idea for consumers or developers. There's a separate issue which is risk. On any given project, you need to think about how much risk to take on. There are a lot of different forms of risk—financial risk, design risk, schedule risk, organizational risk, IP risk, etc… A lot of the interesting VR work is being done by new developers. That is a triple-risk whammy—a new developer creating new game mechanics on a new platform. We're in a much better position to absorb financial risk than a new VR developer, so we are happy to offset that giving developers development funds (essentially pre-paid Steam revenue). However there are no strings attached to those funds—they can develop for the Rift or PlayStation VR or whatever the developer thinks are the right target VR systems. Our hope is that by providing that funding that developers will be less likely to take on deals that require them to be exclusive.

Make sense?”

Some of the commenters in the thread don't seem to think so; several responses express concern that developers will take Valve's money and then, as one put it, “just turn around and make a deal with Facebook anyway.” I'm more inclined to give Valve the benefit of the doubt, however. It has a pretty good track record of getting things right, for one thing, but more importantly, it brings the power of Steam to the table. How much money is it worth to keep your new game off of Steam, even temporarily? I have no idea how much cash is in a “shitton,” but it would have to be a pretty big pile to justify avoiding a distribution channel with that kind of reach.

More information.

I generally avoid any VR focusing games like the plague.

Why games? Why not VR focusing companies?

I really don't care to hear anything Gabe Newell has to say unless it's an announcement for Half-Life 3.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I really don't care to hear anything Gabe Newell has to say unless it's an announcement for Half-Life 3.

Me and Joxer and Ripper were talking about this yesterday and we thought it was a good thing to include. This whole VR thing could affect PC gaming, and so that's why I thought it might be a good idea to include in the news feed.

Originally Posted by Aubrielle
Me and Joxer and Ripper were talking about this yesterday and we thought it was a good thing to include. This whole VR thing could affect PC gaming, and so that's why I thought it might be a good idea to include in the news feed.

Oh I wasn't being entirely serious there. I just really want a Half-Life 3. Valve left us hanging on that one.

I agree the VR issue is important.

Yeah, and more generally, I think the issue of games being exclusive to certain brands of peripherals is a nasty development that's worth looking at.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Oh I wasn't being entirely serious there. I just really want a Half-Life 3. Valve left us hanging on that one.

I agree the VR issue is important.

I don't think Gabe is ever gonna do that for us. I think he's secretly an evil sadist that just likes to watch the world suffer, always wanting Half Life 3 and never getting to have it…

Well, personally this turns out great for me. Either the game is exclusive for my Rift or not exclusive at all. Sweet!

From the industry perspective, yeah, I think he's right. Adding to what he says, it's a big deal for consumers, too. These things are NOT cheap. If people start to worry that buying one VR set means they could get locked out of some great games, that's going to make them delay the purchase. Fewer head sets out in the wild means fewer developers willing to risk development costs.

TIMED exclusives, however, might be OK. That seems to be what the console market has gone toward.

There was another VR set, so far the cheapest but in function not different than others, shown at E3.
I think the helmet war will end in huge pricedrops soon, noone will shell out enormous amount of $ if the competition offers the same performance for less sum.

Hopefully exclusive games won't be a huge issue but with the money horny people running business it might be hard to avoid.

Can't afford vr yet but I'm really looking forward to seeing what kind of games it will bring us RPG nerds.

Any required virtual reality would put a game in the same realm of any game that requires Ubijunk or Origin……something to be laughed at and ignored. There are just some things that no games in existence need or ever will need.

Originally Posted by Carnifex
Any required virtual reality would put a game in the same realm of any game that requires Ubijunk or Origin…

…or Steam itself for that matter.