Facebook was once the hub of social gaming, earning well over $250 million in one of its many peaks, and yet after all this time Facebook still has over 650 million users who play games each month. As Facebook is not looking to leave those fortunes behind they decided to create their own downloadable gaming platform alongside game engine developer Unity, similar to Steam.
This gaming platform still does not yet have a name, as the last one was changed (Facebook Games Arcade). Facebook claim that it will run on different types of PCs, will give gamers a distraction free gaming environment, will support traditional Facebook games, apps, etc. Although Facebook promises better performance, that claim can only be confirmed once the platform releases to the public.
Facebook believes that they have a good chance of beating out Valves marketplace with Facebook’s publicity, enhanced web, and new platform. While on the other side of this Valves marketplace is quite valuable to its users, as people can buy and sell items related with different games, some of those items can be worth well over ten grand. Valve also owns and operated the 2nd most popular game in the world, which is Counter Strike Global Offensive (CSGO).
The Valve marketplace is a more finished platform with many years of perfection and innovation, not only that but millions of dollars are transferred between people everyday and Valve gets a percentage of all sales. Not only that buy many people have already purchased many games and items on Steam, why would they move platforms and have to buy again the items and games that they had earlier. My guess is that it will be a gamers secondary gaming platform, where they can play more chill mobile games (apps) with friends.
One thing many Steam users are hoping for is if Facebook’s new gaming platform will have a strong anti-cheat service, as Valve is lacking with their Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) service, in hopes of getting Valve to update theirs. Of course we will not know how well Facebook’s gaming platform will perform and whether or not it is worth the change.
