Crytek is also pushing forward with their own GFace social platform, after having found their footing self-publishing the F2P shooter Warface in multiple territories. ”..not about taking over the world…”
The Crysis creator is looking to expand its own presence online with a distribution platform, but their goal isn’t to start rivalling Steam, Origin or Uplay.
”You do see games from large publishers that show up in multiple channels, just like how you see games show up on multiple platforms. This is not a world anymore where you are tying yourself to just one thing unilaterally,” Joshua Howard told us in our interview for Warface.
”…we’ve released Warface as a PC game, but we’ve also announced how we’re doing a 360 version as well. And I wouldn’t be surprised if, as a brand, you see Warface show up on other platforms or other devices.”
”So GFace is a way in which we can realise our vision of how social gaming should work, and we think that this is an interesting story and that there’s value there and that people will appreciate that. I think now is a good time to be striking up on your own – it’s not steam all or nothing,” he continued.
Howard recalls he was ”pretty pissed” when he first bought Half-Life 2 for Steam back when it was new, because he had to install the Steam platform to play. ”I was this close to trying to fight for a refund and going to pick up a boxed copy, but at the time I didn’t realise that even the disk had Steam on it as well!”
”I was just like “I don’t want this thing, I want the game”. But what Valve knew was that if they deliver a great piece of content, then that’s going to be the reason that you give this thing a try, and they knew as soon as they delivered that Steam had a future. They believed in that future and they knew they had to kickstart that future somehow. I think the industry has proven that that was a good choice.”
Steam today, rightly or wrongly, is credited with ‘saving’ the PC gaming market.
Crytek feel they’ve deliver ”a great piece of content” with Warface to various regional markets, and now they’re asking us to become a part of GFace. ”We think GFace makes it easier, we think GFace makes it a better way to play with your friends, so between the benefits of use, and the fact that we’ve put out this great content, I think that’s a good value proposition,” continued Howard.
”We KNOW Warface is a successful product, because it’s been successful for our partners. We have confidence that GFace adds to the experience.” Check out our full interview with executive producer Joshua Howard.
