Sure, developers decide, but if they do want NAT traversal, they can't use Steam one without being tied to Steam. At least now.

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Quoting: Smoke39Until then, it doesn't sound to me like anything prevents you from rolling your own solution.

Nothing prevents you from rolling everything yourself, except cost and complexity. Some do roll out their own infrastructure or rely on generic cloud services. But many use Steam one because it's easy.

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Quoting: kuhpunktBut the situation will change. That's not even hypothetical. That's what the news is about.

Well, if it will - good.

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Quoting: kuhpunktNot YET untied.

Sure, we are talking about current situation, not about hypothetical improvements.

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Quoting: AnanaceIt would also easily explain why the service in question would be limited to Steam's services.

That doesn't explain why it has to be tied to Steam store. I.e. what stops such scenario:

1. Developer signs up for Steam network service for multiplayer (let's say it costs them something).
2. Developer uses that service and releases actual game in any store they want.

How is that worse than let's say using any generic service like AWS and such?

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Quoting: LeopardOh , Sudden Strike 4 on GOG doesn't have mp support for Linux because they rely on GOG's Galaxy client which doesn't exist on Linux.

Which only highlights, that Steam multiplayer backend is not untied from Steam, so developers have to duplicate efforts setting another backend or cut out functionality, or not release outside of Steam at all. Q.E.D.

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Quoting: kuhpunktI'm not sure if I'm totally off, but Valve works on "platform-independent account identity."

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/am1stl/looks_like_steams_getting_dedicated_servers_for/

Doesn't that mean that it's NOT locked in?

That's good if true. According to the developer in question though, NAT traversal was tied to Steam store.

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Quoting: LeopardTell that to GOG before bashing Steam fam ?

Never saw such kind of issue with GOG, so leave your irrelevant comments out of the thread please.

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Sounds like another lock-in. I've seen at least one developer saying they'll stop updating their game on itch.io, because they want to add multiplayer, and since it needs NAT traversal, they decided to rely on Steam's service for it. Which means they can't use it with versions released in other stores... (It's also a clear example how the lack of IPv6 is causing harm).

So I don't see this as a good thing at all. Proper network services should not be tied to stores and developers should be able to use them no matter where they release. I suppose those don't need to be free, but tying them to a specific store is simply wrong.

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Hm, would be fun if the game provided Turing complete option to dynamically alter its own behavior using in-game methods ;)

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