1. Skyrim was a huge success on Steam.

• It's still one of the top 5 games played every day.
• The modding community and workshop are enormously popular.
• Skyrim's success makes ESO more appealing to the casual fan. It's an easy transition, everything's in one place.

2. Releasing ESO on Steam is supporting the future of PC gaming.

• Steam has become synonymous with PC gaming. It saved the platform and is primarily responsible for its current good health(with a few exceptions like WoW and LoL).
• ESO on Steam could potentially expose the game to millions more people who may not otherwise know much about it, leading to increased sales.
• ESO on Steam would bring more new players to the service. Steam's user base would grow. Everyone wins.

3. Steamworks. Zenimax/Bethesda can benefit from everything it has to offer. Steam has grown into so much more than merely a digital storefront/DRM.

• The Community, anti-cheat, anti-piracy, voice chat, auto-updating and much more.
• Less work for gamesas. More resources dedicated to making ESO the best game it can possibly be.

Since there has been no official announcement regarding this topic, I thought I'd jot down my thoughts. If you support ESO on Steam and have additional ideas please add them to the list!

As a long time PC gamer and Elder Scrolls fan, I sincerely think this is what's best for the ESO and PC gaming. Bethesda and Valve, please make it happen!!

While I agree with the first 2 wholeheartedly, I don't think the 3rd matters at all. ZOS will have their own launcher and will handle stuff on their own end just fine. I'd still like Steam as a distributor because I love Steam, though.

We'll just have to see how it goes, either way I plan on adding TESO to my non-steam game list and launching through Steam just for the integrated Steam overlay.

I agree with Carde's comment, I'm not sure though if they'll put it on Steam, I suppose if enough fans request it, they'll do it.

1 reason why it won't be on steam.

Consoles.

I don't follow. There's plenty of games that are multi, and even cross-platform that are on Steam.

I think payment models would also affect the availability of the game on Steam. Wouldn't Steam get some money from Zenimax if TESO comes out as a P2P game?

Personally, I don't like to run a programm to play some games. I try to avoid Steam as often I can. Especially if it comes to MMORPGs. To me its kinda more annoying to patch the programm, pop-ups about new games. I just want to start the game with a double-click when I boot up my computer.

The only thing I like in Steam is the Steam Workshop. I think it would even reinstall my subscribed mods if I reinstall the game. Thats the only cool feature I like on Steam to be honest ...

Promotion-wise I doubt that MMORPGs with such a big franchise wouldn't get enough attention. Especially an Elder Scrolls game, an brand new MMORPG with such a huge IP. Even GuildWars 2 wasn't available on Steam and it still has a huge playerbase (waiting to switch off to TESO). Steam offers a really good promotion for singleplayer games to be honest because basically I'm an MMORPG player who just get feeds on MMORPGs.

Planetside 2 did a good job. The game is available on Steam, btw its a F2P game, so its easy to purchase on that platform, but you can still start the game without running Steam.

EvE is on Steam and it's P2P.

If ESO becomes a HIT and the game got put up on steam it would be taken down sooner or later as beth/zen would want to keep their games on their own platforms so they can manipulate the prices of their older games. Take a look at blizzard activision... they are gauging people for money with their older games like sc and wc 1 and 2.

are we as pc gamers willing to pay Valve's cut or is Zenimax supposed to take a loss in profit margin in hope to get bigger sales?

If any of you admit the reason you want it on steam to be that you can show your friends various achievements you have earned, and talk about things like... what you're doing that day, how much you like the game and the economy ( ... ) i will approve steam.

If you keep trying subterfuge to promote it, and hide what you really want it for if you got ESO on it... no one will relate or care.

Did you take that one from a Steam brochure? Cos I think it sounds more than a little overblown.

Forcing ppl to HAVE Steam on [censored]tty idea. I don't like Steam! Its first step to spy players!

I would like to see it on Steam but really I will be buying it in advance of release so there won't be any steam sale prices for me...heh

And really that is one of the main reasons I love Steam, many games I never even think about buying until I see them in a sale for like 5 or 10 bucks instead of the $60 new game price.

And FFXI.

And Rift (pre-F2P).

I just like Steam as a distributor because they always have amazing promotional deals and giveaways and sales. I don't blame ZOS/Bethesda if they decide to just sell their own game though, perfectly reasonable.

I love steam, good deals.

Having it on Steam doesn't mean it would be the only place you could get the game from, its just another distributor. Its like asking for the game to be at Best Buy or Gamestop, except on the internet instead of a physical store.

Stone from heart! Thx Carde Trollu!

That can be bad for the developer though.

I'm the same. I can patiently wait for a game I want to be on sale especially with a distributor like Steam. Eg. I'd not bothered picking up Dragonborn until, well, just now when your post reminded me to check Steam and I saw it for 50% off.

Once upon a time I would have to have spent whatever the asking price was and usually did so.

I uh, I guess you're welcome.

There is only one :

Because It′s Damn STEAM!

<--Chieve addict deal with it im pro steam

1. So were other games not released on Steam. Steam had nothing to do with Skyrim's success. If you remember, Oblivion and Morrowind were not at first released on Steam.

-Doesn't relate to Steam.

-Steam Workshop modding community is absolutely terrible. I feel sorry if you still use the super limited and simplified Steam Workshop, You should be using the Skyrim Nexus if you're modding Skyrim.

-Doesn't relate to Steam.

2. Doesn't relate to Steam.

-No it hasn't, stop making stuff up.

-I can't argue with this, not a good reason for the game to require Steam though.

-I don't see why any player would care that Steam's user base would grow.

3. Not really. Steam will only eat your memory. Browser - minimize your game. Friends - friends list on TESO.

-So does/will TESO without Steam. TESO already has a community. TESO would have its own anti-cheat method with or without Steam. Steam doesn't support anti-piracy. In fact, Steam fully supports piracy. How would you be able to play an MMO without updating it? That would already be there without Steam.

-Not really. Creating a log-in screen isn't hard. They've already made a game, I'd be surprised if they couldn't do this.

I wouldn't mind if TESO is on Steam, but TESO requiring Steam is absolutely ridiculous.

Personally I hate steam. I hated it when I was first forced into using it for a particular game, and I still hate it now. It does have it's upsides - the workshop for skyrim was a nice, easy way to come by new mods and addons - but overall it's just another middleman trying to control how I play.

I hate the fact that steam's existence has completely destroyed PC game sales in physical locations. You can no longer walk into a gamestop, or a walmart, or any other video game retail location and find anything but the poorest selection of games. When you ask why the selection is so limited, and why only the least popular games or most popular games are being sold, or why games disappear from the shelves and are never restocked, the common answer is just "buy a steamcard and go download what you want."

For anyone working on anything but the fastest connections, downloading isnt really a feasible option. I can afford an internet connection fast enough to play these games, but to download most modern games - even non mmo's - takes days of straight downloading time, and while I'm downloading I'm pretty much locked out from doing anything else with my internet, even using a web browser becomes a frustrating experience.

On top of all that, when I had to move out of my house and into an apartment (house lease was up, apartment was cheaper), I wasnt able to get internet set up for several weeks. After about 4-5 days of playing my single-player games (namely skyrim, portal, borderlands 2, and brink) through steam, I suddenly ran into the "your offline mode must be verified, please log into your steam account to play" issue. What the hell is the point in an offline mode if it cuts out after a week? There's a reason you're playing offline - you dont have internet - how do they justify forcing you to log back in to play single player games?

These were even games that I had hard disk copies of, and had paid 40-50$ for when they were new and released, yet steam decides to step in and tell me that I cant play because I'm not connected to the internet?

And nearly every game you can buy for the pc nowdays - even single player games - force you to register the game with steam as an anti-piracy method. That they're trying to prevent piracy is completely understandable, but forcing my games to be linked to a program that wont let me play them without internet access is ridiculous. There have been more than a few games that I've passed on purchasing entirely because I didnt want to deal with steam again.

My vote is no. Screw steam, the whole thing was a bad idea in the first place.

Finally someone being real