HiGame

Over the past 12 years the Steam gaming service has transformed from a digital distribution hub primarily used by Valve’s own games into a colossus that stands astride the entire PC gaming industry. While competitor services like GOG and publisher-specific services like uPlay and Origin exist, Steam is still the 800-lb gorilla in the room. Now, Facebook has announced that it intends to challenge Valve’s dominance of the PC gaming industry — as well as taking on iOS and Android at the same time.

Facebook has announced a significant partnership with Unity Technologies, the company behind the Unity engine. The company’s goal is to create a new gaming platform explicitly tied to Facebook that would run across Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows PCs. This is an interesting concept in and of itself, since gaming is almost always sandboxed by operating system. Facebook claims Unity will help develop new game developer tools, services, and integrate support for the Facebook platform directly into the Unity engine itself.


Slide from Business Insider

When Facebook started becoming popular, it built much of that early popularity on hit games like Farmville and Mafia Wars. Social gaming hasn’t been as critical to FB’s growth and revenue as it used to be, but as the above slide from TechCrunch makes clear, the company still pays huge amounts of money to developers and it claims 650 million gamers among its user base.

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