Of course Steam could have an email sent to all developers at least one month before the launch of the Remote Play Arcade to let them know that their games will be put on the public mailing list for free. To solve this problem, which is above all a question of profitability, this new function could be created in the following way:įree games, demos (and maybe games that are more than 10 years old or have been abandoned by their developer), could be put in the public distribution list automatically. These ideas could avoid the controversy that developers would not be willing or have any motivation to release their game to the public for free and open access. I've made an update to expose my new ideas for the future Steam Remote Play Arcade. These acquisitions have come alongside continued rounds of funding in Epic's favor, with summer 2020 seeing the studio getting an injection of $1.78 billion.Update of Ma(one month before Parsec Arcade's death) (If you've played console or PC games in the past decade, you've seen the RAD logo in at least one game's opening crawl, if not dozens of them.) And two animation-minded acquisitions, of Hyprsense in November 2020 and Cubic Motion in March 2020, have been paid forward in Epic's "digital humans" initiative, which revolves around impressive real-time human animations for Unreal Engine games and software alike. The biggest of these have been full-fledged game studios like Psyonix ( Rocket League) and Mediatonic ( Fall Guys), though Epic has also spent a decent pile of cash acquiring complementary tools that you might expect to attach directly to a toolset like Epic's Unreal Engine.Įpic Games' development-acquisition tear has largely revolved around software and tools, not game studios, as evidenced by the company's acquisition of the hugely popular RAD compression and development suite in January. But Parsec has long differentiated itself in pitches to game studios as a useful remote-workplace option, which is arguably where much of its latest $320 million valuation lies.Įpic Games, Unity's most well-known rival in the game-engine space, has been busy with its own slew of acquisitions, as well. Parsec isn't the only service with that sales pitch: Valve in late 2019 rolled out a similar service, Steam Remote Play, as a built-in toggle within its popular PC gaming storefront. Parsec's public face mostly involves average consumers using Parsec to brute-force some of their favorite games into working online when the games otherwise don't include native online modes. In Google's case, however, Stadia got caught with its confidential pants down after accidentally leaking an unreleased Ubisoft game in June 2020-shortly before the game in question, Immortals: Fenyx Rising, received a more formal debut. AdvertisementĪs it turns out, the game-streaming team at Stadia was making the same remote-testing sales pitch to game studios last year, as well. Parsec fits into that picture by allowing game-makers to efficiently and securely stream their PC and console environments as needed. Sources familiar with the matter have repeatedly pointed to Parsec as an increasingly relied-upon service for game-makers, QA testing departments, and other parts of the game industry, because it allows exact PC and console testing situations to be emulated with minimal button-tap latency issues. Part of Unity Technologies' decision is the result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced game studios from around the world to adapt to an increasingly remote workplace. The answer doesn't necessarily look like Google Stadia, Nvidia GeForce Now, or other consumer-facing game-streaming options. However, Parsec may not immediately seem like a good fit for Unity's reputation. How does peer-to-peer game streaming tie-in to someone trying to make video games? Dev-facing, not consumer-facing Unity users can then nimbly port finished games across a variety of weaker and stronger platforms.Ī recent stock market IPO by Unity Technologies infused the company with cash, which it has used to, among other things, move ahead with company acquisitions. It's similar to other publicly available game engines like Unreal, as it revolves around a general toolset that can be used to build video games from scratch or expanded upon as developers see fit. Further Reading Epic and Unity rev their engines for the next era of entertainmentIn the years since Unity's 2005 inception, its tools have been used to make games for pretty much every console, smartphone, and VR platform imaginable.
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