Is Warner Bros. preparing to go head to head with Steam and Origin?

Something is brewing over at Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. The publisher behind Batman: Arkham Origins, Injustice: Gods Among Us, Mortal Kombat, and a practically never-ending list of other titles might be preparing to launch its own distribution platform.

[Sidewinder-]

WB

Why Bother?

[FarEastOrient]

More walled gardens, this sucks.

[starchild]

We don't want this, Warner Bros. Don't do it. You won't ever be a major player in the digital distribution arena and all you will do is fragment our PC gaming further. We don't want to have to have 5 clients all installed on our computers and all of our games spread out between so many different services.

[Volkama]

I don't mind! More stores is the good kind of competition. Even if this one gets relegated to the UPlay pile.

If they stop distributing through Steam (unlikely), or make you run games through their bad platform (more likely) then it has negatives, but we'll see.

Activision are taking a lot longer than expected to expand battlenet into a full distribution platform....

[TekoIie]

Please stop...

[stragomccloud]

No. Just stop it. 2 is already one too many.

[TekoIie]

Technically its 4. Steam, Origin, Uplay and Battle.net are the big ones.

[lets_go_gunners]

Battlenet is just for Blizzard games.

[TekoIie]

@lets_gog_gunners

It's still another distribution service which further fragments my library. I'm ok with multiple distribution clients, but we're getting to the point where it's going to start promoting piracy.

[scark92]

Desura

[Ashunderfire86]

Gamefly too lol

[stragomccloud]

Quite true; however, at least I can run the games through steame or origin.

[Number-Nine]

It's time for Animaniacs?

[stragomccloud]

Yes!

[zsquaresoff]

Barring the arkham franchise, what else does WB have?

[JoshEngen]

Warner actually has a billion franchises: Mortal Kombat, Injustice, Shadows of Mordor, and every single LEGO game ever made. Plus, they've got Mad Max and Dying Light waiting in the wings.

Their catalog sneaks up on you.

[Agent_hitman]

Bad idea Warner bros. Steam and Origin are good enough for us PC gamers.

[Godmars290]

You just mean Steam? Aside from EA's - waning - pressure in pushing it, Origin is hardly a contender.

Much like this WB effort will be...

[Einhert]

So long as they don't have their games as exclusives on there who cares.

[JoshEngen]

Preach.

[TonyPT]

Hell no! I already gave up on Origin because they don't sell their games in steam. Well, I just don't want more software installed in my pc

[PiNkFaIrYbOi]

Let them do as they wish doesn't really matter to us.

[LAWSON72]

If so, looks like pirating games on my PC will become quite the routine. Origin and Steam are enough.

[ghettosmurf]

The trademark around audio and video transmission tech sounds like Twitch/UStream integration stuff to me, nothing too fancy.

[sreiches]

I get the appeal for a studio to have its own distribution platform. It offers them total control of content distribution, which is the keys to the kingdom in the digital age. Plus, they probably get a bigger cut of the pie on any content sold (if not the whole pie), offsetting their increased overhead.

It's still annoying, though, because it adds yet more bloat to the product and inconveniences the end user, who now needs more software on their computer to access their increasingly splintered game library.

Besides that, you're simply not going to topple the giant that is Steam, or even provide a compelling alternative to it, unless you're supplying something they don't. GOG understands this, which is why I'm so excited for their digital platform to launch.