While Valve president Gabe Newell has shared that he doesn’t think the company needs its own version of Xbox Game Pass right now, he said that he’d be “more than happy to work with [Microsoft] to get that on Steam.”
Speaking to PC Gamer, Newell discussed that despite him understanding the popularity of such services like Xbox Game Pass, he just doesn’t see Valve committing resources to do a similar version any time soon.
“I don’t think it’s something that we think we need to do ourselves, building a subscription service at this time,” Newell said. “But for their customers it’s clearly a popular option, and we’d be more than happy to work with them to get that on Steam.”
These comments align with Newell’s previous comments that pushed back against closed platforms. He also said that openness is ‘PC’s superpower.”
Xbox Game Pass being part of Steam’s future isn’t so out of reason as Valve and Microsoft have been working together in a much greater capacity recently. Not only did Microsoft stop selling its games exclusively through the Microsoft Store and start selling them on Steam, but Bethesda also said it was forgoing its own launcher to also put their games on Steam going forward.
Xbox Game Pass would pose a bit more of an issue as sometimes different versions of games appear on the service as opposed to digital storefronts. In March 2021, for example, the version of Nier: Automata on PC Game Pass was better than the one found on Steam.
So, even though it may be a while until we see a native version of Xbox Game Pass on Steam, the Steam Deck will be able to play games through Xbox Cloud Gaming thanks to the fact that it can also be run as a PC.
For more, check out our Steam Deck review in progress and Newell’s comments on why Valve banned NFTs and how the company may be looking at providing customers with more “higher end” versions as opposed to increasing the handheld’s price.
