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Comment by pqhwan | Hacker News Reader

I learned about this multiplayer segregation recently, and It puzzles me. Is this a business decision? Or do they just not bother tp build their multiplayer protocols to be platform-agnostic?

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If I were Valve, I would absolutely require isolating Steam players from the Microsoft Store buyers. The last thing Valve needs is leaking its customer base to Microsoft.

When a game has multiplayer servers, is Valve involved at all?

The steam API allows servers to verify a player owns the game and provides a server list. Actual networking once players are connected isn't part of its scope iirc.

Don't know, but it doesn't really matter. Player segregation would be a clause in a contract between Activision and Valve first and foremost. How it's technically implemented is secondary.

Probably, a big factor could be the anticheat stuff - without the steam client inspecting game state, Microsoft store players could get away with aim bots or other exploits

In the past they've justified segregating console players from the PC Master Race(tm) using better controllers, but Steam vs Windows Store seems pointless.

It's not. One is a 3rd party store that heavily invests into cross-platform support. The other one is a collection of useless gadgets with a crappy UI bolted on top of a generic OS.

If the Windows Store dies (or stays irrelevant for games, forever and ever) than that's a good thing. I agree with your sibling comment: This is good for Valve and as long as Microsoft DOES refund people that use the Windows Store I'd say there's no harm done.

And I'd heard rumors of the excuse in the past wrt even cross console play (eg. Xbox vs Playstation) was semi officially security. They didn't want their network running code that didn't go through their cert process, and their mutual NDAs kept them from being able to officially cert the other system's build. That being said I'm sure their were marketing reasons too.

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