I'm surprised nobody made a thread about facebook's Gameroom yet

yuck FB. but have a bump

That's probably because most of us might not be using Facebook? And Facebook has a much wider reach than steam, because while Steam caters to PC gamers alone, Facebook is used by just about everyone, and if they want to advertise something, they have their work cut out for them. Whether they beat Steam however is another matter entirely, it depends on how the client functions, what sort of games they make available and whether they try and get exclusive titles solely for their client.

The ONLY way today to make any decent progress is to sign contracts with hundreds of companies and publishers in order to transform majority of licences from Steam account to given service account.

GOG already attempted to do this with several titles, if they only had more support in this regard I'm pretty sure Valve could get hurt in the process. But until that happens, I doubt anybody will ditch steam only for some kind of ideology or hate. I mean, steam is gigantic spaghetti code and I'm the first person that could write a whole freaking master thesis how awful steam network, client and entire service is, but as long as I have access to my games, I won't organize a riot. Casual users are simply too lazy to make a switch if they can't switch all of their favourite games, and I don't see a strong reason either, so why should anybody bother with it?

Competition is always good, and I'm silently cheering for them, but I know that reality is harsh and there is little to none outcome on the Valve regarding this. In best case they can claim some small piece of cake called "online game distribution", but like with Origin, GOG or Uplay, that will be only a very small piece, and only with the most casual segment of the market composed from facebook games and alike.

I don't really see them as "competing" with each other when the overlap between "steam gamers" and "facebook gamers" is probably pretty small.

on a more serious note this might actually be interesting news for my mother

View attached image.

I'm surprised nobody made a thread about facebook's Gameroom yet

Naturally that needed correcting. ^^

So, opinions?

Only "social" site I use is this one, so personally don't really care. I don't even have an account there.

It's more of a competitor to mobile gaming than Steam games. Not gonna touch that like I don't touch GoG, Origin, Uplay and all the other trash that keeps coming out. Nothing against GoG, but my games are on Steam and I'm not moving to another platform for no reason. Origin and Uplay can go shove a cactus up their ass, I had to make accounts on their services a long time ago and they screwed up, their user information and passwords were leaked to the public and I lost my account on uplay because of that, there's a reason why it took Steam like 10 years to become more or less stable, because this shit isn't easy to make and even today they're still tweaking stuff to make it right, then different companies come in and say that they want a slice of that sweet Valve's Steam profits so they'll make their own platform like it, but they don't know how to make it right and they don't get that gamers don't want more different platforms to use, I don't need to have 10 gaming stores installed on my pc because I want to play 10 different games, not to mention the uplay bullshit that even if the game is on steam, you still have to enter uplay before you play it on steam. At this point if a game isn't on Steam I'm either pirating it or not caring about it.

From my point of view as a gamer, I'm not interested.

From my point of view as someone who works in customer facing computer repairs, this could be a good thing.

Often, we'll get a computer in that's riddled with spyware and virus. And our go to approach is to backup the data, wipe the drive, copy the data back over. Since a lot of people these days have squillions of gig of downloads ( and we don't go into the folders for reasons of data security / privacy ) the backup process can take a long time. But we do it, and it's done.

Fast forward two weeks and the customer is back in. They say their Facebook bingo game stopped working, so they tried to update flash/java. They ended up clicking some dodgy bullshit spam links and now they system is back where it was! And since it's only been two weeks, they think it's more a case that we didn't fix it properly, rather than it being something they themselves have done. So it's not like we can charge them to do the job again.

So, if this Facebook thingy takes care of all the updating, so it's not relying on any external Flash or Java players ( which I would assume since it's a standalone installer ) then it could be a good thing. For the right people.

Perhaps someone wants to file a lawsuit against Valve to remove their DRM?
Similar actions encouraged apple to remove DRM from itunes

I don't feel that this can be any danger to Steam, but even if it would be, it would be good. Valve became stale, multiple-year old bugs riddle the client while they push out some nonsesical updates (As always: why can I subscribe and follow a person's message wall but I can't for group announcements? and similar braindead things)
Valve just became another slow, lazy giant corporation but they don't even have to make games to make money, and at the same time they are understaffed. It's incredible that people still worship them without a second thought.

The one screenshot of the thing they have a available strongly implies it's a desktop client to run the tonnes of browser-based games that make up "facebook gaming".
And like all mobile-style crapware it's webpage tries to trick me into installing it first to find out if the initial assumptions are correct or not. Which earns them a big "fuck off".

Instead, a quick search of the internet to see what various tech sites have to say about it proves I'm right. So it's main content is not in my interests. (And more and more of it is making it's way onto Steam anyway these days, reducing the need to install another program for it.)

if it means playing Mafia Wars, Candy Crush and Farmville all over again, they lost me already!

Most of the games of my intrest are above 200mb in size, which is the limit (with possible exeption to 500mb), so for me it isnt intresting at all

I visit Facebook everyday, and browsing there even more than browsing Steamgifts. But I didn't even know about this.

The only easy way for me to buy PC games is through Steam. Steam supports my currency, there is also cheaper regional price, and I can buy Steam wallet at local store here.
I can only buy games with wallet because I don't have credit card.

If facebook can make it easier and have nice games including famous AAA franchise, I'll gladly leave Steam.

I despise "mobile gaming". I've never encounter a good free mobile game. I hate their concept as a whole. Their only hope is too hook you up and get you slitghly interested so then they can offer you their cheap lame microtransaction. Those games are lmited and lack actions and precisions with touch screan. I also laugh at their poor attempt to integrate achievements and leaderboards.
I hope you are not going to get wrong impresion about me, but "mobile gaming" is one of the topics where I get super salty and toxic.
I can only speak for free games, I haven't tried payed ones.

was expecting something VR related as facebook ownes oculus

I don't know. I tried playing a MOBA on Facebook once, and then a few months later ended up with 1500 Facebook followers that I don't even know. -_-
So I'm kind of wary of Facebook gaming now.

But I am kind of interested in how it will work. They could be pretty successful if they do it right. More and more young gamers get Facebook profiles early on, there are lots of FB groups about different games, and even I prefer FB groups than Steam groups sometimes for game-related stuff, I guess I'm just more used at navigating FB than Steam, and using its features.

I only have a FB account for gleam-like promotions and will probably never touch that client but I'm ok with other companies giving it a try and providing some competency for valve... as long as they don't start with the usual BS tactics that ubi tends to pull.