Why doesn 't Rockstar Games make their own Game distribution Platform?

I do not understand why they still use Steam. They also have many other games besiedes GTA. It makes no sense to me. They could make lots of money.

That would be horrible. You want 12 different apps on your desktop to launch games? It's bad enough with uplay, origin, steam, battlenet, and galaxy (the last at least being entirely optional)

What does the Social Club do?

@xantufrog: I do not see a problem with it. Like you said there are so many apps... I would not mind one extra. Maybe we should go back to pre-Steam Era where you just buy the game and that's it. You buy a game and it runs. In my opinion there is no need for game launching apps, but if there are game launching apps it would be horrible to have a monopoly or oligopoly on them

@jun_aka_pekto: Well, its an annoyance?

They really should - but they're probably way too committed to Steam to ever get an audience to migrate.

They already have, they just also release there games on Steam as well.

What would be the advantage to making it exclusive to one service?

Rockstar doesn't release games that often. Not enough to warrant a whole distribution platform anyway. Maybe a 2K service would make sense, but not Rockstar alone.

Rockstar could make lots of money?

Have you seen their estimated revenue from the GTA 5 Shark cards?

Red Dead Redemption 2 is likely funded by Shark card purchases.

They release one game every 5 years, so why the hell would they want their own distribution service?

This. A game library split between a dozen programs is not much better than juggling discs like in the old days.

No, no more distribution platforms please! Origin, Battle.net, Steam and UPlay, Stardocks old platform, ect. What's the matter with you?

Social Club is pointless as it is, why do they need an even more pointless thing to distribute their games on?

Don't get me wrong, GTAV online is OK...I guess? But it just shouldn't exist. All that effort should have gone into a better original campaign, and all the extra effort should have gone into singleplayer DLC. Making it all "social" and "networked" was just lame on their part.

GTA to me has always been a very enjoyable, solo experience.

I'd hate to see a trend of every developer making their their own distribution platform. There are only two...maybe three....doing it right (Steam, GoG, Origin...yes, you might hate EA, but Origin is doing a damn good job. Refunds, free games, sales, plenty of old games, and their Origin Access or whatever it's called is pretty damn awesome). The rest are terrible or have died.

ugh... no. Plenty of good reasons here already.

They have their own launcher. But why would they not use steam? everyone has steam so it would leave out a huge community if they stopped using steam.

You are right, of course GTA V online should not exist, Particular not when it´s the content that has made almost 750mill alone (Not including the inital gamesales) for Rockstar in the first few months of it´s release. Not to mention that heists and the latest content, biker and Corporate has made GTAV online even better.

And it´s also the reason why GTA V is one of the highest selling games and why it keeps selling even so long after it´s inital launch. Not to mention that it´s still full price and not like 99% of it´s counterparts heavily discounted.

And again Rockstar has their own launcher, if you buy the game from Rockstar or select resellers, you do not get a steam key.

@Jacanuk: fair enough, dude, I should have phrased myself better and said it was just my opinion lol.

GTA to me has always been an intimate, singleplayer experience. A treasured story. Taking it online dilutes it, shortens the epic. Infests it with all the problems, immaturities, and other negative aspects of the online community that are otherwise tolerable in games where you can more easily dispatch opponents.

To each their own. I enjoyed GTAV but it was definitely the least enjoyable, and least replayable, of all the GTA games.

@xantufrog: compeition is good though. would it be better if steam was the one and only way to buy games on the PC? i think that would be a disaster.

given the sales of GTA it could actually be worth looking into. people would certainly sign up to it in droves to play the game. valve currently get a cut out of the sales of GTA on steam and given the sales of the game thats a lot of moolah.

it could even just be a R* store (like battle.net or whatever its called now.).

@osan0: to my mind, there's a good way this could go, and a bad way.

The good way is these clients serving as store fronts. And you can choose between which store front for the same game - and maybe they offer deals and hooks to compete with each other and draw you to their store. That's how GoG vs Steam work.

The bad way is publisher specific lockdown - where you can only buy the game on some crummy hacked together client by the company, and there is no competition because that's the only place to buy it. I'm not sure exactly what the OP was proposing, but that was my understanding - that they want Rockstar to move off of Steam and create their own sluggish funky client that I have to buy from and the pricing is fixed by them and doesn't have the benefit of competing sales between - e.g. - Steam and GoG to benefit the consumer. How do we benefit in any way at all from these games being exclusive to a Rockstar client instead of Steam?

That applies to all the clients as well. Steam and Social Club together is just double the crap.

You are not alone, GTA has always been the same for me. A awesome Single player experience.

That is until GTA V online came around with the heists, That was for me what saved GTAV, just such a shame that Rockstar has not expanded on those but instead gone for more mp content like races and deathmatches.

As to GTA V main campaign , it was ok but for me GTA IV will always stand out as the best story based GTA ever made.

why? they release a game every few years.