The State of PC Gaming in 2019
Reported today on TechSpot
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The State of PC Gaming in 2019
Sometimes, as borders erode, new fissures form in their wake. In 2019, more games flowed between PC and other platforms than ever before, but a single major division cracked the PC gaming landscape in half.
This year's central throughline was undoubtedly the titanic clash between Valve and Epic, with Epic snatching up every high-profile exclusive it could get its hands on, much to some PC gamers' chagrin. But this year also saw longtime console exclusives like Red Dead Redemption 2, Heavy Rain, Journey, and Halo: Reach complete their years-long migrations to PC, with other heavy hitters like Death Stranding announced for PC as well. Games flowed in the opposite direction too, with the Nintendo Switch opening its doors to countless indie games that traditionally would have been PC-only affairs. Streaming and subscription services like Google Stadia and Project xCloud muddied the waters even more, putting PC-game-like experiences on platforms you'd never have imagined playing them on years before (albeit still with plenty of kinks to work out).
There are still some console exclusives, of course, and PC gaming retains its unique identity through things like mods, hardware configurations as numerous as grains of sand on the beach, and its inextricable ties to Twitch and YouTube. Increasingly, though, the lines between these platforms are dissolving, and everybody's winding up back where so many series and genres started: on PC. As for how companies decide to divvy that up, well, that's a muddier and potentially uglier question.
Steam
Steam made some real strides in terms of functionality this year, but its 2019 was defined, for better or worse, by opposition. In January, PC gaming's