Tomorrow at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, attendees will get a peak at Dennis “Thresh” Fong’s newest startup – Raptr. It’s being demo’d as part of the Charles River/GDC launchpad event in the afternoon.
Raptr has both desktop software and web service components. The client keeps PC-based games completely up to date behind the scenes – patches, updates, etc. are downloaded automatically. This is very similar to Steam, which keeps Valve games updated – although from what we hear Raptr will support at least a thousand games from all different developers out of the gate. The website, at Raptr.com, will pull in gaming data from the Raptr client and will include a social network around friends, stats, games, groups and other content. The website will also include a news feed of what all your friends are up to.
That’s all I know about the service for now. I should have more tomorrow. The launch date is still months away. The company is also rumored to have closed, or be closing, a significant round of funding.
Dennis Fong, who’s 30, is one of the world’s top gamers. He cofounded Xfire, a freeware instant messaging service targeted at gamers, in 2003. In 2006 it was acquired by Viacom for $102 million. Fong is also an advisor to WeGame, which we covered last month.
This sounds very much like a Steam clone. Steam, for those who aren’t familiar, is Valve Software’s online gaming platform that hosts critically acclaimed hits like Half-Life 2, Counterstrike, and Team Fortress 2, but has branched out to kind of be like iTunes for computer games, but with stuff that tries to make it easy to play games with friends.
Steam is successful because Valve’s games are great.
So, uh, he’s competing against rockstars like Valve right off the bat.
This only works if he targets non-Valve games. Or unless his feature set greatly trumps Valve.
The update/patch auto-downloading would be great if it worked with modifications. They tend to update a lot and having to find and download patches every few times you play takes the fun out of the experience…
I like the idea of the social side too and I’m sure it will be a much nicer experience than Valve’s recent attempt (steamcommunity.com).
Steam’s success I think lies not in Valve’s games being good but in the ease of acquisition and installation of supported games. Not having to hunt for the stack of cds/dvds when you get a new computer or reinstall windows is a wonderful thing.
I have to agree with Andy. So far, every game I’ve purchased in the last year or so, has been off of Valve. And not once, did I buy a Valve game from a game store. No need for CD/DVDs. Download when you buy it. It’s rather nice.
If the purchase of Rupture.com is true, I would say this is who bought them, and I would say it was a cash/equity purchase. Will they use this as a base to build their social network? Rupture already takes news feed from within games, they could work with developers to offer a free alternative to steam and have the news feed and stats.
They should take a look at UGAME.net as well since they may be far ahead of rupture on the social network side from what I have seen.
This is not the first time this has been tried but valve were the only ones that managed to get any traction with it. They managed this because they made manadtory to play counter-strike at first but it really took off when it was needed for hl2.
This sounds like xbox live as well.
Steam seems to have turned into the walmart of online game content because it has such as massive audience so I can’t see anyone breaking its grip.
EA have their own so I can’t see them using this, most of the other big games publishers are now on steam, so whos going to use this?
Raptr.com is the brand name for GXL Inc.
GXL, Inc. is a startup company that is pioneering a new way for users to discover new games and share their gaming experiences with friends. Founded in 2007 by successful entrepreneurs and star engineers from Google, Yahoo, Bioware, Adobe and Netscape, GXL has raised several million dollars from an all-star group of investors. Our offices are located in Sunnyvale, CA.
I’m looking forward to see this implemented. Would this really be a competitor to Steam? What’s their monetization approach?
its online
How is this different from where X-Fire is now? They let you keep track of stats and get updates installed for your games.
GameShadow and it’s new social network seems to do all this already and support 2200 titles.