Wasteland 2 - Interview @ Eurogamer

Eurogamer has another interview with Brian Fargo about Wasteland 2, and he talks about Valve being the saviour of the PC. Here is a small sample of the interview.

Steam was first made available to download in 2002, but Valve's own Half-Life 2, released in November 2004, was the first game to require installation of the client to play - even for retail copies.

It wasn't long before Valve opened up Steam to third-parties for digital distribution. Now, over 2000 games are available to buy for PC, Mac and Linux. Steam enjoys over 40m users.

"They're the saviours of the PC as far as I'm concerned," Fargo told Eurogamer in an interview about Steam Early Access title Wasteland 2.

"They've been great. You think about where we all were, kind of in the dark ages, when there was nothing. There was just flash. There was no digital distribution. They've opened up a way to get directly to the audience in a way that isn't politicised, or forces us to do exclusives or all the other things the console guys do."

The console guys - Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony - "put all sorts of guns to our head", Fargo said.

"It used to be with Xbox, just until very recently, you couldn't have an Xbox Live Arcade publishing license unless you had a retail product. What did that have to do with anything?

"Valve has all this power but they don't wield it. They let us all work in an open system. So for that I can't say enough good things about them."

Fargo has been working with Valve on the Steam Early Access release of post-apocalyptic role-playing game Wasteland 2.