Always a proponent of building connected services around its games, Valve says that five years from now, ‘games as a service’ will be viewed as a baseline for successful productions.

“It certainly won’t be a buzzword like it is now. It will simply be the baseline of all the best and most successful video games,” Valve business development boss Jason Holtman told MCV.

Following in the footsteps of Valve, we’ve seen several pushes from big-name publishers in this regard, most notably EA’s Origin and Activision’s Call of Duty Elite. It’s not a stretch to say that all big-name publishers will employ similar tactics in the future — with the rising costs of development, services are a valuable tool for gauging interest and connecting directly with consumers.

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Read more: Analysts Estimate Steam Brought In Nearly $1 Billion In 2010,  Activision: We Will Never Charge for Call of Duty Multiplayer,  Update: Call of Duty Elite PC Timing ‘To Be Determined’,  Next Call of Duty Unveil This Friday,  EA’s Origin Buddies Up With Third-Party Publishers, Capcom, THQ, Warner Titles Coming Soon