Info game/porter: Should it expand to include platforms (Steam, Microsoft Store)?

[JohnTHedgehog 0]

Hello,

I started a discussion on Valkyria Chronicles about this topic.

With all the new games in Game Pass PC, I noticed that some of them were ported to the Microsoft Store by different studios; for example, Valkyria Chronicles and Shenmue I & II. They are (very slightly) different builds from Steam.

Currently, we have no way of documenting this without using invalid templates, as the "porter" row only allows for operating systems (Windows, etc). I wonder if it makes sense to expand it to either include platforms (Steam, Xbox Live, Microsoft Store, UWP, Origin, etc.) or arbitrary version strings?

I think there can be substantial differences in features and APIs between all platforms (Steam Workshop), or they may require different builds (Win32 vs UWP), or they might have fixes. And proper crediting is always appreciated. On the other hand, maybe this isn't important enough to be included in the wiki?

EDIT: Space Channel: Part 2 (Steam) has a similar situation and it just lists everyone as developer.

[Aemony 141]

This have been on the backburner for a while. I usually just tell users to use /row/developer with an appropriate second parameter instead:

{{Infobox game/row/developer|My Famous Game Studio|Microsoft Store}}

The porter row is currently tied to what PCGW sees as OSes, and trying to fit in /platform “ports”/ on that row is probably going to be a headache. It also isn’t as relevant information since the work done is typically far less minor (usually just involves replacing one library for another, or hooking up calls to replacement calls, etc).

I recommend we simply formalize the use of the developer row in the few cases where another studio worked on one of the platform releases.