If I’m honest, I don’t disagree.
I would love for Steam to have **actual competition. Which is difficult, sure, but you could run a slightly less feature-rich store, take less of a cut, and pass the reduction fully on to consumers and you’d be an easy choice for many gamers.
But that’s not what Epic is after. They tried to go hard after the sellers, figuring that if they can corner enough fo the market with exclusives the buyers will have to come. But they underestimated that even their nigh-infinite coffers struggle to keep up with the raw amount of games releasing, and also the unpredictability of the indie market where you can’t really know what to buy as an exclusive.
Nevermind that buying one is a good way to make it forgotten.
So yeah, fully agreed. Compared to Epic, I vastly prefer Steam’s 30% cut. As the consumer I pay the same anyways, and Steam offers lots of stuff for it like forums, a client that boots before the heat death of the universe, in-house streaming, library sharing, cloud sync that sometimes works.
I trust a steam monopoly long before I’d trust epic. Epic is run to meet the needs of share holders and valve is run to meet the needs of Gaben.
Gaben isn’t going to last forever. But honestly the only other good games storefront is GoG. I’ll continue using Steam for as long as it’s still good.
I’ve used GoG once for a game that wasn’t on steam but I have done much more. Honestly I acknowledge that this ephemeral moment in time where PC gaming is kept in balance by Gaben can’t last. But I really think the lens we should look at PC landscape today is one of appreciation. If EA ran the game in steam’s shoes we wouldn’t get things like summer sales or games at reduced prices long after their launch.
Don’t be sad it will be gone be happy it happened.
Gaben has been hands off at valve for a decade. He’s off breaking world records with research submersibles. Playing with his rubber duckies in the bathtub.
Both Valve and Epic are private companies. I still trust Valve over Epic, but I think technically Tim Sweeney has pretty much full control over Epic as well (for better or for worse).
He does, but not the stake Gaben has. Sweeny sold 40% to tencent. This still gives him control, but thats a very large shareholder that can push and pull when they want.
They can’t “push and pull” anything. With Sweeney owning 50%+1, Tencent and anyone else he sold shares to can literally do nothing - he will always have the final say. And since the company is private, there’s almost certainly an agreement/contract in place on those share purchases that if someone wants to dump them they have to offer them back to him/the company first. Since it’s not a public company they can’t just go sell their shares on an open market. The threat of a large shareholder is gone in a case like this - they can’t stage a hostile takeover and they can’t dump and run.
You’re thinking of technically taking the decisions in the company. But shareholders can do much more. Like influencing the value of stocks by selling too many at once.
Tell me you didn’t actually read my comment without telling me you didn’t read my comment.
You’re also assuming there are no other shareholders…………
Sure, maybe those 106 are sharing 10% but I doubt it.
Ah that’s a fair point. I haven’t paid too much attention to this. Thanks for providing some more context :).
I get like 99% of my news about upcoming or newly released games from steam. There have been so many games I’m not even aware exist, like last week I found out Saints Row got a new game a while back but it was epic exclusive so I never knew.
Also being a Linux gamer steam has amazing support for Linux while epic has none.
Rest assured, you didn’t miss anything with the latest Saints Row. It was decent fun for about 20-30 hours, but it felt like much less of a game than any of its predecessors. I got the impression that the idea was to restart the franchise back to square one with minimal features so they could sell them back to us in future installments.
Linux gaming has come so far. I don’t even run Windows anymore. Especially with how much open source AI stuff I use.
Friends are shocked to hear Kingdom Hearts is on PC. But it’s Epic exclusive.
It’s surreal that it still is an epic exclusive, must be the only game that isn’t just a timed deal.
Steam is a legitimate value add for sellers and buyers/users, that justifies its 30% cut. Other than free games, Epic has a seemingly easy-to-integrate online networking system, that’s about it. Steam has a modding platform, broadcasting, remote “parsec”-like controller emulator, Linux support, content sharing, forums and a developer news feed. That’s quite a lot.
What makes me stick with them is that they don’t preclude Steam and other gaming users from using alternatives but simply compete with their own well-made system… plenty of games have their own cross-platform mod-launchers that aren’t workshop for example. Steamworks DRM isn’t required and Steam networking services for multiplayer aren’t mandatory either.
That said, itch and GoG are great alternatives where they have games available. I’d just like GoG to provide better Linux support.
Gog has support problems on some windows games too. Also they mark games run via dosbox as windows, which is annoying when you specifically want to find an older windows game that also had a dos release. Even with those issues, gog is still my goto because at least my games won’t be full of denuvo securom etc. and nobody else seems to remotely care about the really old harder to find games. I’d be scouring ebay for old discs if not for gog.
How does that quote from Douglas Adams go:
It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it… anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
Epic only has a lower cut because they’re leveraging their undoubtedly massive Chinese investments to gain market share. You can rest assured they would charge 30% if they could.
I don’t like that Steam or Apple or Google charge 30%. I think it’s absurd. But also Valve is basically a saint compared to every modern corporation so I don’t think twice about it.
While 30% is high it seems developers consider it acceptable since number of games Steam releases is not reducing. Any one of those developers can decide not to publish on steam and go that way, but in the end I think Valve’s service offers so much exposure that it’s worth considering.
Getting 100% of 1000 sales is not the same amount of money as getting 70% of 30000 sales, especially when it’s a digital distribution where copying bytes costs nothing. Steam also offers bunch of other services as well, things like networking, cloud saves, streaming and similar all of which cost money to maintain.
While 30% is high it seems developers consider it acceptable since number of games Steam releases is not reducing.
Yeah that’s not how that works. Acceptable or not, if you want to sell your games, they have to be on Steam because that’s where people are buying them.
That’s the whole point. If people prefer to buy it on Steam, then that’s it. Forcing people to move away to other store due to exclusive deals and similar means only making people with money more annoyed and more inconvenienced.
Your “point” is shit. Backing people into a corner and then claiming that your choice is “acceptable” because they didn’t go somewhere else is bullshit.
How is it backing them in the corner if they have elsewhere to go? No one is forcing people to publish on Steam.
I’ve already explained this.
Also their near-infinite Fortnite money.
Just release the game on all platforms
💯
Although, I can imagine supporting Epic is annoying. Unlike even GOG, they don’t have their own support mechanism like a forum. I can see why someone would release on Steam (and hence stuff like GMG and Humble) and even GOG but not Epic. Example Baldur’s Gate 3, which released on everything except Epic. Although in their case Larian commented that the decision to not release on Epic was specifically to not show support for their exclusives-everything stance. Hence on everything except Epic.
That’s an EPIC move by Larian.
Developers would for sure do that, if it were possible. Who wouldn’t take more exposure to their project as a beneficial thing. Problem is probably in legal part of releasing stuff.
It’s infuriating to me that only Steam and EA’s stores have gifting built in. Most of my games budget goes to buying small-squad multiplayer games like Deep Rock Galactic and Sea of Thieves for people.
Sure you can buy a key anywhere but I love seeing at a glance that an acquaintance has a particular DLC or game to surprise them rather than asking them first. And then there’s a small chance they thank you for the key and pass it on to someone else instead of just telling you they don’t like game, while Steam has a handy decline button.
Meanwhile GOG…
Epic is on a decline, never forget what they did to unreal. Also I really like when devs give the option to buy on itch.io and get a steam key with the drm free version. They get more money per sale and I get a drm free version and a steam version in one. Zortch and Dwarf Fortress are the only two games I know of to do this but would like to see more.
What did they do to Unreal?
delisted all the unreal and unreal tournament games from all storefronts to reduce competition to fortnite. You can’t buy any unreal game legit anymore, either have to pirate or scrounge internet archive. For anyone who doesn’t know unreal was epicmegagames first flagship series, the one that printed the money for the foundation they sit on. Very dedicated fanbase and everything, and epic kills it. even the singleplayer campaigns.
to reduce competition to fortnite
this doesn’t make any sense, these games were never competing with fortnite.
delisting these games was a very shitty thing to do, but there is no reason for us to go around fabricating nonsensical motives to explain it. the far simpler explanation is that they didn’t want to put in the work to keep these games playable on modern PCs.
in these instances the steam version is usually also drm-free
I prefer GoG to Steam. I will not install Epic, especially after killing off the Unreal franchise.
Same, I always check whether GOG has a game first, and whether it’s patched up to par. Sadly, surprisingly often while games release on GOG they then lack features (although personally I do not really care about achievements) or worse, the devs give up on releasing patches for the non-Steam versions.
Sadly, surprisingly often while games release on GOG they then lack features
This is almost always a situation that can be pinned on Steam, actually. The games that end up doing this are usually using Steamworks, which essentially forces them into a sort of soft-exclusivity on Steam since their multiplayer features and such can only exist there.
This is almost always a situation that can be pinned on Steam, actually. The games that end up doing this are usually using Steamworks, which essentially forces them into a sort of soft-exclusivity on Steam since their multiplayer features and such can only exist there.
But Steam doesn’t force them to use Steamworks, so I don’t really see “steam’s fault” fault here. Although, of course, it’d be cool if Steamworks would work for non-steam games at least for modding/multiplayer. Granted.
Although, of course, it’d be cool if Steamworks would work for non-steam games at least for modding/multiplayer.
That’s the point. No, nobody’s forcing them to use Steamworks (especially since Epic has rolled out their cross-platform, store-and-OS-agnostic free competitor to it), but anyone who chooses to do so (which is a lot of devs) ends up locking those features to Steam (barring a ton of extra work for themselves) simply because of Valve’s chosen policy.
Don’t think Valve doesn’t understand this. They found a way to get devs to all but lock their games to Steam and thank Valve for the opportunity to do it.
Eh, they’re all just companies and all just as fallible as one another.
Not sure I get the Valve worship here.
It’s not a hard thing to get. Over the years Valve has had relatively low amount of blunders and for the most part they were of the misjudging customer base kind but ultimately they have been very consumer oriented and have provided great value for the money. From universal refund policy to family sharing and similar. Their service consists of many benefits for the consumer but all of that is charged from the developer. Very hard not to like such approach.
Epic on the other hand did the opposite. They catered to developers and inconvenienced consumers. You get to pay the same price as everywhere but you are forced to get exclusives from them and you don’t get any of the benefits Steam has. Am in fact surprised it gained as much popularity as it did. Goes to show people will sell their own pride for occasional free game you don’t even get to chose.
I remember when Valve and Steam was the great enemy in the early 2000s.
Everyone hated how buggy it was and needing it to play Counterstrike.
Oh, don’t mistake me preferring Steam (and GOG, for example, who have an actual value proposition to me as a consumer - unlike Epic!) to “Valve worship”. They’re simply the least bad option, but of course they’re all huge corporations. Realistically though Valve has actually surprisingly little bad given the amount of money and market control they have, so eh… for now, I’m happy buying about half my games there (usually ends up that way, though I prefer GOG for games also releasing on that).
it’s a big circlejerk, it happens. everyone has the exact same opinion but also wants to feel like they are making a valiant statement in opposition of the bad thing
it’s all a massive oversight of course, statisticly everyone here is likely going to outlive Gabe Newel. and when valve goes public someone else will control that monopoly.
steam is good and egs sucks. it’s not worship, just consumers voicing their preference for a better product.
What’s not to get? I’m genuinely curious.
Why do people just want Steam as one store monopoly vs. Having two companies compete where Steam is one of them.
It’s only good for consumers…
it should be easier to change publisher than engine, you can choose publisher, but Unity will hold your balls forever
I only buy from gog on the side too since the no drm policy is very pro consumer. And also the porn games are unrated via a free dlc instead of having to download it externally.
Free dlc you say… interesting
I dreamt once that there was a reliable, non-profit yet well funded community that hosted and distributed games with minimal take in an effort to spread gaming as art and history. They even kept a system agnostic achievement system that retroactively added steam, PlayStation and Xbox achievements in one place with community features.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I have weird dreams, y’all!
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