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.
Is that not what you want from him?
Just saying that trust in Gaben and trust in Valve are two separate things. Valve has been doing fine without Gaben at the wheel.
The point is that, other than Gabe, Valve doesn’t have any shareholders to put before their customers. A publicly traded company, on the other hand, effectively has no choice but to cause as much harm as possible to their customers and to society in general in order to maximize short term shareholder profits, leading to runaway enshittification.
A publicly traded company, on the other hand, effectively has no choice but to cause as much harm as possible to their customers and to society in general in order to maximize short term shareholder profits
Nobody is talking about public companies here. Both Valve and Epic are private companies.
If you want to complain about profit motives, that’s a capitalism problem overall, not an issue with public vs. private corporations.
One of those companies is partly owned and heavily influenced by a publicly traded Chinese company.
are you referring to tennacent (likely misspelled)
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.
Another point for me at least, I actually put in effort to not getting made in China products where feasible. The same thing applies here, supporting epic is supporting China. I really just prefer not to support China, so no epic games for me.
Ah that’s a fair point. I haven’t paid too much attention to this. Thanks for providing some more context :).
valve might be the closest thing i have ever seen to an actual benevolent dictator, even if said dictator is very lazy and only deigns to do anything significant once in a while.
In Gaben we trust.
When he’s gone I assume it will go to shit.
i said valve rather than gabe for a reason, gabe mostly leaves the company to its own devices at this point while he focuses on realizing holodeck technology or whatever the hell he’s doing now.
Don’t fix what ain’t broke.
I mean, the back button has been broken since basically the whole UI overhaul.
There was a recent update that addressed the back button. Since then, I’ve noticed clicking games in my wishlist and then going back returns me to my scroll position and a few pages that were missing in the back button (like it would back past them) are now there.
I’ve been told there’s been an update for the back button since like a day after the new UI was released. Doesn’t matter whether in Beta or Stable, it’s still broken for me such that I get sent back to the library.
More like: out of sight, out of mind.
That’s because you are not in a position to produce and sell a game.
As a user it sure is the case but as a developer you are in a position that you either have to take their 30% cut or accept that you are selling way less
The fact that pretty much immediately after epic launched their store steam lowered the cut for big publishers tells you that they are fully aware that 30% is too much to be reasonable but they completely could get away with that because Devs just didn’t have a choice.
Because of epic that now changed since even if you don’t actually sell more games you at least can get a guaranteed profit as if you sold those games that you miss out on by not being on steam.
Sure the way epic is doing it is not good but I really don’t see another way how a significant number of buyers would ever come to another store. That didn’t work for EA, that didn’t work for Ubisoft, that also didn’t work for GOG where you actually own the game without DRM and not just a license to play it as long as the server is allowing you.
People are fundamentally lazy and hate changing their routines - that’s why forcing them into buying at your store is necessary if you want to get them to switch.
I think you got the whole thing mixed up. Sure Valve takes a huge cut, but if game does poorly Valve earns less as well. So there’s an incentive from both parties to make sure game succeeds. But in the end Valve makes sure you as a consumer get your money’s worth, hence why they even added no questions asked refund policy. Policy which has resulted in more purchases than before, because risk of not liking the game is non-existent now.
Epic on the other hand is forcing users to buy into their ecosystem by way of exclusives. Developers use this to make sure project succeeds even if it’s not good. That is to say they get the money regardless. But this model is not sustainable as Epic has to earn money at some point so number of exclusives will be lower and lower. At the same time they are encouraging developers to not try as hard to polish the game since they get the money regardless.
Fundamentally approaches are completely different and Steam’s approach can’t fail because they cater to customer while Epic is just trying to force people away while offering subpar service. And whoever holds the money holds the power.
It’s a really fascinating market dynamic. Steam is good to consumers, generally speaking, and offers features to that end. Family sharing is the wildest thing imaginable, since it’s formally letting customers share one purchase instead of each making one for two purchases. Their refund policy too is really, really nice.
Valve has effectively chosen to be more enticing to the end user than to the seller. They’ve gathered up so many buyers that it’s foolish for sellers to not set up a shop there. A 30% cut of revenue is hefty, but like you said, that sets up a dynamic where both want the game to succeed. I suspect paying a monthly fee to remain listed on steam would end up worse for everyone.
Gaben is one hell of a mastermind.
Indeed. And it’s a system where everyone benefits. As opposed to currently popular philosophy of “milk it while you can” from big publishers.
It’s a healthy dynamic which could be better, but it being healthy for everyone is what keeps it afloat
Subpar is being generous.
Because of epic that now changed since even if you don’t actually sell more games you at least can get a guaranteed profit as if you sold those games that you miss out on by not being on steam.
how long do devs think this is sustainable?
to me it seems like devs are trading long term sustainability for short term profitability. sure, your game Cracksnot was profitable because EGS paid out the butt to make it exclusive. now hardly anyone has played your game, how many people are going to get excited about Cracksnot 2 in a few years? will epic still be willing to pay you upfront for Cracksnot 2 exclusivity?
if egs never really takes off (which so far, it hasn’t), eventually epic will cut their losses and stop throwing money at it.
That’s what everyone is doing nowadays. Trading long term “potential” for short term gains. Let’s face it, the earth isn’t gonna last forever, it’d be a neverending hellscape in like what 40 - 50 years. Better to enjoy it while you can by getting the most of what you need right now.
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.
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.
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.
I wish we had a branch of government filled with randomly selected people.
Imagine if we filled each house seat by randomly selecting 5 people, having the 5 people debate, and then people could vote for which of the 5 they wanted. We would then have a government filled with normal but likable people.
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.
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.
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
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.
This is asinine. You pay higher costs for games, and Valve gets to pretend to give you something for free. That is not something to like or admire.
Am not sure I have ever overpaid a game on Steam. It’s either same price everywhere or I get it at stupid discounts during sales. There’s no pretending. Valve even said it there are things in place should Steam ever disappear you get to keep your games.
Yes, you have, because developers price their games to still make money even after 30% goes to Valve.
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).
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.
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.
Steam is a better product, but you give less money to the developers of the actual game. Unless it has Steam exclusives (e.g. Steam workshop) I would rather buy wherever I give the devs most money.
features like steam input and steam play benefit every game regardless if the developer actively supports them. i use the latter quite frequently.
Yeah, I understand why people like and buy from Steam. It gives real value.
However, especially for smaller game studios, I believe I get more value if actual game developers get more money than Steam getting it. Let’s say a studio gets $1m in revenue after years of work. Having $180k more ($120k Epic fee vs $300k Steam fee) to spend on artists and developers for their next games/DLCs is a big difference.
Those $300k is literally 0.003409% of Steam’s revenue (estimated 8.8 billion in 2020). Valve could have an army of over 40,000 developers at a yearly $200k compensation and still be profitable just from selling other people’s games.
So I make a big convenience sacrifice when I buy from Epic. I also don’t like to support Tencent. But unless the dev is selling Steam keys directly from their web site, that’s where they get the most money.
Smaller game studios on Epic are DOA anyway because Epic refuses to implement game discovery features.
When it introduced Steam Direct, Valve prioritized the development of Steam features that helped users discover games they might be interested in, such as the Discovery Queue. The Epic Games Store will continue to get interface updates, but as a matter of principle, Allison says that Epic will not track user behavior and use it to algorithmically recommend games. Epic has said in the past that it’s more interested in supporting the game discovery that already happens outside of stores, such as on Twitch and YouTube.
So Epic will put your game trailer on their YouTube for 300 views and call it a day.
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…
I don’t think anyone has a problem with their being two big competitors, it’s just we don’t want it to be epic games. gog games would be a good competitor
Right? I have no issues buying off gog. Epic will never see a penny though.
I was reading about the Unity debacle and thought thank
GodGabe that Steam has never pulled shit like this.I think part of the problem is too many companies are controlled by venture capitalists, or private equity, or whatever you call it. The point is that a single entity owns multiple companies from the shadows.
Companies are supposed to compete and the best company win, that’s good in theory. But when a single shadow entity owns multiple companies they’ll do something like squeeze customers of one company, which drives customers to their competitor, which, surprise, is owned by the same shadow entity.
You seem to know what you are talking about, so this is for those who don’t, the “illusion of competition” has become such a staple in the modern world. In the US (and much of the world as I understand it) eyeglass sellers are all owned by the same company. Pearl Vision, LensCrafters, and I think even the Walmart vision centers are all owned and operated by Luxottica. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica
It is a vertical monopoly that controls everything from materials acquisition to sales, directly “competes” with itself, and lies to customers every day to make them think they are actually in control.
Then you have companies like 3M, or Nestle, who control most of the entire industries. A good 85% of all food on the shelves in the USA is produced by one of 4 or 5 companies that definitely collude to fix prices and use aggressive tactics to protect their position. They also follow the “compete with yourself” model to make you think you are actually making a decision with your money. You aren’t.
Then there is the big Ag companies. In Ohio they have actually gotten laws on the books that make it illegal to do Farm Shares, where you purchase a share of the crops they produce for the year and for about 8 months a year you get a big basket of fresh produce delivered to you. An ex and I got to do it for a year before we split and it was amazing. It was a ton of food and only cost us about $150 for the half-share we purchased. It would be amazing right now with prices and it would help local private farms, which is precisely why they pushed it out.
I can rant for hours… So I cut here. This whole topic just infuriates me to no end.
Illuminatus
In Gaben we trust. Epic sold out to Tencent which is evil.
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
