It’s definitely convenient to have everything in once place, and Steam has way more features, but it’s good to avoid Steam becoming too monopolistic. We saw recently how badly that can go with reddit.
Despite the widespread worshipping of Steam and GabeN, I’ve had lots of issues with Steam and Valve over the years.
No, Steam gained its near monopoly through anti-consumer practices as well: being mandatory for playing Valve games, even offline, as soon as 2004; being DRM-ridden; locking consumers out of their right to sell their games on second-hand market; still enforcing an old revenue share system that’s hurting devs; or putting micro-transactions everywhere with their collectible system that you can’t really disable at all. Just to name a few.
Steam is not better than others. You’re just used to its flaws.
The only one that goes on Epic’s favor is the cut, but frankly I think the whole “old revenue share system that’s hurting devs” is nothing more than Epic’s propaganda trying to get marketshare. 70/30 in favor of the devs while Steam handles hosting, community platform, multiplayer and modding tools, so forth, is neither unusual nor ripping anyone off, certainly not worth how maligned it was. I understand devs who prefer Epic’s cut, but I don’t think Epic is doing this out of fairness, nor that it can be relied on if they ever do gain ground.
In the other aspects, it’s either equal or worse. It has as much DRM. Steam provides options for people to trade extra copies they didn’t activate but as far as I know other stores don’t. Neither allows people to trade away activated copies so that’s no points for anyone.
I assume the microtransaction thing is talking about Steam Trading Cards and such, they are a bit of an iffy worthless addition to get people to waste money… but if the person is concerned over how much money the devs are getting, they do get a cut from every transaction, so under that perspective it should be counted as a plus. Which, by the way, is entirely up to the dev to add or not.
I don’t really remember asking for your opinion on what a fair cut should be or what you think is a rip off. But the fact is that Steam takes more money from developers than other powerful competitors around (but 30% is barely enough to get servers running if I listen to you :D ). Okay. Sure. Yes. Right.
The microtransactions are so awful in Steam that with proposed laws in some countries (like the Netherlands) it would make the whole thing illegal. Some of the worst Valve practices already are, like the loot boxes (they’re banned there).
I don’t tell you that you should switch to something else than Steam. I don’t tell you that there’s a better choice (maybe GOG?). But what I’m saying is that Steam is indeed predatory and has been known for its anti-consumer practices, despite what some True Gamers™ seem to believe.
I don’t really remember asking for your opinion on what a fair cut should be or what you think is a rip off.
Too bad, this is a public forum. I don’t need to ask for your permission to say whatever I want. But if that’s how you are going to go about it, then feel free to think whatever you want on your corner.
Yeah, Steam has DRM. Its the least annoying DRM that exists entirely because they gave us one of the best shop fronts that exists on PC as a trade off. And all companies have the right to sell their own games on whichever store they wish. Unlike Epic, Steam doesnt buy the exclusive rights to OTHER companies games, its just their own games. Your imaginary competition utopian dreamland doesnt exist, and you’re turning optional mole hills into mountains in order to pretend the best option we have is bad. If you don’t like collectible trading cards and the least annoying DRM ever created, go buy on GOG, EPIC UBI and EA all have FAR WORSE practices
Avoid it in favor of GoG. Ubisoft can’t be trusted with a single drop of goodwill. As we can see by how they inject their clunky garbage manager even in games they sell through other stores.
That’s probably the best option. Considering how a Ubisoft exec said we should be “comfortable not owning games”, I wouldn’t trust anything purchased from them anymore.
Genuine curiosity, why does it matter which platform it comes out on? Asking from a comlnsole-only point of view. I only game on PS5, so I’ll never get to play Xbox-only games. But if you’re on a PC, you can just get the other platform?
Those companies have changed their own launcher so many times as well that it doesn’t give me any hope that they will continue to exist or continue to let me borrow the games I bought from them.
People say that theoretically but not only Steam doesn’t stop anyone from selling in other places, it delivers better services than any other platform (except maybe GOG that has the big benefit of being DRM-free)
The Steam “monopoly” ends up being less detrimental than the “competition” of locking each game to a different platform.
If it was only on their launcher I wouldnt care. Its the little exclusivity deal on epic that annoys me.
Its one thing to only sell your stuff on your own personal store. Thats fine, whatever. But to create fake exclusivity on pc? Nah fuck off dude, especially from ubisoft
It’s “exclusive” on a different free platform that doesn’t have any extra requirements. Sure, it’s worse than steam in some ways but choosing not to play the game because it’s only on Epic is pretty dumb, honestly.
Choosing not to use epic branded things because of the companies pretty nasty decisions and financial backers is completely justified. The world is not always about getting things for free.
I haven’t bought a Ubisoft game since Farcry 3 when a friend invited me to join an online game (which is something I very rarely had the opportunity to do) but the game wouldn’t let me play because I didn’t have that subcription thing they had. I tried using the free signup code that came with the game, but my brother already used it. So yeah, I have a personal grudge against that shitty company.
Also, I hate what they did to the Rainbow Six franchise. The original games (by Red Storm, I think?) are what those games should’ve been.
🤣 yeah it kind of does. I like platformers and metroidvanias though, and I have fond memories of several previous entries to the series. That is the appeal for me. The game’s got good reviews, it’s nice to see the series actually getting some stuff right this time, especially because the last entry was such a disappointment for me.
I kinda liked the first game more. Felt a lot more cohesive in terms of themes and story, Little Nightmares 2 felt like it was about something else entirely. And yeah, that ending.
Yeah it feels like they tried something different. With the first one, all the big ennemies were underlings of the Lady. Here, even though they inhabit the city (except for the hunter), they are not linked to the Thin man. It’s a bit confusing.
But overhaul the game is still really good and scary. IMO being chased is one of the scariest thing, so stressfull.
It will be because of the “First Run” deal that Epic offers, so you’ll get to play in 6 months. I don’t blame the studio for doing it though but it’s not ideal for some.
Lol as someone else put it, it’s silly to complain that you won’t buy a game because it doesn’t use the marketplace you want to use.
Steam is just one marketplace and it needs competition. One day it’s going to go through enshittification and when that happens you’ll be thankful other marketplaces exist.
Sometimes I honestly wonder why PC gamers get so riled up over inconsequential things.
I’ve never found it more convenient to use Steam or another store over piracy so it doesn’t make much difference to many.
Some of the games I do own on Steam now don’t work either, so it’s not like it’s an amazing store.
But if it’s inconvenient to download a different client just to buy a game then you’re just lazy. It’s not like you have to subscribe to it, it’s just a click and 5 minute wait.
Lazy for not wanting to have 6 different accounts and launchers? Nah. It’s easier to just get a pirated version than trying to remember which service you bought what on.
Not even close… no one is complaining that it’s on other stores, the problem is that it isn’t on steam and even if there was, it still requires you to install their own garbage client. Quite literally the opposite.
If everything was on everything then sure, that would be great. But that’s not realistic, and having this alternative where everything is on Steam but not elsewhere is not a good solution for that because Steam will be shit one day, and already has quite a few shitty issues.
Honestly, people have this ridiculous view of PC gaming and Steam sometimes. Look around the world and show me where having one company having a massive hold over that sector has ever worked out well long term for consumers.
Man what are you on and whats with these pointless anti steam propaganda. I get why people would be against steam but this literally isn’t one of them.
So let me repeat that. NO ONE WANTS IT TO BE STEAM EXCLUSIVE. PEOPLE ARE AGAINST PLATFORM EXCLUSIVITY. To me you look like weird one having some weird fetish for hating big bad companies. Everyone knows the problems of monopoly and I have also taken course on economics so I am somewhat aware of it but I buy things where it’s convenient and if it isn’t I would rather pirate it. Doesn’t matter if it’s stream or gog or epic, you are simply barking at the wrong tree mate.
It sounds like we agree then. Ideally everything would be on every platform, but that’s unrealistic so OP is pretty much complaining needlessly. It’s good there are different platforms and competition.
Every storefront is DRM, some better than others, and people shouldn’t get so tied to a specific one. PC gaming is so open and getting angry at this is pointless.
Interesting, I wondered why I’ve had messages from automod about removing old posts of mine, and why I’ve seen some recent ones I’ve contributed to suddenly disappearing.
Was this the new team or the previous mod who has done this?
Anyway, good luck and have fun with running the community. Hope to see more from you folks.
Yep. Gog is probably where we should all be getting our games tbf. Being mad that a game is available on one drm store instead of another drm store is kind of silly. In either case we’re only buying the license and not actually owning anything.
Had this epiphany with the new Ass Creed. It launched on steam, but after buying it still has a second front end Ubisoft launcher. Thats just straught up lying to me about what im purchasing. I dont want Ubi Spyware. Period.
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