There is if they’re interested in competing with Steam. Epic made some very competitive offerings for the supply side of things and then provided very little reason for customers to ever shop there, which it turns out is just as, if not more important.
Let me gift games, let me wishlist games to receive gifts. There’s lots of other features I would also like but if other stores had that I’d be much more inclined to use the other stores.
I don't think that :/ I think his statements and the games he chooses to back sort of prove that ultimately profit is what he is interested in. I don't blame him for that. But don't make him out to be what he isn't. He is a CEO first, being a fan of games falls lower on the list.
Valve is an excellent example of a company that is privately owned, so they don’t have to satisfy shareholders with constant growth for growth’s sake. And yet they’re still growing and making a profit, because they make a good product.
Phil and Xbox don’t have that luxury because their masters sold out decades ago.
Valve is also a good example of platform monopoly. People need to stop treating valve like they aren’t also a big problem with the modern games industry. They are PC gaming’s landlord taking a 30% cut of every sale. You have to be smoking crack if you think that doesn’t hurt game developers.
They are a monopoly because they’ve had the best product on the market consistently for 15 years. There used to be huge resistance to them and their drm from gamers, but they have shown over many years that they are trustworthy, unlike others that have tried this.
This is not an Apple or Google store situation where proper competition could not exist. They were always up against giants like Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft or more recently Epic.
No they don’t, Steam barely ever gets updated, it’s not magically better than the others it’s just the one everyone uses.
Digital storefronts are natural monopolies. No one wants to use a different game launcher because it’s annoying to remember multiple passwords, to remember which game is where, to install and have multiple launchers running. None of that is Valve doing some amazing engineering that no one else has done, it’s just the natural state of game launcher / storefront economics. The only reason Steam is what people prefer is because it was the first one on the scene and has the lion share of users and games for sale.
We see the same thing happen with streaming platforms, the same thing happen with social networks. And Steam is also a social network which reinforces the monopoly. The other launches have friends and chat and shit but no one uses it because their friends are on steam or discord.
I don’t doubt that Steam being first to market is the biggest reason for their success, but you make it sound as if there’s some alternative store that is better for the consumer in some way. What’s the alternative? I have yet to see any other store/launcher come close to Steam in terms of features, even more so when it comes to Linux support, which Valve have turned into a viable gaming OS pretty much by themselves. In the end, even exclusivity and drastically lower fees for publishers didn’t make EGS the success that Tim Sweeney wishes it was and I think at that point being first to market can’t be the only explanation. They have to be doing something right.
Today, yes, I agree. It’s really hard to compete with them anymore. But 15 years ago when everyone was rushing to capture the market, there were many opportunities to do so. Steam and valve were never infallible, but at least they took feedback and stayed consistent, unlike their competitors.
Nothing stops you from busting your games on other platforms when available. I always choose GOG over steam personally. What cut they take from publishers isn’t consumers’ concern.
They could definitely treat developers better, but they’re an example of treating customers right. That’s why they’re the biggest platform, and that’s why they admittedly have something debatably close to a monopoly.
Bullshit. That 30% cut pays for all the features that make steam a better store than any other store. Those features are all free for the gamers, because they are essentially paid by the devs in that cut.
If that cut wasn’t worth it, I don’t think Microsoft, ea and others would have come back to steam after trying to make their own stores (and failing).
How can it be a monopoly when I can just download another store with a click of a button? Which I have also done, and even bought games from those said other stores, but the experience was just completely miserable compared to steam, up to the point I’ve considered rebuying those games on Steam.
They are anti-consumer, but for smaller devs in particular, they can mean the difference between between canceling and releasing a game, between bankruptcy and the studio's continued existence.
Do you see developers making games exclusively for one console manufacturer the same way? Are you willing to deprive the gaming community as a whole from these titles? Games like Shadow of the Colossus or Alan Wake 2 would not have happened without exclusivity.
Games like Shadow of the Colossus or Alan Wake 2 would not have happened without exclusivity.
Bullshit. If the publishers for those games had made them for more platforms, they would have sold more copies. Exclusivity deals are made between console makers and publishers in order to sell more consoles and are an anticompetitive practice that should be illegal.
No, both of these titles are "halo games" (not in the Bungie series, but in the way that they are showcase titles) that sold poorly compared to their development costs - and their publishers likely knew that these would sell very poorly, but chose to publish them regardless, because they bring prestige to their platforms. They sold poorly, because they are niche games, not due to their platform exclusivity.
It's kind of like a car manufacturer making an exclusive sports car that only a few hundred people will buy, but that is meant to elevate the entire brand, bring in customers for other products and wow journalists so that they think of the brand more highly. Most of Sony's publishing strategy hinges on strong exclusive titles - since their hardware is virtually identical to Microsoft's - and they started this by going down the "high art" game route all the way back with the PS1 (with extremely niche games like "The Book of Watermarks") before creating more mainstream blockbuster exclusives like the Uncharted series.
I get your frustration with this, I have felt it myself with exclusives that I wanted to play, but couldn't justify the expense of buying a console for, but there are solid reasons from the perspective of developers and publishers for doing it and outlawing this practice would result in a far less vibrant and interesting gaming landscape. Another comparison is how rich aristocrats used to pay artists like Leonardo DaVinci to create art for them. This was also an exclusivity deal of sorts, since most of the public didn't see these artworks until centuries later (the platform exclusivity was being born to the right kind of family), but without these wealthy, selfish patrons of the arts, mankind would have been deprived of amazing creations.
Lol comparing console makers to renaissance art patrons is rich. They are hardware makers and that’s all. They don’t give a shit about great art. They are just trying to have some unique selling points for their locked down platforms so that gaming PCs don’t completely dominate the market. Fuck Sony. Fuck Microsoft. And fuck publishers who sign exclusivity deals. Monopolistic and anticompetitive behaviour doesn’t deserve praise or encouragement.
Which still may not have recouped development costs. Shadow was on PS2, no other console got close to their sales. Costs to convert it to other platforms may have been more than profit from sales on Xbox and GameCube.
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