If Epic spent half as much money as they are suing organisations and instead funded developing their shop into a gaming community platform like Steam, they’d probably have caught up by now.
To be honest, Epic is doing a good job of tearing down walled gardens in places like mobile, and we’ll probably be better off for it. But yeah, they’ve done a terrible job of competing with Steam.
Of course, but…broken clock, you know? A large percentage of personal computers will be freed from Windows in large part because of Valve, even though they profit off of legalized child gambling addiction. And walled gardens in mobile will be broken down in large part because of Epic, which uses dark patterns to trick people out of their money in pursuit of a cultural hodge podge of nonsense that won’t even exist in a few decades.
it’s often more risky and expensive to hire, train and develop systems and communities like that, especially when doing it against the tide, than to just try to trip up the competition. It’s not just that it’s dificult and it costs money, but it’s not preferred because investors abhor risks.
Isn’t this seen in global politics all the time. When US says China is too dominant in X and we need to fight it. They are not saying that US will invest in shit that will help them compete. All or 90% of the actions is to try to trip up, sabotage and sanction the competition.
I wouldn’t call them malware, but both Valve and Epic are not your friends and they have done a lot of bad shit (Valve was huge in enabling lootbox gameplay).
They could remove that competition by making a better product, but that is somehow always the last thing they’d ever think about. It never stops being so fucking weird with all these business people who go to great lengths to do shitty stuff and always end up making it worse for everyone except a quick buck for themselves, even though they could easily make a lot more for a longer time by simply doing a good job. But no, that would require anything other than immediate greed. Absolutely vile people.
Their approach feels like how lot of companies are currently focusing on AI to market to investors and AI data centers directly, and ignoring what consumers want assuming their opinions are of little relevance. Like how Microsoft doesn’t care if people dont want copilot, and keeps talking up the corporate side with the assumption that they know people will use Microsoft no matter what.
Which is much like Epic with them focusing more on giving money to publishers to lock up titles in the past like Final Fantasy 7 Remake from Square Enix over concerning themselves with the demographic of people buying the product.
Its not a consumer focused business model, because the idea of consumers not buying it is impossible to comprehend. Their headlines never seem to be around how its better for the consumer and the benefits to using them over the competition.
Epic approach is the typical venture capitalist run company approach of running at loss then once they get market share start jacking up the prices.
Can’t really trust a company until they are actually profitable with a functioning sustainable business model. We’ve seen it time and time again where even Facebook launched without ads and look at it now.
If they didn’t have Fortnite they probably wouldn’t even have the money to dump into Unreal Engine to make it where it is today. They probably would ask Tencent for more money and Tencent would have bought the rest of the company. The game engine business is just not as profitable as Fortnite, just look at Unity.
There’s an argument for using these services in the early stages because they often operate at a loss in the hope that they will secure a monopoly in the future. The trick is to immediately abandon them when they jack the price up. I recently heard that in the food delivery space virtually no one is turning a profit.
Even worse, it’s costing the food places you order from money. We have a lot of restaurants here that will give you free stuff if you do not use Thuisbezorgd which is owned by Just Eat Takeaway. They also own the American Grubhub since 2021 and are also active in the UK, Germany, Canada and the Netherlands.
He literally said Epic’s launcher/store is ready as is, doesn’t need more development. It also runs in Unreal Engine, so you get Chromium (CEF) + Unreal Engine running just for one launcher/store.
At least on Linux you can run Unreal Editor without EGS (because it doesn’t exist on Linux) and if you’ve claimed any free games on Epic, you can use Heroic launcher to manage them easily.
I don’t understand this I use it for rocket league occasionally and it all just works ™ ? I prefer Valve 100% to slopnite developers but the launcher seems fine to me. (On Linux Heroic is unlikely better than steam which has a bunch of random bugs every few weeks)
They are being accused of price fixing with the whole “can’t sell games for cheaper on other store fronts compared to the steam listing” thing
warm@kbin.earth explains it better below:
It only applies to Steam product keys though, so developers cannot sell cheap Steam keys on other platforms while still taking advantage of Steam’s services.
It only applies to Steam product keys though, so developers cannot sell cheap Steam keys on other platforms while still taking advantage of Steam's services.
I believe the problem is that it isn’t just Steam keys. There’s apparently emails from Valve employees that state that it’s all versions of the game, and that seems to be the real crux here. And if that’s true it’s pretty shitty, and they might actually lose this.
Do you have a source for that? All I can find on their Steamworks site is the rules on Steam keys being restricted, not other versions. Maybe I missed that email part in the news.
It only applies to steam keys though. Like if you want to sell on other storefronts (like Epic) for cheaper, it’s perfectly fine. You simply can’t sell steam keys on other storefronts for cheaper. It’s not really “price fixing” as much as it is “Steam ensuring their servers aren’t used to download the game unless the dev has properly paid them for the key”…
Like imagine a company wants to sell more copies of their game. So they set up their own site to sell directly to consumers, and it’s cheaper than buying on Steam. This is totally fine. Consumers can still choose to add the standalone version as a non-Steam game to be able to launch it via Steam.
It’s only a breach of contract if they start offering steam keys for that same (cheaper) price, which allows the game to be downloaded via Steam, includes achievement integrations, includes Steam’s friend list “join game” multiplayer, includes Steam Deck/Steam Machine optimizations, etc… If they want all of those nice Steam integrations, they need an official Steam key. And that Steam key can’t be sold cheaper than on Steam’s official store.
ah yes, they are price fixing by saying devs can't set the price on steam (which the devs control) higher than the price on other platforms (which the devs also control)
That’s not true, it only applies if you’re selling a steam key. Devs are free to set the price on any platform they want, want proof? Check out the currently free game on epic which has never been free on Steam.
Steam provides developers with infinite steam keys that they can sell outside of steam for 100% profit, however those keys cannot be sold at a lesser price than what it’s sold on steam. Which honestly sounds like common sense.
That itself is false too with a quick look at isthereanydeals showing lot of steam games being sold cheaper outside of the steam store.
Even the Steam key guidelines don’t explicitly state that steam keys can’t be sold cheaper.
It’s OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.
Key word being comparable which is why if you are a user of isthereanydeals or /r/gamedeals you’ve likely gotten most of your steam games from outside the official Steam store.
I think some people just assume Steam sales must be the cheapest and don’t look beyond it.
I am puzzled why people believe Steam keys can’t be sold cheaper outside Steam unless they never looked outside the Steam store.
This is one example of a game that isnt too old is Silent Hill F.
Sure, but that’s more about Valve not pursuing violations than anything else (in other comment I also mentioned how they turn a blind eye to Humble Bundle as well). But legally they could go after silent hill f and demand it be sold for a similar value to $31.49 since some time has passed and stem users have not been offered a comparable offer. I think what’s in the clause they make people sign is more important than whether they enforce it or not, because if it was about price parity with other stores then it would be abusive (even if they didn’t enforced it always), but if it is about selling something they provide then it’s not abusive even if they do enforced it always.
I just keep hearing claims, but nothing actually definitive when it comes to sources. Do you have any actual evidence that price is not supposed to be lower, because I don’t see clear language stating that in the steam key documentation.
And then when it comes to real world price tracking it doesn’t fit with the claims that devs aren’t allowed to sell steam keys cheaper.
That’s what makes it unclear. What is the definition of not worse or comparable? It could be interrupted as $41 vs $31 meeting the definition while selling for $10 but going no lower than $41 would be considered a breech. There’s no clear language of it has to be equal or can’t be lower. It’s language with a lot of flexibility.
That’s why I don’t feel like claims of people saying Steam keys can’t be lower with such confidence is appropriate. The sources we have at hand isn’t cut and dry and actual prices don’t fit those claims either to state it as a fact.
Which isn’t accurate and is more nuanced involving Steam keys like another user said. For instance, Prey is on sale for $6 on the PlayStation store but still $30 on Steam.
As per my understanding (which isn’t saying much), Steam takes a 30% cut of each sale. In UK, someone with a specific agenda claimed to represent gamers as a class and sued reasoning that the 30% cut inflates the price of games globally even beyond Steam’s store, harming everyone.
Did i understand it right? No idea. What’s the actual goal here? Also no idea. Is Steam the “good guy” in all this? Of course not.
Best example is Ubisoft and EA when they took their games off Steam and Epic wasn’t around but didn’t sell their games any cheaper despite 0% cut. Or Final Fantasy 7 Remake released as an Epic exclusive, but was priced at $70.
It is weird. Every other product people know that companies want to charge as much as the market will take to maximize profits. Most noticeable examples being GPU prices over the years and now ram and storage.
But, gamers for some reason think companies want to price things lower as though game companies are so noble they escape the greed of capitalism to seek out exponential profits.
I think devs actually get quite a bit for that 30%. Let’s present a hypothetical. What if Valve offered an option where you could list your game on Steam with no restrictions and they’d only take a 10% cut, but the tradeoff is, they won’t promote your game at all? Like, it won’t show up in any Steam storefront advertisements, can’t participate in sales, etc. - it’s still there if it’s linked to from off-Steam or if someone searches for it, but it won’t be promoted, period.
How do you think that would work out for developers? I’d argue not well, especially for small studios.
The promotion those games get applies to the game as a whole, not only through Steam - someone can see the promotion on Steam, then go shop around and buy it elsewhere. Why should Valve promote a game if they aren’t getting a cut of the sales?
At the risk of sending you down a rabbit hole, there are some people who use Reshade on non-online games to do “game photography”. You could go as light as overlaying a grid, or more complicated stuff like simulating lens focal length, removing fog, adjusting colors, adding bloom, bokeh, etc.
It’s meant for overlaying complex graphical effects while you play, but there’s a small dedicated community of people using it to set up the perfect still shots. It’s definitely a deep rabbit hole.
I tried getting into it for a little bit, especially when playing Arkham Asylum with some of the more advanced tools like freecam. Reshade i’ve had a few brushups with though, and even used it to simulate a CRT effect on Halo CE/2. The only downside is i have to remember to manually turn Anticheat off, which thankfully isn’t too hard, just i forget too and then get confused why it won’t run. I might try experimenting with it though for some more artsy screenshots. I’d love to start going in that direction with screenshots, or at least some of them
I’m offered a variety of things to review, but since this is a friend’s site, I’m not paid to review nor write, and there’s no ads on the site…I’m lucky enough to not have to review everything to survive. Or even to keep the content machine going like most YouTubers have to. I just do this for fun!
I just accept the handhelds I find interesting to me, the ones I find most unique.
But I’ve written for a few years now in various gaming spaces, so I do understand why I get asked :)
And I also feel very lucky to do so! I really love gaming handhelds, its a passion of mine :)
Thanks for this review!
I haven’t found any information regarding external controllers or DisplayPort at the USB-C output both at the sepcifications and your review.
I’m aware that it is not the intended use case to make it a kind of stationary console. But to be honest, I’d very much appreciate being able to attach it to an external monitor and use a separate controller when playing at home.
I figure this is the wrong type of device for me then, but wanted to ask you just to be sure about it.
Yes you’re right, this handheld won’t do video out. That’s both a software and hardware limitation on this one, but so many of these handhelds do that with ease. Its just a case of narrowing down which one is right for you.
The last two devices I tested for and utilized video out on for reviews were high-end handhelds (the AYN Odin 3 Max and the Anbernic RG477V), but again…a huge variety of that for you!
Thank you for your reply, it helps a ton!
I plan to complement my SteamDeck with a tiny portable emulator, but would love to use it at home in the same way as the SteamDeck, which is in part stationary.
I’m aware that the SteamDeck could do the emulator part well, but taking it with you and whipping it out for a short gamining session is not one the SteamDeck’s strong suites.
It is an easy one to do, just choosing the right retro handheld for you…that’s the difficult part! My aforementioned Odin 3 for example plays anything from the oldest consoles, PS2 upscaled to 4K all the way to literal PC games via GameHub Lite.
I’ve ordered a TRIMUI Brick Hammer a few hours ago, because I figured that I value durability of a portable device higher than video output; at home I can use my Steam Deck comfortably.
Your review made it look like a good piece of hard-/software for the money. At that price point I’m fairly sure I won’t have regrets.
You’ve got plenty of firmware options if you’re not loving the stock one (which is honestly fine!), the community around this device is so enthusiastic and do such amazing things. In fact, tenlevels showed off his new one which is coming soon, too. Called Bloom, its the first to manage to bring retroachievements to the device!
Can’t wait to hear how you like it, once it arrives. If portability is key to choosing one, then you certainly get that with it. So sleek, so slim and nice to take along for the ride!
Aren’t those attempts to jack your steam account? I remember hearing something a few years back about people being able to “recover” an account by having a certain number of friends put in a ticket saying it was stolen.
Or maybe that was discord. Either way, as a result I don’t add randos.
I hadn’t heard of that one, a kind of social engineering attack. Definitely something to keep in mind!
as a result I don’t add randos
This is generally my attitude, and it sucks really that ignoring random friend requests is usually the sensible thing to do. Anyway so far this person does seem to be genuine and hasn’t tried to get me to add a load of their friends or anything like that.
It’s 1.4.5 and there’s many QoL features (building platform is finally doable without cursing) and stilistic choices (all characters have cute portraits). Even the door and items handling has been improved, now selecting and closig doors is fast and easy. Also npc can now use stairs so they won’t be isolate to their respective level Beyond that there is a new npc with a dead cell collab (you’ll see it’s the room with the hanging bottles) and even a kingdom hearts one too. I still can’t tell the whole of it because there is a lot of stuff in a single update
I’m currently waiting for an Anbernic rg-35xx to arrive, but this was definitely on the shortlist during my research! In the end, availability and the joysticks were the deciding factors, but interested to hear how you think those two compare.
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