Colorcodedresistor,

We are just now getting out of the bullshit days of 40 game launchers. The Big Industry morons like Ubi, Ea and Bliz are crumbling. Indie devs are being celebrated and releasing titles now more than ever before. We are in a ‘quiet’ time of gaming. i believe. not a dark time. If the mainstream industry can get back to more honest and longevity based projects then we will in the next 5-10 years see another golden age (think 2007 or 2017 release titles) and of course year over year everyone can point to one or two games worth playing for the whole year or two till the next one.

chiliedogg,

2023 is one of the best years in the history of gaming. So, so many many great titles, large and small, have been released this year.

terny,

I don’t keep up as much as I used to, what are great small games that have released this year?

greenkarmic,

Halls of Torment is pretty good

chiliedogg,

Sea of Stars is spectacular so far.

Trainguyrom,

So there’s this guy named notch who’s making a funky indie title in Java…

I kid but my wife and I have banked so many hours playing Minecraft together in the last 2 weeks

Jakeroxs,

BG3, Larian wasn’t exactly a powerhouse of gaming prior to it

LUHG_HANI,
@LUHG_HANI@lemmy.world avatar

I hope ubisoft go bankrupt. Everything is pile of hot scamming garbage.

Trainguyrom,

think 2007 or 2017 release titles

Remember, Skyrim was released closer to the first year you listed than the second one and the sequel is still quite a ways out. There are entire release day players of Elder Scrolls 6 who were not yet born when 5 came out.

Jakeroxs,

What’s your point? They released Fallout 4, Skyrim Special Edition, VR editions of both, Fallout 76 and Starfield since then

The worst out of the list being FO76

Squirrel,
@Squirrel@thelemmy.club avatar

I have no problem with competition, but don’t force me to use your inferior product. If any of the major companies developed an actual competitor with the Steam launcher (in terms of features, not just a lousy storefront), it would likely get some use. If they somehow made it better than Steam, plenty of people would likely jump ship.

Epic is just a failure of a launcher. Nobody uses it over Steam by choice, because it’s lacking in nearly every way. While I’m not big on exclusives, if the launcher was a reasonable Steam alternative, they wouldn’t bother me nearly as much. As things stand, I’m firmly in the “fuck Epic” camp.

nicman24,

I d trust a privately own company with Gabe as the head than the asshats that proliferated micro transactions and shitty always online DRM for single player games.

rikudou,
@rikudou@lemmings.world avatar

I’m one of the few who actually like the existence of Epic. Like, not necessarily Epic itself, but some serious competition is needed. I personally would’ve loved it if the competition was GOG, but it seems consumers don’t particularly care about ownership, so we have Epic.

BaroqueInMind,
@BaroqueInMind@kbin.social avatar

I personally would’ve loved it if the competition was GOG, but it seems consumers don’t particularly care about ownership

What the fuck are you saying? Of course consumers care about ownership, otherwise Stadia would be dominating the market, and we can see that it's not.

Virkkunen,
@Virkkunen@kbin.social avatar

Ownership is not why Stadia failed.

BaroqueInMind, (edited )
@BaroqueInMind@kbin.social avatar

If you are trying to argue that ownership was not even a part of the multitude reasons Stadia failed and is off the table, you should seriously need to consider evaluating your critical thinking skills.

Gamey,

It wasn’t, it works for Nvidia, people just don’t want to pay for their games twice and that broke Stadias neck…

stillwater, (edited )

This was supposed to be the comment where you show why ownership was a major factor in why Stadia failed, not a comment where you huff and puff and complain that something you insist on isn’t being accepted.

nanoUFO,
@nanoUFO@sh.itjust.works avatar

The problem is that all the competition to steam is far far inferior to steam in technology and ideology and future prospects. Steam isn’t a publicly traded company, has features that are pro consumers, is supporting other OS’s and doesn’t have a CEO that is a prick like epic.

echo64,

Sure. But what if Gabe newel decided to sell tomorrow. Just wants to retire maybe he’s pretty old. What if Microsoft buys it and you’re left with a monopoly you don’t like. That’s the eventuality of every unhealthy industry.

nanoUFO, (edited )
@nanoUFO@sh.itjust.works avatar

Well it will be a sad day and Ubisoft, Microsoft and Epic competition won’t fix anything if steam goes to shit. Steam is basically the unicorn and once it becomes extinct we won’t get anything half decent to replace it with. Publicly traded companies are the bedrock of unhealthy industries.

echo64,

Competition in the marketplace is the only thing that has any chance of saving you when that day comes.

You are in lucky days today. Tomorrow won’t be so good, but you can choose to support an industry controlled by a monopoly, or you can support an industry with healthy competition.

I would hope that Gamers aren’t so near sighted, but I’ve been proven wrong over and over again.

nanoUFO,
@nanoUFO@sh.itjust.works avatar

When steam shuts down and we have Ubisoft and Epic to replace it with I’m just moving to itch.io and probably torrenting my steam library if it comes to the worst. Also I might actually stop playing games since steam is pushing proton development forward and without them I have no reason to play or buy anything new. Epic’s shitty CEO has made toxic remarks against linux before and Ubisoft just couldn’t care less. I’ll support a company that supports my interests, epic doesn’t so I don’t simple as.

CileTheSane,
@CileTheSane@lemmy.ca avatar

“Supporting competition” is not a good enough reason to use a shitty service. If I start a service that charges twice as much as Steam and has none of the features would you use it in order to “support competition”?

If the only reason to purchase from Epic is “they exist” that’s not good enough.

I will happily avoid Epic’s attempts to be a monopoly now over worrying that Steam might be shitty in the future.

echo64,

It’s super weird to me that you guys think epic is trying to be a monopoly. Epic had 0.00001% of the market. In their wildest dreams they might expect to get ten percent.

woelkchen,
@woelkchen@lemmy.world avatar

Epic had 0.00001% of the market.

The numbers for Fortnite, available on EGS but not Steam, tell otherwise.

CileTheSane,
@CileTheSane@lemmy.ca avatar

Just because they aren’t good at it doesn’t mean they aren’t trying very hard to do so, and will clearly be very shitty if they ever achieve it.

Zorque,

That would be helpful if they actually tried to be competitive on the same level.

Unfortunately they're only competing for profit, not as a service. Which is why they're failing.

Competition bettering service only works if people want to compete to create a better service. That clearly isn't the case.

leftzero,

Then we’d go back to sailing the high seas, until a better alternative shows up; as Gabe said, piracy is a service problem.

Kbin_space_program,

I feel Steam vs competitors is like how after 1st wave MCU, everyone was jumping on that bandwagon, but instead of putting in the groundwork just skipped ahead, or like the monsters one just abandoned it because of one bad movie.

Kecessa,

Epic launches my games, Steam is full of bloat that I never use… 🤷

Zorque,

That "bloat" is 99% of the reason people use it.

Kecessa,

No, 99% of the reason they use it is that they were first to market, made it mandatory for their first party games that were extremely popular at the time (and even today) and became defacto mandatory for many third party games as it made it simpler to control piracy to just sell through them or include a key in the physical copy and force people to install Steam. The majority of Steam users are casuals that couldn’t care less about their forums, cards, social profiles and so on. It’s the same thing in everything, there’s enthusiasts that think everyone is as crazy as they are about their hobby, the majority are just casual users that will never know/use half of the possibilities available to them because they don’t care.

rambaroo,

Lol. You think 99% of people give a shit about forums or Linux support?

Kecessa,

I personally don’t include Linux support in the bloat, but forums, social profiles, trading cards, reviews, achievements… Yes, that’s bloat.

Honytawk,

Hey!

Linux has almost a 2% market share on Steam, I have you know!

So it is only 98% who don’t care.

Zeus, (edited )

i would love for steam to have some competition. i will gladly switch over to the first competitor that has

  • a big picture / controller-friendly interface
  • controller configurator that
    • is more powerful than rewasd
    • is editable in the overlay
    • has import/exportable configs (incl. with the community)
    • supports the best controller i’ve ever used, the steam controller
  • cross-platform client
  • cross-platform cloud saves
  • workshop/modding support
  • proper reviews system
  • community page for each game
  • etc.

and doesn’t

  • buy exclusivity rights to games
    • i don’t mind revenue deals for exclusivity, but buying existing games takes the biscuit
  • actively worsen existing games
    • e.g. removing the impeccable siapi support in rocket league, and making it run on the shitty epic servers so it disconnects all the time

particularly now that steam has switched over to electron, so the client runs like shit

i do sometimes use gog because i like their ideology, but they’re missing quite a few from this list. any gog or itch.io games i buy, i inevitably add to steam as a non-steam game. which adds a lot of these handy features, but not all

unfortunately, until a competitor brings along something new to the table, i’m quite happy to wait and pay more for a game on steam. it just has too many features i can’t give up

ayaya,
@ayaya@lemdro.id avatar

particularly now that steam has switched over to electron, so the client runs like shit

It uses CEF not Electron, which it has used for over 13 years. This isn’t something they just added. If it’s running slow for you you probably have an issue with hardware acceleration.

Zeus, (edited )

It uses CEF not Electron,

fine. i was simplifying. that wasn’t the main point of my comment. forgive me.

which it has used for over 13 years. This isn’t something they just added.

no…?

you mean that the store has been an embedded browser? in that case yes

but the whole steam client? has always been vgui, not electron . did you even read the link you sent? just because there is reference to chromium in the commit log doesn’t mean the whole thing’s built in chromium, and just because a programme can render web content also doesn’t mean it’s built in chromium. when firefox switched from xul to html did you go “akshyually, it was always able to render html content so it hasn’t switched at all”

If it’s running slow for you you probably have an issue with hardware acceleration.

it’s not just me who has performance issues. at one point it was everyone on linux with an nvidia gpu. which is supposedly fixed (and it’s definitely better) but it’s still unusably slow on both linux and windows. also, so what. “it works on my machine” isn’t a great excuse to ignore the biggest gaming gpu brand, and electron is notoriously non-performant (if my pc can handle playing a video in ffx whilst playing recent 3d games, i think it should also be able to display my list of owned games without stuttering). my point was that i never had issues with vgui, and now i do.


edit: ah, i’ve just looked through your comment history. i don’t believe anyone who’s not a troll has -10 karma and no negative comments (especially with some comments with >100 points), and i also suspect vote manipulation. i should never have engaged. sorry. i won’t engage any more.

ayaya,
@ayaya@lemdro.id avatar

but the whole steam client? has always been vgui, not electron cef. just because there is reference to chromium in the commit log doesn’t mean the whole thing’s built in chromium.

The “whole client” hasn’t been VGUI. Yes now every element is CEF but many, many pieces have been CEF for a very long time. “Switched over to Electron” implies it was entirely changed but it’s just using more of the thing it was already using. Those are two different things.

it’s not just me who has performance issues. at one point it was everyone on linux with an nvidia gpu

The issue you linked had nothing to do with Steam it was a bug with the Nvidia driver itself. Not sure what that’s supposed to prove.

my point was that i never had issues with vgui, and now i do.

And my point is that is not an inherent problem with Steam, that is something specific to your configuration. If it runs fine for other people it can run fine for you. I’m on Arch with an Nvidia GPU. I have zero issues with the performance.

echo64,

How is a competitor ever supposed to compete with a feature list like that? It has to come out of the gate with all those things? This is why monopolies exist.

Zeus, (edited )

honestly? i kind of agree. but gog spent a lot of dev time revamping their client into "gog galaxy 2.0" just to make it less controller accessible; and the epic client is just unusable

i would have more sympathy if they were little indie companies. but the itch.io client is better than either. these companies are pouring money into breaking into a market, but not bothering to develop features

that comment was more an example of why the egs isn’t yet a real competitor than a criticism of any as yet nonexistent competitors

ICastFist,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

The funny thing is that Valve kickstarted the digital sales with Half Life 2 back in 2004. Steam was an utter piece of shit for, what, some 6 years? It took them a lot of time to make it bearable, then good.

That the EGS launcher is a fucking Unreal app, needlessly bloated as fuck and with barely working UI shows their complete disregard for what is supposed to be their “money givers” (us, customers) and, like every other stupid company with their own launcher which manages to be worse than their fucking website, shows they refuse to learn the obvious.

I hope GOG never goes the enshitification path.

Honytawk,

I fucking hated Valve for making me buy a physical CD of Portal, only to get a CD with the Steam Installer and a code to download the game on their store.

Ironfacebuster,

Same thing happened to me but with portal 2. I had DSL at the time and it barely hit 10 Mbps on a good day which was great because I thought the disk had the game on it. Despite all of the pain I still love steam to this day lol (and I’ve gotten better Internet)

reagansrottencorpse,

I remember when steam first came out and I was like…I need this extra program to play counter strike now ?!

Paranomaly,
@Paranomaly@sh.itjust.works avatar

There are so many companies that have all the pieces to make good competition to Steam but their greed gets in the way. Microsoft in particular should have been a shoe-in for it, but GFWL was an embarrassing failure, the WIndows store is rubbish and insists on a new file format that (at least in the past) caused all kinds of issues for games, and now their Game Pass service has no focus on a buying element. This is without going into both Amazon and Google tripping on the starting line when it comes to getting in the gaming space. A launcher that was tied in with Amazon’s web store would be a really quick way to get a lot of people in naturally.

I really wish more people used GoG to where it could be a competitor. Unfortunately the game selection is much lower due to companies turning their noses up at no DRM. Also, I will admit that I tend to buy things on Steam in favor of GoG due to a lot of the features Steam has.

Saneless,

I’ll never buy another game on Microsoft’s store ever again. And this is AFTER all that GFWL bs. Bought Forza 7 and it refuses to install. It did once before but now it says it’s done immediately and is nowhere to be found. I’ve tried everything short of a reinstal, which I will not do

Paranomaly,
@Paranomaly@sh.itjust.works avatar

I have a lot of problems with them too. I gave Game Pass an honest shot once, but could never get any games to run or install properly. Can’t imagine the normal store front is any better.

woodenskewer,
@woodenskewer@lemmy.world avatar

Sometimes, I just forget to use GoG. Like Balder’s gate 3, I realized after purchasing on steam, fuck, why didn’t I buy this on GoG.

Paranomaly,
@Paranomaly@sh.itjust.works avatar

Honestly, I can be the same.

z0rb,

Valve supports linux gaming! The Steam Deck is awesome and with an even better configuration (or the rumored valve's own new steam machine) this is only getting better. So, only Valve gets my money.

Aurenkin,

I buy games pretty much exclusively on Steam because of the Linux support (my gaming PC runs Linux only).

Hopefully more places follow suit because I believe competition is a good thing but for now it’s Steam all the way pretty much apart from Starsector and until recently Dwarf Fortress.

TheBlue22,

Steam doesn’t have a monopoly, other platforms are just shit.

Missing features, badly made features, fucking spyware, some barely working at all (I am looking at you, ubisoft)

Perhaps if the other platforms tried a little bit, they would actually be a competition.

Gamey,

The position makes a monopoly, not the reason…

TheBlue22,

A monopoly is defined as a single seller or producer that excludes competition from providing the same product

By this definition, Epic games would be a monopoly with its exclusives.

Gamey,

That’s not at all what a monopoly is, it’s simply the absence of competition aka the market position. You don’t have to engage in anti-competitive practices to havw a monopoly, I don’t get why that’s so hard to understand for many here…

MomoTimeToDie,

deleted_by_author

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  • Gamey,

    Other games aren’t a competition for a platform like Steam, that’s a different market. Steam has a monopoly because they have a extremely dominant position without real competition in their sector, they don’t have to engage in anti-competitive practices against games outside of steam to have that…

    MomoTimeToDie,

    deleted_by_author

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  • Gamey,

    Fuck, this is so stupid it’s hard to even responde… Steam has a monopoly on game distribution but Minecraft isn’t a Steam competitor just like Fortnite isn’t a Play Store competitor! I am done with this thread, it’s frustrating to try and explain so many people such basic things if they don’t want to hear them!

    MomoTimeToDie,

    deleted_by_author

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  • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime,

    What planet do you live on exactly?

    MomoTimeToDie,

    deleted_by_author

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  • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime,

    It monopolizes PC games in America and other countries. As even the most casual observer would know. Kind of idiotic to argue against that.

    It’s at the point where younger people think “pc games” is synonymous with “steam games”.

    MomoTimeToDie,

    deleted_by_author

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  • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime,

    In the last 10 years I have bought 95% of my games on steam and that’s far from unusual

    gamer,

    I think he graduated from the Parker Brothers school of economics.

    GenBlob,

    I will always support valve because of their amazing Linux support but if GOG finally made a client for Linux then I would try to use that more. I wish Epic would also support Linux but with massive douchebag Tim Sweeney running the company, that will never happen.

    kadu,
    @kadu@lemmy.world avatar

    If these platforms supported Linux, they’d be able to compete with Steam… 15 years ago.

    Nowadays Steam offers so many solutions to PC gaming that other clients simply would take ages to copy. Steam Input, cloud saves that actually work, Steam Link, Remote Play Together, etc

    blind3rdeye,

    I personally get most of my games from GOG and itch.io these days. And I’ve never bought anything from the Epic store whatsoever.

    I will say though that I find it kind of weird how much hate Epic gets for their store. Like, I understand that someone prefers Steam, or doesn’t want to buy stuff from Epic etc. - but what we see goes way beyond that. Epic has people actively campaigning against it, as if its mere existence is insulting. I don’t really get why.

    As for the 30% cut… Developers will try to price their games competitively, and within customer expectations. So with or without Steam’s 30% cut, you can expect games to be similarly priced. The large 30% cut from Steam is basically coming out of the developer’s revenue rather than from your pocket. (I’m under the impression that GOG also has a similar 30% fee. Epic has a lower fee. And on itch.io the seller gets to choose how money goes to itch.io anywhere from 0% to 100%. So itch.io is the best deal for developers in terms of fees.)

    Gabu,

    The reason people hate Epic is fairly obvious – they don’t give a shit about the gaming industry nor about players. At some point their client contained literal spyware, they tried to brute force market share via sleazy exclusivity contracts, their software doesn’t have one tenth of the features Steam has, their CEO is a piece of shit, etc.

    blind3rdeye,

    The reason people hate Epic is fairly obvious – they don’t give a shit about the gaming industry nor about players.

    What do you mean by that? For developers, they take a much smaller fee than Steam or GOG, and for players they’re constantly giving away free games.

    At some point their client contained literal spyware.

    That sounds like a decent reason to campaign against them. I haven’t heard anything about that before. What was the story behind that? (As in, when / why / how / what? Perhaps you have a link or something.)

    brute force market share via sleazy exclusivity contracts

    I’ve heard people talk a lot about exclusivity contracts… but can you name even a single game that has such a contract? When people have discussed this the past, the relevant developers basically said “there is no contract”. But maybe there is some different case I don’t know about. In any case, that personally doesn’t bother me anyway. If some developer wants to take money to be on one store rather than another, they can do that at their own peril. As for customers, we’re only talking about a store. It’s not like anyone is in danger of not being able to buy / play their favourite games. So it seems like a bit of a nothing-burger to me. Like, is there actually something bad happening here? Or are people just speculating that something bad might one-day happen if Epic got bigger?

    their software doesn’t have one tenth of the features Steam has,

    Steam has more features, yeah. Steam is very good. But Steam has been around for some 20 years. It’s hard to catch up with that so quickly. In any case, although missing features is a good reason to prefer Steam, it certainly isn’t a reason to campaign against Epic.

    … So from your list, I’ll keep the spyware thing and the CEO complaint. I don’t know enough about either of those to say much though. I don’t recall who the CEO of Epic is right now, so I won’t say whether or not I think that’s a good reason. And the spyware… I take that kind of stuff seriously. Right now I’m posting this from Linux - because I’m fed-up with Windows spyware. But as I said, I’ve not heard any details about any Epic spyware thing.

    Incidentally, I’ve found that Steam is very good for Linux gaming. … But obviously that doesn’t mean that I’m going to start making posts trash-talking Epic. I don’t find it weird that people prefer Steam. I just find it weird that people put so much energy into attacking Epic.

    derpgon,

    As for the games that were Epic exclusive for a year: Borderlands 3, Satisfactory, Darksiders 3, Hitman 3, Dead Island 2, Borderlands TTW to name a few. They have a year exclusivity deal with Epic - we know how annoying exclusivity deals are on consoles.

    About the features, it’s quite tricky. Epic rather spends thousands on exclusivity deals rather than invest into a launcher to have a working basket.

    It’s super obvious where Epic’s priorities are, and it’s not the gamers. How are they able to dedicate so much work on Unreal, but now on a launcher? They try to substitute a half-assed launcher with exclusivity deals, because they know nobody would use it willingly.

    geophysicist,

    3rd result on Google for “epic games exclusive contracts”

    theverge.com/…/epic-games-store-first-run-develop…

    4th result on Google is the epic games CEO stating they use exclusive contracts

    pcgamer.com/epic-isnt-done-with-epic-games-store-…

    Kaijobu,

    It takes quite a lot of time to repeat all the wrong doings of Epic and it’s CEO Tim.

    Thus, I can only relay to the collected information of bad old Reddit, if you want to (I’m intentionally not linking, you can search it up easily). r/fuckepic has a lot of collected information on their side page.

    In short, biggest issue for me exclusivity contracts with games advertised on Steam, then as a bait and switch removed from the store page and their physical copies getting a sticker on top of the Steam logo, so a last minute deal, for Metro Exodus. And then they continued their exclusivity hunt for games, they didn’t even helped to develop. Nothing against self-made or published games to be limited time exclusive in my perspective, but not second hand bought (out).

    The other about their CEO, r/timcritizisestim He’s… a douche. Using kids with the free games to bait them to his store, using them against Apple’s store rules like a little army… he is a bad person with too much money and luck to have build the Epic engine with Fortnite…

    azthec,

    Also adding to other people, they “poached” games from other platforms.

    eg they wanted Rocket League, which I have on Steam and am happy to continue using there, to be completely removed from my account and available through the epic launcher some 3(?) years after I first bought it. Eventually they backpedaled, only due to community backlash, people that owned it on steam can still play it there.

    If you’re serious about not knowing about all this stuff take a look at steamcommunity.com/groups/…/1796278072844560561/Obviously Steam biased, but a very good index

    blind3rdeye,

    Are you saying that Rocket League was removed from the Steam accounts of the people who already owned it? That sounds like a big deal, and surely must be illegal. But I didn’t see mention of that in the link you posted. Most of the things in the list seemed to be just saying that they didn’t think the Epic store is high quality. (eg. prices too high, not enough features, difficult to use return policy, etc.) Those are all fair complaints, and good reasons to not use the store - but again, they are only good reasons to not use the store. They aren’t really good reasons to crusade against it. There are heaps of crap online stores, and generally people just ignore them.

    The Rocket League thing you mentioned would be a good reason to get upset at Epic beyond just not wanting to buy from them. So I’m kind of surprised to see it missing from such a comprehensive list of grievances.

    Others have mentioned spyware, and like I said, I care about that. That’s a big red flag. But I looked at the links in the post you gave, and as far as I could tell they were all speculation. Things like Tencent owns 40% of Epic, and Tencent is bad - so Epic is probably bad. … Which is quite possibly true! I certainly wouldn’t want to trust Epic with my personal info. But it’s still a big step away from them having spyware built in.

    I personally think that many gamers put up with too much privacy invasion and ‘telemetry’ in the form of online accounts and especially ‘anti-cheat’ software. The “anti cheat” software that some games require explicitly demand access to see every program you have installed, every program you have running, and in some cases even read RAM outside of what the game is allocated. That’s an enormous security risk and privacy breach… but people install that crap all the time with barely a whisper - but then complain about the risk the Epic will share its telemetry data with Tencent. I’m certain that some of Epic’s online games have software like that, but that wasn’t mentioned in thread you linked to.


    Maybe I just don’t care about the same things that other people care about. Like, if Epic has a crap store… I just don’t care. It makes no difference to me how crap it is. It makes to difference if they say it is going to be great, and it falls short of what they said. I’m not going to go around telling people how crap it is, because I don’t think it matters. I don’t intend to use the store anyway; and if other people like the store for some reason, then fine. I don’t think it matters. They can like it, and I won’t try to convince them otherwise. But if they are somehow removing games you’ve already bought elsewhere - then that’s a big deal. That would be worth telling people about. I hope you can see what I mean.

    JackbyDev,

    Anno 1800 was available for purchase on Steam prior to release but at some point they made a deal with Epic to sell it there for a year. Then it was removed from Steam. If you already bought it you could use it on Steam but everyone else had to wait. You could also directly buy it from Ubisoft’s own store Uplay so in the most strict sense it was not an exclusive contract but pretty damn close. Also it wasn’t a secret. The company talked about it. They had to, because it was literally available for pre purchase on Steam and then suddenly wasn’t.

    Gabu,

    For developers, they take a much smaller fee than Steam or GOG, and for players they’re constantly giving away free games.

    “Free stuff, pl0x” isn’t an indicator of supporting the industry or players. That’s a business tactic for clawing market share away from their competitors by attracting people without the means to buy games and devs desperate for funding. Also, if parity is your worry, many games on Steam go free or effectively free (<1 USD) all the time.

    That sounds like a decent reason to campaign against them. I haven’t heard anything about that before. What was the story behind that? (As in, when / why / how / what? Perhaps you have a link or something.)

    With Reddit going tits up and a coverup operation by Epic throwing a bunch of garbage info around, it’s been difficult to find the exact sources (why I’ve been taking so long to reply). If I find the actual articles/posts I’ll link them, but in summary:

    • EGS bypassed many APIs, such as Steam’s API, to data mine your usage statistics of their competitors, including friends and games played - they didn’t ask for your consent nor Steam’s.
    • Some major red flags with memory manipulation and internet traffic obfuscation.
    • They “apologized” about it, citing some bullshit reasons for that behavior. Suspiciously, behavior changed.

    I’ve heard people talk a lot about exclusivity contracts… but can you name even a single game that has such a contract? […] Like, is there actually something bad happening here? Or are people just speculating that something bad might one-day happen if Epic got bigger?

    There are loads of games in my “do not buy unless heavily discounted” list precisely for taking exclusivity deals. Hitman 3, Darkest Dungeon 2, Hades, Satisfactory, among others. The danger, beyond rewarding shitty behavior, shutting out large portions of the community, and limiting consumers’ options, is the same as always - you’re effectively telling companies that whoever has the biggest pocket gets to dictate what the entire industry has to do.

    But Steam has been around for some 20 years. It’s hard to catch up with that so quickly. In any case, although missing features is a good reason to prefer Steam, it certainly isn’t a reason to campaign against Epic.

    It wouldn’t be if Epic had shown any intention of eventually having parity. It’s been however many years since they released, with the immense advantage of seeing what works for Steam so they could copy it, and yet their client remains just as bad. It clearly shows that their focus in on getting market share to exploit gamers and devs, not on making the best platform possible.

    Atomic,

    Steam can also leverage their insanely huge userbase. Even with the 30% cut, a company will probably see more profits if they use steam and give up 30% than trying to launch it outside.

    At this point. The 30% is just the cost of doing business

    Saneless,

    Higher fee but significantly many more multiples of customers on steam who see and buy the game.

    Just like I could sell on Etsy for a massive margin or I could sell it to Walmart at a smaller margin but make 100x the sales.

    You’re paying for the customer base

    Phen,

    Steam doesn’t let you sell the game for cheaper prices in other stores.

    IWantToFuckSpez, (edited )

    A monopoly is a monopoly. Just because Steam is a good store today doesn’t mean they deserve to hold a monopoly over the pc gaming market. So what happens when Valve has crushed every competitor? Gamers and devs have nowhere to go if Steam turns to shit. Eventually there will be a change of guards at Valve’s C-suite when Gaben retires or is dead. There is a good chance that those new execs will hollow out Steam and extract all the value out of it for their own benefit by screwing over the customers and developers. And they can get away with that if there is no competition. Competition is what keeps Valve in check.

    nanoUFO,
    @nanoUFO@sh.itjust.works avatar

    Ubisoft, Epic etc… have done nothing to make the market better or make it more healthy. Epic is even more anti competitive than it’s competition.

    IWantToFuckSpez, (edited )

    Doesn’t matter. It’s still competition. They motivate Valve to create a better store and keep it that way. Since that is Valve’s unique selling point and what distinguishes them from the competition. Therefore I believe devs should make their games available on every storefront. Not just the best one, to give customers a choice.

    nanoUFO,
    @nanoUFO@sh.itjust.works avatar

    Steam was great before epic and has been adding killer features since before egs came along. EGS tactics to win over steam users is to be anti competitive…

    IWantToFuckSpez,

    Ok but competition is always good for the customer even when the competitors are shit.

    CileTheSane,
    @CileTheSane@lemmy.ca avatar

    Ok, but as a consumer I’m fine with the shit competitor existing but I’m not going to use it.

    NightOwl, (edited )

    Like Walmart coming into a town to compete with the stores already there and then putting them out of business? Then moving onto the next town to compete again?

    nanoUFO, (edited )
    @nanoUFO@sh.itjust.works avatar

    competition is good when the rest of the competition is able or good. EGS is so shit it has to buy exclusives and give out free games and it still doesn’t work. There has to be some equality in quality to have any chance of making steam better otherwise they just exist to make anti competitive moves, what is steam supposed to do? Also pay for exclusives?

    Kolanaki, (edited )
    !deleted6508 avatar

    If that was true, then why complain about Valve’s “monopoly?” It has competition. The competition is just shit.

    leftzero,

    When their launcher is literal malware or they engage in anti-consumer practices like exclusives, no, they are not good for the customer.

    (Not that any publicly traded company can be good for the customer, mind; by definition they can only be good for the shareholders; any benefit they might accidentally provide to the customer or to society is an inefficiency that will eventually be corrected through enshittification. The only reason Valve isn’t entirely harmful is that they aren’t publicly traded yet.)

    XLRV,
    @XLRV@lemmy.ml avatar

    Tell that to Epic.

    stillwater,

    Doesn’t matter. It’s still competition. They motivate Valve to create a better store and keep it that way.

    Explain. What specific examples can you point to regarding the UPlay store that forced Steam to improve something?

    Kolanaki, (edited )
    !deleted6508 avatar

    The only thing Valve has done with Steam that apparently is anti-competitive, is actually having a decent product with good features and no one else is capable of actually delivering parity with it to be a viable competitor.

    A natural monopoly is a far cry from one built through anti-competitive practices, and easily toppled by competent competitors.

    Perhaps if Valve’s competition was competent, there would be better options.

    IWantToFuckSpez,

    True. But Google became the number one search engine by creating a better product and basically got a natural monopoly. And now look what kind of monster the company has become.

    Just because Steam is a good store today doesn’t mean it will stay that way in the future. Therefore I rather not see Steam be the only game store left in the pc gaming space.

    CileTheSane,
    @CileTheSane@lemmy.ca avatar

    But Epic is a shitty store today. I’m not going to use it out of fear the Steam might become a shitty store tomorrow.

    IWantToFuckSpez,

    That’s fine, neither do I. Because as a customer we have a choice. But we only have that choice if devs make their games available on all stores.

    CileTheSane,
    @CileTheSane@lemmy.ca avatar

    Epic has in the past declined hosting games that don’t agree to exclusivity, so it’s not always the dev’s choice.

    Kbin_space_program, (edited )

    Well no. Google used to steal results from other search engines initially.v And then suppressed search results for competing products for at least the last 20 years.

    rambaroo,

    deleted_by_moderator

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  • Kolanaki, (edited )
    !deleted6508 avatar

    Then get mad at the weak-ass competition. Start a fire under their asses to make something that is actually just as good, if not better.

    Punishing the one good product for being good is just gonna lead to there being no good products and only shitty ones just as much as your slippery-slope scenario. 🤦‍♂️

    conciselyverbose,

    But they haven't crushed any other competitor through any mechanism but having a dramatically better product.

    They don't force you to be exclusive to be on steam. They don't force you to implement any of their Steam stuff. They are very permissive unless you do shit that potentially exposes them to liability down the road, like the NFT nonsense.

    And they let you generate keys for literally free to sell on other stores.

    All their stuff companies use is because it's things customers value.

    Kbin_space_program, (edited )

    When they started, they did used to force you to use products edit: aside from their own games(fair cop), some 3rd party games like Lost Planet also required it.

    Certain games, and not just valve games, you'd buy in a store and the disc would force you to install and create a steam account to play the single player offline game.

    conciselyverbose,

    They're a distribution mechanism. If you buy a Steam game you need Steam. Allowing developers to require Steam to play their game is not anticompetitive or in any way unethical.

    They didn't force any developer who wanted to sell games on Steam to only sell games on Steam. That's what would be anticompetitive and abusing their market position. Games choosing to only distribute through Steam because there's no other storefront that wouldn't be a worse value if it was free isn't Steam doing something wrong.

    Kbin_space_program, (edited )

    My point is that they did initially to force usage. I'll edit the post with the game name when I get home.

    Edit: Lost Planet. It had a disc but required you to sign up for and use steam to play it.

    conciselyverbose,

    A publisher only distributing through Steam when it does things others don't isn't forcing usage.

    Forcing usage is requiring developers to only distribute through Steam.

    There is no scenario where the first is wrong, and there is no scenario where the second is OK.

    Zorque,

    Looks like it was a console exclusive before it released on Steam, if you're talking about Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (which is the only one I can find by that name).

    Do you have more information about the release? Or perhaps it's a different game?

    stillwater, (edited )

    They didn’t force any game to use Steamworks, developers and publishers chose to use it because it offered a lot of good middleware. And of course it requires Steam to use Steamworks.

    This is a very soft idea of “force”.

    DarylDutch,

    I get it. Steam doesn’t seem to do exclusivity deals with 3rd party titles. So you could still sell your game on gog and humble without issue.

    Kecessa,

    They control prices though, can’t sell for less on another platform.

    Zorque,

    Of course you can, just not steam keys.

    Honytawk,

    If it was only about Steam keys, there wouldn’t have been a lawsuit.

    Paranomaly, (edited )
    @Paranomaly@sh.itjust.works avatar

    They don’t though? Devs set the price. Steam just says that you need the same base price there as elsewhere.

    rambaroo,

    Yeah because if you don’t, they delist your game. That’s the literal definition of anti-competitiveness. They could never get away with that if they weren’t a monopoly.

    stillwater,

    That’s the literal definition of anti-competitiveness.

    No it isn’t. That’s actually a very common store policy that’s been in place since the days of brick and mortar locations. Why do you think you never see any platform listing games at higher or lower full retail prices than every other one regularly, even when they’re not on Steam?

    Where did you get the idea that this was the definition of anti-competitive? There are so many more things that define it more, like buying up all the competition or taking a big hit on loss leading pricing to force the competition to undercut themselves and collapse.

    Kecessa, (edited )

    Actual unpopular opinion: I don’t give a fuck, I want my launcher to launch my games, all of them do it, Steam just comes with a shit load of extra stuff I don’t care about. I buy my games where they’re the cheapest and with all the free games on Epic I rarely use Steam anymore. If they’re the same price I’ll go with the platform that give the devs the biggest share of the profit and that’s not Steam.

    Edit: See? That was the unpopular opinion…

    stillwater,

    It’s not unpopular, it’s just banal.

    Kecessa,

    Based on the votes and the opinion of the majority that hates Epic and wouldn’t mind seeing Steam have a real monopoly? Seems pretty unpopular to me!

    stillwater, (edited )

    Based on how you completely changed what your point from one comment to the other, it seems you realized you had to have something more interesting to opine.

    EmperorHenry,
    @EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Fuck epic games!

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