Yeah. Those assholes. Taking 12% of the gross of a game sales instead of Valve’s 30% at a time when studios are struggling.
That better overlay and browser is totally worth 18% of the total value of a game and shouldn’t go to the employees making the product or into more features. I need my virtual stickers!
The thing is gaming is a weird industry where the consumer price is essentially fixed tegardless of platform/marketplace outside of sales.
Ideally, games would cost more on Steam to make up for the increased fees. That would create a market where Steam would probably have to lower its fees to be competitive. And if Steam did that, EGS would need to improve the quality of its service to remain competitive.
Or maybe Steam could be a boutique marketplace where the games cost more but the UU is better, while EGS is an unholy mess of a UX, but the games cost less.
But what we have right now is neither. With the customers being shielded from the price differences, the negative effects of Steam are invisible to most people and the market doesn’t properly function.
Is a better launcher really worth 18% of the gross value of a game?
If a developer decided to cut 20% of their content, and their excuse was “we want to use that budget towards a better third-party game launcher instead of using it to develop the game” would you be okay with that?
Because that’s what you’re suggesting they do by choosing Steam over EGS.
As much as I like using Steam, I’m on Epic’s side here. They sue over anti-competitive practices of other marketplaces that take almost triple the cut that Epic does on game sales.
If I were a developer and one platform took 12% while the other took 30%, I’d push my customers to the 12% option no matter how much better the in-game overlay or whatever was on the other platform. Game studios are closing left and right, and that extra 18% is a big deal when games are struggling to actually profit from the development.
I don’t understand why people are so in love with a Steam monopoly. Steam has a lot of neat features, but the main feature I’m looking for in a game is the game itself, and I’d prefer more of the money to go to the companies making the games.
And maybe if Valve didn’t take home a larger profit from game sales than the developers themselves, they’d go back to being a full-time game studio to make their money.
Agreed. But I was responding to the claim that the remasters suck. With the recent updates, that’s not as accurate unless the music is the most important part of the experience for you.
The improved controls, higher resolution, gameplay tweaks (fucking David Cross RC missions in the original were ludicrous), and restored lighting make a pretty compelling package. If the remasters launched in their current state they’d be considered excellent.
They actually updated the remaster a few weeks ago and it is a huge difference.
Now the only glaring issue is the music, since the originals came out before game studios knew to secure licensed music rights in a way that would allow future re-releases in different formats.
I built a $3,000 performance desktop a few years back, and the main games games I ended up playing on it were things like FTL, Shovel Knight, SNES emulators, and other games that could be run on an overclock ham sandwich.
I think that Borderlands still had the best gameplay loop because of its more random loot system.
You didn’t have the legendary items dropping from specific enemies, so instead of farming bosses for a specific item, you just run around playing the game. Every time you opened a chest it was exciting because there might be something good inside.
Oh, and the legendary guns could be stupid powerful. I got a Hellfire with my Lilith at level 25 or something, and it still melted enemies at level 70 because of the elemental effects.
If I could get that loot system with BL2’s story and level design and the Pre-sequel’s OZ kits I think it’d be perfect.
My understanding is they keep adding features even though they’re supposed to be done because they still play the game constantly themselves and end up wanting more content.
Threads by Meta is on the fediverse. So by describing the fediverse as good, it sounds like Threads is just like Mastodon.
The topic is too complicated to quickly explain to a novice. Because now you have to explain FOSS, and why that’s sometimes good, but not always since bad actors have used FOSS .