I don’t think “pro consumer” is mutually exclusive with “because of competition”. In fact, I would say the two necessarily overlap. If a company does something pro consumer that isn’t driven by competition, then it’s just charity, not “capitalistic” at all. The point I’m making is that, Epic often seems to be on the other side: taking actions that are driven by competition, but not good for consumers. As I stated above, the linux push by valve is the same fight that Epic is battling in courts vs Apple and Google; the difference is that consumers benefit from the linux push, whereas mostly just Epic benefits from their court battles (and maybe some other companies).
I don’t think steam refund was driven by EA offering refunds on EA-exclusives. It was in direct response to Early Access titles being posted that were just obvious scams, with no recourse once you’ve purchased the game (maybe you read EA as a motivator somewhere and assumed Electronic Arts rather than Early Access?)
I agree valve could afford to take a smaller cut. I do believe Epic is directly to thank for all the Sony exclusive ports to PC.
linux support is 100% motivated by valve’s business interests, but also, it’s good for consumers
I’d need to know specifics about reviews over the years. I don’t read reviews, but I know they have to make a deliberate effort to prevent review bombing. “Curators” are a waste of everyone’s time.
TBH I feel like the Steam UI changes at a glacier’s pace compared to almost any other UI. It’s really not that different from what it was 20 years ago.
Yeah, the key/lootbox stuff is a valid criticism. I don’t like any digital economy that’s clearly fishing for whales.
AFAIK, steam’s price parity policy only requires that free steam keys not be sold off the platform for less than what they’re sold for on the steam store. Which makes sense, as that would open the door to just freeloading your game on the platform. I could post my game on steam for $1,000,000, never sell any copies through steam, then generate free steam keys, and sell them over on my own site for $30, keeping 100% of the profits. If allowed, every dev would just do that, and no one would ever purchase through steam. But it sounds like their policy would allow for a game to be $50 on steam, and $40 on EGS.
Meanwhile, EGS is constantly signing exclusivity deals on their platform, preventing them from selling on any other platform at all, which is very clearly anti-consumer.
The fact that Valve can just charge 30% even if a developer didn’t use “any” steam feature
The fact that the Valve is facilitating streamlined distribution of the game (and any updates) to thousands, or millions of players at the same time alone means they are already taking advantage of steam’s features. That is a huge amount of bandwidth savings and complexity that the developer just doesn’t have to think about.
I would use EGS, but they don’t support Linux. Additionally they are deliberately building a walled-garden version of NFTs where you exchange “Vbucks” for emotes and skins that can work across UE games, thereby encouraging more devs to use their engine, and more customers to play games on their engine. That feels gross, centralized, and anti-consumer.
Steam lets devs use any engine, and enables players to use any OS via proton. Any DRM or anticheat present is up to the devs. Yeah, I have a library that is centralized on steam, and that’s not ideal, but it doesn’t feel like they’re exploiting that…yet. Epic doesn’t even have market share yet and it already feels like they’re exploiting everything they can.
Valve’s push on Linux is THE reason that Microsoft isn’t forcing Steam, EGS, EA Play, etc, to go through the Windows Store, which would allow msft to take 30% of all their sales. Both Valve and Epic are fighting the same battle, just valve is fighting with innovation and pro consumer options, and epic is fighting in court against the same kinds of walled gardens they’re building.
I’m not smart enough to see a world where Linux and effective client side anti-cheat can cohabitate. Nothing can ever stop someone running a custom linux kernel that hides any nefarious code from the games they’re targeting. PC gaming can only head that direction to the degree that they take kernel-level control away from the user.
When it comes to windows, the devs working on kernel-level anti-cheat systems are working closely with microsoft on the implementation. To the point that, if you were to try to reverse engineer it on your own machine, in all likelihood msft could convince a court that you are hacking their system, not the other way around.
Lol I know it sounds like I’m treating it like a job, but it’s more like wanting to travel the world but knowing I’m not going to have time in my life to see everything (which is both a metaphor, and also a thing I would actually like to do that competes for time lol).
We have to prioritize some experiences in life over other experiences we also want to have, and that’s just how it is. So if they could just stop making new things for a while, that would really make my job easier 😝.
Like with any skill, the yt videos feature the 1% of the time when they get to show off progress. But of course the other 99% of the time is spent on the struggle bus. And like with any skill, if you can learn how to slog through the lows, the highs can be a very rewarding experience.
There’s really nothing like seeing someone play your game for the first time. I assume it’s similar to a musician showing off their music, or a director showing off their film. But that interactive element is very unique; getting to see how people interact and respond emotionally to this thing you built. Actually, maybe it’s like being a toy maker.
I think realistically, TotK is going to win the popularity aspect by a longshot. Even though BG3 is, IMO an objectively more impressive feat, and most of the novelty in TotK was already in BotW.
RDF is useful if the goal is completing content, but not if the goal is interacting with other people, which I believe is a crucial part of the MMO acronym, even when I don’t have much time to game. If my goal is to complete content, there are more interesting single player games I can spend my limited amount of game time playing than WoW.
IMO modern WoW is designed to give you the sensation of completing content so rapidly that you mistake the resulting dopamine hits for the feeling of having fun. Meanwhile, anything that could interrupt that cycle of hits has been optimized out, which includes virtually any dependency on another player. (Vanilla has quests that require you to find another player to craft you an item! They never made that “mistake” again…)
I currently run a 10m “dad” guild in WotLK classic. We’re only on for 1 night a week for 3h to raid, and virtually every week at least 2 people can’t make it due to work, family, or other reasons. And it’s fine. Yeah, we progress slower, we still haven’t even fully cleared Ulduar which was 2 phases ago, but it makes for a more rewarding experience IMO. The goal isn’t completing content, it’s interacting with other people.
Meanwhile, when you queue in RDF, no one talks, everyone already knows all the fights, and if you don’t keep up you will be vote kicked. I don’t see the appeal. TBH I don’t even see anything “massively multiplayer” about WoW these days. Everyone else running around could be bots and I wouldn’t have any way of knowing. The hardcore WoW servers are probably where the most interesting multiplayer experiences are happening these days.
I’m not really interested in any MMOs these days which all deemphasize player interaction and prioritize content completion. I’m sure it appeals to the widest audience and thus is the easiest way to pay the bills, but it also makes for a braindead experience.
I’m reservedly optimistic given the wow vets involved, but if they do stuff like:
adding fast travel portals instead of reliance on player mages,
random dungeon finder,
random cross-realm interaction at the cost of fostering server communities,
and otherwise make a single player experience where other players might happen to appear,
then It’s not interesting to me. Also, I don’t think being a retail wow clone will be enough to dethrone retail wow.