If I'm honest, I don't disagree.
I would love for Steam to have **actual competition. Which is difficult, sure, but you could run a slightly less feature-rich store, take less of a cut, and pass the reduction fully on to consumers and you'd be an easy choice for many gamers.
But that's not what Epic is after. They tried to go hard after the sellers, figuring that if they can corner enough fo the market with exclusives the buyers will have to come. But they underestimated that even their nigh-infinite coffers struggle to keep up with the raw amount of games releasing, and also the unpredictability of the indie market where you can't really know what to buy as an exclusive.
Nevermind that buying one is a good way to make it forgotten.
So yeah, fully agreed. Compared to Epic, I vastly prefer Steam's 30% cut. As the consumer I pay the same anyways, and Steam offers lots of stuff for it like forums, a client that boots before the heat death of the universe, in-house streaming, library sharing, cloud sync that sometimes works.
I trust a steam monopoly long before I’d trust epic. Epic is run to meet the needs of share holders and valve is run to meet the needs of Gaben.
Gaben isn’t going to last forever. But honestly the only other good games storefront is GoG. I’ll continue using Steam for as long as it’s still good.
I’ve used GoG once for a game that wasn’t on steam but I have done much more. Honestly I acknowledge that this ephemeral moment in time where PC gaming is kept in balance by Gaben can’t last. But I really think the lens we should look at PC landscape today is one of appreciation. If EA ran the game in steam’s shoes we wouldn’t get things like summer sales or games at reduced prices long after their launch.
Don’t be sad it will be gone be happy it happened.
Both Valve and Epic are private companies. I still trust Valve over Epic, but I think technically Tim Sweeney has pretty much full control over Epic as well (for better or for worse).
He does, but not the stake Gaben has. Sweeny sold 40% to tencent. This still gives him control, but thats a very large shareholder that can push and pull when they want.
They can’t “push and pull” anything. With Sweeney owning 50%+1, Tencent and anyone else he sold shares to can literally do nothing - he will always have the final say. And since the company is private, there’s almost certainly an agreement/contract in place on those share purchases that if someone wants to dump them they have to offer them back to him/the company first. Since it’s not a public company they can’t just go sell their shares on an open market. The threat of a large shareholder is gone in a case like this - they can’t stage a hostile takeover and they can’t dump and run.
You’re thinking of technically taking the decisions in the company. But shareholders can do much more. Like influencing the value of stocks by selling too many at once.
Tell me you didn’t actually read my comment without telling me you didn’t read my comment.
You’re also assuming there are no other shareholders…………
Sure, maybe those 106 are sharing 10% but I doubt it.
Ah that’s a fair point. I haven’t paid too much attention to this. Thanks for providing some more context :).
Gaben has been hands off at valve for a decade. He’s off breaking world records with research submersibles. Playing with his rubber duckies in the bathtub.
Is that not what you want from him?
Just saying that trust in Gaben and trust in Valve are two separate things. Valve has been doing fine without Gaben at the wheel.
The point is that, other than Gabe, Valve doesn’t have any shareholders to put before their customers. A publicly traded company, on the other hand, effectively has no choice but to cause as much harm as possible to their customers and to society in general in order to maximize short term shareholder profits, leading to runaway enshittification.
A publicly traded company, on the other hand, effectively has no choice but to cause as much harm as possible to their customers and to society in general in order to maximize short term shareholder profits
Nobody is talking about public companies here. Both Valve and Epic are private companies.
If you want to complain about profit motives, that’s a capitalism problem overall, not an issue with public vs. private corporations.
One of those companies is partly owned and heavily influenced by a publicly traded Chinese company.
Do you think he uses a steam controller to steer the sub?
If he is I know someone who could use one. Oh…
I get like 99% of my news about upcoming or newly released games from steam. There have been so many games I’m not even aware exist, like last week I found out Saints Row got a new game a while back but it was epic exclusive so I never knew.
Also being a Linux gamer steam has amazing support for Linux while epic has none.
Rest assured, you didn’t miss anything with the latest Saints Row. It was decent fun for about 20-30 hours, but it felt like much less of a game than any of its predecessors. I got the impression that the idea was to restart the franchise back to square one with minimal features so they could sell them back to us in future installments.
Linux gaming has come so far. I don’t even run Windows anymore. Especially with how much open source AI stuff I use.
valve might be the closest thing i have ever seen to an actual benevolent dictator, even if said dictator is very lazy and only deigns to do anything significant once in a while.
In Gaben we trust.
When he’s gone I assume it will go to shit.
i said valve rather than gabe for a reason, gabe mostly leaves the company to its own devices at this point while he focuses on realizing holodeck technology or whatever the hell he’s doing now.
Don’t fix what ain’t broke.
More like: out of sight, out of mind.
That’s because you are not in a position to produce and sell a game.
As a user it sure is the case but as a developer you are in a position that you either have to take their 30% cut or accept that you are selling way less
The fact that pretty much immediately after epic launched their store steam lowered the cut for big publishers tells you that they are fully aware that 30% is too much to be reasonable but they completely could get away with that because Devs just didn’t have a choice.
Because of epic that now changed since even if you don’t actually sell more games you at least can get a guaranteed profit as if you sold those games that you miss out on by not being on steam.
Sure the way epic is doing it is not good but I really don’t see another way how a significant number of buyers would ever come to another store. That didn’t work for EA, that didn’t work for Ubisoft, that also didn’t work for GOG where you actually own the game without DRM and not just a license to play it as long as the server is allowing you.
People are fundamentally lazy and hate changing their routines - that’s why forcing them into buying at your store is necessary if you want to get them to switch.
I think you got the whole thing mixed up. Sure Valve takes a huge cut, but if game does poorly Valve earns less as well. So there’s an incentive from both parties to make sure game succeeds. But in the end Valve makes sure you as a consumer get your money’s worth, hence why they even added no questions asked refund policy. Policy which has resulted in more purchases than before, because risk of not liking the game is non-existent now.
Epic on the other hand is forcing users to buy into their ecosystem by way of exclusives. Developers use this to make sure project succeeds even if it’s not good. That is to say they get the money regardless. But this model is not sustainable as Epic has to earn money at some point so number of exclusives will be lower and lower. At the same time they are encouraging developers to not try as hard to polish the game since they get the money regardless.
Fundamentally approaches are completely different and Steam’s approach can’t fail because they cater to customer while Epic is just trying to force people away while offering subpar service. And whoever holds the money holds the power.
Epic only has a lower cut because they’re leveraging their undoubtedly massive Chinese investments to gain market share. You can rest assured they would charge 30% if they could.
I don’t like that Steam or Apple or Google charge 30%. I think it’s absurd. But also Valve is basically a saint compared to every modern corporation so I don’t think twice about it.
Also their near-infinite Fortnite money.
While 30% is high it seems developers consider it acceptable since number of games Steam releases is not reducing. Any one of those developers can decide not to publish on steam and go that way, but in the end I think Valve’s service offers so much exposure that it’s worth considering.
Getting 100% of 1000 sales is not the same amount of money as getting 70% of 30000 sales, especially when it’s a digital distribution where copying bytes costs nothing. Steam also offers bunch of other services as well, things like networking, cloud saves, streaming and similar all of which cost money to maintain.
While 30% is high it seems developers consider it acceptable since number of games Steam releases is not reducing.
Yeah that's not how that works. Acceptable or not, if you want to sell your games, they have to be on Steam because that's where people are buying them.
Just release the game on all platforms
💯
Although, I can imagine supporting Epic is annoying. Unlike even GOG, they don’t have their own support mechanism like a forum. I can see why someone would release on Steam (and hence stuff like GMG and Humble) and even GOG but not Epic. Example Baldur’s Gate 3, which released on everything except Epic. Although in their case Larian commented that the decision to not release on Epic was specifically to not show support for their exclusives-everything stance. Hence on everything except Epic.
Developers would for sure do that, if it were possible. Who wouldn’t take more exposure to their project as a beneficial thing. Problem is probably in legal part of releasing stuff.
Meanwhile GOG…
I prefer GoG to Steam. I will not install Epic, especially after killing off the Unreal franchise.
Man the thing I hate the most about fortnite is that it killed UT4…
Same, I always check whether GOG has a game first, and whether it’s patched up to par. Sadly, surprisingly often while games release on GOG they then lack features (although personally I do not really care about achievements) or worse, the devs give up on releasing patches for the non-Steam versions.
Sadly, surprisingly often while games release on GOG they then lack features
This is almost always a situation that can be pinned on Steam, actually. The games that end up doing this are usually using Steamworks, which essentially forces them into a sort of soft-exclusivity on Steam since their multiplayer features and such can only exist there.
This is almost always a situation that can be pinned on Steam, actually. The games that end up doing this are usually using Steamworks, which essentially forces them into a sort of soft-exclusivity on Steam since their multiplayer features and such can only exist there.
But Steam doesn't force them to use Steamworks, so I don't really see "steam's fault" fault here. Although, of course, it'd be cool if Steamworks would work for non-steam games at least for modding/multiplayer. Granted.
Although, of course, it'd be cool if Steamworks would work for non-steam games at least for modding/multiplayer.
That's the point. No, nobody's forcing them to use Steamworks (especially since Epic has rolled out their cross-platform, store-and-OS-agnostic free competitor to it), but anyone who chooses to do so (which is a lot of devs) ends up locking those features to Steam (barring a ton of extra work for themselves) simply because of Valve's chosen policy.
Don't think Valve doesn't understand this. They found a way to get devs to all but lock their games to Steam and thank Valve for the opportunity to do it.
I have 146 titles in my Epic library. I’ve never given them a penny and don’t plan on starting. I can’t be the only one.
Oh that’s another really good point: Epic trained the consumers to open Epic weekly to get free games, then close it again. It’s a weird thing to be known for.
Sure, had them cornering the sellers market worked out - unrealistic as it was in hindsight - then having the buyers already all have the store installed for the free games would have been a genius way of getting more and more people onto the store. But it did not, and now it has just cemented the Epic store as a place you do not spend money on!
I have maybe 2 dozen and I haven’t played a single one. I downloaded titles a few times, forgot about it, then went on and bought the game on steam.
You know you made a really interesting point that they marketed to the sellers not the ultimate customers. I hadn’t really picked up on that before, but it does mitigate what should be a healthy dose of competition by altering the target audience a bit.
That’s what I always said, why use Epic store? As a user you get worse treatment. Sure price is the same or they give you some discount but number of services offered is far from being on par with Steam. No family sharing, no refund policy, no cloud saves, no networking system, no streaming, no card collecting, no steam play. I might not use or desire all of those but some people do.
The fact Epic had to resort to extremes like timed exclusives just meant I dropped those developers off of my list of wanted games as it only went to show they are willing to sacrifice your inconvenience and happiness for some extra money. For them it was probably making sure project succeeds but in the end I don’t care about them if they don’t care about me.
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I loved my switch at the beginning in 2017 but it being nintendcucked ruined it for me. Terrible sales/overpriced games, also I refuse to pay just to have multiplayer and their half assed emulators. Steam deck is a godsend, someday ill work up the courage to eat the 600$ on one or wait until steam deck 2/pro/ultra/the deckening
Indie games are a breath of fresh air in this day and age
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I mean that’s the same side that steam is using their monopoly for, too
For the users it’s definitely the most relaxed option - but as a developer if you choose to not put up with steams 30% rule you are fucked.
The fact that pretty much immediately after epic gained traction steam announced cheaper rates for bigger publishers tells you that they definitely are aware of how 30% is too much
Personally that’s why I buy all my games on gog if possible even though I have a Steamdeck and that makes stuff more complicated.
People denying steam has a monopoly are probably also denying other fundamental truths that would imply that they had to change their lifestyle (climate change anyone?)
Yeah, GOG is my preferred store if there’s feature parity, too. On that note, anyone here got AoW4 from GOG? Are all mods available through Paradox, or at least all you’d ever need? Or is most bound to Steam like back in the AoW3 days?
Eh, they’re all just companies and all just as fallible as one another.
Not sure I get the Valve worship here.
Oh, don’t mistake me preferring Steam (and GOG, for example, who have an actual value proposition to me as a consumer - unlike Epic!) to “Valve worship”. They’re simply the least bad option, but of course they’re all huge corporations. Realistically though Valve has actually surprisingly little bad given the amount of money and market control they have, so eh… for now, I’m happy buying about half my games there (usually ends up that way, though I prefer GOG for games also releasing on that).
It’s not a hard thing to get. Over the years Valve has had relatively low amount of blunders and for the most part they were of the misjudging customer base kind but ultimately they have been very consumer oriented and have provided great value for the money. From universal refund policy to family sharing and similar. Their service consists of many benefits for the consumer but all of that is charged from the developer. Very hard not to like such approach.
Epic on the other hand did the opposite. They catered to developers and inconvenienced consumers. You get to pay the same price as everywhere but you are forced to get exclusives from them and you don’t get any of the benefits Steam has. Am in fact surprised it gained as much popularity as it did. Goes to show people will sell their own pride for occasional free game you don’t even get to chose.
I remember when Valve and Steam was the great enemy in the early 2000s.
Everyone hated how buggy it was and needing it to play Counterstrike.
it’s a big circlejerk, it happens. everyone has the exact same opinion but also wants to feel like they are making a valiant statement in opposition of the bad thing
it’s all a massive oversight of course, statisticly everyone here is likely going to outlive Gabe Newel. and when valve goes public someone else will control that monopoly.
In Gaben we trust. Epic sold out to Tencent which is evil.
I dreamt once that there was a reliable, non-profit yet well funded community that hosted and distributed games with minimal take in an effort to spread gaming as art and history. They even kept a system agnostic achievement system that retroactively added steam, PlayStation and Xbox achievements in one place with community features.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I have weird dreams, y’all!
Maybe if godot gets bigger something like that could spew out of its foundation.
My biggest issue with Epic is them very clearly doing the classic tactic of selling goods at unsustainably low prices in order to drive out competition before jacking them back up again. Their whole free game shtick can't possibly last forever and they know it.
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I was reading about the Unity debacle and thought thank
GodGabe that Steam has never pulled shit like this.I think part of the problem is too many companies are controlled by venture capitalists, or private equity, or whatever you call it. The point is that a single entity owns multiple companies from the shadows.
Companies are supposed to compete and the best company win, that's good in theory. But when a single shadow entity owns multiple companies they'll do something like squeeze customers of one company, which drives customers to their competitor, which, surprise, is owned by the same shadow entity.
