Steam is a platform that happens to also have a storefront. Other companies are building storefronts and hoping that’s enough.
If you can’t provide fast downloads, cloud saves synced across devices, achievements, mod support, friends lists, and multiplayer support, it’s not a real option. Being cheaper or having some exclusives aren’t attractive. Gog already has the drm free angle to be a legitimate competitor.
Being consistently cheaper would actually be attractive to many people. The thing is, none of these competitors can even muster that. Steam consistently has better sales, more often. And it’s pretty funny seeing Amazon of all things not able to match or beat that. They are known for undercutting the competition, even at their own expense, just to get customers; It’s literally how they got to be as big as they are.
Epic kinda tried that by giving away tons of free games in the Epic Games Store. It didn’t work.
If I want Steam games cheaper, I go buy a Steam key for that game from a separate retailer and activate it on Steam. Save like 50-70% irrespective of Steam sales. It’s remarkable that Steam allows us to even do that in the first place.
Epic also generated a lot of bad blood by scooping up Kickstarter projects and ordering the devs to cancel the Steam releases, releases that had already been paid for by backers. A bunch of potential customers refused to buy from Epic on principle after that.
I’m one of them. For all their trash talk about Steam being a monopoly, Epic Games sure pulled some hypocritical, anticompetitive shit in their attempt to replace one monopoly with an objectively worse, consumer-hostile one.
Look at market shares, Steam is in a monopolistic position, they can turn around and fuck up the whole market whenever they want, and people like you are encouraging it.
You realize that they’re anti DEI over there? I don’t think drag would ever be hired by Valve!
They wouldn’t even release a statement about George Floyd because it was too divisive for them, they instead gave 10k to each employee to spend on whatever they wanted, which might just as well have been BLM or a white supremacist group, they didn’t check!
Yep. I have a bunch of Epic’s free games. Never bought a single game from them and probably never will.
The experience on Steam is just better. And Epics lawsuits look less like they’re fighting for the little guy and more that they are envious of the market that other companies have.
Maybe if they had done that with brand new games and not just a few good but old games and tons of games nobody has even heard of before. It’s not really even in the same league as just genuinely being cheaper than the competition. It’s a gimmick. Steam also sometimes gives games away for free, while still having tons of deep discounts all year long.
I’m the same. I’ll look on Steam first just because I would prefer to keep all my shit in one place, but if it’s not the cheapest price I’ll get it somewhere else. Although 90% of the time, the cheapest price is just a steam key being sold by a 3rd party (I like Eneba, personally).
The one time Epic was cheaper, was when they gave out Civ6 for free. I bought the two major DLC expansions through Epic instead of buying everything on Steam just because I didn’t have to buy the base game and the DLCs were $10 cheaper anyway.
If your software is profit motivated then it doesn’t need to exist
Not that it would make any difference for the end user because it should all be modular enough for the user to mix and match any of those services with any other services
Because each independent section would try to make more money and end up breaking things and adding new shit users don’t want but marketing execs think are good.
Name an example of a better workshop, I’ve used nexus mods and it’s a complicated mess that requires a subscription to get normal download speeds for content created for free by other people
Yeah, but where do you have to go to redeem those keys and then subsequently have to open their program every time you wish to use your purchase (which you don’t own). Steam is very good at promoting itself and locking people into their platform, it’s a constant free advertisement program where they have total control and no competition.
I understand the “Steam is fine” position, but I also wish we weren’t always turning to this ONE supplier for a goods or service because it always hits the hardest when corruption takes over. Would love for these threads to be filled with multiple conversations of all these great different gaming services everyone personally loves for one reason or another, instead of comparing the crappiness between these few huge mega-corporations.
It’s a launcher successful on the most popular OS in the world that they don’t even own that anyone can come in to compete at. And had decades to do so when “PC gaming was dead” so was wide open for anyone that wanted to try to reach potential customers over fixating on the console demographic. What more do want.
Can I give the classic example of US healthcare where for very minor benefits, the absolute richest can afford to have great healthcare whilst everyone else seems to be crippled (financially) by even minor ailments.
But the industry is worth billions, the line goes ever up, and the shareholders are happy. Just fuck the customer.
Steam is a platform that happens to also have a storefront. Other companies are building storefronts and hoping that’s enough.
If you can’t provide fast downloads, cloud saves synced across devices, achievements, mod support, friends lists, and multiplayer support, it’s not a real option. Being cheaper or having some exclusives aren’t attractive. Gog already has the drm free angle to be a legitimate competitor.
Being consistently cheaper would actually be attractive to many people. The thing is, none of these competitors can even muster that. Steam consistently has better sales, more often. And it’s pretty funny seeing Amazon of all things not able to match or beat that. They are known for undercutting the competition, even at their own expense, just to get customers; It’s literally how they got to be as big as they are.
Epic kinda tried that by giving away tons of free games in the Epic Games Store. It didn’t work.
If I want Steam games cheaper, I go buy a Steam key for that game from a separate retailer and activate it on Steam. Save like 50-70% irrespective of Steam sales. It’s remarkable that Steam allows us to even do that in the first place.
Epic also generated a lot of bad blood by scooping up Kickstarter projects and ordering the devs to cancel the Steam releases, releases that had already been paid for by backers. A bunch of potential customers refused to buy from Epic on principle after that.
The timed exclusivity deals are what did it for me
Bringing that bullshit to the PC gaming market guaranteed I’ll never spend a penny on their storefront.
If the carrot they’re leading with is limiting choice, I’m not going to hang around waiting to find out what the stick might be if they get successful
Epic is doing me a favor, I get to keep my money while I play my backlog, then I buy the game on Steam / GOG for cheaper later on.
I’m one of them. For all their trash talk about Steam being a monopoly, Epic Games sure pulled some hypocritical, anticompetitive shit in their attempt to replace one monopoly with an objectively worse, consumer-hostile one.
Epic Games is creating a monopoly in PC gaming - they keep making bad decisions and leaving Steam as the only good option
Look at market shares, Steam is in a monopolistic position, they can turn around and fuck up the whole market whenever they want, and people like you are encouraging it.
You realize that they’re anti DEI over there? I don’t think drag would ever be hired by Valve!
Source?
https://youtu.be/s9aCwCKgkLo
They wouldn’t even release a statement about George Floyd because it was too divisive for them, they instead gave 10k to each employee to spend on whatever they wanted, which might just as well have been BLM or a white supremacist group, they didn’t check!
Yep. I have a bunch of Epic’s free games. Never bought a single game from them and probably never will.
The experience on Steam is just better. And Epics lawsuits look less like they’re fighting for the little guy and more that they are envious of the market that other companies have.
Maybe if they had done that with brand new games and not just a few good but old games and tons of games nobody has even heard of before. It’s not really even in the same league as just genuinely being cheaper than the competition. It’s a gimmick. Steam also sometimes gives games away for free, while still having tons of deep discounts all year long.
I’m the same. I’ll look on Steam first just because I would prefer to keep all my shit in one place, but if it’s not the cheapest price I’ll get it somewhere else. Although 90% of the time, the cheapest price is just a steam key being sold by a 3rd party (I like Eneba, personally).
The one time Epic was cheaper, was when they gave out Civ6 for free. I bought the two major DLC expansions through Epic instead of buying everything on Steam just because I didn’t have to buy the base game and the DLCs were $10 cheaper anyway.
I am an extremely cheap and patient gamer. This is how I look at both the stores.
If I want free games, I’ll go to Epic.
If I want good deals, I’ll go to Steam.
Why would I go to Epic for good deals when it’ll either have a good deal on Steam OR be free on Epic after a few months or a year?
And their $5 off coupons during numerous sales
I would like to see government intervention to break up Steam to remedy this
Though arguably Epic is way bigger of a platform since it goes from developer to end user
What exactly would you be breaking up? Steam isn’t a mishmash of companies…
forums, store, launcher, workshop
The forums company will be where all the money is at, think of the profit!
If your software is profit motivated then it doesn’t need to exist
Not that it would make any difference for the end user because it should all be modular enough for the user to mix and match any of those services with any other services
Does the dadaist approach to arguments usually work for you?
I thought you would have reference Stallman in trying to dismiss me
I’ll take that as a no, then.
I’d rather see competitors actually try and be better than steam rather than make steam worse.
How did you get “make steam worse” from that?
Everything else still exists, just not controlled by Valve
…Breaking steam up would make it worse.
How? If any feature is necessary then it will be filled by someone else
You aren’t losing anything
Because each independent section would try to make more money and end up breaking things and adding new shit users don’t want but marketing execs think are good.
Then find a different workshop/forum/launcher to pair with the Steam store
In no world is it worse than what we have now
Name an example of a better workshop, I’ve used nexus mods and it’s a complicated mess that requires a subscription to get normal download speeds for content created for free by other people
If steam is a client not a store then whichever steam allows to be built into their client
So, no answer then?
No don’t break up Steam. Standardize DRM and make digital games licenses ownable/transferable. I could see the EU eventually doing this.
I say this as someone who loves Steam but wants more ownership, in the games I “own”.
They offer keys which allows for third party sellers to exist, and there are a handful of legitimate sites that sell keys for steam.
Yeah, but where do you have to go to redeem those keys and then subsequently have to open their program every time you wish to use your purchase (which you don’t own). Steam is very good at promoting itself and locking people into their platform, it’s a constant free advertisement program where they have total control and no competition.
I understand the “Steam is fine” position, but I also wish we weren’t always turning to this ONE supplier for a goods or service because it always hits the hardest when corruption takes over. Would love for these threads to be filled with multiple conversations of all these great different gaming services everyone personally loves for one reason or another, instead of comparing the crappiness between these few huge mega-corporations.
It’s a launcher successful on the most popular OS in the world that they don’t even own that anyone can come in to compete at. And had decades to do so when “PC gaming was dead” so was wide open for anyone that wanted to try to reach potential customers over fixating on the console demographic. What more do want.
It doesn’t even come pre-installed with Windows.
Sounds like a free market proponent.
Can I give the classic example of US healthcare where for very minor benefits, the absolute richest can afford to have great healthcare whilst everyone else seems to be crippled (financially) by even minor ailments.
But the industry is worth billions, the line goes ever up, and the shareholders are happy. Just fuck the customer.
Nobody else has a platform that comes close to competing and most of my games are already on there. From my pov this looks like an awful idea.