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Ex Valve Employee: "Steam was killing PC gaming...Epic is fixing this for all gamers."

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benzopil

benzopil

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Oct 25, 2017
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User Banned (3 Days): Repeatedly making inflammatory and antagonistic topics with no personal engagement
Richard Geldreich was working at Valve from 2009 to 2014. On Twitter he wrote a lot of stuff so it's better to just quote him than to insert all these links.

https://twitter.com/richgel999

Steam was killing PC gaming. It was a 30% tax on an entire industry. It was unsustainable. You have no idea how profitable Steam was for Valve. It was a virtual printing press. It distorted the entire company. Epic is fixing this for all gamers.
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It's not potential spyware, that's insane. Anyone with procmon and some knowledge can see this. I worked for Valve and believe me they gather huge amounts of data about virtually everything you do with the Steam client. Yet no one calls Steam spyware.
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If it wasn't for Epic the entire industry would still be crunching away to support Valve's 30% revshare. Most of these profits went to a tiny handful of people who could care less about the industry or working conditions. Thank the gaming gods for Epic.
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Gamers believe that the PC is somehow special and immune to market dynamics and market forces. It's not. It's been defacto monopolized by a single greedy storefront for a long time and gamers grew used to it. Change was inevitable. Even if EGS fails something else will pop up.
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Developers and publishers wouldn't take these deals unless they were excited to do so. Clearly, Epic has cut them a fair deal, and Valve didn't. Gamers have been blindly supporting a corporation (Valve) that eventually started to take its partners and employees for granted.
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I think gamers are going to remain mad for a long time, as these exclusives won't stop anytime soon. Could last 1 year or more. Steam will be for indy/2nd tier/shovelware/porn, Epic and other launchers for AAA. This seems to be where the market is heading at the moment.
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Even if Epic suddenly matched 80% of Steam's features it still would need to make competitive bids for exclusives. There's a social glue of sorts that holds Steam users to the platform. Inertia would prevent users from migrating. This would be very costly to publishers.
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To be fair, Epic isn't forcing you to do anything. You can wait to play BL3 on Steam. Steam's terms to developers aren't compelling anymore, so they don't get the best releases. Gabe can fix this quickly by lowering Steam's rev share to something fair like 15% or so.
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Another way of looking at it: Steam's robust features are currently way overpriced (to publishers/devs). So you get cloud saves etc., but you don't get the latest releases anymore. Once Steam fixes its out of kilter revshare it'll be more competitive again.
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Publishers gladly favored Steam vs. retail because they made a lot more money. Today the costs of digital distribution have plummeted and Steam hasn't adjusted. This isn't a competition over features- it's a competition for who gets the privilege of publishing specific releases.
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I don't think it will hurt much because this exclusive trend was already in motion anyway (with publisher-specific launchers). If EGS fails more and more pubs will just use their own launchers or other non-Steam storefronts like Discord or Origin.
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I would love for there to be a real alternative to Steam (from a feature perspective). Maybe the Discord people are sitting back and watching. Storefronts aren't rocket science - just copy & paste Steam's best features.
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I think what's likely is that Sweeney will push his team to add features to EGS until it's somewhat at parity vs. Steam's key features. The exclusive backlash will only cost them a few percent of sales (maybe 5-10%?)
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Much more on Twitter
 
GhostTrick

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Oct 25, 2017
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If Steam was killing PC gaming with a 30% cut, I guess the whole industry is pretty much fucked up with retail + 30% on digital from console manufacturers. Good thing Epic saved it then.
 
Tregard

Tregard

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Oct 27, 2017
5,221
"Steam will be for indy/2nd tier/shovelware/porn, Epic and other launchers for AAA"

That's a hell of a statement
 
tunnel visionary

tunnel visionary

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Oct 13, 2018
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Epic does seem rather dev-focused in their approach to an online distribution platform, but as a cheapskate who buys games I'd rather wait and see how they handle sales. At the moment the store doesn't have a single title that I'm interested in.
 
Yunyo

Yunyo

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I thought he would write something more nuanced, but this seems like the ravings of a crazy person or someone with a deep grudge.

Steam was killing PC gaming. It was a 30% tax on an entire industry. It was unsustainable.
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PC gaming isn't dying or in an unsustainable loop or anything of the sort. I mean this is the foundation of his rant and it's wrong.
 
Bunkles

Bunkles

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What the OP just did to Era:

tenor.gif
 
TheMoon

TheMoon

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Don't think we actually need the sensationalist headline version of this twitter thread because we're not a site hunting for clicks at every turn.
 
GhostTrick

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Yunyo said:
I thought he would write something more nuanced, but this seems like the ravings of a crazy person or someone with a deep grudge.



PC gaming isn't dying or in an unsustainable loop or anything of the sort. I mean this is the foundation of his rant and it's wrong.
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It exactly reads as such. Someone with a grudge that is spouting a load of bullshit (and on top of that, wrong informations).
 
Isee

Isee

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Oct 25, 2017
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So, are Microsoft and Sony also killing console gaming with their 30% cut?
 
Xiaomi

Xiaomi

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A 30% tax on an entire industry... that just about every other platform holder is also taking. Please.
 
DontHateTheBacon

DontHateTheBacon

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I have high hopes for this thread!

More seriously though, killing PC gaming? Killing it?

Really?
 
elyetis

elyetis

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Oct 26, 2017
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Killing something which kept growing over the years.

I want something to kill my money this way.
 
catswaller

catswaller

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are you guys gonna make a thread like this and then insist the dev is crazy every single time somebody who makes games or otherwise has exposure to the business side of gamedev explains this in public.

waving all of the differences in store cut and way the product is sold to benefit devs (curation, no defacto mandatory reviews, no defacto mandatory forums, etc), the very thing you guys hate (giving money or sales guarantees in exchange for exclusives) is a massive influx of health and stability to the business of selling games.
 
Ganado

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Is the entire industry built upon Valve, Steam and PC gaming? No, and by only throwing shade at Valve for this makes this feel rather "in-bad-faith". All are going for 30%. While I would like for Valve to lower their cut, they shouldn't be alone with getting all the shit. Console makers should be able to do as well with lowering their fees. They already get their RnD costs subventioned by online fees.
 
Rodjer

Rodjer

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Soul of Miyazaki said:
None of this matters OP, most of Era will continue to hate on the Epic Games Store regardless.
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I can't believe and take seriously someone who says: "
"Steam was killing PC gaming...Epic is fixing this for all gamers."

Because:

1) Steam was not killing PC gaming and never killed PC gaming
2) Epic is doing nothing for the gamers, they are doing everything they can for the developers.
 
Keikaku

Keikaku

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Oct 27, 2017
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Yeah thanks for raising the prices and keeping games from me. What a crock of shit.
 
hans_castorp

hans_castorp

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I remember reading things like this back when GFWL launched.
Can't wait for EGS to disappear as GFWL did, I only hope it's quicker this time
 
Zeroneo

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Oct 25, 2017
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Yet another person that fails to mention that Epic isn't trying to kill just Steam but every 3rd party store. How is that better than what we have right now?
 

Deleted member 8593

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I knew that console manufacturers were killing gaming since forever.

And day now it will drop dead.
 
Dest

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I don't understand I just don't understand. That 30% cut that Valve takes makes way more sense when you consider the features that it gives customers, and the amount of advertising you have being on the platform vs. the little advertising you get form being at the place where Fortnite is.
 

Deleted member 48434

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I mean, he has a point when he says devs wouldn't take epic deals if it wasn't worth it for them.
Capitalism baby.
Also the second point, about steam taking data, literally every company stores and sells data. Like, there's practically no reason for a company not to.
People moan about privacy as if every damn company doesn't already know your blood type.
 
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