A genuine Steam competitor would be great. In the world of launchers, so far all we have are publishers trying to maximize profits by not paying Valve a cut. Nobody seems to want to compete with Steam on features, unfortunately.
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"No Steam No Buy" an explanation about competition, launchers, storefronts and monopolies on PC.
- Thread starter GhostTrick
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And if your version of the game is on Steam, where do you have to go to activate the product code? That brings us back to the "you're part of their ecosystem" part.
OP
OP
It's not and it never was altruism. It's a business. But they understand that it's a necessity to not close down this market. But it's also for the better since as stated, Steam became more than a storefront and became a convenient API for games.
Also about DLCs, you're wrong.
So ? How is it bad ? I mean at some point, you need an ecosystem for your friend list ? You need an ecosystem for your online player ? Your complaint is the equivalent of saying "Vulkan is open to ensure everyone gets on it and use it".
I STILL don't see the point in Epic Games Store. Is its only defining feature that developers get 88% instead of the usual 70%? The games are exclusives so I'm forced to buy there instead of picking between different platforms with the same game. And frankly, I don't care about 88%. It doesn't benefit me and I'm not buying games out of charity. The platform needs to support the consumer, too. If I truly wanted to support a developer, I'd go buy their game (if it was on) Itch or buy merchandise. I need something to convince me to use it. Pass off the higher margin for the dev to the consumer.
this is a good step, but i think the biggest feature epic should take from steam is unlimited key generation for developers so they can sell through sites like GMG.
The market is "open", but they created a system result where the end result is Steam. They still benefit from your presence on their platform. It's not closing down the market, per se, but it's create a situation where Steam is a larger than average part of the market, which affords them an unprecedented amount of influence and power.
Well because blizzard games have a lot of functionally tied to their launcher.
The bnet launcher feels bespoke for the games that are on it. It doesn't try to overstep its boundries, doesn't act like a replacement or alternative to steam and instead feels like it's just making sure the games that are on it have the best possible social features that they can.
You're making a lot of assumptions based on outdated economic lessons that only apply to typical capitalist companies.
Steam has been innovating for years without any serious competition. They don't "need" a serious threat to motivate them to keep doing what they've been doing for nearly 15 years on their own.
It's because Discord isn't trying to be a competitor and Epic is, I am not some starry-eyed waif
Epic seems to be trying to cut through to things Valve hasn't gone after yet, which is mainly the cross-platform stuff and the royalty fees
Jury's out on whether it works but they're definitely throwing punches
OP
OP
What's the problem with that ? Since, as of today, they're aiming for more openess ? An open OS, hardware/vendor agnostic features, openess toward storefronts and such ?
There will be growing pains, inconveniences and steps back, but all of it will be considered necessary evils to wrestle away what is presently basically a monopoly.
I'll take it temporary annoyances over the alternative. Just give it time.
100% agree. I'm betting they have a plan to roll out content and features slowly. It's no good competing with Steam on feature sets all at once if most of them are broken, essentially non-functional, or somehow inherently inferior because they're under-developed and under-tested.
The only reason they instituted refunds is because they knew they were going to lose a court case in Australia. "A serious threat" led to positive change, even if it wasn't from another economic entity.
OP
OP
The necessary evils is to make place for someone that doesn't aim to make things better ?
You keep using the word monopoly as if it was enough in itself. "It's a monopoly, therefore it is bad and must be defeated".
Let's say it's a monopoly. Is this a reason to ensure the worse alternatives gets a bigger marketshare and the better ones a smaller marketshare ?
What a strange logic here.
Competition is: multiple stores selling identical goods and competing for consumers dollars by offering lower prices, better services, or both. Competition existed long before Epic showed up.
Competition is not: one store has acquired exclusive rights to a non-fungible product and can rely on demand for it to allow them to provide the bare-minimum in terms of services and price cuts.
I'd be more willing to pay a Steam premium that makes up the difference between what the devs get than download a rival launcher.
Well yeah being threatened by countries who can levy massive fines and penalties will get any business to change.
Something isn't really "open" if functionality is reliant on a single company being relies on to continue being benevolent. You'd think after them needing to go to court with an Australian consumer rights group for refunds to happen and the disaster of paid mods just being things that happened a few short years ago people would know there's still plenty to be nervous about regarding them having so much power.
Attacking developers is never right. But there's nothing wrong with telling a developer that you don't like what he's doing. Personally I will no longer support any devs working with Epic to bring paid store exclusivity to pc gaming. Really, f*ck that shit!
Exactly. Well said!
But meanwhile, these devs don't mind releasing Rebel Galaxy Outlaws on consoles where they need to pay a 30 percent cut as well. It's ridiculous how they are trying to sound like some kind of Robin Hood, while they are just doing it for Epic's bag of money.
You're free to have that opinion. In my opinion, people voting with their wallets against something they don't like are smart.
Hi there! How's life in 2015? :)
And in this case, it was for the benefit of a consumers. The point is that Steam shouldn't be called good guys or praised for something that they basically had to be forced to do.
Oh, and let's not forget that Valve was profiting off of the third party gambling that was going on with games like CSGO, and that they only stopped because people made noise about it.
Discord exclusives failed hard 2 released on Steam before their official exclusivity perioids were up. (Bad North, Sinner (in China only) and one of their exclusive was on Steam years before.
Discords exclusivity was just big failure. Epic at least has some chance of 'succeeding'.
Still, Steam offers refunds far wider than law requires, so that's big positive. They could've just changed wording a bit, and still not offer refunds expect where law requires (which is for broken games and preorders).
Yet Steam offers refunds for any reason, which is not required by law. On otherside GoG does bare minimum to say on legal side, they offer refunds only of their support can't troubleshoot with you.
(Real reason of course is Valve can't be bothered do something like that, so they figured it's easier to just refund for any reason).
OP
OP
And the solution is to make place to companies who are going to the opposite direction already. And yes, it required courts to get refunds. Not competition. Despite that, other storefronts still don't have a good refund policy. Even Epic, which is the latest, limit your no question refunds to 2 per lifetime.
That was never my point and never anything I argued. I've not said anything in favor of what Epic or anyone else is doing. I'm only asking people to recognize what Valve is doing for what it is, and not give them brownie points for something that gives them unprecedented power and influence that only appears benevolent because it's wholly reliant on it being charitable in the context of the system they created. "Free Steam keys" is a valuable proposition because Steam exists in the state Valve created it; before they came along, such a thing was never necessary.
I have no idea what a waif is. I'm old, I don't speak youth.
Nobody's giving Valve "brownie points" for anything. The fact of the matter is, whatever the history behind it was, Steam right now has a much better return policy than Epic's store right now.
Insisting that Steam can't be praised for currently having a better policy for consumers in the physical reality that we actually occupy because of the history that led us to this point seems silly. It doesn't matter why it's currently better; all that matters is that it is currently better.
OK, perhaps saying with open arms might be wrong, but if Epic offered something interesting, people wouldn't mind installing it for play games.
Steam does have competitors. GOG, Itch.io, Humble. Are those not competitors?
That's different, because all your experience with said mmo carries over and you still have access to talk to all your friends in game.
A homeless child.
Presumably, he meant "starry-eyed naif", which is the actual idiom.
And the fact that they basically created the situation that they're being credited for being the "better option" for, out of foresight that it would lock more players into their infrastructure, doesn't factor in at all? The people who pointed out the whole "you need to register a game online with another service thing" started or at least was popularized by Valve's using it are 100 % correct. Yes, I guess you could say that them being "better" at something is the current reality we live in, but that doesn't change the fact that they're winning at a game they created.
The user didn't even mention platform so I'm not sure why the attempt to move goalposts. Verbatim:
And yet they go one to admit that they already have done what they said they wouldn't, undermining this specific tenet:
In the somewhat topsy-turvy logic that seems to be en vogue, when multiple stores sell the same product at a variety of price-points with various levels of additional services, they are not in competition.
But when one store acquires the rights to be the exclusive and only supplier of a product, then that store is "finally bringing competition to the market", and bravely opposing the horror of a monopoly market in which one store is the only supplier for a product.
lol can't determine if serious or meme.
ROFL i dunno about that... the blizzard launcher is an absolute piece of garbage and defending it just seems like someone creating an arbitrary exception to allow oneself to play blizzard games while still maintaining a hard on for steam.
I personally have zero issue with multiple launchers/storefronts (Steam, Epic, Windows, Blizzard, etc.)....just find it hilarious how those who do have all these issues will often find ways of creating exceptions to their own rules.
No, it doesn't. Of course it doesn't. All I care about is that when I spend a dollar in a store now, I can get it refunded. Why would it matter to me how I got to that point?
Like, if it took a lawsuit to get McDonalds to guarantee that all of their hamburgers were 100% cow-feces free , and then Epik Burgerz Inc showed up on the market with the "great offer" of 2 cow-feces free burgers per lifetime of eating there, I'd still eat at McDonalds because all I care about is not eating cow shit, not the legal history of what it took to keep cow shit out of my mouth.
It would be ridiculous to instead accuse McDonalds of deviously conspiring to create cow shit free meat "to lock eaters in".
Only if you don't separate the store from the client. Most of the features you listed aren't part of the store itself, and certainly aren't a part of any other store - minus the few GOG/Origin/Uplay share with Steam (cloud saves for instance)
If all you want are game keys to lead back to the Steam client, then yes 'no steam, no buy' is a problem because you've now locked an entire platform [pc] behind one client not because the store is good [though it is], but because it's part of the launcher you use for its features.
Not to say Epic's store or launcher are good, they're not. They suck at even basic shit, but to act like 'no steam, no buy' isn't a problem even if Steam is good is a bit shortsighted
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What about the entrance of a competitor that is flush with cash and is gunning for your market share. You don't think that would inspire change?
I'm literally laughing at your assertion that Valve has transcended the confines of capitalism and is operating as some benevolent service provider because they have updated Steam during the last 15 years.
I'm not demanding anything but they already have said that those games will be everywhere in a year and maybe I'll buy it than or maybe I won't but I know they won't get my money right now with the epic client.
No it's customers excercising their rights to not buy a game. This is the wrong way to handle it and epic is being called out for it.
For me, it's quite simple. I'm not going to pretend that Valve is my buddy and are all benevolent. That being said, yes, people want to bring up HL2, DRM, and how Steam got started. Point is, they worked at keeping the PC gaming market alive, when others, such as MS, and the wonderful Epic, turned their backs on it. For Valve, this is their world. For Epic, it feels like they just want to swoop in after Valve, and have a piece of the cake after the work was already done. Who's to say what happens if/when that Fortnite money dries up, or the next great console arrives? Is Epic in it for the long haul? Will they turn their back on PC again? Of course, that future is uncertain. Given history, and what's currently on the table, I prefer to place my trust in Valve. If Epic proves they are worthy, then they'll garner the trust down the line as well.
A fast food purchase isn't anywhere near a good analogy, because fast food is a one and done deal. The only systems in place designed to motivate you to continue to exist in benefit to McDonald's economically is the marketing they spend money on.
Now, if McDonald's were disproportionately the dominant fast food company compared to other fast food companies, and one of the "benefits" of the market is that you can buy vouchers to redeem McDonald's food ANYWHERE that McDonald's allowed stores to acquire for free, and that needing a voucher to eat fast food was the agreed upon norm for getting access to it, to the point that people are conditioned to see McDonald's as the "objectively best deal" and continue to desire their stuff, and also McDonald's "food" was actually product other chains spent money to make, it'd be a good analogy.
And that's your right.
But that still doesn't make Steam an "open market." Even I see the wisdom in preferring Valve, but I'm not going to pretend that this isn't at least verging upon the territory of monopolistic behavior.
An ecosystem is extremely important when they hold your games. I had a bunch of games on desura. The company went bankrupt and all my games went along with them.
Whoa where'd those goal-posts go? I swear they were just over there by that part of the field labelled "refunds", but it seems like all of a sudden they've gone all the way over to the "steam keys" area for some reason...
... I started talking about steam keys with my first post in this thread. I thought they were still part of the discussion.
It could but I could easily see Valve mostly ignoring them too, because that would be an incredibly Valve thing to do. They didn't really care when EA started Origin and usually don't react to anyone else at least publicly. The biggest reactionary move I saw from Valve was when they watched Microsoft talk about windows 10 and their plans for it and almost immediately they started working on deeper Linux support while Gabe was publicly criticizing UWP.
no it's like saying that a new console with zero features introducing itself to the market by buying some high-profile third party exclusives isn't healthy or good competition
OP and most (if not all) epic critics want all games on all platforms and for stores/launchers to compete through features, both for developers and customers
Couldn't disagree more. Not a single 'feature' you mention which Epic lacks is something I care about and complaining about something like the number of no questions asked refunds offered seems disengenuous.
Expecting them to launch day 1 with a Steam replica is ridiculous gatekeeping. Im quite happy to pay fair prices for games on a different platform to support developers and to support Epic in building a more feature complete alternative.
Expecting them to launch day 1 with a Steam replica is ridiculous gatekeeping. Im quite happy to pay fair prices for games on a different platform to support developers and to support Epic in building a more feature complete alternative.
That explanation could be suited to fit consoles as well but its still considered fanboyism when someone say "wont get it unless it comes on switch/xbox/ps4"
So i don't really get why steam should get an exception here instead of this entire stupid line of thinking being dropped completely for everyone
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