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Steams "Competitors"
- Thread starter brokenswiftie
- Start date
- Status
OP
OP
Humble is a third party entity though not something provided by the storefront, unlike Origin Access or Gamepass
I've added a "3rd Party Keys" row for stuff like GMG, Humble etc.
I can't really get behind this thought process....
Arg! My friends keep trying to chat with me. I just want to play games!
I can refund this game? No other stores allowed me to refund my games. All that money I could have saved. I am outraged!
Wait, this has STREAMING? Streaming killed my grandmother. That's it! No more Steam.
Seems like a weird way of thinking, if you otherwise enjoy PC games.
Why'd you pick those specific features?
Tangentially however, yes, the "community" features of Steam are mostly a net negative for the platform for me personally. I'd much rather use other platforms to communicate and coordinate with my friends as the Steam community integration is at best lazy and at worst a mild hinderance.
It's not an excuse it's just how I feel about playing games on Steam. The "features" aren't all as attractive as each other.
But Valve hired the best psychologists to devise methods to addict you to their store via cards and badges. How could you just leave them like that?
lol right? Where else am I going to start games and then alt-tab out of them to idle my way into 9 cents worth of jpgs?!
Really though, I do still play games on Steam because it's the biggest most convenient place to play them AND they just released Artifact which is fucking dope
So this "mild hindrance" from community was actually not so mild and made you stop using it altogether? Am I getting this right?
And in this case, the Epic store could very well lead to Steam reducing the 30% cut for all developers. Which would be a good thing in a world where development costs are rising and opposition to MTX is rising.
This has been the Crux of my arguments for the past 24 hrs.
I can't actually tell if these posts are serious anymore. They all read like they're from some generic "Steam needs competition" comment generator.
The whole point about this thread is that Steam's competitors aren't forcing Steam to do anything because they can't match its features.
That along with a multitude of other reasons yes, though I still use Steam occasionally mainly to play games that are exclusive to the platform like the recently released Artifact or to play games I've bought that are unfortunately locked to the platform.
I'm not entirely sure why I have to justify my reasonings for disliking Steam as a platform? If I told you I didn't shop at Walmart would you be equally skeptical?
You've still not answered the question originally posed: What alternative to Steam do you prefer and why?
This is a parody at this point.
You don't have to justify shit, do whatever pleases you. But if you post your opinions on a forum, you might want to be prepared that someone might comment on them.
If you posted that in a thread that showed how Wal-mart is objectively better for its customers than all other stores... yeah, maybe. But from what I can tell, your comment would probably be along the lines of "Yeah but all those things that improve my shopping experience are actually the reason I don't want to shop there."
That's a decent enough argument, what doesn't make sense are the one million posts which claim that Valve needs to "step up" from a customer perspective (or even a developer perspective, other than revenue share, and even that just happened right now in terms of competition).
In fact, everyone else needs to step up, as this thread demonstrates.
I say that as both a developer and an enthusiast PC gamer.
If there's one thing I do agree Steam should do is release a real "lite" client. Just your library of games and a list of your friends. DO AWAY WITH THOSE USELESS FEATURES PEOPLE NEVER ASKED FOR.
I wouldn't go to a Walmart competitors forum, to tell them I stopped using their services for "these exact reasons" and then leave without explaining what these reasons actually are?
Battle.net, Origin, GOG, itch.io, etc etc etc
Why? Multiple reasons, game exclusivity, easy of use and portability of games, friend migration, bought games that were on sale for lower than the Steam price. It's not as if Valve has done one individual thing that has made me reticent to launch a game from their platform, it's a cumulation of small things over time that has made me go from a 100% Steam PC user to a more even split among multiple other platforms.
Objectively better?
I mean, for you I guess. Then that's not objective though is it?
I posted because while I understand if someone else finds the listed features to all be personally positive, I find some of the listed features to be personally negative in my experience. So much for objectivity I suppose.
You guys make it sound like you're being held at gunpoint to click anything outside of STORE & LIBRARY
Just don't use the features if you don't want to? it's not that difficult.
You guys make it sound like you're being held at gunpoint to click anything outside of STORE & LIBRARY
Just don't use the features if you don't want to? it's not that difficult.
That's all I do.
And I do that on other stores as well become some other stores do it better in my opinion.
As shown in the 9(!) pages we have on this topic, quite a bit of people.
Probably not so many, but the main point is to respond with facts to the usual stuff steam detractors say here and repeat as mantra
You can literally right click the Steam icon from the taskbar and launch a game that way. And it will always include your most recently installed game in that menu. You don't even have to open Steam.
Sorry I should have said "stopped using it as much"
Before Artifact launched I hadn't started Steam in a few months.
But you listed a bunch of things that are not just "play game" a few posts above:
So what's really going on here? Can we cut the bullshit?
Its a low effort troll.
As shown in the 9(!) pages we have on this topic, quite a bit of people.
What do you mean "what's really going on here"?
I enjoy other platforms, for numerous reasons. What's the question?
Y'all really like Steam huh? I don't begrudge y'alls enjoyment of the Steam storefront.
This is a bad example considering the Xbox UI seems to get slower with each monthly feature update lol
I certainly give a shit about refunds, Linux support, universal controller mapping, workshop mod integration and free unlimited key generation. Everything else is gravy.
There's something to be said about simplicity and doing a few things very well, but a lot of Steam competitors do close to nothing and sometimes aren't even very good at that.
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Oh I see we've pivoted toward "well... all those extra features Steam added are BAD" now.
you people have lost it
you people have lost it
Which while good for developers is actually bad for customers - we will lose the great discounts official Steam resellers like Voidu or Greenmangaming offer for upcoming releases (plus the more grey shops like CDKeys.com).
Valve doesn't make the games people want now so they gotta shit on them.
All that matters is the fact that those features exist for those who do give a shit.
Even if something only matters for one person why would you want to take it away? Because it doesn't matter to you?
Or is it because you want to find a way to "invalidate" the table in the OP?
It seems like the premise of the thread is more things = better. I'm not invalidating that some people want some of those things, just that having more stuff does not automatically make it a better option.
The tone of the OP acting like it's some kind of objective measure of Steam superiority kinda rubs me the wrong way.
Can people not prefer Steam but also think that competition is good for them?
I wish people would stop touting this as "fact"
PC gaming was fine. You didn't get your JRPGs, but that had hardly gotten worse - it had simply always been bad until PC got its own central digital distribution platform. As someone who was happily gaming on PC all through the supposed drought, this is bizarro world.
The most funny thing is that people used to mock devs and pubs for claiming that piracy killed PC gaming ("again?") - now they're using the same rhetoric >XD
I don't think anyone really disagrees that market competition is good. It's more the stores that "compete" by locking exclusives behind bad launchers which benefits no one besides that company that are railed against.
Then ensure you don't complain about the era of lootboxes and MTX, then.
It's hard for a shitload of developers to turn a profit via Steam, as more and more games get released. There are only so many games that can be promoted heavily on the platform. It's pro-consumer to want developers to make more money...in many cases to even allow devs make a living.
This is an educational thread since many people on this site don't exactly know what are the differentiating features between different launchers on PC.
Many people come to discuss on PC threads without any knowledge about it and the whole thread get's derailed because of it. This thread itself has been derailed multiple times as an example.
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