I like the fact they tried to compete with Steam from the begining. I have a large library of games and some real gems that I wouldn’t normally look at.
EGS is ok, GOG is ok and also Steam is just ok too for what I want from a store/launcher.
No digital game store is worth your loyalty.
No digital game store is worth your loyalty.
A sentiment too advanced for most G*mers.
Find me another company that supports open source and Linux the way Valve does… I’ll wait
Steam is just ok to for what I want from a store/launcher.
It’s not just ok, compared to the alternatives. A games library that cannot be matched, regular sales, easy no-frills refunds, cloud saves, beta support, family mode, big picture support, seamless integration with the Steam deck, which in its own right, has pushed right-to-repair and Linux gaming to new heights. The competition doesn’t even have any of this stuff, including the console market, and if they can’t compete, they don’t deserve my money.
No digital game store is worth your loyalty.
I’m fine being loyal to a privately-owned company that actually gives a shit about its customers. As long as Gabe is still alive and they will continue to be privately-owned, the company will stay in good graces.
No digital game store is worth your loyalty.
When that store is run by a company that contributes massively to open source and works harder and puts more money into enabling alternate platforms for gaming than all other companies combined; ya, they have my loyalty.
Imagine if Steam and EGS were hotdog vendors.
Steam offers all the condiments; mustard, ketchup, mayo, relish, onions, pickles, tomatoes, bacon, cheese, chili, etc.
EGS is just a plain hotdog. No condiments. You’re lucky to even get a bun.
Both are equal price.
Which hotdog are you getting?
Now imagine that the plain hotdog guy keeps whining that nobody wants his hotdogs.
yesssssssss, but the second hot-dog vendor wants to offer customers lower prices, and the first says they can’t because otherwise those hot dogs will be banned from their stand, and the second responds by attempting to throw piss water-balloons at any passers by, or something
the second hot-dog vendor wants to offer customers lower prices, and the first says they can’t because otherwise those hot dogs will be banned from their stand
It’s more accurate to say that the plain hotdog vendor wants to sell the other vendor’s hotdogs at a lower price at his own stand, thereby undercutting the sales of the first vendor for their own hotdogs.
not really, unless you’re implying the fancy hotdog vendor paid for the development of said hotdogs, which they didn’t
games don’t belong to valve
Nope, you are wrong, this is a common mistake that Epic keeps spreading as missinformation. Valve does NOT enforce price parity on other platforms, there are games that are sold cheaper on other stores, this is up to the publisher to decide, but most publishers find it easier to have the same price across the board. If this was true games that are exclusive on Epic would be cheaper until they come to Steam years later, but they aren’t.
The mistake happens because there is one specific case in which Valve enforces price parity, but for this you need to know three things:
- Valve gives away for free infinite steam keys to publishers
- Those keys can be sold by the publisher elsewhere
- If they do that the publisher keeps 100% of the revenue of that sale
That sale of that free steam key for which Valve is not charging anything is regulated and can’t be sold cheaper than Steam on regular basis, it can be in a sale for cheaper, but the regular price must match Steam and if it goes on sale outside of Steam eventually it needs to do a similar sale on Steam (but not necessarily at the same time).
So one thing that’s amazing that Valve does for people who publish their games with them is getting them hate because of Epic, please stop spreading missinformation.
But when I asked Valve about this plan, they replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM.
Epic games store occasionally gives you a free hotdog every week. But it also contains no fixings, and you gotta eat it at the counter.
I eat that free hotdog every week, then go across the street and buy another one.
I eat that free hotdog every week, then go across the street and buy another one.
You actually eat it? I put it in the fridge for bad times but only eat the ones from the other side.
That, and Gabe’s hotdog stand has spent decades building customer trust by generally acting decently towards its customers, right after it invented the concept of the hotdog stand.
Making the core of your business model revolve around whining about your competitors doesn’t work so great when your main competitor is already significantly better than you are.
I don’t know so much about EGS, but probably some of the following (most of which I don’t use very often, I hope I recall correctly)
- Refunds
- Family sharing of games
- Sharing games for other local users
- Being able to lend games
- Remote Play (with friends)
- Remote Play (stream for a local machine)
- Linux support through proton
- probably more?
- Workshop, providing mod hosting/browser/framework for API
- controller configuration tools
- Better storefront with decent discovery and better search (Although this wouldn’t be a condiment in the anology)
- Passable social tools (IE voice chat)
- Game streaming to friends
- Cloud saves
- Relatively good review system
- Item marketplace and trading
The hotdog vendor keeps going on about how he’s the good guy because he pays more to the sausage suppliers. As if that’s at all relevant to his customers.
He also tried suing the fruit vendor because they wouldn’t let them sell their hotdogs on their Apple cart.
I’m having a really hard time keeping up with the analogies at this point, haha
To be fair, with regular groceries, it’s not uncommon for consumers to be concerned about whether or not the person who manufactured or processed the good or food you are buying was paid a fair wage. So in that sense, it is kind of relevant to the hotdog vendors customers.
I’m only playing devils advocate though. Fuck epic lol
It’s false equivalence to claim steam has a monopoly when you’re literally giving epic a monopoly on your games for financial kickbacks between yourselves that in the best case doesn’t impact the user and worst case actively compells them to a much worse platform. What epic and gearbox did is monopolistic, what steam did is just make a good enough product that no one gives a sh*t about EGS. If you want an actual competitive store front, make something your users want, not your business partners. Gog is struggling but it’s still my first goto for games because even if it’s missing all of steams functionality, it gives me ownership of games that can’t just be revoked or broken by publishers. That’s a value add I’m willing to pay for. Paying more so publishers can make more money and sell a worse experience through EGS ain’t moving me.
Name any Steam exclusives. I can think of Half Life Alyx; you could get everything up to The Orange Box and even Portal 2 on disc.
It’s a little different to have your own games exclusively on your platform than to pay other devs not to release on other platforms, and it’s entirely different if devs just choose not to release elsewhere because no other store is worth the effort for them.
Steam did exactly that for years under the “Steam Greenlight” prism where users voted for games to be released on steam with the condition that they would be exclusive. They only stopped it when they decided to go the Amazon route and sell any old shit with zero curation instead.
And Tim Sweeny made the offer to stop offering Epic exclusivity and even sell their games on Steam if Valve offered to provide their service to developers at the same rate as Epic.
But Steam charges nearly triple what Epic does and can depend on gamers to defend them for some reason.
I gave Epic’s store a chance but even after all this time it’s still shit and very far from feature parity with Steam. There’s not even proper reviews. No big-picture equivalent. No good out-of-the-box Linux support. No Steam-Deck. The list is very very long. Until Epic starts delivering, the 30% cut Valve takes is more than justified.
Yeah i get and play the free games from there, but they don’t seem to want to do more than the bare minimum for the storefront so I won’t purchase anything through them.
I gave it a chance when they took over Rocket League. The damn platform doesn’t even support profile avatars while Steam did. So to get a basic nice feature working all you had to do was… not use their platform.
They still don’t have avatars.
They absolutely slaughtered rocket league. They even put the dumb cyber truck in it lmao
Oh really? I haven’t played since they disabled trading items.
I mean, the cyber truck probably looks better than some of the other cars, and you’ll probably get better FPS due to the lowered polygon count! But yeah… no bueno.
“Famously, Steam does very little to earn the massive cut they take”
Must be why it’s so successful.
I kind of cracked up at “Steam does very little”.
Hell, Epic does not have any social features, didn’t have cart, refund process through support only, very basic search, I am not sure about cloud saves and if they don’t break completely when you play offline (is there even offline mode?).
Steam, on the other hand, is constantly adding and improving features - like the new beta family sharing which is finally what an easy way to share with my GF and sister.
The only things that Epic has are free games, exclusivity, and lower fees - and that’s about it. All three, as you can see, are not really hard to implement for the developer team, but easy to throw large sums of money at for a quick boost so they can boast numbers.
Fuck Epic, seriously. Money can solve lots of stuff, but not by throwing it at the wall. Meaningless.
Don’t forget first party Linux support and Proton to add Linux/Mac support to many windows exclusive games.
Oh, completely forgot about my Steam Deck, it is just that seamless.
I also hate the other side of the coin that is against both Steam and EGS. Citing Steam doesn’t “deserve your loyalty”. Why not? I can’t really pinpoint any particular fuckup in the 15 years I’ve been using it. Sure, some delays in games, updates, and other minor shit - but imagine if like game ratings broke, I am sure they’d get fixed in an hour.
Steam absolutely deserves our loyalty.
