A PC game is either on Steam or GOG or it doesn’t exist to me.
I subscribe to the humble monthly bundle thing and if a game doesn’t activate on one of those two I’m probably never going to play it despite owning it.
I’d maybe have added epic to the list if it wasn’t for the store exclusivity stuff. I know that they’ve dialled it back significantly, but anti-consumer stinks like that don’t readily wash out.
Conversely, GOG is on the list because they’re expressly pro-consumer, particularly with their preservationist initiatives. My monkey brain would prefer everything in one place on Steam, but I recognise behaviour I want to support in these companies, so GOG gets my money too
You forgot patreon. Steam censors the library in places (hello German government & fuck you hard with a rusty rebar). But even outside censorship, patreon game developers usually do not lock in their games into rootkit-protected anticheat/copy protection/whatever bullshit.
Not censored but mandated by a government body so they literally have no other option other than doing that.
If the dev is too lazy to fill out a questionnaire for self-categorizing the age rating why is Valve responsible for that?
Not censored but mandated by a government body
What exactly do you think censorship is?
- I was cursing at the German government, not steam
- I am not talking about the age categorization, I am talking about having to implement a customer age verification which they won’t do for the German market, and again, while this would be easy, I don’t necessarily blame steam for it. But that they do censor is unquestioned, and therefore more options are welcome, as long as those stores do not require a launcher, installer or otherwise intrusive software.
I can live with that as long as we consider that Steam games need to be on Epic and GOG as well.
Yeah. Those assholes. Taking 12% of the gross of a game sales instead of Valve’s 30% at a time when studios are struggling.
That better overlay and browser is totally worth 18% of the total value of a game and shouldn’t go to the employees making the product or into more features. I need my virtual stickers!
Yeah I love Epic’s cloud saves… Wait… I mean I love their supreme 80% discounts… No wait, I mean I love their integrated friends li… Their API?.. No, I mean their customizable launche…Well, the two free games they hand out once a month are alright.
As a consumer I’m more concerned about Epic’s anti-consumer practices than what they are paying devs.
Epic deserves shit for being a shitty company overall. The lower sale tax is great for devs, but most consumers don’t care, because the program is a shitty Unreal application pretending to be a shitty web browser
Valve can definitely lower their sale tax, they get loads of money off trading cards and skin sales, maintenance of that shit is waaay lower than the petabytes needed for games. At least some of the money is spent making better consumer stuff, like Steam deck and increasing the number of games that you can play on Linux with Proton. Doesn’t explain the 30% either way
Ah, then that meme sucks and you’re just fanboying. I don’t make the rules.
And make sure to avoid stores that actively promote the store exclusives concept, even for stuff that isn’t an exclusive (anymore). They don’t deserve our money. Looking at you Epic.
I remember when Metro Exodus was about to release, Epic bought them out and they made the game unpurchasable on Steam after people already preordered. So only those who preordered were able to play on Steam for the first year after release. Valve left this statement on the store page.
Ubisoft pulled something like that with Anno 1800. If you pre-ordered it on Steam it was possible to install and play it, as it was only delisted but not removed entirely. Buying the DLC was a bit of a pain as you couldn’t search Steam for it, you had to dig up the direct Steam Store link from one of the official posts on the Ubi forum. It wasn’t ideal, but at least they had the sense to make everything available immediately on Steam for those that already bought the game there.
Store exclusivity is paid, this means that the devs get a guaranteed income instead of relying on the Steam gamble.
Would you work for your employer if you might be paid more than average but no guarantee on that and only in two years if it happens at all as it depends on the number of clients you got and how influencers feel about your work once it’s complete?
I don’t know about you but I look around and I don’t know anyone who would accept those conditions. That’s where exclusivity becomes an option, you might not have as high an income, but that employer tells you ahead of hiring you how much you’ll make in the next year with a commission on every sale you make once your work is complete.
I’m fully aware, and I don’t even blame developers, especially indies, as I can completely understand their reasoning and commercial consideration. But from a user perspective I just see a store trying to buy market share and either forcing customers to wait a year or cave and use that store. Epic doesn’t fork over money to help developers, it does so to grab a piece of the pie and create value for shareholders.
Personally I prefer not buying or using platforms from companies whose policies I don’t agree with. I avoid Amazon for that reason, and Epic’s store is therefore also on my personal blacklist.
It’s a choice I’m allowed and willing to make. Of course you are free to disagree and by all means, do whatever you feel is right.
Do you purchase on Steam? Because it is in a monopolistic position and that’s much more anti consumer than anything Epic or GOG can do in their position.
That’s not even talking about the 30% cut which means less money going to the devs (and before you say they use the money to innovate, devs being able to afford making games is much more important for gaming than developing virtual trading cards or enriching a billionaire with a yacht collection).
I don’t know about you but I look around and I don’t know anyone who would accept those conditions.
except publishers frequently do accept those conditions.
“steal”
Stealing implies a transfer of ownership. Downloading a “COPY” of a digital game only infringes on a copyright or licence or whatever the multi-million dollar company wants to claim it has.
If you don’t own the game by purchasing it, then it’s not stealing if you pirate it.
Maybe he’s gonna break into the publishers office and steal the master copy 🤣
I am, again, mostly fine with that.
As long as that means you don’t pirate anything that has a physical version or is on GOG.
I mean, that’s not entirely true, my views on piracy are more nuanced than that, but in terms of how much I can stand behind that line as an argument.
I am mostly fine with that.
As long as that means the games I buy physical are still manufactured and sold by the publisher and not Joe Bloe on eBay for a 900% “rare retro game” mark-up.
I will try your game out on my terms anyways. Soooooo
