this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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If I'm honest, I don't disagree.

I would love for Steam to have **actual competition. Which is difficult, sure, but you could run a slightly less feature-rich store, take less of a cut, and pass the reduction fully on to consumers and you'd be an easy choice for many gamers.

But that's not what Epic is after. They tried to go hard after the sellers, figuring that if they can corner enough fo the market with exclusives the buyers will have to come. But they underestimated that even their nigh-infinite coffers struggle to keep up with the raw amount of games releasing, and also the unpredictability of the indie market where you can't really know what to buy as an exclusive.
Nevermind that buying one is a good way to make it forgotten.

So yeah, fully agreed. Compared to Epic, I vastly prefer Steam's 30% cut. As the consumer I pay the same anyways, and Steam offers lots of stuff for it like forums, a client that boots before the heat death of the universe, in-house streaming, library sharing, cloud sync that sometimes works.

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[–] FireTower@lemmy.world 163 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I trust a steam monopoly long before I'd trust epic. Epic is run to meet the needs of share holders and valve is run to meet the needs of Gaben.

[–] Varyag@lemm.ee 89 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Gaben isn't going to last forever. But honestly the only other good games storefront is GoG. I'll continue using Steam for as long as it's still good.

[–] FireTower@lemmy.world 32 points 1 year ago

I've used GoG once for a game that wasn't on steam but I have done much more. Honestly I acknowledge that this ephemeral moment in time where PC gaming is kept in balance by Gaben can't last. But I really think the lens we should look at PC landscape today is one of appreciation. If EA ran the game in steam's shoes we wouldn't get things like summer sales or games at reduced prices long after their launch.

Don't be sad it will be gone be happy it happened.

[–] Cabrio@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Gaben has been hands off at valve for a decade. He's off breaking world records with research submersibles. Playing with his rubber duckies in the bathtub.

[–] Lolman228@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is that not what you want from him?

[–] Cabrio@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just saying that trust in Gaben and trust in Valve are two separate things. Valve has been doing fine without Gaben at the wheel.

[–] leftzero@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The point is that, other than Gabe, Valve doesn't have any shareholders to put before their customers. A publicly traded company, on the other hand, effectively has no choice but to cause as much harm as possible to their customers and to society in general in order to maximize short term shareholder profits, leading to runaway enshittification.

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[–] Chobbes@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Both Valve and Epic are private companies. I still trust Valve over Epic, but I think technically Tim Sweeney has pretty much full control over Epic as well (for better or for worse).

[–] mosiacmango@lemm.ee 14 points 1 year ago (6 children)

He does, but not the stake Gaben has. Sweeny sold 40% to tencent. This still gives him control, but thats a very large shareholder that can push and pull when they want.

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[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 75 points 1 year ago (10 children)

valve might be the closest thing i have ever seen to an actual benevolent dictator, even if said dictator is very lazy and only deigns to do anything significant once in a while.

[–] Not_Alec_Baldwin@lemmy.world 44 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In Gaben we trust.

When he's gone I assume it will go to shit.

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 25 points 1 year ago

i said valve rather than gabe for a reason, gabe mostly leaves the company to its own devices at this point while he focuses on realizing holodeck technology or whatever the hell he's doing now.

[–] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Don't fix what ain't broke.

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[–] FluffyPotato@lemm.ee 68 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I get like 99% of my news about upcoming or newly released games from steam. There have been so many games I'm not even aware exist, like last week I found out Saints Row got a new game a while back but it was epic exclusive so I never knew.

Also being a Linux gamer steam has amazing support for Linux while epic has none.

[–] Decoy321@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

Rest assured, you didn't miss anything with the latest Saints Row. It was decent fun for about 20-30 hours, but it felt like much less of a game than any of its predecessors. I got the impression that the idea was to restart the franchise back to square one with minimal features so they could sell them back to us in future installments.

[–] markon@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Linux gaming has come so far. I don't even run Windows anymore. Especially with how much open source AI stuff I use.

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[–] Silverstrings@lemmy.blahaj.zone 58 points 1 year ago (3 children)

My biggest issue with Epic is them very clearly doing the classic tactic of selling goods at unsustainably low prices in order to drive out competition before jacking them back up again. Their whole free game shtick can't possibly last forever and they know it.

[–] Viper_NZ@lemmy.nz 19 points 1 year ago (4 children)

This and the paid exclusives mean I haven’t, and won’t use EGS out of pure spite.

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[–] Rentlar@lemmy.world 50 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Steam is a legitimate value add for sellers and buyers/users, that justifies its 30% cut. Other than free games, Epic has a seemingly easy-to-integrate online networking system, that's about it. Steam has a modding platform, broadcasting, remote "parsec"-like controller emulator, Linux support, content sharing, forums and a developer news feed. That's quite a lot.

What makes me stick with them is that they don't preclude Steam and other gaming users from using alternatives but simply compete with their own well-made system... plenty of games have their own cross-platform mod-launchers that aren't workshop for example. Steamworks DRM isn't required and Steam networking services for multiplayer aren't mandatory either.

That said, itch and GoG are great alternatives where they have games available. I'd just like GoG to provide better Linux support.

[–] TeoTwawki@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Gog has support problems on some windows games too. Also they mark games run via dosbox as windows, which is annoying when you specifically want to find an older windows game that also had a dos release. Even with those issues, gog is still my goto because at least my games won't be full of denuvo securom etc. and nobody else seems to remotely care about the really old harder to find games. I'd be scouring ebay for old discs if not for gog.

[–] HughJanus@lemmy.ml 43 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Epic only has a lower cut because they're leveraging their undoubtedly massive Chinese investments to gain market share. You can rest assured they would charge 30% if they could.

I don't like that Steam or Apple or Google charge 30%. I think it's absurd. But also Valve is basically a saint compared to every modern corporation so I don't think twice about it.

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[–] MeanEYE@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How does that quote from Douglas Adams go:

It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it... anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

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[–] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 33 points 1 year ago (13 children)

You know you made a really interesting point that they marketed to the sellers not the ultimate customers. I hadn't really picked up on that before, but it does mitigate what should be a healthy dose of competition by altering the target audience a bit.

[–] MeanEYE@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (15 children)

That's what I always said, why use Epic store? As a user you get worse treatment. Sure price is the same or they give you some discount but number of services offered is far from being on par with Steam. No family sharing, no refund policy, no cloud saves, no networking system, no streaming, no card collecting, no steam play. I might not use or desire all of those but some people do.

The fact Epic had to resort to extremes like timed exclusives just meant I dropped those developers off of my list of wanted games as it only went to show they are willing to sacrifice your inconvenience and happiness for some extra money. For them it was probably making sure project succeeds but in the end I don't care about them if they don't care about me.

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[–] beefcat@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

it's the paypal problem

sellers everywhere fucking hate paypal

but they all still use it because buyers fucking love paypal

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[–] M0ty@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Just release the game on all platforms

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

💯

Although, I can imagine supporting Epic is annoying. Unlike even GOG, they don't have their own support mechanism like a forum. I can see why someone would release on Steam (and hence stuff like GMG and Humble) and even GOG but not Epic. Example Baldur's Gate 3, which released on everything except Epic. Although in their case Larian commented that the decision to not release on Epic was specifically to not show support for their exclusives-everything stance. Hence on everything except Epic.

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[–] SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I have 146 titles in my Epic library. I've never given them a penny and don't plan on starting. I can't be the only one.

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

Oh that's another really good point: Epic trained the consumers to open Epic weekly to get free games, then close it again. It's a weird thing to be known for.

Sure, had them cornering the sellers market worked out - unrealistic as it was in hindsight - then having the buyers already all have the store installed for the free games would have been a genius way of getting more and more people onto the store. But it did not, and now it has just cemented the Epic store as a place you do not spend money on!

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[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I prefer GoG to Steam. I will not install Epic, especially after killing off the Unreal franchise.

[–] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Man the thing I hate the most about fortnite is that it killed UT4...

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[–] Lesrid@lemm.ee 23 points 1 year ago

It's infuriating to me that only Steam and EA's stores have gifting built in. Most of my games budget goes to buying small-squad multiplayer games like Deep Rock Galactic and Sea of Thieves for people.

Sure you can buy a key anywhere but I love seeing at a glance that an acquaintance has a particular DLC or game to surprise them rather than asking them first. And then there's a small chance they thank you for the key and pass it on to someone else instead of just telling you they don't like game, while Steam has a handy decline button.

[–] 7112@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago

Meanwhile GOG...

[–] Smokeydope@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Epic is on a decline, never forget what they did to unreal. Also I really like when devs give the option to buy on itch.io and get a steam key with the drm free version. They get more money per sale and I get a drm free version and a steam version in one. Zortch and Dwarf Fortress are the only two games I know of to do this but would like to see more.

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[–] Buttons@programming.dev 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I was reading about the Unity debacle and thought thank ~~God~~ Gabe that Steam has never pulled shit like this.

I think part of the problem is too many companies are controlled by venture capitalists, or private equity, or whatever you call it. The point is that a single entity owns multiple companies from the shadows.

Companies are supposed to compete and the best company win, that's good in theory. But when a single shadow entity owns multiple companies they'll do something like squeeze customers of one company, which drives customers to their competitor, which, surprise, is owned by the same shadow entity.

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[–] DingoBilly@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Eh, they're all just companies and all just as fallible as one another.

Not sure I get the Valve worship here.

[–] MeanEYE@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It's not a hard thing to get. Over the years Valve has had relatively low amount of blunders and for the most part they were of the misjudging customer base kind but ultimately they have been very consumer oriented and have provided great value for the money. From universal refund policy to family sharing and similar. Their service consists of many benefits for the consumer but all of that is charged from the developer. Very hard not to like such approach.

Epic on the other hand did the opposite. They catered to developers and inconvenienced consumers. You get to pay the same price as everywhere but you are forced to get exclusives from them and you don't get any of the benefits Steam has. Am in fact surprised it gained as much popularity as it did. Goes to show people will sell their own pride for occasional free game you don't even get to chose.

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[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

Oh, don't mistake me preferring Steam (and GOG, for example, who have an actual value proposition to me as a consumer - unlike Epic!) to "Valve worship". They're simply the least bad option, but of course they're all huge corporations. Realistically though Valve has actually surprisingly little bad given the amount of money and market control they have, so eh... for now, I'm happy buying about half my games there (usually ends up that way, though I prefer GOG for games also releasing on that).

[–] beefcat@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (4 children)

steam is good and egs sucks. it's not worship, just consumers voicing their preference for a better product.

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[–] sirboozebum@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

I remember when Valve and Steam was the great enemy in the early 2000s.

Everyone hated how buggy it was and needing it to play Counterstrike.

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[–] Scrof@sopuli.xyz 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

In Gaben we trust. Epic sold out to Tencent which is evil.

[–] yamanii@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I only buy from gog on the side too since the no drm policy is very pro consumer. And also the porn games are unrated via a free dlc instead of having to download it externally.

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