- cross-posted to:
- games@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- games@sh.itjust.works
From the opinion piece:
Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin’ back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.
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Epic bought rocket league and promptly tanked it in favor of their stupid fortniteverse. Maybe steam keeps winning because they’re not actively screwing over their customers.
Or Pheonix Point, where Epic bought an kickstarter game that was funded under the promise of releasing on Steam, GOG and potentially other stores and promptly made it exclusive - and this was in the early days when their launcher/store was in a much worse state too.
Epic bought rocket league and promptly tanked it in favor of their stupid fortniteverse.
Sadly Valve is guilty of a similar thing. Valve bought Campo Santo and (at least that’s the public statement) the developers were free to work on whatever projects and chose HL Alyx instead of that new game after Firewatch. Game development gets cancelled all the time and perhaps the new game just wasn’t that good.
Count this comment as irrelevant if you will, but I think one of the biggest missed opportunities of EGS is mod support. They have this world-class game engine, and they do so little with it. Maybe it is because of Unreal Tournament 4 failing to take off. Maybe they think just hamfisting a bunch of this modding stuff into Fortnite is all they need, but still I feel like the EGS version of the steam workshop is an open goal. Hell, with the money they’re saving from pawning off Bandcamp you can even buy off mod.io to get support for virtually no work at all. Like why hasn’t this happened yet?
do not give them good ideas. I need steam to have all games since it is the only one with any good linux support. it does not matter if EGS have free games if i can not play them.
True, UT4 was supposed to all about user-modding.
This article didn’t research the VR bits…Gabe has said multiple times, even recently, that they are working steadily on VR and it’s hardware. Their next headset even has a codename, Deckard.
Also, I don’t think most people realize Valve doesn’t have much of an internal structure. It more resembles a community of people working together because they want to.
Oh god, I just realized… Imagine if they brought Portal back, but in VR like they did Half-Life.
We’d get so many videos of people falling over in their living room
Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin’ back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.
Why is it so hard for companies to build a game launcher that doesn’t suck? Is it just a lowest bidder situation?
I think it’s just priorities, those other companies weren’t interested in making a launcher, they were interested in tying their customers into their eco system.
Steam started out like that in appearance at least, nobody really wanted it and it was kind of forced on you if you wanted to play HL2 but since Valve seemed to understand the value in a platform like steam and actually work at making it good it became pretty good.
At this point it’s actually kind of hard to fully appreciate how much work has gone into steam. Not just the basic stuff like chat and forums and a store with a functioning search, or the banal stuff like inventories and trading cards and points I still don’t understand, but also the stuff most people don’t see like all the stuff for developers launching a game on steam and managing sales and keys and betas. Not to mention all the experiments they’ve done along the way to try and figure out what the best way forward is.
Steam is kind of a huge undertaking and unless a company is really invested in competing with it they’re simply not going to be able to.
they were interested in tying their customers into their eco system.
Data, they were also interested in that sweet, sweet, data harvesting. Previously only Valve was grabbing all that via Steam.
If your goal was only to make a good launcher, it would be easy. If your goal is a lot of DRM shenanigans as if we were still in 1998, it’s really hard.
IMO my favorite launcher to use out of all is probably Battle.net, even over Steam. This is probably mostly because Steam is terrible unresponsive and its startup is still kinda ass (I just tested the start and noticed its 3 fucking loading screens: Verifying installtion, Logging in and finally loading the page. All as separate windows).
Wow. Ive never heard someone say something positive about battle net
GOG > itch.io > Steam > whale poo > everything else
For Linux, it’s Steam and then anything that works with Bottles, Lutris or Heroic.
Blizzard had a legit decent platform for a while there. Real fall from grace.
Now Epic games are next, hopefully.
I don’t mind things being slightly spread out, even. What is like most though is if there were regulations that you cannot have exclusivity deals. Beyond a publisher not bothering to publish on store XYZ, there should never be a way a store is inherently excluded.
As in, fuck Epic.
I hope epic game store burns in hell, personally.
I know everyone loves Valve, but it feels super weird to be celebrating a monopoly so much and so ferociously. (I know Steam isn’t a technical monopoly. We don’t need to have that discussion)
Gaben is old, and he’s gonna retire. It’ll likely be a lot sooner than anyone here is comfortable with. When Valve gets sold, or even when gaben isn’t in total control anymore, things are going to start changing, and there isn’t going to be a healthy, diverse marketplace to soften that.
There is a very good chance that the PC platform will be a really horrible place because of the lack of consumer choice in which they can purchase and play games.
Steams biggest competition isn’t another launcher, it’s piracy. Gabe is wise enough to know that, if the next guy to take over is a chode they’ll learn the hard way.
We did it boiz.
Pat yourselves on the back if you never used an alternative.
This is a weird mentality. Competition in the space is good, even if the current “default” thing is really good.
Fanboys and monopolies, name a better combination.
Monopoly isn’t bad (or illegal) if it doesn’t exploit and/or abuse it’s market position, which Steam doesn’t.
But it does abuse its market position. By setting very high developer/publisher fees and forcing everyone to pay them. Don’t forget that from Steam perspective, developers and publisher are their consumers, not you. Their business is similar to supermarkets. Supermarkets don’t sell stuff to you, they provide selling and logistics services to produce manufacturers.
But those fees are counteracted by large user base, which is large due to the fact the platform is great and provides it’s users good features that aren’t elsewhere. A s large user base means large buying power, which directly translates to higher sales and thus higher profits.
If a supermarket gives the customers a nice place to stay, and provides extra features others don’t, the extra cost for having your store in there (in Steam terms higher commissions, although I personally think it’s adequate, but I digress) is offset by having bigger profit overall.
That doesn’t mean Steam doesn’t abuse its power. Because they sure do.
How? By being a good company? Look at the Google Play Store lawsuit, and why were they sued, any why they lost. Steam is not abusing it’s position. And if you think they do, gimme an example or two please.
Competition for the sake of competition isn’t intrinsically a good thing.
Seems to me, most of the people complaining about Steam are greedy devs who want to make more money off of their products.
For me, as a user, that’s not my concern. For me, as a user, it’s more important that I can play games without having to download different launchers just to make someone else richer.
GOG is probably the only legitimate competitor with Steam. They provide value to customers instead of just themselves or greedy devs.
For me, as a user, that’s not my concern. For me, as a user, it’s more important that I can
have my convenienceFTFY
Also, the only truly bad competition is subsidized competition. As long as it’s not surviving on some kind of grant or funding, instead of its actual market value, then it’s always a good thing as it keeps competitors on their toes.
Listen. Some of us have our life savings in our Steam library. If competition ever drives Steam bankrupt, we go down with the ship! We take Steam’s health personally and very seriously. Your mumbo jumbo about competition doesn’t factor into it.
No one wants Steam bankrupt, they just want more than one videogame vendor on PC to be viable.
“Mumbo jumbo about competition” I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or are just legitimately a braindead moron.
There are exceptions to the notion that competition is good. If we attempt to map out all the exceptions, we will be left with mumbo jumbo. Economic libertarianism is the true death of the brain. Some monopolies are good and any threat to the monopoly is a threat to the consumer.
That’s why you buy from GOG.
