Nothing more disappointing to me than seeing a game I might enjoy… and then it’s only available on PC on Epic Games store. Why can’t it be available on Epic, Xbox game store and Steam? It’s so annoying, like you have no choice but to use Epic… which I would literally do ANYTHING not to use.
Yep. I loved Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, and was excielted to hear they made a sequel. Then I learned it’s an EGS exclusive. They can go get bent, not buying from them anymore
If you refuse to buy after it hits steam, then you’re just 1 of several billion who didn’t buy the game.
No, you have it backwards. If people buy the game when it goes on Steam, that tells the developer they can double dip buy going Epic exclusive then releasing at full price on Steam a year later with no repurcussions.
The only way to make the publisher learn to not go Epic exclusive is to not buy those games at all, even after they are brought onto other marketplaces
Isn’t this whole post just a part of a long running gag where people give shit to Epic for their exclusivity deals after they gave Apple so much shit for their walled garden in much the same way?
Oh no, we don’t complain about Steam exclusivity, monopolies are ok as long as they’re the monopolies that we want, ok? What happens when Valve turns to shit and we made sure there’s no viable alternative? That will never happen! Are you kidding?
Everything goes to shit eventually, but pre-emptively making yourself suffer is just silly. Enjoy the time you have, and vote with your wallet once they start doing anticompetitive crap like paid exclusivity deals. Until then, we might as well enjoy the fact that Valve isn’t a public company obligated to chase short term profits for shareholders.
If you think taking a 30% cut to enrich a billionaire isn’t enshitifaction then I don’t know what to tell you buddy.
Most of the 30% cut goes to developing the store, software, and even hardware. Valve has worked to make gaming on Linux way more feasible and easy, popularized handheld PC’s, made game streaming simple, etc.
Meanwhile EGS took 2 whole years to add a shopping cart to their online store and had multiple data breaches. That is what I call enshitification
It goes against every fiber of my being to not utterly despise a multi-billion dollar corporation, but I just don’t have the energy that I used to. I have to pick the battles I want to fight, and they haven’t done enough to make it worth it for me to do that.
I specifically don’t get upset when a game is exclusively on Steam because of how much work Valve puts into Linux gaming, work that Epic directly and actively opposes.
Two games I anticipated came out on Steam only, so I asked the developers if they planned to sell on alternative platforms and they did, but considering the game isn’t full done yet (they released it in Early Access) Initially I was annoyed, but after their response (they want to focus their effort on the game before adding the extra burden of managing multiple update channels) I understand why they did, on top of being a small team.
I decided to wait for one (came out on GOG on v1.0) and for the second one I decided to buy it on Steam right away since there’s still a lot of work left.
Epic games launcher is no where best as bad as anyone says. The storefront is also one of most responsive ones, especially compared to the likes of GOG.
For me, I just buy a game wherever it’s cheapest. Like I got satisfactory on epic because I could get it like £15 cheaper than steam.
Like I don’t understand why people are so irked by a steam alternative. It’s not like it requires new hardware to play it’s exclusives like with consoles. Aren’t we all supposed to be against monopolies, steam needs competition, look at how shit its sales have been for like 10 years now compared to what they were like prior.
I’m gonna have to agree. It used to be about the most slow and bloated thing in existence, but they actually fixed a lot of performance issues last time I checked. It’s still slow, but in the same time period Steam on Windows decided to add a pointless splash screen increasing the load time by 4x, letting Epic take the W by a wide margin in load times, while responsiveness is a draw.
Yes, I know that Steam is more feature complete and consumer friendly which is why I still prefer to buy from Steam when possible.
Wait until you read all the problems people have with EGS!
I’ve read people complaining they lost their account and support couldn’t do shit because “of security reasons” while steam needs a few stuff and you get it back. I’ve helped someone getting his steam account back after someone stole his account changing mail + password in like ~12 hours (?)/1 day
Was very simple:
Yo steam I lost my account here a bunch of pics proving my email was the owner of said game: There you can see my old steam user, email address and purchase
Let me check Yep, you’re right. Changed back your email and your password has been reset. Log back in and change it
I’ve experienced losing my old email address, and all traces of my old digital identity. They went above and beyond to work with me till I could prove to their satisfaction that I was the original owner of the account, then restored it to me. Steam support is generally amazing.
Epic games launcher is no where best as bad as anyone says.
Is it better now? Last I used it, earlier this year, it still took me half a year for any UI change to happen when I did anything.
To be clear, I hated Steam for ages too. Only maybe 6 years ago I started actually buying games there. Before then I’d just pirate everything. The Steam application often had issues and I had no money before then anyway. But nowadays I find Steam more convenient than piracy. I do not find EGS more convenient than piracy. I do wish Steam had more meaningful competition.
Aren’t we all supposed to be against monopolies, steam needs competition
Steam is not a monopoly. The vast majority of PC gaming revenue is made outside Steam. Fortnite: EGS only, not on Steam. Minecraft: own web storefront and Microsoft Store, not on Steam. Roblox: I think it has its own storefront, it’s not on Steam.
Steam has an estimated revenue of 8.6bn out of PC gaming’s overall 45bn. It’s very far from even approaching 50%, let alone surpass it.
I don’t mind other storefronts. What I mind is people spreading the false narrative as if one of the most widely installed storefronts (EGS because of Fortnite) is somehow the little underdog.
Does the image have a source? Also I don’t think just revenue some us the only Barometer for a monopoly. If something has very few users but had really high prices that they’re willing to pay for them by your metric they’d be closer to a monopoly than steam
Yes, the image has a source and everything is detailed in the lower part of the image.
Also I don’t think just revenue some us the only Barometer for a monopoly. If something has very few users but had really high prices that they’re willing to pay for them by your metric they’d be closer to a monopoly than steam
But that’s exactly why the EU classified Apple as digital gatekeeper: iPhones have a lower installed base than Android in the EU but higher spending.
Given the massive popularity of Fortnite, I wouldn’t bet if Steam has a higher installed base than EGS. People just prefer to buy on Steam.
The apple thing wasn’t about apple vs android for a monopoly. It was about how there’s no alternative option on ios for purchasing apps. Android is completely irrelevant to that decision.
The apple thing wasn’t about apple vs android for a monopoly. It was about how there’s no alternative option on ios for purchasing apps.
Nobody in the EU would have cared if the commercial app market wasn’t dominated by Apple. Plenty of devices out there don’t let you install random stuff off the internet but if the market dominance isn’t there, the EU won’t care.
I don’t like it when something is only available on Epic either. I also don’t like it when someone is only available on Steam - which happens far more often.
You going to the platform that nerds get excited shovel money into, or are you going to cash out up front and have Epic hand your your game to Fortnight kids for free while pissing off excited potential customers.
What? I will always pick the platform that offers me a better service and Piracy is better than Epic but steam is my favorite. Don’t care about epic and they giving away the games
I’m also confused. I was implying that taking a deal with Epic makes you shitty sellout on a untrustworthy platform they have to bribe users, and the custom will remember that.
Great, the devs of good games deserve that money. The way you’re putting it, makes it seem morally just to buy Epic exclusives whenever possible. Thank you!
But why should this matter to a consumer? If you don’t like Steam or Valve’s business practices, it’s much more difficult to avoid Steam because of its exclusives.
There’s a class action lawsuit against Valve now, over Steam’s practices similar to price fixing. Part of the reason Epic has to pay for exclusives is that Steam prohibits publishers from offering lower prices on lower cut stores like Epic. If publishers could pass on part of the savings to consumers from the smaller cut, Epic could be more successful without exclusive contracts. Anyway, hopefully what comes out of the suit will be better for consumers in the end.
That’s not why epic has to pay for exclusives. They have to pay to cover the income gap developers would face from eschewing the better store.
Publishers are free to skip using steam and pass along their savings, but they invariably don’t. They just pocket the difference.
That epic game store exists, takes a lower cut and gives away free stuff, and still struggles to be viable is an indicator that valve isn’t be anticompetitive.
It’s not illegal to have a better product, only to use your market position to keep other products from trying to compete.
It’s one thing to be generally against big companies, and another to be against one in favor of another, when the stakes are “which company keeps money”.
It’s not illegal to have a better product, only to use your market position to keep other products from trying to compete.
That’s exactly what the lawsuit alleges though. The only way smaller featured storefronts have to compete with Steam is on price. Valve uses its market dominance to prohibit offering a better price on smaller stores. If you offer a better price on Epic, Valve will kick you off Steam.
Valve not letting you use their advertisement and distribution network at the same time you undercut them on sales elsewhere doesn’t feel anticompetitive to me.
Some games choose to skip steam and use epic. Epic pays them to do so, and the publisher doesn’t lower prices.
If you’re a publisher, why would you want to offer a lower price elsewhere? The appeal to a lower cut to you is higher revenue, not equivalent revenue.
Some games choose to skip steam and use epic. Epic pays them to do so, and the publisher doesn’t lower prices.
Evidence? Even if we went down the list of launch Epic exclusives and somehow determined that the price is equivalent to what it would launch at on Steam, the economics of an exclusive launch on a smaller platform are going to be completely different.
If you’re a publisher, why would you want to offer a lower price elsewhere?
Maybe ask the publishers who got together to sue Valve for the ability to do this, and check their many examples of comms with Valve where Valve was upset that publishers were offering lower prices on other platforms.
The appeal to a lower cut to you is higher revenue, not equivalent revenue.
There is a phenomenon called price elasticity. Example, a 5% price cut might result in 10% more units sold, giving you higher revenue.
How much does Diablo cost? How much did StarCraft 2 cost? Alan wake 2 ? Every Nintendo game? PlayStation or Xbox console exclusives?
It’s trivially easy to find full featured games that didn’t launch on steam and have the same price point as a full featured game on steam.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “the economics of an exclusive launch on a smaller platform are going to be completely different”.
Isn’t your whole point that the smaller platform can compete by taking a smaller cut and allowing developers to offer lower prices for the same revenue?
How does developers not doing that become irrelevant?
And it’s two small publishers who had their remaining claims joined by the court after variously having them dismissed and reframing them. Class action doesn’t mean that a large number of publishers have actually made the complaint.
That lawsuit is ridiculous and misses a ton of huge boons to developers. The fact is , valve only takes that sales cut for games sold on their platform but they never require you to make that sale on their platform. In fact, they are totally cool with you making the sale elsewhere and giving a steam code out which means steam makes nothing on that sale and they still host the software distribution for said sale. You can use their multiplayer infrastructure, their distribution infrastructure, and their communication infrastructure without paying them a dime if you sell your game on your own website. And it’s by design that you can do this.
As for consumer benefits, steam has a system that allows you to give your friends and family members access to your library. They are constantly selling games at steep discount (after getting permission from developers to do so). They allow a huge range of content with very light handed censorship policies. They have a robust multiplayer system and communications platform that integrates seemlessly with the games they sell and distribute. I won’t get into the Linux stuff but all I will say is Proton wouldn’t be where it is without valve and steam.
Steam is single handedly the most pro-consumer and pro-developer platform on the market. When developers put their games on steam, everyone wins. And it’s never a requirement that those games only exist on steam. When steam is the only place a developer sells their game, it’s because steam is legitimately the only place that developer wants to sell it anyway.
they are totally cool with you making the sale elsewhere and giving a steam code out which means steam makes nothing on that sale
And they can afford to do this because they still require price matching, so all it does is create an inconvenience for the user to sign up for another site (something Steam fans don’t have a problem noticing in other contexts). They still get the game at the same price. I personally have hundreds of games on Steam and I don’t think I have ever purchased a Steam code this way, and I expect it’s the same for the majority of Steam users.
Steam is single handedly the most pro-consumer and pro-developer platform on the market
The lawsuit wants to create a world where a new game can come out for $60 on Steam and $55 on Epic. Valve doesn’t want this. Valve wants you to be required to pay the same price on Epic and Steam. This doesn’t seem very pro consumer.
It’s great that Steam is investing in their platform and Proton and Steam Deck. But they shouldn’t be requiring publishers to pretend that that stuff is free, to make consumers pay other storefronts like Epic as though Epic is also investing in these things.
I got a ton of my games through humble bundle, Which distributes steam codes. I’ve also gotten steam keys through Itch.io.
As for your price argument, price matching is only for the lowest price steam has ever sold the software for. So you can sell your games at steam sale prices 100% of the time and have a higher price on steam. So you’re literally just wrong.
Cool, but myself and I bet most others don’t bother making accounts on other sites for the same price as Steam.
So you can sell your games at steam sale prices 100% of the time and have a higher price on steam. So you’re literally just wrong.
Source or example of someone doing this (regular price on reseller is lower than regular price on Steam)? The legal documents contain plenty of examples of Valve even complaining when there’s a sale on another platform but no comparably priced sale on Steam recently. I can’t imagine they’d tolerate basically a permanent sale.
It’s OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.
What about that is unreasonable considering you’re using their platform to deliver your software and their multiplayer framework. Steam makes no money on the sale of your keys.
Also, if your issue is that steam is a monopoly, then go make accounts in other places and stop supporting that monopoly you’re mad about…
Exclusives? Never heard of them paying devs to release only on steam, epic did that and still does that (?? I think). Steam offers a better store and features to devs so they release the games there.
You know steam offers you to generate infinite (?) Steam keys to sell them on your website or anywhere else and valve gets 0% from it? It’s plenty of bad practices and devs accepting money just before the steam release (Metro exodus, I’m talking about you)
If it’s only on Steam and no other PC platform, it’s exclusive. I don’t see the relevance from a consumer’s point of view whether money changed hands for that exclusivity. You could even argue that no money changes hands, Epic just doesn’t take its cut from the game’s sales is how I believe that works.
If Steam has the better store, then it should have no need to require publishers to match their prices. Of course if you’re buying a game on a fully featured, 30% cut store, it should cost more than on a less fully featured 12% cut store. Steam is using their large market share to bully publishers into not passing on savings to consumers from lower cut stores.
Steam keys can be generated, but the product can’t be discounted, ie again the 0% cut savings cannot be passed on to consumers. So all this does is create an extra inconvenience for the consumer to sign up to some publisher’s storefront to get the same product at the same price.
The difference is the developer deciding they don’t want to bother going through the effort of making their game available on every platform on the Internet, vs. a dev saying “we are going to release a game on this platform”, even doing presales, and then saying “oh, some guy just gave us a bunch of money to not sell you the thing we promised.”
Ya, that’s great for the devs being given a bunch of money, but that’s shitty for me so I’m not going to give money to the rich asshole doing this so that he can keep doing it
Yeah, they expressed that they wanted to join the online game store scene and the big feature they were offering to draw in users was… anticompetitive exclusivity deals!
Plus the company killed off the unreal tournament franchise because they didn’t want it to compete with fortnite.
I have no interest in supporting a company that thinks removing options is the best way to get users to use their products.
It’s the same shit that has turned streaming services from great back when it was new to now having content spread across many competing services. I’d rather they competed based on their own platform’s features and advantages than the whole “if you want to watch x, you must use service y”. It’s just a series of mini monopolies.
Imagine if they succeed with the exclusivity tactics, how other companies will respond to that? Doing the exactly same thing.
Let some years of exclusivity wars and the PC gaming will look like the streaming, a bunch of storefronts offering the same poor service and the clients doesn’t know where to buy what they want because at any moment another exclusivity deal could be made and the entire library moved to another storefront, just like streaming.
Exactly. Oh and I also just remembered another angle: their anti-linux stance. They used to make games with native Linux support, but as I understand it, they’ve even removed Linux support from some games that already had it, trying to keep the Microsoft monopoly going. I wonder how much money ms is giving epic for that.
Same reason why a lot of the non-steam handhelds are non-starters for me. And yeah, I can live without games that depend on Windows kernel-level anti-cheat.
My backlog is so full I could keep entertained even if I ignore every single game I don’t currently have in my steam library. Hell, I even ignore some that are there when I realized they have denuvo or something like that after buying and the refund window has already passed when I do notice.
They used to make games with native Linux support, but as I understand it, they’ve even removed Linux support from some games that already had it, trying to keep the Microsoft monopoly going. I wonder how much money ms is giving epic for that.
Probably none, the CEO with the small dick energy just hate Steam so if Steam is pro Linux he will do the opposite of it.
Basically watch games being promoted on steam pre-release and when games get popular, reach out to them and offer them money to be exclusive on EGS for a period of time despite all the publicity the game got being on Steam.
Tldr: Kickstarter Game with a lot of interest while in development announces a release date on Steam. After the date announcement they get contacted by Epic saying “we’d love to host your game” for an exclusivity deal.
Dev responds that they would be happy to have their game on Epic but promises were made during crowd funding that it would be available on Steam.
Epic replies that they aren’t interested if it’s not exclusive.
This tells me that
Epic is full of shit. "We’d love to have your game, but only if it’s exclusive.
Epic doesn’t care about being a better service for its customers. Having the game available on Epic as well is strictly better for Epic’s customers and they easily could have done that. They chose not to.
Epic is not interested in actually having to compete with other companies. This would require them to provide a better service in some fashion. They are only interested if they can force people “if you want to purchase this game you have to buy it through us” which is anti-consumer.
Downloading the games does not cost Epic anything. They paid a flat rate to make it free to download, regardless of how many people actually download it.
You signing into the store and claiming the free games provides user metrics that Epic can use to entice investors.
One reason is Valve has put a fuckton of effort into linux support. So for linux users, buying a game on Steam means it’s probably going to work right out of the box. Buying from Epic, it’s a crapshoot.
For example, I spent hours trying to get Red Dead Redemption 2 that I had bought from Epic to work. Never did, something with rockstar launcher compatibility. Gave up and bought it again on Steam, worked the first time I hit play.
Hell, Epic takes less of a share of the sale. It is better for devs.
88% of 1.000 vs 70 of 1.000.000? Which one is better?
People don’t like what they did with exclusives. I’m kinda okay-ish if you keep the game you founded locked on your store for a year or 2 but not all the games you get by paying devs to release it exclusive to some shitty launcher
Yeah I don’t really buy pc games before they fall below a certain price point, anyway. So I don’t really care about these limited exclusive periods.
I wonder how much these deals are paying off for epic. Outside of exclusives and the weekly free games I’ve basically never even thought of buying a game on EGS. Definitely the worst launcher experience. Easily ignorable.
I don’t buy hardware until it drops below a certain price point, so when I finally have a PC capable enough, the game price is coincidentally also lower.
Not even just ignorable. I literally don’t even hear about them until they release on steam and people talk smack in steam reviews. It might as well not exist unless it’s on Steam or GOG.
Apparently Alan Wake 2 came out on PC awhile ago, and I literally had no idea until someone bitched about it on Lemmy, lol.
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Every time someone takes the epic deal it just makes it easier to choose which game to ignore forever
There’s always one more option. In fact, this is the only instance I find myself using that other option now-a-days.
Well they decide to lose customers, up to them.
Yep. I loved Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, and was excielted to hear they made a sequel. Then I learned it’s an EGS exclusive. They can go get bent, not buying from them anymore
TIL, they made a soasr sequel. Was it good?
No idea, I refuse to buy it. The first one was good.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1575940/Sins_of_a_Solar_Empire_II/
It’s on steam now
I am aware. They’re still not getting my money
If you refuse to buy on Epic, you send the message that you don’t like to buy from Epic.
If you refuse to buy after it hits steam, then you’re just 1 of several billion who didn’t buy the game.
Why would you continue to not buy?
No, you have it backwards. If people buy the game when it goes on Steam, that tells the developer they can double dip buy going Epic exclusive then releasing at full price on Steam a year later with no repurcussions.
The only way to make the publisher learn to not go Epic exclusive is to not buy those games at all, even after they are brought onto other marketplaces
Wait a year for the exclusivity clause to expire and it to appear on other stores.
Do you also get this upset when a game only appears on Steam?
Isn’t this whole post just a part of a long running gag where people give shit to Epic for their exclusivity deals after they gave Apple so much shit for their walled garden in much the same way?
The apple walled garden is still really bad for users
Oh no, we don’t complain about Steam exclusivity, monopolies are ok as long as they’re the monopolies that we want, ok? What happens when Valve turns to shit and we made sure there’s no viable alternative? That will never happen! Are you kidding?
When it turns to shit, we have the high seas.
Everything goes to shit eventually, but pre-emptively making yourself suffer is just silly. Enjoy the time you have, and vote with your wallet once they start doing anticompetitive crap like paid exclusivity deals. Until then, we might as well enjoy the fact that Valve isn’t a public company obligated to chase short term profits for shareholders.
“make yourself suffer”
I open Steam, switch to the library open my game and play
I open Epic, open my game from the main screen and play
So much suffering! Heck, I also sent more money to the devs through that suffering!
If you think taking a 30% cut to enrich a billionaire isn’t enshitifaction then I don’t know what to tell you buddy.
Most of the 30% cut goes to developing the store, software, and even hardware. Valve has worked to make gaming on Linux way more feasible and easy, popularized handheld PC’s, made game streaming simple, etc.
Meanwhile EGS took 2 whole years to add a shopping cart to their online store and had multiple data breaches. That is what I call enshitification
No need to defend the guy who owns a yacht collection buddy, I’m sure he does perfectly fine without you
“Making yourself suffer” by boycotting Steam.
It goes against every fiber of my being to not utterly despise a multi-billion dollar corporation, but I just don’t have the energy that I used to. I have to pick the battles I want to fight, and they haven’t done enough to make it worth it for me to do that.
Never said I boycott Steam, I said I don’t boycott any of them
I specifically don’t get upset when a game is exclusively on Steam because of how much work Valve puts into Linux gaming, work that Epic directly and actively opposes.
Epic refuses to enable the Linux support for EAC on Fortnite despite being super easy, and specifically removed Linux support for Rocket League.
That’s what I said.
Yes, we should reward decisions we dislike. That’ll show 'em.
Two games I anticipated came out on Steam only, so I asked the developers if they planned to sell on alternative platforms and they did, but considering the game isn’t full done yet (they released it in Early Access) Initially I was annoyed, but after their response (they want to focus their effort on the game before adding the extra burden of managing multiple update channels) I understand why they did, on top of being a small team.
I decided to wait for one (came out on GOG on v1.0) and for the second one I decided to buy it on Steam right away since there’s still a lot of work left.
Do epic and gog even have early access avenues?
Gog does. The game manor lords is in early access on gog.
https://www.gog.com/en/game/manor_lords
Neat
Good question 🤔
GoG does, dunno about Epic.
Epic games launcher is no where best as bad as anyone says. The storefront is also one of most responsive ones, especially compared to the likes of GOG.
For me, I just buy a game wherever it’s cheapest. Like I got satisfactory on epic because I could get it like £15 cheaper than steam.
Like I don’t understand why people are so irked by a steam alternative. It’s not like it requires new hardware to play it’s exclusives like with consoles. Aren’t we all supposed to be against monopolies, steam needs competition, look at how shit its sales have been for like 10 years now compared to what they were like prior.
I’m gonna have to agree. It used to be about the most slow and bloated thing in existence, but they actually fixed a lot of performance issues last time I checked. It’s still slow, but in the same time period Steam on Windows decided to add a pointless splash screen increasing the load time by 4x, letting Epic take the W by a wide margin in load times, while responsiveness is a draw.
Yes, I know that Steam is more feature complete and consumer friendly which is why I still prefer to buy from Steam when possible.
I’m not irked by a Steam alternative. I’m irked by Epic Launcher. It’s so incredibly slow to start up.
Also not available on much more than Windows.
When was the last time you used it?
Also use Heroic launcher to bypass the bloat.
It’s been some months. I usually just game on Steam installed with flatpak on Arch Linux.
I’ll look into Heroic. There are quite a few such solutions. Lutris or whatever, and similar. It’s a jungle to me.
Wait until you read all the problems people have with EGS!
I’ve read people complaining they lost their account and support couldn’t do shit because “of security reasons” while steam needs a few stuff and you get it back. I’ve helped someone getting his steam account back after someone stole his account changing mail + password in like ~12 hours (?)/1 day
Was very simple:
Was really that simple! A few mails
I’ve experienced losing my old email address, and all traces of my old digital identity. They went above and beyond to work with me till I could prove to their satisfaction that I was the original owner of the account, then restored it to me. Steam support is generally amazing.
Is it better now? Last I used it, earlier this year, it still took me half a year for any UI change to happen when I did anything.
To be clear, I hated Steam for ages too. Only maybe 6 years ago I started actually buying games there. Before then I’d just pirate everything. The Steam application often had issues and I had no money before then anyway. But nowadays I find Steam more convenient than piracy. I do not find EGS more convenient than piracy. I do wish Steam had more meaningful competition.
It’s fine, it lists the games I have, installs and updates them and I can press play to play them without anything like pop-ups getting in the way.
Steam is not a monopoly. The vast majority of PC gaming revenue is made outside Steam. Fortnite: EGS only, not on Steam. Minecraft: own web storefront and Microsoft Store, not on Steam. Roblox: I think it has its own storefront, it’s not on Steam.
Steam has an estimated revenue of 8.6bn out of PC gaming’s overall 45bn. It’s very far from even approaching 50%, let alone surpass it.
I don’t mind other storefronts. What I mind is people spreading the false narrative as if one of the most widely installed storefronts (EGS because of Fortnite) is somehow the little underdog.
Do you have a source on that? I’d love to quote it in future
Dude, I embedded the source right in the comment you’ve replied to. 🤦
Does the image have a source? Also I don’t think just revenue some us the only Barometer for a monopoly. If something has very few users but had really high prices that they’re willing to pay for them by your metric they’d be closer to a monopoly than steam
Yes, the image has a source and everything is detailed in the lower part of the image.
But that’s exactly why the EU classified Apple as digital gatekeeper: iPhones have a lower installed base than Android in the EU but higher spending.
Given the massive popularity of Fortnite, I wouldn’t bet if Steam has a higher installed base than EGS. People just prefer to buy on Steam.
The apple thing wasn’t about apple vs android for a monopoly. It was about how there’s no alternative option on ios for purchasing apps. Android is completely irrelevant to that decision.
Nobody in the EU would have cared if the commercial app market wasn’t dominated by Apple. Plenty of devices out there don’t let you install random stuff off the internet but if the market dominance isn’t there, the EU won’t care.
Ah. I was not expecting numbers for 2023 under a 2003 year heading.
I don’t like it when something is only available on Epic either. I also don’t like it when someone is only available on Steam - which happens far more often.
Problem is:
Devs trade Epic reputation for cash.
Reputation? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
As I said in another comment:
88% of 1.000 vs 70% of 1.000.000 which one is better? Just curious
>Steam has 132 million monthly active users.
>Monthly Active Users reached 75M users
You going to the platform that nerds get excited shovel money into, or are you going to cash out up front and have Epic hand your your game to Fortnight kids for free while pissing off excited potential customers.
What? I will always pick the platform that offers me a better service and Piracy is better than Epic but steam is my favorite. Don’t care about epic and they giving away the games
I’m also confused. I was implying that taking a deal with Epic makes you shitty sellout on a untrustworthy platform they have to bribe users, and the custom will remember that.
Ooh I’m dumb. Sorry! Yeah you’re right
Great, the devs of good games deserve that money. The way you’re putting it, makes it seem morally just to buy Epic exclusives whenever possible. Thank you!
As well as 2 max players and their game to fail
But why should this matter to a consumer? If you don’t like Steam or Valve’s business practices, it’s much more difficult to avoid Steam because of its exclusives.
There’s a class action lawsuit against Valve now, over Steam’s practices similar to price fixing. Part of the reason Epic has to pay for exclusives is that Steam prohibits publishers from offering lower prices on lower cut stores like Epic. If publishers could pass on part of the savings to consumers from the smaller cut, Epic could be more successful without exclusive contracts. Anyway, hopefully what comes out of the suit will be better for consumers in the end.
That’s not why epic has to pay for exclusives. They have to pay to cover the income gap developers would face from eschewing the better store.
Publishers are free to skip using steam and pass along their savings, but they invariably don’t. They just pocket the difference.
That epic game store exists, takes a lower cut and gives away free stuff, and still struggles to be viable is an indicator that valve isn’t be anticompetitive.
It’s not illegal to have a better product, only to use your market position to keep other products from trying to compete.
It’s one thing to be generally against big companies, and another to be against one in favor of another, when the stakes are “which company keeps money”.
That’s exactly what the lawsuit alleges though. The only way smaller featured storefronts have to compete with Steam is on price. Valve uses its market dominance to prohibit offering a better price on smaller stores. If you offer a better price on Epic, Valve will kick you off Steam.
Valve not letting you use their advertisement and distribution network at the same time you undercut them on sales elsewhere doesn’t feel anticompetitive to me.
Some games choose to skip steam and use epic. Epic pays them to do so, and the publisher doesn’t lower prices.
If you’re a publisher, why would you want to offer a lower price elsewhere? The appeal to a lower cut to you is higher revenue, not equivalent revenue.
Evidence? Even if we went down the list of launch Epic exclusives and somehow determined that the price is equivalent to what it would launch at on Steam, the economics of an exclusive launch on a smaller platform are going to be completely different.
Maybe ask the publishers who got together to sue Valve for the ability to do this, and check their many examples of comms with Valve where Valve was upset that publishers were offering lower prices on other platforms.
There is a phenomenon called price elasticity. Example, a 5% price cut might result in 10% more units sold, giving you higher revenue.
How much does Diablo cost? How much did StarCraft 2 cost? Alan wake 2 ? Every Nintendo game? PlayStation or Xbox console exclusives?
It’s trivially easy to find full featured games that didn’t launch on steam and have the same price point as a full featured game on steam.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “the economics of an exclusive launch on a smaller platform are going to be completely different”.
Isn’t your whole point that the smaller platform can compete by taking a smaller cut and allowing developers to offer lower prices for the same revenue?
How does developers not doing that become irrelevant?
And it’s two small publishers who had their remaining claims joined by the court after variously having them dismissed and reframing them. Class action doesn’t mean that a large number of publishers have actually made the complaint.
That lawsuit is ridiculous and misses a ton of huge boons to developers. The fact is , valve only takes that sales cut for games sold on their platform but they never require you to make that sale on their platform. In fact, they are totally cool with you making the sale elsewhere and giving a steam code out which means steam makes nothing on that sale and they still host the software distribution for said sale. You can use their multiplayer infrastructure, their distribution infrastructure, and their communication infrastructure without paying them a dime if you sell your game on your own website. And it’s by design that you can do this.
As for consumer benefits, steam has a system that allows you to give your friends and family members access to your library. They are constantly selling games at steep discount (after getting permission from developers to do so). They allow a huge range of content with very light handed censorship policies. They have a robust multiplayer system and communications platform that integrates seemlessly with the games they sell and distribute. I won’t get into the Linux stuff but all I will say is Proton wouldn’t be where it is without valve and steam.
Steam is single handedly the most pro-consumer and pro-developer platform on the market. When developers put their games on steam, everyone wins. And it’s never a requirement that those games only exist on steam. When steam is the only place a developer sells their game, it’s because steam is legitimately the only place that developer wants to sell it anyway.
And they can afford to do this because they still require price matching, so all it does is create an inconvenience for the user to sign up for another site (something Steam fans don’t have a problem noticing in other contexts). They still get the game at the same price. I personally have hundreds of games on Steam and I don’t think I have ever purchased a Steam code this way, and I expect it’s the same for the majority of Steam users.
The lawsuit wants to create a world where a new game can come out for $60 on Steam and $55 on Epic. Valve doesn’t want this. Valve wants you to be required to pay the same price on Epic and Steam. This doesn’t seem very pro consumer.
It’s great that Steam is investing in their platform and Proton and Steam Deck. But they shouldn’t be requiring publishers to pretend that that stuff is free, to make consumers pay other storefronts like Epic as though Epic is also investing in these things.
I got a ton of my games through humble bundle, Which distributes steam codes. I’ve also gotten steam keys through Itch.io.
As for your price argument, price matching is only for the lowest price steam has ever sold the software for. So you can sell your games at steam sale prices 100% of the time and have a higher price on steam. So you’re literally just wrong.
Cool, but myself and I bet most others don’t bother making accounts on other sites for the same price as Steam.
Source or example of someone doing this (regular price on reseller is lower than regular price on Steam)? The legal documents contain plenty of examples of Valve even complaining when there’s a sale on another platform but no comparably priced sale on Steam recently. I can’t imagine they’d tolerate basically a permanent sale.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
What about that is unreasonable considering you’re using their platform to deliver your software and their multiplayer framework. Steam makes no money on the sale of your keys.
Also, if your issue is that steam is a monopoly, then go make accounts in other places and stop supporting that monopoly you’re mad about…
Exclusives? Never heard of them paying devs to release only on steam, epic did that and still does that (?? I think). Steam offers a better store and features to devs so they release the games there.
You know steam offers you to generate infinite (?) Steam keys to sell them on your website or anywhere else and valve gets 0% from it? It’s plenty of bad practices and devs accepting money just before the steam release (Metro exodus, I’m talking about you)
If it’s only on Steam and no other PC platform, it’s exclusive. I don’t see the relevance from a consumer’s point of view whether money changed hands for that exclusivity. You could even argue that no money changes hands, Epic just doesn’t take its cut from the game’s sales is how I believe that works.
If Steam has the better store, then it should have no need to require publishers to match their prices. Of course if you’re buying a game on a fully featured, 30% cut store, it should cost more than on a less fully featured 12% cut store. Steam is using their large market share to bully publishers into not passing on savings to consumers from lower cut stores.
Steam keys can be generated, but the product can’t be discounted, ie again the 0% cut savings cannot be passed on to consumers. So all this does is create an extra inconvenience for the consumer to sign up to some publisher’s storefront to get the same product at the same price.
Whatever dude. The difference is Epic paid for the exclusive, Steam just offers a better store and people release it there because they want it
Edit: Look at Ubishit, went epic exclusive then went back to steam crawling because no sales on epic LOL
Cya
The difference is the developer deciding they don’t want to bother going through the effort of making their game available on every platform on the Internet, vs. a dev saying “we are going to release a game on this platform”, even doing presales, and then saying “oh, some guy just gave us a bunch of money to not sell you the thing we promised.”
Ya, that’s great for the devs being given a bunch of money, but that’s shitty for me so I’m not going to give money to the rich asshole doing this so that he can keep doing it
If you don’t like giving money to rich assholes, I have some bad news for you about Valve.
That rich asshole doesn’t try to actively interfere with things in my life.
And if your only response is “Gabe is also rich” I guess that means the rest of my post stands.
Just wait till it’s on GOG or Steam, no game is worth the hassle of Epic Games store.
I haven’t created an epic account even for the free games I don’t care how many awesome games they give out for free. Fuck Epic
But One Must Fall 2097 was pretty sweet
Excuse my ignorance. What did Epic do?
Exclusivity deals with companies.
Yeah, they expressed that they wanted to join the online game store scene and the big feature they were offering to draw in users was… anticompetitive exclusivity deals!
Plus the company killed off the unreal tournament franchise because they didn’t want it to compete with fortnite.
I have no interest in supporting a company that thinks removing options is the best way to get users to use their products.
It’s the same shit that has turned streaming services from great back when it was new to now having content spread across many competing services. I’d rather they competed based on their own platform’s features and advantages than the whole “if you want to watch x, you must use service y”. It’s just a series of mini monopolies.
Imagine if they succeed with the exclusivity tactics, how other companies will respond to that? Doing the exactly same thing.
Let some years of exclusivity wars and the PC gaming will look like the streaming, a bunch of storefronts offering the same poor service and the clients doesn’t know where to buy what they want because at any moment another exclusivity deal could be made and the entire library moved to another storefront, just like streaming.
Exactly. Oh and I also just remembered another angle: their anti-linux stance. They used to make games with native Linux support, but as I understand it, they’ve even removed Linux support from some games that already had it, trying to keep the Microsoft monopoly going. I wonder how much money ms is giving epic for that.
Same reason why a lot of the non-steam handhelds are non-starters for me. And yeah, I can live without games that depend on Windows kernel-level anti-cheat.
My backlog is so full I could keep entertained even if I ignore every single game I don’t currently have in my steam library. Hell, I even ignore some that are there when I realized they have denuvo or something like that after buying and the refund window has already passed when I do notice.
Probably none, the CEO with the small dick energy just hate Steam so if Steam is pro Linux he will do the opposite of it.
Basically watch games being promoted on steam pre-release and when games get popular, reach out to them and offer them money to be exclusive on EGS for a period of time despite all the publicity the game got being on Steam.
Copying my reply to someone else:
Epic is anti-customer: https://medium.com/@unfoldgames/why-i-turned-down-exclusivity-deal-from-the-epic-store-developer-of-darq-7ee834ed0ac7
Tldr: Kickstarter Game with a lot of interest while in development announces a release date on Steam. After the date announcement they get contacted by Epic saying “we’d love to host your game” for an exclusivity deal.
Dev responds that they would be happy to have their game on Epic but promises were made during crowd funding that it would be available on Steam.
Epic replies that they aren’t interested if it’s not exclusive.
This tells me that
I created an epic account solely for the free games, which I claim and never play. Fuck Epic. I still haven’t forgiven them for ruining Rocket League.
Downloading the games does not cost Epic anything. They paid a flat rate to make it free to download, regardless of how many people actually download it.
You signing into the store and claiming the free games provides user metrics that Epic can use to entice investors.
You wouldn’t complain if it was only available on Steam so fuck off
Steam doesn’t engage in the same kind of strong-arming and anti-consumer practices, so it’s not exactly comparable, is it?
The fact that they take a 30% cut and it’s used to enrich a billionaire is very much anti consumer.
I’m pretty annoyed when a game isn’t on GoG.
Where are all the memes about Steam exclusives then?
Not my problem.
Oh we’d find something to complain about.
Available on both Apple and Google stores? That’s a near instant pass to me, too.
They say: “Sonic Dream Team is an Apple Arcade Exclusive, maybe we’ll do a port one day if our contract allows”
I hear: “Sonic Dream Team is in devleopment hell and may never be released”
I know this is unpopular, but I don’t understand why people care so much about which storefront they use to buy a game. I buy it where it is cheapest.
Hell, Epic takes less of a share of the sale. It is better for devs.
For me, the social aspect of the store I buy games from is irrelevant.
One reason is Valve has put a fuckton of effort into linux support. So for linux users, buying a game on Steam means it’s probably going to work right out of the box. Buying from Epic, it’s a crapshoot.
For example, I spent hours trying to get Red Dead Redemption 2 that I had bought from Epic to work. Never did, something with rockstar launcher compatibility. Gave up and bought it again on Steam, worked the first time I hit play.
88% of 1.000 vs 70 of 1.000.000? Which one is better?
People don’t like what they did with exclusives. I’m kinda okay-ish if you keep the game you founded locked on your store for a year or 2 but not all the games you get by paying devs to release it exclusive to some shitty launcher
I guess, Epic Games sales cuts seems attractive for multiplatform games with microtransaction made with Unreal Engine…
For me, its like it didn’t have a release at all. There are allot more game I want to play of years ago. No fomo.
Yeah I don’t really buy pc games before they fall below a certain price point, anyway. So I don’t really care about these limited exclusive periods.
I wonder how much these deals are paying off for epic. Outside of exclusives and the weekly free games I’ve basically never even thought of buying a game on EGS. Definitely the worst launcher experience. Easily ignorable.
I don’t buy hardware until it drops below a certain price point, so when I finally have a PC capable enough, the game price is coincidentally also lower.
Not even just ignorable. I literally don’t even hear about them until they release on steam and people talk smack in steam reviews. It might as well not exist unless it’s on Steam or GOG.
Apparently Alan Wake 2 came out on PC awhile ago, and I literally had no idea until someone bitched about it on Lemmy, lol.
I use both Epic and Steam. That’s it. I understand your sentiment though.
Give it a year, Epic Games Stores exclusivity always runs out eventually.