Sweeney is overly opinionated and will dictate to you how you will use your products. Valve largely short of the app’s drm just gives me the games and the app just sits in the background, this is why GOG is the true contender to Steam as they have a similar approach.
We don’t want to be told how to play our games, give us services to help do so by all means, but otherwise it’s a take money and leave situation.
GOG is actually losing ground, in my opinion. I still use it, as that’s where I bought the Witcher games (and some old classic collections), but the launcher is SO persistently annoying. If Steam is running and minimized to the tray, I never see it unless I want to. GOG Galaxy pops to the front and demands input WAY too often.
The meme of “Valve maintains dominance by doing nothing but waits for competition to trip over itself” is funny but they do put part of the billions they make towards beneficial products for their customers.
Remote Play (stream your own game from another PC)
Remote Play Together (can stream a game to friends without a copy of the game and play together)
Linux, Proton
Well designed hardware innovations
Not out of the goodness of their heart but to drive sales and foster a customer base willing to return.
GOG and itch do try in their own way so I have bought from them, IMO they are the only competitors making serious efforts to build a mutually benefical gaming ecosystem.
Epic, Microsoft, Ubisoft, EA and the rest are like a trapdoor with a wooden board over it. Tim Sweeney is standing there hoping you won’t think he’s trying to find the right time to swipe the board away and get you to fall in.
Not out of the goodness of their heart but to drive sales and foster a customer base willing to return.
I think this is partially true, but also I legit think Gabe Newell is ideologically a market anarchist that legitimately loves video games as a medium. He probably could have (more safely) made even more money doing something else considering his early Microsoft connections and ability but he didn’t.
Unfortunately as a result, the moment hes dead Valve might be in trouble long term. Depends on who takes over afterward and how they want to direct Valve. Pierre-Loup Griffais or Lawrence Yang seem possible given how successful Steam Deck has been. Its hard to get a read on them. They seem smart and well meaning though.
Based on what I’ve heard of the internal structure of Valve, there’s a good chance he’s helped foster enough an environment of “doing what you love” that it’d survive him retiring/dying. Maybe not forever, but at least for a long while after he’s gone.
Honestly, remote play together has probably sold me more games than all of the summer/winter sales combined. I don’t play multiplayer games much, so I don’t really invest in them. If my friends are enjoying one we will remote play it together and I can make a decision to purchase after that. Otherwise, I would just never purchase them. Because of that, I’m also now incentivized to purchase any remote play together games that come across my feed and I think would be even a little fun so that I can return the favor. If they enjoy it then I will often just buy them a copy and they will get to share the experience with their go-to multiplayer friends who also go on to purchase the game. That may not be everyone’s experience with remote play together, and it’s possible that they are missing out on more sales than they are generating, but I doubt it from my personal experience.
Being the go to gaming platform really just means you’re a money printer at a certain point. I have quite an extensive friends list on Steam, often adding people from conventions on steam and nowhere else. I have never once met somebody at a con and exchanged epic information with them. But because of my extensive friends list I’m introduced to a bunch of games that I would never have heard of or seen otherwise. It’s basically free advertising for all of those titles. I might not personally be interested in any of those games, but if I notice I have friends with a similar gaming history, I will look into whatever other titles they are playing as possible gifts for topics to bring up next time we’re chatting about games.
It works great for me on wifie 6e, I did have issues using remote play from my PC to my deck until I disabled AX for the 2.4/5ghz networks on my router tho
Valve reinvests and does more work then basically every other major studio. It’s just a lot of back end stuff they don’t market.
Since valve doesn’t care about selling anything. Their service sells it self so they don’t need to shove it in your face.
They are a hardware and software RnD company more then a game studio too. Which is just boring to most gamers till there is a finished product or someone points out that x y or z was because of a decade of effort by valve in the back ground.
Almost a decade ago I was playing a game called paragon in development by epic games. The game was amazing, and then epic forced the devs away from what the game was, a MOBA, and forced the devs to make it more like a brawler with smaller and smaller maps. Epic ignored the community playing the game and acted shocked when the community left. While all this was going down, they were alpha testing fortnight, which was a plants, zombies clone with base building. When PubG took off, they killed Paragon, rolled the assets into fornite, and abandoned what fortnite was to turn it into a PubG copycat. (Highly recommend predecessor, a fan made remake from the released paragon assets with og heros, it’s on steam.)
Epic doesn’t have an original thought rattling around in the heads of their MBAs and C-suite. They copy what others are doing, and pray that some of the shit they fling against the wall will stick. They don’t want to take chances or innovate. Plenty of other options out there besides their game engine too. I’m looking forward to the fall of epic and EGS.
At the end of your first paragraph I thought that if Epic are taking other ideas and implementing in their own games would work well in the long game. Just do what competition does, but better.
By the time my eyes flew to the first word of a second paragraph my mind acknowledged that Epic would never actually do something good for industry cause all they know is how to leech.
They don’t even do the shop or library right or well. Come on, their whole app is a joke. I’m glad their (epic’s) anti-competitiveness hasn’t worked so well.
I feel like there’s a bunch of choosing beggars in here. Grabbed a crapload of free games, games they didn’t pay for, and complaining about how they’re delivered.
Tim Swiney said on the game product page there should be no disclosure of Ai usage in the games, in response to Steam “forcing” the disclosure of what is being used Ai for. Just shows how I will avoid Epic Games Store even more than before. There are plenty other reasons. Epic will not buy me as a “user” by giving me free games (however I do not blame anyone else doing so, free is a great deal to be honest).
I collected free games for sure. I don’t even know if I played many of them. Tbh most of them were older and would go on sale on steam and I’d just buy them there.
Also steams Linux support is so good, I just can’t do epic
I check their free games once a week, and take any that pique my curiosity - after all, Epic still has to pay the actual publishers of the games, right? Then, if I enjoy the game enough, I buy it on Steam. Yes, for the cheevies.
From what I remember back when EGS started appearing in the headlines, its main intention was to replace Steam. Besides barely delivering anything relevant other than freebies, and I could argue what people would want/expect after being fed so many “treats”, but something born only to destroy is fated to destroy itself. Perhaps due to being stores from other times, but even places like GOG and Itchio understood engagement is important (even if execution is not always pristine).
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Sweeney is overly opinionated and will dictate to you how you will use your products. Valve largely short of the app’s drm just gives me the games and the app just sits in the background, this is why GOG is the true contender to Steam as they have a similar approach.
We don’t want to be told how to play our games, give us services to help do so by all means, but otherwise it’s a take money and leave situation.
Fuck even steams drm is optional, even when it’s on by default is frequently opt out.
There’s like less then a few hundred games on steam that require its drm AND don’t let you just delete or turn it off.
You don’t get much better then that. Companies that really want can have it and customers win in literally every other case.
GOG is actually losing ground, in my opinion. I still use it, as that’s where I bought the Witcher games (and some old classic collections), but the launcher is SO persistently annoying. If Steam is running and minimized to the tray, I never see it unless I want to. GOG Galaxy pops to the front and demands input WAY too often.
Have you tried https://heroicgameslauncher.com/ ?
The meme of “Valve maintains dominance by doing nothing but waits for competition to trip over itself” is funny but they do put part of the billions they make towards beneficial products for their customers.
Not out of the goodness of their heart but to drive sales and foster a customer base willing to return.
GOG and itch do try in their own way so I have bought from them, IMO they are the only competitors making serious efforts to build a mutually benefical gaming ecosystem.
Epic, Microsoft, Ubisoft, EA and the rest are like a trapdoor with a wooden board over it. Tim Sweeney is standing there hoping you won’t think he’s trying to find the right time to swipe the board away and get you to fall in.
I think this is partially true, but also I legit think Gabe Newell is ideologically a market anarchist that legitimately loves video games as a medium. He probably could have (more safely) made even more money doing something else considering his early Microsoft connections and ability but he didn’t.
Unfortunately as a result, the moment hes dead Valve might be in trouble long term. Depends on who takes over afterward and how they want to direct Valve. Pierre-Loup Griffais or Lawrence Yang seem possible given how successful Steam Deck has been. Its hard to get a read on them. They seem smart and well meaning though.
Based on what I’ve heard of the internal structure of Valve, there’s a good chance he’s helped foster enough an environment of “doing what you love” that it’d survive him retiring/dying. Maybe not forever, but at least for a long while after he’s gone.
And hopefully by that time they’ve built up the open source community enough that even if Valve turned bad they wouldn’t be able to do much damage
Honestly, remote play together has probably sold me more games than all of the summer/winter sales combined. I don’t play multiplayer games much, so I don’t really invest in them. If my friends are enjoying one we will remote play it together and I can make a decision to purchase after that. Otherwise, I would just never purchase them. Because of that, I’m also now incentivized to purchase any remote play together games that come across my feed and I think would be even a little fun so that I can return the favor. If they enjoy it then I will often just buy them a copy and they will get to share the experience with their go-to multiplayer friends who also go on to purchase the game. That may not be everyone’s experience with remote play together, and it’s possible that they are missing out on more sales than they are generating, but I doubt it from my personal experience.
Being the go to gaming platform really just means you’re a money printer at a certain point. I have quite an extensive friends list on Steam, often adding people from conventions on steam and nowhere else. I have never once met somebody at a con and exchanged epic information with them. But because of my extensive friends list I’m introduced to a bunch of games that I would never have heard of or seen otherwise. It’s basically free advertising for all of those titles. I might not personally be interested in any of those games, but if I notice I have friends with a similar gaming history, I will look into whatever other titles they are playing as possible gifts for topics to bring up next time we’re chatting about games.
Also all the consumer friendly shop page stuff like labeling anti features
I have never had remote play together work smoothly enough to actually play. Even when on the same network the input lag is problematic.
It works great for me on wifie 6e, I did have issues using remote play from my PC to my deck until I disabled AX for the 2.4/5ghz networks on my router tho
Family sharing got a huge upgrade recently too where now only the game you’re actually playing is locked instead of your whole library.
It’s a sidegrade. The ability to share with overseas family was nixed, which sucks for immigrants
Valve reinvests and does more work then basically every other major studio. It’s just a lot of back end stuff they don’t market.
Since valve doesn’t care about selling anything. Their service sells it self so they don’t need to shove it in your face.
They are a hardware and software RnD company more then a game studio too. Which is just boring to most gamers till there is a finished product or someone points out that x y or z was because of a decade of effort by valve in the back ground.
Almost a decade ago I was playing a game called paragon in development by epic games. The game was amazing, and then epic forced the devs away from what the game was, a MOBA, and forced the devs to make it more like a brawler with smaller and smaller maps. Epic ignored the community playing the game and acted shocked when the community left. While all this was going down, they were alpha testing fortnight, which was a plants, zombies clone with base building. When PubG took off, they killed Paragon, rolled the assets into fornite, and abandoned what fortnite was to turn it into a PubG copycat. (Highly recommend predecessor, a fan made remake from the released paragon assets with og heros, it’s on steam.)
Epic doesn’t have an original thought rattling around in the heads of their MBAs and C-suite. They copy what others are doing, and pray that some of the shit they fling against the wall will stick. They don’t want to take chances or innovate. Plenty of other options out there besides their game engine too. I’m looking forward to the fall of epic and EGS.
They got SO lucky with that Fortnite pivot, the original game was in development hell
At the end of your first paragraph I thought that if Epic are taking other ideas and implementing in their own games would work well in the long game. Just do what competition does, but better.
By the time my eyes flew to the first word of a second paragraph my mind acknowledged that Epic would never actually do something good for industry cause all they know is how to leech.
It only took maybe 0.04 seconds or so.
They don’t even do the shop or library right or well. Come on, their whole app is a joke. I’m glad their (epic’s) anti-competitiveness hasn’t worked so well.
I feel like there’s a bunch of choosing beggars in here. Grabbed a crapload of free games, games they didn’t pay for, and complaining about how they’re delivered.
I have a crapload of free games from EGS that I never play because I hate starting that thing up.
I mean isn’t replacing community with consumerism one of the main goals of modern capitalism?
Tim Swiney said on the game product page there should be no disclosure of Ai usage in the games, in response to Steam “forcing” the disclosure of what is being used Ai for. Just shows how I will avoid Epic Games Store even more than before. There are plenty other reasons. Epic will not buy me as a “user” by giving me free games (however I do not blame anyone else doing so, free is a great deal to be honest).
I collected free games for sure. I don’t even know if I played many of them. Tbh most of them were older and would go on sale on steam and I’d just buy them there.
Also steams Linux support is so good, I just can’t do epic
I check their free games once a week, and take any that pique my curiosity - after all, Epic still has to pay the actual publishers of the games, right? Then, if I enjoy the game enough, I buy it on Steam. Yes, for the cheevies.
News flash: epic was never anyones friend or any type of “good guy”.
I mean, I got a bunch of free games off epic, and have never touched any of them.
Epic also has a shitty UI. Steam’s isn’t great, but at least it’s mostly intuitive.
Just as a reminder you still can not see the games in your library for Epic without getting the desktop app or looking at your past purchases.
Absolutely dense how bad and how little you can do with their game store.
From what I remember back when EGS started appearing in the headlines, its main intention was to replace Steam. Besides barely delivering anything relevant other than freebies, and I could argue what people would want/expect after being fed so many “treats”, but something born only to destroy is fated to destroy itself. Perhaps due to being stores from other times, but even places like GOG and Itchio understood engagement is important (even if execution is not always pristine).
I’ve gotten more free games from EGS than buying anything and I don’t think I’ve ever bought anything on EGS. that’s all it’s good for to me.
But a shop is all I want Steam to be.
Steam is easy to use. Egs always feels slow and bloated even though it doesn’t have things to load.