Last year, they all came crawlin' back to Steam, and this year was another strong one for Valve.
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.
the oracle stated something to the effect of “Socrates is the wisest person in Athens.”[3] Socrates, believing the oracle but also completely convinced that he knew nothing, was said to have concluded that nobody knew anything, and that he was only wiser than others because he was the only person who recognized his own ignorance.
It took the australian government to do it, but at least they did it in the best possible way after being forced to, instead of throwing a tantrum and having people need to talk to a support person.
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?
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).
Yeah I agree. I don’t play Blizzard Activision games for other reasons, but the battle.net launcher was by far the best.
I don’t get why, when PC gamers spend thousands to get a quick, smooth machine, that they put up with the shitfest that is Valve. I mean, it’s 2023 why is the UI still a website? Why is it that I can’t stop the news from popping up? And it’s so damn unresponsive and laggy.
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.
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.
I mean steam sucked for 8 years like 20 years ago. Technology wasn’t the same as it is. They revolutionized the pc gaming scene and I’d argue that even that Steam version was better than the current EGS version. Was it uglier? Yea maybe but it did the job. You could install, manage and launch your games, cloud saves and it wasn’t bloat or spyware. The Steam just kept getting better even if with a messy ui in some places. They do a ton of shit that generates them no direct profit but that makes using Steam a no brainer. And gamers respect and value that even if not all of them.
Heck I’m sure that they very quickly came up with a functional shopping cart at the very least.
People complain because the EGS launcher is shit and not getting better in any meaningful way. Plus all the anti consumer shit that they do.
EGS didn’t come out last year. Heck GOG galaxy is fairly decent and it’s not even required and they have a fraction of the budget. And guess what a lot of people like and support them.
Epic started out shit, and then used their fortnite money to impro… No, wait, sorry, they used their fortnite money to buy exclusivity of games people had already preordered from other stores.
Starting out shit and then slowly improving is one thing. Starting out shit and then kicking your customers in the teeth is completely different.
No, not exclusivity. Pointedly spending large amounts of money to take already purchased games away from people.
Exclusivity isnt a new concept. Im still patiently waiting for the next horizon game to come to PC at all. Exclucivity isnt kicking your customers in the teeth.
Wagging your fortnite cash in peoples faces by showing them you can take away what they already paid for is the kick in the teeth.
And, more importantly, it showed me how they value me. They will spend extra money to directly inconvenience me in the hopes Im stupid enough to pay them for inconveniencing me. Bad launcher? Thats fine, blizzards launcher is dogshit and I played overwatch for years. Exclusivity again, fine. Ill wait if Im really going to be stubborn, and I wont if I really want the game.
But going out of their way to antagonize other users of the competition, as if Im supposed to find that cute and rebuy what I already purchased at a store I already chose? Zero respect for your customers means you will do the same or worse to me even if I am stupid enough to pay you, if you think antagonizing me again will wiggle out more of my money.
Fuck them forever, they cannot rebuild that trust. The only reason they havent done it again is because steam changed their tos. And they will do it to you as soon as they think theyve got a stable userbase
Origin is still bad and so is whatever Ubisoft’s launcher is called.
edit: for the record I didn’t say that steam was the best launcher, but I have found the launchers for world of warships and warthunder to be serviceable
It’s kind of funny. I feel that the rebranding was because those launchers sucked ( a common marketing tactic.) The thing is though, the EA App still sucks so it doesn’t do anything for its reputation.
I mean steam sucked for 8 years like 20 years ago. Technology wasn’t the same as it is. They revolutionized the pc gaming scene and I’d argue that even that Steam version was better than the current EGS version. Was it uglier? Yea maybe but it did the job. You could install, manage and launch your games, cloud saves and it wasn’t bloat or spyware. The Steam just kept getting better even if with a messy ui in some places. They do a ton of shit that generates them no direct profit but that makes using Steam a no brainer. And gamers respect and value that even if not all of them.
Heck I’m sure that they very quickly came up with a functional shopping cart at the very least.
Valve has objectively done far more good in the gaming space than any other company so I would say yes, their achievements are worth celebrating even if it is monopolistic. They’ve proven to be trustworthy for the time being, unlike other companies.
It’s not a monopoly in the way that valve has does bad things to keep it that way, just that every other try has so far failed. Nothing has been close to as good as steam, and probably never will. GOG is good but they’re not directly competing in the same way.
Pretty sure Gabe lives in New Zealand now. Unless I’m remembering incorrectly, he just got stuck there during COVID and then never left once restrictions were eased.
Unless I’m remembering incorrectly, he just got stuck there during COVID and then never left once restrictions were eased.
Yeah, there was some fuss recently about him getting ordered to attend as a witness at some trial in the US instead of video conferencing as is the norm since covid.
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.
Maybe there’s a disproportionately high amount of linux users on lemmy, cause I keep seeing it come up in the comments. But I would use Epic if they had linux support. Heck some games like satisfactory I have access to on both cause I paid for it twice lol
For reference I do have it installed… i think… The one that runs overwatch/blizzard games, haven’t played or launched it in about a year though. As apart from fortnite, which I just dont play because of lockout, satisfactory is the only one I have on there i care about. Plus I can share the epic login with my less fortunate windows friends… dont tell anyone I said that though haha
Call me whatever, but Valve does so much for Linux gaming that when I do buy games I make sure to get them through Steam. Between Proton and the Steam Deck it seems like Valve is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Linux gaming is in a great place right now and Valve deserves a lot of credit.
They also have Steam Input which is incredible. The customization and control you have over your experience is insane.
Epic Games on the other hand can’t even be bothered to support Linux properly. Valve earns their cut.
Competition is good…when the competition is actually competitive.
But what has happened is games on are steam … which installs the launcher + game.
So it’s not a win at all. It’s actually a loss for us. If steam was to force “yeah you can publish the game on steam, but you cannot use your launcher”
The key is to use an alternative that’s actually good, and most of these companies were never going to make an alternative that was good, just one that was exploitative.
Most of my purchases the last few years have been gog. The only game service where you actually own the game afterwards.
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.
A nice thing about GOG is that you can choose whether or not you use their launcher. You can use GOG Galaxy, and it will download game updates and sync saves. or you can just not use it; and just launch the games directly. Or you can put shortcuts to the gog games into steam and launch them from there. Or you can launch your steam games from galaxy if you like. … I appreciate that kind of stuff a lot, because although I think Steam does a good job, I’m very wary of lock-in and companies becoming too powerful.
(And of course, for real indie games, itch.io is the place to go.)
For me, as a user, that’s not my concern. For me, as a user, it’s more important that I can have my convenience
FTFY
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.
That is looks like it’s supposed to point out something negative.
Convenience is always something to consider as a customer in literally any product. It’s most often the main driver between competitors and can make or brake a product.
So, yeah. Using another launcher that has 10% of the features and not a single upside while being incredibly inconvenient has not worked out. Fuck origin, uplay, and the likes.
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.
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.
As I’ve said elsewhere in this thread, the only bad competition is one that gets subsidized in order to survive. If they are operating on their own profit margins then they are definitionally “good competition.”
No, zero monopolies are good. If you can even name one that you personally believe to somehow be good then I can explain why you’re wrong.
At no point in time has a natural diversification of product sources has been bad for the consumer. The only exceptions to this relate back to point #1, the subsidized or otherwise “assisted” business model.
Any threat to the monopoly is a threat to the consumer
Tell me, does your childhood home have a lot of lead paint on the walls? We aren’t trying to take down Steam FFS, just provide alternatives that force them to stay competitive by giving better service to the consumer.
The fact that you think a second source for videogames is somehow going to threaten you personally just shows how much of a zombie you are. Gabe isn’t your lord and savior, he’s just another rich guy who has a monopoly on his corner of the market. Grow the fuck up.
Ya because so far it doesn’t seem to impact the consumer so it works for me lol. Valve has always had great sales too. If they jacked up prices YoY, and did evil things, then I’d welcome competition. But all I see at this point is lousy extra software to install a single game or two. Annoying. Fragmented. Just just media streaming.
I’ve not been “swindled” into anything, I’ve never paid for shit twice and I get most of my games DRM free on GOG. I use Epic exclusively for their free games.
I’m just sick of hearing Gabe’s personal blowjob brigade pretending that monopolies and capitalism don’t apply when it’s a product they personally enjoy.
I don’t identify as neither, I do no follow politics, nor do I care about some left right bullshit.
But yeah, if a product is good, I do recommend it if there is discussion. Your regular Joe is not gonna build his own home printer, he goes to the store and either buys an HP, or a Brother. They don’t know how to pirate games, they go to a launcher and buy it there.
You have to understand that not everyone has the freedom to choose, because they simply don’t have time or don’t give a fuck, and settle for something that someone recommends.
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.
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.
Also it depends what’s driving that attitude… if it’s an ethos from Gabe then great but he won’t be around forever… what happens when he dies/retires?
Many companies have started with great ethics that went out of the window when the founders moved on, and Steam is in a fantastic position to enshitify if it wanted to.
That’s a lot or what-ifs. If a lot of companies enshittify, that doesn’t mean all do. Especially when Valve is not publicly traded (sure, “for now”). It has a lot of credibility, especially compared to other launchers (EA, Ubi, Bethesda, Battle.net). And while there is GOG which is a great launcher aswell especially by selling games without DRM, it’s one in a million.
By your logic, we shouldn’t trust any company because they can all enshittify.
Doesn’t even have to be a monopoly, I have zero loyalty to any business beyond the product they give me. Trust is for people, not for some nebulous corporate entity who wants my money.
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.
It’s rare that I wholeheartedly back a billion dollar company, but I do with Valve. Until Gabe is no longer CEO and their business model changes to something more nefarious, I will stick with them for years to come. No battle.net, No epic, just Steam.
Replacing csgo with counterstrike 2 so its broken launch could be covered up with a decade of positive reviews for a different game and guaranteeing people won’t be able to play the previous after an indefinite amount of time was pretty scummy, for one.
CS2 is fine and it feels like CSGO, except the nades were updated. If you want to go nostalgic you can go play the other CS games.
I understand preserving a game is important, but this isn’t a single-player game, this is a game that they have to continuously host and manage, which costs money. Valve wanted to update the game, and they probably didn’t want to have 2 games fighting each other. You can be mad at their strategy, but CSGO was a free multiplayer game (yes yes it was $15 or $20 dollars years ago), and they decided to change it into an updated free multiplayer game.
If you want to call them scummy because they slightly changed a game you paid for, go for it. Never buy another Valve product and go exclusively GOG.
Having said all that, I would be on your side if and only if we were talking about a single-player game that does not need to be managed 24/7.
Replacing csgo with counterstrike 2 so its broken launch could be covered up with a decade of positive reviews for a different game and guaranteeing people won’t be able to play the previous after an indefinite amount of time was pretty scummy, for one.
People would be way more up in arms had it been a completely new game where none of the inventory transfers over. Recent reviews are still “mostly positive” and traditional CSGO is still available, just unsupported. I dislike it myself that practice with bots and a friend currently no longer works in CS2 but enabling csgo_legacy wan’t that much of a deal for me.
I like what Valve does and I sound like a fanboy sometimes because they just keep doing great stuff… But I don’t fucking trust them long term. I hope they prove me wrong, of course! I also don’t really trust anybody else.
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.
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They won me over permanently when they instituted a refund policy.
Not just a refund policy but a refund policy where you can just say ‘yeah this shit sucks yo’
You’re not wrong. 💯
I rarely am. I’m a very wise man.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing
I know this quote, for I am very intelligent. Also handsome.
And exceedingly humble.
You forgot to mention modest. :p
Could you be the humblest person in the world?
It is very possible.
It took the australian government to do it, but at least they did it in the best possible way after being forced to, instead of throwing a tantrum and having people need to talk to a support person.
Steam did have refund policy and I have returned games in the past, but it was a review process.
HAHA
Why is it so hard for companies to build a game launcher that doesn’t suck? Is it just a lowest bidder situation?
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).
well, I don’t think battle.net is the worst launcher
Yeah I agree. I don’t play Blizzard Activision games for other reasons, but the battle.net launcher was by far the best.
I don’t get why, when PC gamers spend thousands to get a quick, smooth machine, that they put up with the shitfest that is Valve. I mean, it’s 2023 why is the UI still a website? Why is it that I can’t stop the news from popping up? And it’s so damn unresponsive and laggy.
Wow. Ive never heard someone say something positive about battle net
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.
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.
Data, they were also interested in that sweet, sweet, data harvesting. Previously only Valve was grabbing all that via Steam.
Steam sucked, really bad. For 8 years, maybe? Maybe more? It takes time to build something, but consumers demand everything immediately.
GIF from that period.
I wish I had a use for that.
I mean steam sucked for 8 years like 20 years ago. Technology wasn’t the same as it is. They revolutionized the pc gaming scene and I’d argue that even that Steam version was better than the current EGS version. Was it uglier? Yea maybe but it did the job. You could install, manage and launch your games, cloud saves and it wasn’t bloat or spyware. The Steam just kept getting better even if with a messy ui in some places. They do a ton of shit that generates them no direct profit but that makes using Steam a no brainer. And gamers respect and value that even if not all of them.
Heck I’m sure that they very quickly came up with a functional shopping cart at the very least.
Steam has been offering third-party titles since 2005 but still had no shopping cart as of 2008.
So 3 years? How long did that take epic? About the same time almost 2 decades later?
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Yea no
People complain because the EGS launcher is shit and not getting better in any meaningful way. Plus all the anti consumer shit that they do.
EGS didn’t come out last year. Heck GOG galaxy is fairly decent and it’s not even required and they have a fraction of the budget. And guess what a lot of people like and support them.
… Because years later, steam got good.
Epic started out shit, and then used their fortnite money to impro… No, wait, sorry, they used their fortnite money to buy exclusivity of games people had already preordered from other stores.
Starting out shit and then slowly improving is one thing. Starting out shit and then kicking your customers in the teeth is completely different.
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No, not exclusivity. Pointedly spending large amounts of money to take already purchased games away from people.
Exclusivity isnt a new concept. Im still patiently waiting for the next horizon game to come to PC at all. Exclucivity isnt kicking your customers in the teeth.
Wagging your fortnite cash in peoples faces by showing them you can take away what they already paid for is the kick in the teeth.
And, more importantly, it showed me how they value me. They will spend extra money to directly inconvenience me in the hopes Im stupid enough to pay them for inconveniencing me. Bad launcher? Thats fine, blizzards launcher is dogshit and I played overwatch for years. Exclusivity again, fine. Ill wait if Im really going to be stubborn, and I wont if I really want the game.
But going out of their way to antagonize other users of the competition, as if Im supposed to find that cute and rebuy what I already purchased at a store I already chose? Zero respect for your customers means you will do the same or worse to me even if I am stupid enough to pay you, if you think antagonizing me again will wiggle out more of my money.
Fuck them forever, they cannot rebuild that trust. The only reason they havent done it again is because steam changed their tos. And they will do it to you as soon as they think theyve got a stable userbase
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Origin is still bad and so is whatever Ubisoft’s launcher is called.
edit: for the record I didn’t say that steam was the best launcher, but I have found the launchers for world of warships and warthunder to be serviceable
Origin is now the “EA App” and Uplay is now “Ubisoft Connect”
They can’t even keep consistent branding.
It’s kind of funny. I feel that the rebranding was because those launchers sucked ( a common marketing tactic.) The thing is though, the EA App still sucks so it doesn’t do anything for its reputation.
they change the names because they suck
Ea app is origin without linux compatibility
I mean steam sucked for 8 years like 20 years ago. Technology wasn’t the same as it is. They revolutionized the pc gaming scene and I’d argue that even that Steam version was better than the current EGS version. Was it uglier? Yea maybe but it did the job. You could install, manage and launch your games, cloud saves and it wasn’t bloat or spyware. The Steam just kept getting better even if with a messy ui in some places. They do a ton of shit that generates them no direct profit but that makes using Steam a no brainer. And gamers respect and value that even if not all of them.
Heck I’m sure that they very quickly came up with a functional shopping cart at the very least.
Isn’t… This what a monopoly is?
Why are we celebrating that?
Valve has objectively done far more good in the gaming space than any other company so I would say yes, their achievements are worth celebrating even if it is monopolistic. They’ve proven to be trustworthy for the time being, unlike other companies.
Remind me, which store is paying publishers for exclusivity?
It’s not a monopoly in the way that valve has does bad things to keep it that way, just that every other try has so far failed. Nothing has been close to as good as steam, and probably never will. GOG is good but they’re not directly competing in the same way.
Yup, gog and steam are my 2 preferred platforms. Same_but_different.gif
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The power of a monopoly
Makes sense Santa would holiday somewhere sunny.
Pretty sure Gabe lives in New Zealand now. Unless I’m remembering incorrectly, he just got stuck there during COVID and then never left once restrictions were eased.
By the way, that sun is the ozone hole.
Yeah, there was some fuss recently about him getting ordered to attend as a witness at some trial in the US instead of video conferencing as is the norm since covid.
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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.
If they fix the bullshit joystick switch on the goddamn index controllers I will throat every valve employee that made it happen.
Open up for gaben
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
Funded by the cash cow steam store, they just kinda do what they will in the mean time.
Blizzard had a legit decent platform for a while there. Real fall from grace.
Maybe there’s a disproportionately high amount of linux users on lemmy, cause I keep seeing it come up in the comments. But I would use Epic if they had linux support. Heck some games like satisfactory I have access to on both cause I paid for it twice lol
https://github.com/Heroic-Games-Launcher/HeroicGamesLauncher
Works like a charm.
can confirm!
For reference I do have it installed… i think… The one that runs overwatch/blizzard games, haven’t played or launched it in about a year though. As apart from fortnite, which I just dont play because of lockout, satisfactory is the only one I have on there i care about. Plus I can share the epic login with my less fortunate windows friends… dont tell anyone I said that though haha
Call me whatever, but Valve does so much for Linux gaming that when I do buy games I make sure to get them through Steam. Between Proton and the Steam Deck it seems like Valve is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Linux gaming is in a great place right now and Valve deserves a lot of credit.
They also have Steam Input which is incredible. The customization and control you have over your experience is insane.
Epic Games on the other hand can’t even be bothered to support Linux properly. Valve earns their cut.
🤡
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.
The competition kind of shot itself in the foot
Competition is good…when the competition is actually competitive.
But what has happened is games on are steam … which installs the launcher + game.
So it’s not a win at all. It’s actually a loss for us. If steam was to force “yeah you can publish the game on steam, but you cannot use your launcher”
The key is to use an alternative that’s actually good, and most of these companies were never going to make an alternative that was good, just one that was exploitative.
Most of my purchases the last few years have been gog. The only game service where you actually own the game afterwards.
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.
A nice thing about GOG is that you can choose whether or not you use their launcher. You can use GOG Galaxy, and it will download game updates and sync saves. or you can just not use it; and just launch the games directly. Or you can put shortcuts to the gog games into steam and launch them from there. Or you can launch your steam games from galaxy if you like. … I appreciate that kind of stuff a lot, because although I think Steam does a good job, I’m very wary of lock-in and companies becoming too powerful.
(And of course, for real indie games, itch.io is the place to go.)
FTFY
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.
That is looks like it’s supposed to point out something negative.
Convenience is always something to consider as a customer in literally any product. It’s most often the main driver between competitors and can make or brake a product.
So, yeah. Using another launcher that has 10% of the features and not a single upside while being incredibly inconvenient has not worked out. Fuck origin, uplay, and the likes.
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.
As I’ve said elsewhere in this thread, the only bad competition is one that gets subsidized in order to survive. If they are operating on their own profit margins then they are definitionally “good competition.”
No, zero monopolies are good. If you can even name one that you personally believe to somehow be good then I can explain why you’re wrong.
At no point in time has a natural diversification of product sources has been bad for the consumer. The only exceptions to this relate back to point #1, the subsidized or otherwise “assisted” business model.
Tell me, does your childhood home have a lot of lead paint on the walls? We aren’t trying to take down Steam FFS, just provide alternatives that force them to stay competitive by giving better service to the consumer.
The fact that you think a second source for videogames is somehow going to threaten you personally just shows how much of a zombie you are. Gabe isn’t your lord and savior, he’s just another rich guy who has a monopoly on his corner of the market. Grow the fuck up.
That’s why you buy from GOG.
Ya because so far it doesn’t seem to impact the consumer so it works for me lol. Valve has always had great sales too. If they jacked up prices YoY, and did evil things, then I’d welcome competition. But all I see at this point is lousy extra software to install a single game or two. Annoying. Fragmented. Just just media streaming.
Fanboys and monopolies, name a better combination.
Sorry you got swindled into buying games on a bunch of different launchers.
I’ve not been “swindled” into anything, I’ve never paid for shit twice and I get most of my games DRM free on GOG. I use Epic exclusively for their free games.
I’m just sick of hearing Gabe’s personal blowjob brigade pretending that monopolies and capitalism don’t apply when it’s a product they personally enjoy.
Cheese and a cheese slicer.
You missed an opportunity to say “coffee and biscuits” and I’ve never been more disappointed 😔
I failed myself 😓
Monopoly isn’t bad (or illegal) if it doesn’t exploit and/or abuse it’s market position, which Steam doesn’t.
Monopolies are bad. Period. End of story.
You probably identify as leftist yet here you are shilling for corporate capitalism the moment you like the product.
I don’t identify as neither, I do no follow politics, nor do I care about some left right bullshit.
But yeah, if a product is good, I do recommend it if there is discussion. Your regular Joe is not gonna build his own home printer, he goes to the store and either buys an HP, or a Brother. They don’t know how to pirate games, they go to a launcher and buy it there.
You have to understand that not everyone has the freedom to choose, because they simply don’t have time or don’t give a fuck, and settle for something that someone recommends.
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.
Monopolies are always bad. They give too much power to the people who do not deserve it. Even if the one in charge looks benevolent.
Tell me, what do you think would happen if Gabe died tomorrow?
Also it depends what’s driving that attitude… if it’s an ethos from Gabe then great but he won’t be around forever… what happens when he dies/retires?
Many companies have started with great ethics that went out of the window when the founders moved on, and Steam is in a fantastic position to enshitify if it wanted to.
That’s a lot or what-ifs. If a lot of companies enshittify, that doesn’t mean all do. Especially when Valve is not publicly traded (sure, “for now”). It has a lot of credibility, especially compared to other launchers (EA, Ubi, Bethesda, Battle.net). And while there is GOG which is a great launcher aswell especially by selling games without DRM, it’s one in a million.
By your logic, we shouldn’t trust any company because they can all enshittify.
If you replaced “company” with “monopoly” in your last sentence, I agree.
Doesn’t even have to be a monopoly, I have zero loyalty to any business beyond the product they give me. Trust is for people, not for some nebulous corporate entity who wants my money.
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.
GOG > itch.io > Steam > whale poo > everything else
For Linux, it’s Steam and then anything that works with Bottles, Lutris or Heroic.
It’s rare that I wholeheartedly back a billion dollar company, but I do with Valve. Until Gabe is no longer CEO and their business model changes to something more nefarious, I will stick with them for years to come. No battle.net, No epic, just Steam.
Valve has done scummy things even recently but the scummy things they’ve done have never personally affected me negatively so I don’t care.
Source for the scummies?
Replacing csgo with counterstrike 2 so its broken launch could be covered up with a decade of positive reviews for a different game and guaranteeing people won’t be able to play the previous after an indefinite amount of time was pretty scummy, for one.
CS2 is fine and it feels like CSGO, except the nades were updated. If you want to go nostalgic you can go play the other CS games.
I understand preserving a game is important, but this isn’t a single-player game, this is a game that they have to continuously host and manage, which costs money. Valve wanted to update the game, and they probably didn’t want to have 2 games fighting each other. You can be mad at their strategy, but CSGO was a free multiplayer game (yes yes it was $15 or $20 dollars years ago), and they decided to change it into an updated free multiplayer game.
If you want to call them scummy because they slightly changed a game you paid for, go for it. Never buy another Valve product and go exclusively GOG.
Having said all that, I would be on your side if and only if we were talking about a single-player game that does not need to be managed 24/7.
People would be way more up in arms had it been a completely new game where none of the inventory transfers over. Recent reviews are still “mostly positive” and traditional CSGO is still available, just unsupported. I dislike it myself that practice with bots and a friend currently no longer works in CS2 but enabling csgo_legacy wan’t that much of a deal for me.
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I like what Valve does and I sound like a fanboy sometimes because they just keep doing great stuff… But I don’t fucking trust them long term. I hope they prove me wrong, of course! I also don’t really trust anybody else.
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?
True, UT4 was supposed to all about user-modding.
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.