So funny seeing the comments on the GOG article saying how it’s basically Steam’s only competition, and it would be bad if it were to fail, and then come here and see the exact opposite.
People don’t have to be forced to use GOG so there’s people that actually like them, and offering DRM free games with offline installers is pretty pro consumer.
I foresee the only chance steam has of not being immediately enshittified would be for it to be a 100% employee owned company and to stay the f away from ever being listed anywhere.
I don’t know about that. The whole company is set up in a very unique way, such swift enshittification would probably cause a mutiny.
How well the culture of just making good things is enshrined once Gaben is gone is a different question. I can easily see a slow dissolution of the company as the people who care and the people who can grab power fight.
I also don’t know the internal details of the structure besides that it’s very flat and self-driven. Perhaps Gaben has an apprentice? I can’t imagine him being completely blind to his unique importance, surely they won’t just sell the company or hire a random CEO.
From a consumer’s point of view, does it matter if the exclusive is de facto or de jure? If I have no choice but to do business with Valve and Steam to play a game on PC, it seems to me that that game is a Steam exclusive. And there are thousands of Steam exclusives, but only a handful of Epic exclusives.
It doesn’t seem like you’re paying attention… Steam didn’t buy the publisher of a popular game, and have it removed from the Epic game store so that it could be their exclusive. That was Epic and the game was rocket league. If epic wanted to compete “from a consumer’s point of view” they would make a better product than steam, but their store is still missing features
I mean this isn’t ideal, but you can understand why they might make that a lower priority. Probably 90% of my gaming purchases are for 1 item.
And I find it hard to believe that you anti Epic people are arguing in good faith when your first complaint is that you can’t more easily buy multiple games on a platform you seem to dislike so much.
We’re talking about a company that was raking in hundreds of millions of dollars from Fortnite, and buying exclusivity deals for tens of millions of dollars, being unwilling to implement a store feature that would take any half-decent developer a single day to implement.
We bring up this argument because it perfectly highlights how little Epic cares about creating a service that can compete with Steam based on quality. They’d rather ignore the basic functions for years and instead spend orders of magnitude more money on anti-competitive practices like exclusives.
you anti Epic people
And this tells me that also aren’t willing to argue in good faith. You’re disregarding my argument simply because I hate Tim Sweeney and Epic
You don’t like Epic because their store is not fully featured. I understand that. I’m concerned about Valve because, among other things, certain damning allegations made in their recent class action lawsuit.
You can much more easily avoid Epic because of exclusives than I can avoid Steam.
I might be out of the loop, but wasn’t that lawsuit based around publishers not being able to sell steam keys for cheaper than the price on steam? In my mind that seems perfectly reasonable since valve is paying for the steam services that are needed to turn that steam key into a playable game.
It’s hard to have a productive conversation when I bring up a specific example of Epic being scummy, but then you wave vaguely at allegations made in an ongoing lawsuit
If the allegations were just about steam keys, that would be one thing, but it looks like they’re leveraging their large market share to essentially fix prices on other stores, even outside keys. For example, even though Epic charges a much smaller cut, 12% vs Steam’s 30%, publishers are prohibited from selling at a lower price on Epic (or Steam will delist their game, blocking the vast majority of the game’s potential audience).
I personally don’t find buying a publisher to make some game exclusive to be all that scummy. Is it really so different from Warcraft being exclusive to Battle.net ? But I’m not to try to convince you that my reasons are more valid. I respect your reasons, I just ask you to also respect mine.
Epic games store can’t even buy my love… I cannot forgive the abuse. Exclusives have no place in PC gaming. Stop trying to make them happen.
What does that have to do with Dredge?
So funny seeing the comments on the GOG article saying how it’s basically Steam’s only competition, and it would be bad if it were to fail, and then come here and see the exact opposite.
Because Epic does everything it can to be anti-competitive, because they don’t actually want to be competition they just want to be the monopoly.
GOG doesn’t operate that way, they just try to compete by offering a good service,
People don’t have to be forced to use GOG so there’s people that actually like them, and offering DRM free games with offline installers is pretty pro consumer.
It would be great if Steam had competition! They’re pretty good for what they are, but I’d rather not have to trust them to be so nice.
As long as gaben is in charge I think it’s in rrasonably safe hands, but the second he is out the enshittification will be Swift and complete.
I foresee the only chance steam has of not being immediately enshittified would be for it to be a 100% employee owned company and to stay the f away from ever being listed anywhere.
I don’t know about that. The whole company is set up in a very unique way, such swift enshittification would probably cause a mutiny.
How well the culture of just making good things is enshrined once Gaben is gone is a different question. I can easily see a slow dissolution of the company as the people who care and the people who can grab power fight.
I also don’t know the internal details of the structure besides that it’s very flat and self-driven. Perhaps Gaben has an apprentice? I can’t imagine him being completely blind to his unique importance, surely they won’t just sell the company or hire a random CEO.
From a consumer’s point of view, does it matter if the exclusive is de facto or de jure? If I have no choice but to do business with Valve and Steam to play a game on PC, it seems to me that that game is a Steam exclusive. And there are thousands of Steam exclusives, but only a handful of Epic exclusives.
It doesn’t seem like you’re paying attention… Steam didn’t buy the publisher of a popular game, and have it removed from the Epic game store so that it could be their exclusive. That was Epic and the game was rocket league. If epic wanted to compete “from a consumer’s point of view” they would make a better product than steam, but their store is still missing features
Reminder that it took them 2 fucking years to implement a shopping cart
I mean this isn’t ideal, but you can understand why they might make that a lower priority. Probably 90% of my gaming purchases are for 1 item.
And I find it hard to believe that you anti Epic people are arguing in good faith when your first complaint is that you can’t more easily buy multiple games on a platform you seem to dislike so much.
We’re talking about a company that was raking in hundreds of millions of dollars from Fortnite, and buying exclusivity deals for tens of millions of dollars, being unwilling to implement a store feature that would take any half-decent developer a single day to implement.
We bring up this argument because it perfectly highlights how little Epic cares about creating a service that can compete with Steam based on quality. They’d rather ignore the basic functions for years and instead spend orders of magnitude more money on anti-competitive practices like exclusives.
And this tells me that also aren’t willing to argue in good faith. You’re disregarding my argument simply because I hate Tim Sweeney and Epic
Why does the reason for the exclusivity matter?
You don’t like Epic because their store is not fully featured. I understand that. I’m concerned about Valve because, among other things, certain damning allegations made in their recent class action lawsuit.
You can much more easily avoid Epic because of exclusives than I can avoid Steam.
I might be out of the loop, but wasn’t that lawsuit based around publishers not being able to sell steam keys for cheaper than the price on steam? In my mind that seems perfectly reasonable since valve is paying for the steam services that are needed to turn that steam key into a playable game.
It’s hard to have a productive conversation when I bring up a specific example of Epic being scummy, but then you wave vaguely at allegations made in an ongoing lawsuit
If the allegations were just about steam keys, that would be one thing, but it looks like they’re leveraging their large market share to essentially fix prices on other stores, even outside keys. For example, even though Epic charges a much smaller cut, 12% vs Steam’s 30%, publishers are prohibited from selling at a lower price on Epic (or Steam will delist their game, blocking the vast majority of the game’s potential audience).
I personally don’t find buying a publisher to make some game exclusive to be all that scummy. Is it really so different from Warcraft being exclusive to Battle.net ? But I’m not to try to convince you that my reasons are more valid. I respect your reasons, I just ask you to also respect mine.
This!