XatolosGearbox founder says Epic Games Store hopes were “misplaced or overly optimistic”
TelorandI have some personal qualms about supporting “the biggest fish” in the pond, since that tends to lead to the Apples, the Googles, and the Microsofts.
However, Steam hasn’t particularly abused its market power, and has even used it to create a very successful Linux handheld that has both helped propel Linux desktop adoption and added upstream improvements to Linux in general.
I’ll revise my opinion when Valve changes to a more overtly predatory model of capitalism, but for now, I’ll enjoy only needing to keep a partial eye open.
I'll revise my opinion when Valve changes to a more overtly predatory model of capitalism
I believe as long they’re not publicly traded )and Gabe is in charge), that’s not a concern.
Being public (or owned by a publicly traded company) tend to bring out these nasty traits. It’s more about finding ways to bring value to shareholders than the customers.
Private companies can be dicks. Public companies can and will be sued by their shareholders if they aren’t big enough dicks.
cobysevI’m terrified of Gabe retiring or passing away. He’s been amazing for the company and I don’t trust anyone else to not want to use Valve for their own greedy purposes. The next president of Valve will likely ruin all the good things about it, thanks to late-stage capitalism.
I firmly believe in voting with your wallet; I normally don’t invest much long-term interest into businesses because you never know how they’ll change over time, but I’ve been so happy with Valve that I’ve gladly given them thousands of dollars over the decades for Steam games. My library is sitting at just over 3,500 games right now. I don’t know what I’m gonna do when Valve crumbles one day. I really hope they give me an option to download and play offline all the games I’ve bought, because that’s a massive library to lose.
I’ve never given a penny to Epic Games, and unless they get on-par with Steam’s functionality, I won’t ever buy or play any of their games. The one thing that might make Epic Games competitive (and could convince me to use their platform) is letting Steam users copy their libraries over, so we’re not just starting over from scratch with a new service.
That’s what got me on Steam in the first place. Back around 2010 or so, I discovered that if you had a physical PC game that was also in Steam’s store, you could type in the serial number on the game box and it would register and add it to your Steam library. That’s how I got my collection of early Call of Duty titles on Steam, as well as Half-Life and some others. I moved my physical game library over to Steam and I’ve been a Steam loyalist ever since.
snooggumsBack around 2010 or so, I discovered that if you had a physical PC game that was also in Steam’s store, you could type in the serial number on the game box and it would register and add it to your Steam library.
There were a few older games I owned that had trouble with running well on newer hardware because of the messy manual updates. Did the seriel bumber i to steam and it installed and updated to a smooth running version on steam at no cost.
Yes, this tied the hard copy to the steam account so there was a loss of reselling unless they changed that at some point. But I never bothered with selling used games and these were old enough that nobody wanted them anyway so I got some free use out of something I was almost ready to throw out.
ZonetrooperBack around 2010 or so, I discovered that if you had a physical PC game that was also in Steam’s store, you could type in the serial number on the game box and it would register and add it to your Steam library.
WAIT WHAT.
Does this happen even if the game wasn’t on Steam at time of purchase so long as it has a Steam version now? Because that would be amazing.
Anyone in charge of a non-publicly traded company will want to do what’s best for the company in the long term instead of milking as much from it as fast as they can, so I don’t think that replacing Gabe by someone else will be the end of Valve like so many people claim.
The problem is that you can never be certain about someone’s ability to stand their morals atop money until it is truly offered to them. Supposedly Gaben has turned down Billion dollar offers for steam. It is certainly not every person who will do so and it is hard to know how a person will react until that is truly offered to them. I don’t know that I’d turn it down (though I also don’t know how much Gaben makes).
Not necessarily. Sometimes even owners just want to milk as much as possible as fast as they’re able.
Source: life.
seaQueueI really hope GabeN has a continuity plan that involves a nonprofit governance board when he’s no longer in the picture. I don’t even want to imagine valve as a publicly traded company (or owned by a private equity company for that matter.)
I’ll revise my opinion when Valve changes to a more overtly predatory model of capitalism, but for now, I’ll enjoy only needing to keep a partial eye open.
this is the correct approach towards how a society should support big buisnesses. the companies that don’t fuck us over will continue to get my public support and money
They’re also directly funding linux devs to work on related projects, which the most mutually-beneficial way to build products around linux
I really hope GabeN has a continuity plan that involves a nonprofit governance board when he’s no longer in the picture. I don’t even want to imagine valve as a publicly traded company.
GoG exists and I always check there before going to Steam. I just won’t deal Epic.
GOG is great, but they need to make a Linux launcher, already. Or if they can’t, they should make it so the community can.
Yes. It’s not like you can’t even buy linux games on it. It was some jumping through hoops, but if you buy Factorio on GoG, you can get the linux version.
ValWube (creators of Factorio) have the best customer policy in game development.
- Don’t go on sale so you will always pay the cheapest price.
- if you have the game on steam you can download a DRM-free version directly from their website. (alongside all old versions)
- Encourage the community to create mods, host your own mod portal accessible inside the game.
- Make a good game.
- Be open about game development through monthly blog posts.
The only way I would like it more is if the game was open source but since that’s impossible to sell I will take this.
I don’t view games as needing to be open source as the end users doesn’t need them to be productive in work. They aren’t a part of a productivity pipeline and the discontinue of a game’s support or radical change in fuction can’t throw a person’s livelihood into jeopardy.
Games should have a plan to release the source and assets if support ever gets dropped and I believe that it should be a requirement if a games gets to enjoy copyright protects that there’s a plan for when it enters public domain, but that’s a different discussion.
The heroic launcher supports GOG.
For sure, but it’s not really the same functionality. You can play your games, but you can’t buy or redeem any others from Heroic or Lutris.
It has a store page, basically an embedded web browser, I redeem free epic games through it, don’t know about GOG but I’d imagine it works the same.
It’s still a third party solution. There’s no reason they couldn’t make a Linux client for Galaxy, and some people want to use the official launchers.
woelkchenThe heroic launcher supports GOG.
True but paying customers can expect that CD Project to that by themselves from the cut they take from games on GOG and the insane amounts of Cyberpunk money they earned. Randy Pitchford claims that “Steam does very little to earn the massive cut they take and continues its effective monopoly” and that “very little” includes making clients for three operating systems, a VR platform, a handheld, and a whole operating system.
ToriborIt’s clear that Valve’s competitors undervalue the user experience that Steam provides and don’t understand why it’s so sticky.
yamaniiThe joys of not having a duty to shareholders.
After the Borderlands 3 incident, not surprising.
CALIGVLANo shit. Everyone was saying this from day one, but Sweeney was too stupid to realize it.
NeryKThe Epic Games Launcher is so far behind on features compared to Steam it’s not even funny. Epic chose not to try and compete with Steam on that front and to try and force users onto the platform with exclusivity deals and sweeten the deal with free games.
The one user-centric killer feature Epic has in their stack IMHO is the built-in multiplayer crossplay. Except it’s not even exclusive to their store ironically (you do need an Epic account for it though).
Epic chose not to try and compete with Steam on that front
Forget competing, they lack even the basics.
MHLoppyWhat do you consider basic that it's still missing? To be honest I've felt content with it as a game launcher for a while now, but I admittedly don't use it that often either.
frazorthLinux support.
I kinda understand it not being a priority; even if they dedicated the resources to both create and adequately maintain Linux support, I imagine very few of the games on the platform have native support anyway. Sure, many would work (to varying degrees) with the various bags of tricks available, but it's still an extra step of compatibility that's sort of beyond their immediate control.
Fuck off. They paid to remove support for Linux from Rocket League because their launcher doesn’t support it.
Thanks for so politely and cordially sharing that information
For me it’s the inability to set my status to “invisible”.
It’s not that I don’t want to game with people, but sometimes I want to practice alone without being bombarded by invites.
Fair enough! I barely use its social side since most of the games I've played on there are singleplayer titles - honestly didn't even know that wasn't there yet!
Remote play together, local network streaming, etc.
I guess our opinions differ, because I don't consider either of those to be "basics". They're nice features for e.g., Steam to have, sure, but they're not "game launcher 101" imo.
That’s a fair take. We all have different priorities.
We use in home streaming nearly every day now, so it’s a must have for me. Remote play together is critical for certain games as well.
Didn't take long for Randy's tone to change after the Epic bribe money dried up.
I feel like he’s know for this shit like aliens colonial Marines
ParadoxThat and mysteriously disappearing thumb drives
And assaulting the original Claptrap VA, among other things.
A Civvie 11 Randy-Bo-Bandy Compilation #FreeCivvie
One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates. – Gabe Newell, 2011
Time and again, digital distribution platforms have proved this. Apple Music became a dominant music distribution platform at the height of Napster, LimeWire and other peer to peer sharing apps. They did it, because it was easier to just buy the tracks/albums you wanted than to dig through trackers and websites which may or may not actually have what you want. Netflix became the de-facto source for streaming movies at a time when BitTorrent was common and well known. Again, they made it easy and convenient, while not charging an arm and a leg. Steam also faced competition from BitTorrent piracy. But again, Steam made buying, downloading and running games easier than the pirates. And people are willing to pay for that convenience and not dealing with the crap which floats around the high seas.
And, so long as Steam continues to treat it’s customers right, those customers will keep coming back. And that’s the problem with Pitchford’s whole premise. Developers will go where the customers are. Sure, you’ll get the odd case of a publisher/developer doing an exclusivity deal. But even then, it’s probably limited, because the customers are on Steam. If another storefront wants to draw customers, they need to start with treating customers well. They will still face headwinds, as Steam has a large “first mover” advantage. But, success is going to start with making customers want to come back.
yea let’s just forget about the illegality of those things and how companies, ISPs and law enforcements fight tooth and nail to shut those services down repeatedly.
You ever wonder why these companies don’t operate in countries that don’t have strict piracy laws and can’t shut down sites with court orders? Because it’s still easier to pirate than face criminal charges.
Re-read what I wrote, but hop down off your high horse first, it’s obvious you weren’t able to read it clearly from up there. I’m neither promoting nor defending piracy. Quite the contrary, I’m praising the legitimate services (and Steam in particular) for understanding that competition with piracy isn’t all about money, it’s often about the quality of service. Funny enough, your own comments are actually a point in favor of this:
You ever wonder why these companies don’t operate in countries that don’t have strict piracy laws and can’t shut down sites with court orders? Because it’s still easier to pirate than face criminal charges.
Yet somehow, with a lot of time, money and effort put into shutting down piracy, the pirates were able to provide a better service. Seriously, step back from the whole “napster bad” for a moment and think about the dissonance of the situation. Large companies, pulling in millions of dollars a year, with no need to worry about law enforcement or monied interests coming after them, somehow failed to create anything resembling a functional digital marketplace. They were stuck in the physical distribution paradigm and fought tooth and nail to avoid digital distribution. At the same time, a few kids, with little money, and law enforcement trying to shut them down created a pretty good user experience. Sure, some of that is not having to worry about licensing. But, a large part of it is understanding what the users want and giving it to them.
It wasn’t until Apple came along and basically created “Napster, but legitimate” that music piracy really fell off. Netflix pulled off something similar with video (though that is rebuilding some rough edges at the moment) and Steam did it for games. Sure, piracy still exists, and it will always be a problem. But, a lot of piracy can be tamped down by having a good service available.
with the amount of money they apparently had available to spend on this little jolly, it's absolutely incredible how much they fumbled things by trying to force their way in instead of asking nicely
if they just hadn't done exclusives, and had instead relied on their decreased split to offer lower prices, while chucking in the odd free game, they'd probably be a lot closer to the 50% of revenue they were hoping for when they started
valve is actively abusing their monopoly by preventing epic from offering the same product(s) at lower prices in their storefront, and their customer base are happy about it because of thoroughly epic pissed everybody off with their opening move
what chumps
I was actually excited about a new storefront that, if anything, might’ve made steam improve and then there was that game awards where it felt like every single game they showed was an epic exclusive and I lost all interest.
The one thing I like about them is they recognized why people really wanted to stick with steam: they have a large established library and don’t want to bounce back and forth.
They took that and said “ok we’ll give you free games every week until you have a large library here and won’t want to leave!”
Jokes on them, I now have a large library of completely free games on epic and still use steam for the games I want to buy because I refuse to support their exclusivity bullshit.
Can you also launch the games through steam to get features like the overlay and stuff
I believe you can, I haven’t tried though. The games install like any other and have an .exe you can point to through steam so it would probably just be a matter of having the epic launcher open as well when you go to play.
Ah cus I have a faint memory of getting games thru Amazon and launching thru steam but idr if I had the overlay
You don’t need a subscription like Prime to get the free games? I was under the impression you do.
Hell no
Well that’s fuckin’ sick lmao
Altima NEOThey were giving them away to anyone who made an epic account.
There are even more free games from prime for the epic store, but the epic store has it’s own free games too that don’t require any subscription to anything.
Wait now it appears I’m the one out of the loop. When did that start?
No idea, I only noticed it a couple weeks ago. The prime gaming redemption site where I used to get stuff for lost ark now has a listing for free games, does amazon games, epic games, and gog games. The epic games are different ones than the free ones directly from epic.
Neat, well thanks for the heads up