Two new platforms in two days but no talk of how their security will be compared to Steam which to me is their main selling point.
Like someone else mentioned Discord has had problems with security and Fortnite accounts are compromised en masse daily. How will these companies keep up with security if they are only making 10%, 12% per game sale. Remember that even Twitch was compromised a while ago targeting Steam users.
Any social PC gamer already has discord installed and if you don't then you probably should so having 'another' launcher is less of an issue with this one.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
I thought Discord was some sort of game talking application thing? Either way, perfect timing for me. Steam is getting more and more authoritarian in their own forums with their child mods-gone-wild, and has no rules on how game dev's abuse their power in the game's forums (which is getting more and more problematic for me as I ask questions when I game I am interested comes out and within the last couple of months I've been getting banned for it. Not crazy questions. Questions about mechanics that are not addressed or covered on the store page. I'm only interested in certain types of games that have certain elements I find necessary for me to enjoy. Trying to find out if a game has these elements is now trolling somehow).
I am happy there is going to be more and more competition. I hope one of them buys up D2D so my games from them will carry over. Maybe buy up that other one, itcho or something like that, that had some decent rpgs that weren't on any other platform.
The other main issue for me is sorting tools. They just suck now that every single game is an rpg. Pure puzzle games on steam are now considered rpgs. Pure puzzle games, like making pictures of cats.
I used to be able to find some indie rpg gems, now steam is full of so much shit with the rpg label I don't even bother looking. GoG's sorting tools suck too also, but for different reasons than just game genre spam.
Steam is getting more and more authoritarian in their own forums with their child mods-gone-wild, and has no rules on how game dev's abuse their power in the game's forums (which is getting more and more problematic for me as I ask questions when I game I am interested comes out and within the last couple of months I've been getting banned for it. Not crazy questions. Questions about mechanics that are not addressed or covered on the store page. I'm only interested in certain types of games that have certain elements I find necessary for me to enjoy. Trying to find out if a game has these elements is now trolling somehow).
Really? I find that very hard to believe.
is it that you are just asking a question, "how" you are asking the question, or getting into fights with people regarding those questions. Or is it your response to those questions?
Sorry man, I have been on many forums over the years and have never been banned for asking a question.
And I've never seen anyone banned for "just asking a question."
But you are correct, competition can be good.
For me I use Steam as a store. I got there, buy my product and that's it. Don't want anything else to do with it.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Two new platforms in two days but no talk of how their security will be compared to Steam which to me is their main selling point.
Like someone else mentioned Discord has had problems with security and Fortnite accounts are compromised en masse daily. How will these companies keep up with security if they are only making 10%, 12% per game sale. Remember that even Twitch was compromised a while ago targeting Steam users.
Did Valve rectify the security issues surrounding their marketplace stuff? Wasn't that long ago Steam was seeing about 70,000 accounts compromised monthly.
The only way this affects me as a consumer is if prices come down, but I see that as an unlikely scenario. I would rather have these companies spend money to fund games that will hold developers accountable rather than allow them to constantly flood the market with bogus EA titles, many of which never get finished.
Competition is good. I'll bring the popcorn to see how it all shakes out.
Competition is good, but I'd like to see how this is going to be a financial benefit to the consumer. If this translates into lower pricing for the same games, then that'll be a huge win for the gaming community. But, if we are going to continue paying box pricing for digital downloads from all of these store platforms, then what's the point? I'll just stick with steam since since my library is already on that platform.
And there's the rub. Competition means better prices, all I'm seeing here is now you have to go game shopping at several different game stores instead of one because they are all going to end up a certain store exclusive. No thanks.
Not that simple.
IF Game A launched on all 3 platforms and was available at $X + 30%, 12% or 10% then people could look to see if the price of X differed and then decide if they were happy paying the markup.
Probably won't happen - at least at first.
What we may get is Game A on Steam, Game B on Epic, Game C on Discord etc. A different type of competition. And the devs on Epic and Discord will, if they choose, be able to price their games lower and still make a bigger profit. They will - however - have to factor in potential sales: higher on Steam due t bigger reach (today) or higher on Epic or Discord due to a lower price. Decisions!
And its the studios "bigger" profit that could drive the competition simply be ensuring that more studios stay afloat. Studio after studio closing is absolutely not good for competition. More studios = more games = more competition.
Competition is good. I'll bring the popcorn to see how it all shakes out.
This reminds me of the transition to F2P when publishers made a ton of wild offers. Have they started offering more than 5 to 10 games? Last time I looked there were only a few.
Discord could pull it off. Twitch is the other one with a massive established user base that could do it too. Although, they've given me between 50 - 100 games for free and I still haven't installed any or use their service much. I'm probably not a typical user but it makes me wonder how challenging it will be for Discord.
That's why I said I'll be interested in seeing how it shakes out. I just want the best price for my games. I'll go where I need to to get it.
When places like GMG, and Humble start to let these new places add games bought there to their services...then i will start to pay attention.
Till then...i have all my games in one place, (Steam)...and can buy for good prices at several. All i need for now.
Competition is good. I'll bring the popcorn to see how it all shakes out.
Competition is good, but I'd like to see how this is going to be a financial benefit to the consumer. If this translates into lower pricing for the same games, then that'll be a huge win for the gaming community. But, if we are going to continue paying box pricing for digital downloads from all of these store platforms, then what's the point? I'll just stick with steam since since my library is already on that platform.
And there's the rub. Competition means better prices, all I'm seeing here is now you have to go game shopping at several different game stores instead of one because they are all going to end up a certain store exclusive. No thanks.
Not just better prices. I mentioned in the other thread that there have been multiple devs who have shared their experience with Valve's dev support service, and they had very little good to say.
In the end, the choice of storefront isn't just about getting us gamers the best price to the entities involved, just as a brick and mortar store considers more than simply what they will charge customers when looking for a place to install a new location.
EDIT - For example, from a dev:
"It isn't that I dislike Steam, just that where once they drove in a lot of traffic via a curated storefront, carefully presented sales, popular events, etc, now they're just... a storefront. We're expected to drive our own traffic in. That isn't bad, but is it worth [Valve's cut of the revenue]? Only in "we control the marketshare, so you pay our rates for access to these customers" toll terms."
Just give me a consumer friendly platform. EPIC doesn't seem to be very consumer friendly and seems to be setup to favor publishers/devs. No idea about Discord since I don't use it and the only reason I have twitch is for the WoW mods and since they are selling that off I have no reason to keep twitch around.
Competition is good, but there can be a down side as well. Just imagine devs releasing exclusives on different launchers. Next thing you know we have 6+ launchers with only a few games on each. I have 4 as it is and don't want to add anymore than that.
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.
Competition is good. I'll bring the popcorn to see how it all shakes out.
This reminds me of the transition to F2P when publishers made a ton of wild offers. Have they started offering more than 5 to 10 games? Last time I looked there were only a few.
Discord could pull it off. Twitch is the other one with a massive established user base that could do it too. Although, they've given me between 50 - 100 games for free and I still haven't installed any or use their service much. I'm probably not a typical user but it makes me wonder how challenging it will be for Discord.
That's why I said I'll be interested in seeing how it shakes out. I just want the best price for my games. I'll go where I need to to get it.
I would put my money that the prices will the be the same on all platforms. Devs would just see more money on one vs. the other. Don't think price wars for the games themselves is going to happen. The actual price we pay now for games is very low in reality. With that said very few have actually been worth what we paid either, mostly shallow reskin of other peoples ideas with no real substance a lot anymore.
I use Discord so I would be more keen to use it before even considering using Epics.
Same, I use discord a lot so if I was to buy a game on something other than steam Discord will probally be what I'd choose, depends what games it has and such.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Competition is good. I'll bring the popcorn to see how it all shakes out.
This reminds me of the transition to F2P when publishers made a ton of wild offers. Have they started offering more than 5 to 10 games? Last time I looked there were only a few.
Discord could pull it off. Twitch is the other one with a massive established user base that could do it too. Although, they've given me between 50 - 100 games for free and I still haven't installed any or use their service much. I'm probably not a typical user but it makes me wonder how challenging it will be for Discord.
That's why I said I'll be interested in seeing how it shakes out. I just want the best price for my games. I'll go where I need to to get it.
I would put my money that the prices will the be the same on all platforms. Devs would just see more money on one vs. the other. Don't think price wars for the games themselves is going to happen. The actual price we pay now for games is very low in reality. With that said very few have actually been worth what we paid either, mostly shallow reskin of other peoples ideas with no real substance a lot anymore.
Yeah the price will probally be about the same on all 3, the diff is discord/epic give a bigger cut to the game dev, so it seems to be more profitable for the dev, compared to losing 30% thru steam. Steam only got away with a 30% cut because there was no real competition. More people use discord than steam I bet, so thats a fairly huge audience to tap into.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
The only thing Discord has over other voips are the emojis for the children and accessibility. Will there be Discord hosted servers for these games that it sells, will there be discord integrated matchmaking? If anything this seems like attempt to compete with humble bundle more than it does to challenge steam.
Making developers happy is a good thing, but I think most of you forget, you are consumers. This doesn't mean you'll see games for cheaper prices. So, as I stated in the other thread about EPIC, it all comes down to which platform has the best CONSUMER packages or benefits. I for one appreciate STEAM's return policy because let's be honest, game developers bottom line does not have CONSUMER satisfaction in the equation.
Developers making more money will not change my mind. Consumer protection is what I look for so I'll wait and see if EPIC or Discord can top STEAM.
That would be the policy (in the EU) they adopted after the EU forced them to? It certainly wasn't voluntary.
And - it being a legal thing and all - Epic and Discord (in the EU at least) will have to adopt "the same" policy. (I'm not aware of Steam offering more than they have to legally.)
Competition is good. I'll bring the popcorn to see how it all shakes out.
Sometimes. This competition is going to be a pain in the ass though. It's going to fragment access to games further. If companies start signing exclusives, it's going to be annoying as hell. I was already pissed when EA, UBI, EPIC and the rest all created their own platforms. If I have to start having a dozen platforms to have access to the games I want, I may just be an old grumpy man and just go back to consoles save for MMOs. Ahh who am I kidding, i'll just stay on Steam forever.
And yet in the days of discs, everyone had literal shelves-ful. My bottom line is my dollar since I don't have lots to throw around. The better the deal, the better I'll like it IF all this ostensible competition pans out.
I don't use any of these platforms for social features or anything else. If I can buy a game at a good price and have the chance for a refund if it's a dud, then I'm happy. I don't care if I have everything all in one place and I find the idea of a single company holding a monopoly on games distribution to be an odious, non-consumer-friendly thing.
You don't use Discord for guild raids or dungeons and what not?
Steam is getting more and more authoritarian in their own forums with their child mods-gone-wild, and has no rules on how game dev's abuse their power in the game's forums (which is getting more and more problematic for me as I ask questions when I game I am interested comes out and within the last couple of months I've been getting banned for it. Not crazy questions. Questions about mechanics that are not addressed or covered on the store page. I'm only interested in certain types of games that have certain elements I find necessary for me to enjoy. Trying to find out if a game has these elements is now trolling somehow).
Really? I find that very hard to believe.
is it that you are just asking a question, "how" you are asking the question, or getting into fights with people regarding those questions. Or is it your response to those questions?
Sorry man, I have been on many forums over the years and have never been banned for asking a question.
And I've never seen anyone banned for "just asking a question."
But you are correct, competition can be good.
For me I use Steam as a store. I got there, buy my product and that's it. Don't want anything else to do with it.
With all honesty I'd have to admit it is kind of a mix. But keep in mind my experience is from smaller, indie games (besides Pathfinder and one dual console/pc release game). But my bigger issue is with Steam themselves.
For the ones it spirals and I'm not blameless - It usually starts with me trying to find out if game has X. Then people tell me how wrong I am to care and how my taste is wrong. In these I don't personally attack anyone (I do make broad statements about "kids" and "small children" clearly aimed at the kids and small children I am talking to) while getting directly personally attacked by damn near everyone, the dev warns everyone no personal attacks and locks the thread and bans me. The first time this happened, out of about maybe four of five similar instances, I started a new thread since no one told me if X element was in the game or not. That time I was banned for spamming. I never did get an answer.
Another three or four times (three I can clearly think of) I did absolutely nothing to get banned. For some game listed as an rpg that had zero rpg elements and even the most hippie of the rpg-hippies that think almost every game is an rpg wouldn't think this game was an rpg. I asked why it was listed as an rpg (not tag, had rpg as a genre listing). I got banned and the thread was locked. For Pathfinder I asked questions the day before release, system specific questions, and got banned. I guess they were (maybe still are) super ban happy at that time. Everyone tried saying all the banning was due to political questions but my questions were about combat mechanics and how prominent the city management aspects were. The other game was a console game/pc release and I asked questions about the UI and if keys could be rebound to the KB&M and got banned for trolling. I put in a steam ticket for that one and steam said the devs can do what they want on their steam forums. This was in the last three months or so, so a newer game. Not the vampire one or Lovecraft one, but kind of similar graphics as those. I can't remember the name off-hand.
For Steam themselves, my issue with them is every time I post something in feedback, about better sorting functions, or having more exclusive tagging options to weed out games I don't have any interest in, about anything I post about the thread gets immediately locked by some dickhead mod after some nonsensical reply. Once I made a post about something like their "big picture" controller thing but for KB&M, letting players know it fully supports KB&M and has standard functions everyone expects and have expected since the late 80s like rebindable keys. That got locked and I made a new thread asking why it was locked (no reason was given by a mod when they locked it) and then I got a warning or a really short ban for spamming or something like that.
I never posted heavily on steam - I'm just not a big poster anywhere. Sometimes I go through spurts. The first time I posted in Steam's site feedback was maybe a year or two ago, and I've had steam damn near the start. Every single one of my threads in feedback were locked for no discernable reason besides the one where I asked why my thread was locked. That angers me because it is Steam themselves, and not a dev being heavy handed trying to protect their game.
Crazily enough, the one time I clearly deserved to be banned nothing happened to me. In was the console/pc game with the slow-minded blacksmith's son turned knight from Hungary or thereabouts, which I did not like and gave a negative review to so the devs had no reason not to ban me since they already got my money and a bad review, I got in an argument claiming the game was a JRPG since it had no choices, a pre-generated character that isn't and never will be your character, and played exactly like a Jrpg and not a real rpg. We got really mean and rude and not even a warning was given. My first post was very hostile and I acted like a dick throughout. If that got locked and me banned I would 100% understand why and would never complain about it. I don't think they are heavy handed with bigger games like that?
In fact, I never got a warning or anything from Steam outside of the last year. This all seems new. I had no idea devs could even ban people on steam. And again, I've been with steam since the start.
I never got a warning or banned (at least that I can remember) on this forum, and got into at least one argument with someone on here I figured I would at least get a warning for. I'm old and generally don't give a shit so I'm not a quality poster, and when I'm high I write walls of text like this, but I don't think I do much anything to be banned or have threads I start locked. And I'm reasonable enough to understand if and when I do do something to deserve it.
Steams massive number of games and current level of integration with CDNs and so many other services...it goes far beyond just other platforms taking a smaller cut.
Just my 2c.
I don't know. I agree that steam has services none of the others currently do or probably will, but even with that tied into a game people still use gog and anything that isn't steam. Most of the people I know waited to buy the NWN:EE through GOG, even though almost all the reasons for the EE is steam workshop or their server thing through steam (I think, I haven't bought it but going off what I think I heard the improvements are).
I also remember people saying Origin would fail, and they keep offering more and more third party games through it. Hell, outside of Bioware EA makes pretty much zero games I am interested in and even I keep my subscription going for it.
I think the new platforms will do well enough, and I think Amazon will get in on it, and I think MS is stupid for not doing it years ago. But what I think will make the new ones or not will be key resellers. I'm predicting now that one of the new ones is going to be more lucrative for resellers and exploit the shit out of it for market share, forcing the others to adopt and driving prices down. Which is good for the PC market long term, especially when these platforms start being mobile device stores too.
The big question will be will MS do something about this or continue being absolutely retarded when it comes to PC gaming (and the eventual merge of PC/mobile device gaming on these platforms).
Uhm way to late to the party I doubt either have much of a hope to compete with steam. Let's review all the reasons.
1) Discord is a pretty small fry alot of people dont actually use it either and a good chance they cant handle the loads.
2) EPIC they have the developer end covered but their front end is pretty abysmal atm for shopping and browsing.
Ok nit picky trivial issues really THIS IS THE REAL DEAL.
1) Most gamers have established steam libraries why should I start a new library with yet another loader and account to manage.?
2) Guess what as a customer aka the end buyer I honestly dont care that game maker xyz can make even more money. Come back talk to when you realize us the consumers are the ones that matter so until you are able to talk that we get to purchase games for less we DONT CARE HOW YOU GUYS CHOP UP OUR MONEY. Personally I think steam earns their cut.
3) While joe blow short sighted game developer might say "gee if we used epic we would have made xxxx more money because of the lower cut...Apparently they forget that ACTUALLY they would made less money because steam comes with a built in customer base of millions to sell your game to so ya epic might take 15% less for the service but you forgot to factor in you most likely sold 35% less copies of your game....DUH.
Its going to be insanely hard to compete with steam at this point, BUT I would favor EPIC over discord by a long shot because EPIC atleast has the potential to tie in the use of their VERY POPULAR game engine that many dev's use to try to pull them onto the epic store, discord literally offers nothing but another space that is far inferior to steam.
Kind of funny to see people talk about competition is good....I think you are confused though non of this was the type of competition that helps the buyer and customer it was all about competition to chop up our money not provide us better and cheaper purchase options.
Competition is good. I'll bring the popcorn to see how it all shakes out.
This reminds me of the transition to F2P when publishers made a ton of wild offers. Have they started offering more than 5 to 10 games? Last time I looked there were only a few.
Discord could pull it off. Twitch is the other one with a massive established user base that could do it too. Although, they've given me between 50 - 100 games for free and I still haven't installed any or use their service much. I'm probably not a typical user but it makes me wonder how challenging it will be for Discord.
That's why I said I'll be interested in seeing how it shakes out. I just want the best price for my games. I'll go where I need to to get it.
Except nothing discussed mentioned "lowering game prices" its was all about increasing revenue for the developer and you would be naive to think they will pas down those savings to the consumer lol. If that was the case it would been mentioned but it wasnt.
Comments
Like someone else mentioned Discord has had problems with security and Fortnite accounts are compromised en masse daily. How will these companies keep up with security if they are only making 10%, 12% per game sale. Remember that even Twitch was compromised a while ago targeting Steam users.
I am happy there is going to be more and more competition. I hope one of them buys up D2D so my games from them will carry over. Maybe buy up that other one, itcho or something like that, that had some decent rpgs that weren't on any other platform.
The other main issue for me is sorting tools. They just suck now that every single game is an rpg. Pure puzzle games on steam are now considered rpgs. Pure puzzle games, like making pictures of cats.
I used to be able to find some indie rpg gems, now steam is full of so much shit with the rpg label I don't even bother looking. GoG's sorting tools suck too also, but for different reasons than just game genre spam.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Not that simple.
IF Game A launched on all 3 platforms and was available at $X + 30%, 12% or 10% then people could look to see if the price of X differed and then decide if they were happy paying the markup.
Probably won't happen - at least at first.
What we may get is Game A on Steam, Game B on Epic, Game C on Discord etc. A different type of competition. And the devs on Epic and Discord will, if they choose, be able to price their games lower and still make a bigger profit. They will - however - have to factor in potential sales: higher on Steam due t bigger reach (today) or higher on Epic or Discord due to a lower price. Decisions!
And its the studios "bigger" profit that could drive the competition simply be ensuring that more studios stay afloat. Studio after studio closing is absolutely not good for competition. More studios = more games = more competition.
Till then...i have all my games in one place, (Steam)...and can buy for good prices at several. All i need for now.
In the end, the choice of storefront isn't just about getting us gamers the best price to the entities involved, just as a brick and mortar store considers more than simply what they will charge customers when looking for a place to install a new location.
EDIT - For example, from a dev:
"It isn't that I dislike Steam, just that where once they drove in a lot of traffic via a curated storefront, carefully presented sales, popular events, etc, now they're just... a storefront. We're expected to drive our own traffic in. That isn't bad, but is it worth [Valve's cut of the revenue]? Only in "we control the marketshare, so you pay our rates for access to these customers" toll terms."
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-biggest-issues-with-steam-in-2017-according-to-230-developers/
Competition is good, but there can be a down side as well. Just imagine devs releasing exclusives on different launchers. Next thing you know we have 6+ launchers with only a few games on each. I have 4 as it is and don't want to add anymore than that.
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.
Same, I use discord a lot so if I was to buy a game on something other than steam Discord will probally be what I'd choose, depends what games it has and such.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Either way, you can't lose! Try it out sometime!
Yeah the price will probally be about the same on all 3, the diff is discord/epic give a bigger cut to the game dev, so it seems to be more profitable for the dev, compared to losing 30% thru steam. Steam only got away with a 30% cut because there was no real competition. More people use discord than steam I bet, so thats a fairly huge audience to tap into.
Being a pessimist is a win-win pattern of thinking. If you're a pessimist (I'll admit that I am!) you're either:
A. Proven right (if something bad happens)
or
B. Pleasantly surprised (if something good happens)
Either way, you can't lose! Try it out sometime!
Maybe we can Make Steam Great Again if they have some actual competition.
And - it being a legal thing and all - Epic and Discord (in the EU at least) will have to adopt "the same" policy. (I'm not aware of Steam offering more than they have to legally.)
You don't use Discord for guild raids or dungeons and what not?
For the ones it spirals and I'm not blameless - It usually starts with me trying to find out if game has X. Then people tell me how wrong I am to care and how my taste is wrong. In these I don't personally attack anyone (I do make broad statements about "kids" and "small children" clearly aimed at the kids and small children I am talking to) while getting directly personally attacked by damn near everyone, the dev warns everyone no personal attacks and locks the thread and bans me. The first time this happened, out of about maybe four of five similar instances, I started a new thread since no one told me if X element was in the game or not. That time I was banned for spamming. I never did get an answer.
Another three or four times (three I can clearly think of) I did absolutely nothing to get banned. For some game listed as an rpg that had zero rpg elements and even the most hippie of the rpg-hippies that think almost every game is an rpg wouldn't think this game was an rpg. I asked why it was listed as an rpg (not tag, had rpg as a genre listing). I got banned and the thread was locked. For Pathfinder I asked questions the day before release, system specific questions, and got banned. I guess they were (maybe still are) super ban happy at that time. Everyone tried saying all the banning was due to political questions but my questions were about combat mechanics and how prominent the city management aspects were. The other game was a console game/pc release and I asked questions about the UI and if keys could be rebound to the KB&M and got banned for trolling. I put in a steam ticket for that one and steam said the devs can do what they want on their steam forums. This was in the last three months or so, so a newer game. Not the vampire one or Lovecraft one, but kind of similar graphics as those. I can't remember the name off-hand.
For Steam themselves, my issue with them is every time I post something in feedback, about better sorting functions, or having more exclusive tagging options to weed out games I don't have any interest in, about anything I post about the thread gets immediately locked by some dickhead mod after some nonsensical reply. Once I made a post about something like their "big picture" controller thing but for KB&M, letting players know it fully supports KB&M and has standard functions everyone expects and have expected since the late 80s like rebindable keys. That got locked and I made a new thread asking why it was locked (no reason was given by a mod when they locked it) and then I got a warning or a really short ban for spamming or something like that.
I never posted heavily on steam - I'm just not a big poster anywhere. Sometimes I go through spurts. The first time I posted in Steam's site feedback was maybe a year or two ago, and I've had steam damn near the start. Every single one of my threads in feedback were locked for no discernable reason besides the one where I asked why my thread was locked. That angers me because it is Steam themselves, and not a dev being heavy handed trying to protect their game.
Crazily enough, the one time I clearly deserved to be banned nothing happened to me. In was the console/pc game with the slow-minded blacksmith's son turned knight from Hungary or thereabouts, which I did not like and gave a negative review to so the devs had no reason not to ban me since they already got my money and a bad review, I got in an argument claiming the game was a JRPG since it had no choices, a pre-generated character that isn't and never will be your character, and played exactly like a Jrpg and not a real rpg. We got really mean and rude and not even a warning was given. My first post was very hostile and I acted like a dick throughout. If that got locked and me banned I would 100% understand why and would never complain about it. I don't think they are heavy handed with bigger games like that?
In fact, I never got a warning or anything from Steam outside of the last year. This all seems new. I had no idea devs could even ban people on steam. And again, I've been with steam since the start.
I never got a warning or banned (at least that I can remember) on this forum, and got into at least one argument with someone on here I figured I would at least get a warning for. I'm old and generally don't give a shit so I'm not a quality poster, and when I'm high I write walls of text like this, but I don't think I do much anything to be banned or have threads I start locked. And I'm reasonable enough to understand if and when I do do something to deserve it.
I don't know. I agree that steam has services none of the others currently do or probably will, but even with that tied into a game people still use gog and anything that isn't steam. Most of the people I know waited to buy the NWN:EE through GOG, even though almost all the reasons for the EE is steam workshop or their server thing through steam (I think, I haven't bought it but going off what I think I heard the improvements are).
I also remember people saying Origin would fail, and they keep offering more and more third party games through it. Hell, outside of Bioware EA makes pretty much zero games I am interested in and even I keep my subscription going for it.
I think the new platforms will do well enough, and I think Amazon will get in on it, and I think MS is stupid for not doing it years ago. But what I think will make the new ones or not will be key resellers. I'm predicting now that one of the new ones is going to be more lucrative for resellers and exploit the shit out of it for market share, forcing the others to adopt and driving prices down. Which is good for the PC market long term, especially when these platforms start being mobile device stores too.
The big question will be will MS do something about this or continue being absolutely retarded when it comes to PC gaming (and the eventual merge of PC/mobile device gaming on these platforms).
1) Discord is a pretty small fry alot of people dont actually use it either and a good chance they cant handle the loads.
2) EPIC they have the developer end covered but their front end is pretty abysmal atm for shopping and browsing.
Ok nit picky trivial issues really THIS IS THE REAL DEAL.
1) Most gamers have established steam libraries why should I start a new library with yet another loader and account to manage.?
2) Guess what as a customer aka the end buyer I honestly dont care that game maker xyz can make even more money. Come back talk to when you realize us the consumers are the ones that matter so until you are able to talk that we get to purchase games for less we DONT CARE HOW YOU GUYS CHOP UP OUR MONEY. Personally I think steam earns their cut.
3) While joe blow short sighted game developer might say "gee if we used epic we would have made xxxx more money because of the lower cut...Apparently they forget that ACTUALLY they would made less money because steam comes with a built in customer base of millions to sell your game to so ya epic might take 15% less for the service but you forgot to factor in you most likely sold 35% less copies of your game....DUH.
Its going to be insanely hard to compete with steam at this point, BUT I would favor EPIC over discord by a long shot because EPIC atleast has the potential to tie in the use of their VERY POPULAR game engine that many dev's use to try to pull them onto the epic store, discord literally offers nothing but another space that is far inferior to steam.
Kind of funny to see people talk about competition is good....I think you are confused though non of this was the type of competition that helps the buyer and customer it was all about competition to chop up our money not provide us better and cheaper purchase options.
Except nothing discussed mentioned "lowering game prices" its was all about increasing revenue for the developer and you would be naive to think they will pas down those savings to the consumer lol. If that was the case it would been mentioned but it wasnt.