So developers aren't allowed to shop around for deals? Only gamers are allowed to? That's some privilege right there.
If a developers can get a 6 figure deal, and a better split of sales... They probably should take it.
It works out for steam users to since in 6 months the exclusivity deal likely ends. So they'll have a game without the launch bugs.
It's disingenuous for a studio or publisher to use Steam as an advertising platform for FREE and then bait and switch at the last moment. Shopping is fine. Saying one thing to your partners and customers and the pulling a switch at the last moment isn't. At least in the US it's generally a frowned upon business tack. If a company wants to shop then they should do so before choosing a partner.
I can see Steam changing how that works in a very short period of time Metro and Ashen (they played Microsoft on this too) got huge exposure on Steam. I'm not sure what, or if they're do anything, but it would be wise to shore that up. Maybe they'll need to adjust their pricing structure, maybe not. The other 30%'ers (stores that also charge 30%) haven't even publicly acknowledged the issue. Also Epic and other studios haven't even tried to break that hold. This is personal with Steam, not because it affects them industry wide. Industry wide 30% and unfriendly terms are still the norm.
TL;DR: This is Epic/Tencent trying to break Valve, not make the industry change for the better.
I agree the timing sucks, but competition has almost always led to innovation within an industry. In that sense, "breaking Valve" is incredibly likely to make the industry change for the better.
You weren't going to some kind of open source, OS-neutral, non-profit with the resources to compete with Valve. It had to be a juggernaut with it's own interests.
How is it going to lead to innovation? Valve has been innovating like hell. In the past few years Valve has helped take WINE and SteamPlay from something that sort of works to making over 80% of my games library work on Ubuntu, no Windows needed. It literally gets better by the week and month.
I wasn't expecting any of that. I was happy with studios publishing on Steam, PlayStation, Microsoft Store, GoG, Xbox, Nintendo, Uplay, etc. I don't care if these studios publish on Tencent/Epic. I care that they exclusively publish on Tencent/Epic. I care that they're openly hostile to my platform mostly because of DRM.
Most of all I'm pointing out that these stores aren't all in one building, aisles away from each other. They're completely different buildings. Epic/Tencent isn't even a choice because they're openly hostile to a truly DRM free OS. They support Denuvo, DRM, and publishers/studios to the detriment of their users.
Gamers have forgotten how exclusives used to screw us over and how we had to fight that philosophy from consoles. Tim Sweeny whine and whined how Microsoft Store exclusives would break the PC industry. Gamers raged at Microsoft and the Store as a great exlcusives evil. Oh the irony of a gullible user base and a predatory company like Tencent/Epic.
Valve has been innovating alright; their sales have gone to shit, they've completely stopped curating their store to the detriment of gamers, and they fuck indie devs hard unless the indie devs reach breakout hit status of epic proportions.
You're acting like this is all bad, and it's not. Growing pains are inevitable. But maintaining the status quo because Valve happens to be taking one iniative that serves a rather small percentage of total gamers (including yourself) doesn't seem very convincing to me.
How has Valve screwed indies? They're the first major storefront to promote indies. The hands-off curation is to accommodate indies. They give game publishers and studios a lot of free room to run their games how they want - custom DRM, modding workshop, community hubs and groups.
Valve's initiative serves themselves but benefits me, and all gamers really. They're working to build a Windows free gaming system. This means games that worked on old versions of Windows and not Win10 could work well again. That means you aren't shackled to a Microsoft update cycle or their inherent built-in DRM platform.
So I ask again how has Valve screwed indies? If anything the indie game movement has Valve to thank for even being a thing because before them no other major publisher even gave two fucks about them. In fact "indies" got traction from other stores just to compete with Valve. That was competitive innovation. How do exclusives breed competition? They don't. It is all bad.
How has Valve screwed indies?
How are exclusives beneficial and how do they breed competition?
You yourself have pointed out how saturated the gaming market is and how many of these game studios need to die. So how does Epic propping them up with financial crutches benefit the entire ecosystem rather than fostering more mediocre glut?
Propping what up, exactly?
Valve screws indies by taking the cut and providing fairly shit support in terms of facilitating technical concerns from gamer to dev, for one specific example. They do the least possible unless the dev's game has skyrocketed into the strastophere, and they do it because they're holding the gaming population hostage. They dgaf, because they know a struggling or up and coming indie will have to come to them merely for the possibility to have gamers see the title.
They screw gamers by negligently allowing bullshit titles with no prospect of completion and scam artists to linger in their store. Why? Because where else you gonna get solid indie games, except by wading through the bullshit on Steam? They dgaf, because they know you got nowhere else to go if you're interested in the majority of indie titles.
Microsoft update cycles have as much to do with security as anything else. Sure, it isn't all centered around that, but it sure as hell is a huge part of it. And since YOUR PC being vulnerable can, quite literally, cause OTHER PCs to become infected as well, I can't see fault in that.
Like I said, that you guys seem to be ignoring in the interest of just arguing for the sake of arguing: this is not all good or all bad. But competition in general is good, and should be encouraged, even if we criticize the specific decisions of some of the competition.
How is it going to lead to innovation? Valve has been innovating like hell. In the past few years Valve has helped take WINE and SteamPlay from something that sort of works to making over 80% of my games library work on Ubuntu, no Windows needed. It literally gets better by the week and month.
I wasn't expecting any of that. I was happy with studios publishing on Steam, PlayStation, Microsoft Store, GoG, Xbox, Nintendo, Uplay, etc. I don't care if these studios publish on Tencent/Epic. I care that they exclusively publish on Tencent/Epic. I care that they're openly hostile to my platform mostly because of DRM.
Most of all I'm pointing out that these stores aren't all in one building, aisles away from each other. They're completely different buildings. Epic/Tencent isn't even a choice because they're openly hostile to a truly DRM free OS. They support Denuvo, DRM, and publishers/studios to the detriment of their users.
Gamers have forgotten how exclusives used to screw us over and how we had to fight that philosophy from consoles. Tim Sweeny whine and whined how Microsoft Store exclusives would break the PC industry. Gamers raged at Microsoft and the Store as a great exlcusives evil. Oh the irony of a gullible user base and a predatory company like Tencent/Epic.
Valve has been innovating alright; their sales have gone to shit, they've completely stopped curating their store to the detriment of gamers, and they fuck indie devs hard unless the indie devs reach breakout hit status of epic proportions.
You're acting like this is all bad, and it's not. Growing pains are inevitable. But maintaining the status quo because Valve happens to be taking one iniative that serves a rather small percentage of total gamers (including yourself) doesn't seem very convincing to me.
How has Valve screwed indies? They're the first major storefront to promote indies. The hands-off curation is to accommodate indies. They give game publishers and studios a lot of free room to run their games how they want - custom DRM, modding workshop, community hubs and groups.
Valve's initiative serves themselves but benefits me, and all gamers really. They're working to build a Windows free gaming system. This means games that worked on old versions of Windows and not Win10 could work well again. That means you aren't shackled to a Microsoft update cycle or their inherent built-in DRM platform.
So I ask again how has Valve screwed indies? If anything the indie game movement has Valve to thank for even being a thing because before them no other major publisher even gave two fucks about them. In fact "indies" got traction from other stores just to compete with Valve. That was competitive innovation. How do exclusives breed competition? They don't. It is all bad.
How has Valve screwed indies?
How are exclusives beneficial and how do they breed competition?
You yourself have pointed out how saturated the gaming market is and how many of these game studios need to die. So how does Epic propping them up with financial crutches benefit the entire ecosystem rather than fostering more mediocre glut?
Propping what up, exactly?
Valve screws indies by taking the cut and providing fairly shit support in terms of facilitating technical concerns from gamer to dev, for one specific example. They do the least possible unless the dev's game has skyrocketed into the strastophere, and they do it because they're holding the gaming population hostage. They dgaf, because they know a struggling or up and coming indie will have to come to them merely for the possibility to have gamers see the title.
They screw gamers by negligently allowing bullshit titles with no prospect of completion and scam artists to linger in their store. Why? Because where else you gonna get solid indie games, except by wading through the bullshit on Steam? They dgaf, because they know you got nowhere else to go if you're interested in the majority of indie titles.
Microsoft update cycles have as much to do with security as anything else. Sure, it isn't all centered around that, but it sure as hell is a huge part of it. And since YOUR PC being vulnerable can, quite literally, cause OTHER PCs to become infected as well, I can't see fault in that.
Like I said, that you guys seem to be ignoring in the interest of just arguing for the sake of arguing: this is not all good or all bad. But competition in general is good, and should be encouraged, even if we criticize the specific decisions of some of the competition.
so i'm guessing you was i]working or its a owner of a indie and had problem with steam, if not that is some bold declaration of someone who don't know what he is saying, because hey a idie dev can launch tehy game over the internet by they own, they don't really need steam for that or epic, plus from what I saw people complaining the pricing on epic don't give people any advantage, so why go there?, course if you live in the US you won't have problem, but if you live in any other part of the planet epic is not even competition on this regard, epic is WORSE then Origin, and both are just a launcher for games
competition is al nice and good, but the way things are, epic is not even it
Well, from an alternative gaming shop I would expect competitive prices that would originate from companies competing with each other. Not a console like exclusive bubble inside the PC eco-sphere.
I don't think that anybody would object with Epic's store being an alternative to Steam or GoG or any other store. In the case of exclusives, I will do what I already do with console exclusives, completely ignore them. As far as I am concerned they don't exist.
In a year's time I might even buy the full GOTY edition all DLCs included, assuming Metro Exodus is not avoiding the steam player reviews purely out of preservation purposes. I did that with the latest Deus Ex and ended up not buying it at all, since Square Enix decided to sell half the game and never finish it.
They have to do something to entice players away from Steam.
That's what happens when you allow a monopolistic entity go unchallenged for so long. Merely offering a store with random other games or the same games at the same price wouldn't do shit, because consumers would have no real reason to download it instead of ignoring it.
How about better prices? Since they take a 12% cut, they can theoretically sell the game at a 18% discount price, which is huge. Of course that would require from the developers to also forfeit that amount, which, had they done that, what would the point be leaving Steam if the money in their pocket was the same, but they were losing the Steam marketing in the process?
So why should I care if Epic's store grows, if they need to go anti-consumer in the process? If I as a customer don't benefit from that growth, even long term, why should I facilitate it?
And what makes you think you wouldn't benefit long-term because ONE title on ONE platform isn't immediately and exclusively concerned with you?
That's a pretty bold prediction.
As I said above, I treat exclusives, whether they come from the console eco-system or anywhere else as non existent. The moment this particular game became exclusive, it ceased to exist, as far as I'm concerned.
The problem is not the one game. The problem is with DRM, DLCs, loot boxes and other predatory practices. In this case the curse of closed eco-systems. If this gains any traction, then we'll regress back to the gated past. The only saving grace is that it's going to be operating system gated rather than hardware gated.
The problem from my view is not the Epic store. The problem is the exclusive deals inside the PC gaming zone. Everybody cheered when Microsoft completely abandoned exclusives and all games for Xbox are available for PC. Now we see the exact opposite and it baffles me that there are people defending it.
And being OS-gated is a much lower barrier for the vast majority of consumers.
I get where you're coming from. I do, and I'm with you: the fact that programs aren't all OS and hardware and launcher-neutral sucks for consumers. Ideally, it would've never happened. We can rabble-rouse about it if you like; I'm a huge fan of consumers acknowledging a less-than-ideal situation for themselves. Let's sabre-rattle about it, then. I'll bring my antique Civil War-era sabre. We can rattle all night long.
But that's an ideal, and it's far from reality. Once we're done rattling, we have to accept the reality that there's a balance in these things, and one part of that balance is folks need an incentive to put in the work required to innovate. That incentive is, in this world, money. It's competing to extract the most cash from the consumer base. As such, you (and developers) weren't going to get a new platform built by Tibetan monks for the good of humanity to compete with Valve. You'll get another juggernaut attempting to steal some of that sweet, sweet market share from Valve, largely by trying to tie you into their own platform. And how has it been easiest and most effective to draw players from one platform to another (whether it be OS, console, or launcher)? By having titles gamers want to play that they can't get elsewhere. Did you really not expect that?
How is it going to lead to innovation? Valve has been innovating like hell. In the past few years Valve has helped take WINE and SteamPlay from something that sort of works to making over 80% of my games library work on Ubuntu, no Windows needed. It literally gets better by the week and month.
I wasn't expecting any of that. I was happy with studios publishing on Steam, PlayStation, Microsoft Store, GoG, Xbox, Nintendo, Uplay, etc. I don't care if these studios publish on Tencent/Epic. I care that they exclusively publish on Tencent/Epic. I care that they're openly hostile to my platform mostly because of DRM.
Most of all I'm pointing out that these stores aren't all in one building, aisles away from each other. They're completely different buildings. Epic/Tencent isn't even a choice because they're openly hostile to a truly DRM free OS. They support Denuvo, DRM, and publishers/studios to the detriment of their users.
Gamers have forgotten how exclusives used to screw us over and how we had to fight that philosophy from consoles. Tim Sweeny whine and whined how Microsoft Store exclusives would break the PC industry. Gamers raged at Microsoft and the Store as a great exlcusives evil. Oh the irony of a gullible user base and a predatory company like Tencent/Epic.
Valve has been innovating alright; their sales have gone to shit, they've completely stopped curating their store to the detriment of gamers, and they fuck indie devs hard unless the indie devs reach breakout hit status of epic proportions.
You're acting like this is all bad, and it's not. Growing pains are inevitable. But maintaining the status quo because Valve happens to be taking one iniative that serves a rather small percentage of total gamers (including yourself) doesn't seem very convincing to me.
How has Valve screwed indies? They're the first major storefront to promote indies. The hands-off curation is to accommodate indies. They give game publishers and studios a lot of free room to run their games how they want - custom DRM, modding workshop, community hubs and groups.
Valve's initiative serves themselves but benefits me, and all gamers really. They're working to build a Windows free gaming system. This means games that worked on old versions of Windows and not Win10 could work well again. That means you aren't shackled to a Microsoft update cycle or their inherent built-in DRM platform.
So I ask again how has Valve screwed indies? If anything the indie game movement has Valve to thank for even being a thing because before them no other major publisher even gave two fucks about them. In fact "indies" got traction from other stores just to compete with Valve. That was competitive innovation. How do exclusives breed competition? They don't. It is all bad.
How has Valve screwed indies?
How are exclusives beneficial and how do they breed competition?
You yourself have pointed out how saturated the gaming market is and how many of these game studios need to die. So how does Epic propping them up with financial crutches benefit the entire ecosystem rather than fostering more mediocre glut?
Propping what up, exactly?
Valve screws indies by taking the cut and providing fairly shit support in terms of facilitating technical concerns from gamer to dev, for one specific example. They do the least possible unless the dev's game has skyrocketed into the strastophere, and they do it because they're holding the gaming population hostage. They dgaf, because they know a struggling or up and coming indie will have to come to them merely for the possibility to have gamers see the title.
They screw gamers by negligently allowing bullshit titles with no prospect of completion and scam artists to linger in their store. Why? Because where else you gonna get solid indie games, except by wading through the bullshit on Steam? They dgaf, because they know you got nowhere else to go if you're interested in the majority of indie titles.
Microsoft update cycles have as much to do with security as anything else. Sure, it isn't all centered around that, but it sure as hell is a huge part of it. And since YOUR PC being vulnerable can, quite literally, cause OTHER PCs to become infected as well, I can't see fault in that.
Like I said, that you guys seem to be ignoring in the interest of just arguing for the sake of arguing: this is not all good or all bad. But competition in general is good, and should be encouraged, even if we criticize the specific decisions of some of the competition.
so i'm guessing you was i]working or its a owner of a indie and had problem with steam, if not that is some bold declaration of someone who don't know what he is saying, because hey a idie dev can launch tehy game over the internet by they own, they don't really need steam for that or epic, plus from what I saw people complaining the pricing on epic don't give people any advantage, so why go there?, course if you live in the US you won't have problem, but if you live in any other part of the planet epic is not even competition on this regard, epic is WORSE then Origin, and both are just a launcher for games
competition is al nice and good, but the way things are, epic is not even it
No, I've read reports from indie devs on Steam's work with them. They do the bare minimum for all but their darlings.
EDIT- Oh, and as of recently, they charge more for smaller titles than their darlings, too.
And being OS-gated is a much lower barrier for the vast majority of consumers.
I get where you're coming from. I do, and I'm with you: the fact that programs aren't all OS and hardware and launcher-neutral sucks for consumers. Ideally, it would've never happened. We can rabble-rouse about it if you like; I'm a huge fan of consumers acknowledging a less-than-ideal situation for themselves. Let's sabre-rattle about it, then. I'll bring my antique Civil War-era sabre. We can rattle all night long.
But that's an ideal, and it's far from reality. Once we're done rattling, we have to accept the reality that there's a balance in these things, and one part of that balance is folks need an incentive to put in the work required to innovate. That incentive is, in this world, money. It's competing to extract the most cash from the consumer base. As such, you (and developers) weren't going to get a new platform built by Tibetan monks for the good of humanity to compete with Valve. You'll get another juggernaut attempting to steal some of that sweet, sweet market share from Valve, largely by trying to tie you into their own platform. And how has it been easiest and most effective to draw players from one platform to another (whether it be OS, console, or launcher)? By having titles gamers want to play that they can't get elsewhere. Did you really not expect that?
You're assuming that people will subscribe to the multiple of fragmented little eco-systems. I think the more likely outcome is to have what is happening in the media service provider eco-system (Netflix etc.). People will subscribe to one service and torrent/pirate the rest.
You can already see the signs in this very thread.
Edit: As it stands right now, Metro Exodus really needs Denuvo. Otherwise the majority will stick with Steam and just pirate the game.
As I said above, I treat exclusives, whether they come from the console eco-system or anywhere else as non existent. The moment this particular game became exclusive, it ceased to exist, as far as I'm concerned.
So let me get this right.. unless the game can be played on all platforms, and sold by everyone, it is not exist to you.. so if it requires a steam account.. you don't play it.. right?
You must have a very small list of games you can play..
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
Valve screws indies by taking the cut and providing fairly shit support in terms of facilitating technical concerns from gamer to dev, for one specific example. They do the least possible unless the dev's game has skyrocketed into the strastophere, and they do it because they're holding the gaming population hostage. They dgaf, because they know a struggling or up and coming indie will have to come to them merely for the possibility to have gamers see the title.
They screw gamers by negligently allowing bullshit titles with no prospect of completion and scam artists to linger in their store. Why? Because where else you gonna get solid indie games, except by wading through the bullshit on Steam? They dgaf, because they know you got nowhere else to go if you're interested in the majority of indie titles.
Microsoft update cycles have as much to do with security as anything else. Sure, it isn't all centered around that, but it sure as hell is a huge part of it. And since YOUR PC being vulnerable can, quite literally, cause OTHER PCs to become infected as well, I can't see fault in that.
Like I said, that you guys seem to be ignoring in the interest of just arguing for the sake of arguing: this is not all good or all bad. But competition in general is good, and should be encouraged, even if we criticize the specific decisions of some of the competition.
so i'm guessing you was i]working or its a owner of a indie and had problem with steam, if not that is some bold declaration of someone who don't know what he is saying, because hey a idie dev can launch tehy game over the internet by they own, they don't really need steam for that or epic, plus from what I saw people complaining the pricing on epic don't give people any advantage, so why go there?, course if you live in the US you won't have problem, but if you live in any other part of the planet epic is not even competition on this regard, epic is WORSE then Origin, and both are just a launcher for games
competition is al nice and good, but the way things are, epic is not even it
No, I've read reports from indie devs on Steam's work with them. They do the bare minimum for all but their darlings.
you want steam do the work of developing the game too?
If Steam is so great for everyone, including developers, exclusive deals like the ones with EPIC would never be considered. Especially when said developers know that they're more than halving their sales numbers.
There is seriously something wrong with Steam from a developers perspective if developers are willing to lose that many sales.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
As I said above, I treat exclusives, whether they come from the console eco-system or anywhere else as non existent. The moment this particular game became exclusive, it ceased to exist, as far as I'm concerned.
So let me get this right.. unless the game can be played on all platforms, and sold by everyone, it is not exist to you.. so if it requires a steam account.. you don't play it.. right?
You must have a very small list of games you can play..
If the game is not available in my platform of choice, which is the PC, it might as well not exist.
For example I treat RD2 as a non existent game. I consider it a much healthier approach than wait for Sony to unshackle their games from their hardware. (Edit) Or even worse, whine about it.
As I said above, I treat exclusives, whether they come from the console eco-system or anywhere else as non existent. The moment this particular game became exclusive, it ceased to exist, as far as I'm concerned.
So let me get this right.. unless the game can be played on all platforms, and sold by everyone, it is not exist to you.. so if it requires a steam account.. you don't play it.. right?
You must have a very small list of games you can play..
If the game is not available in my platform of choice, which is the PC, it might as well not exist.
That is nowhere near the same as being exclusive.
That is akin to saying "I play Play Station Games, and if it's not part of the Play Station, it does not exist to me" but at the same time you will buy, and thus fiscally support and ensure the success of, all the exclusive stuff that Play Station carries.
(end: Changed above analogy to be more game related, I used Target, changed to Play Station)
Egotism is the anesthetic that dullens the pain of stupidity, this is why when I try to beat my head against the stupidity of other people, I only hurt myself.
If Steam is so great for everyone, including developers, exclusive deals like the ones with EPIC would never be considered. Especially when said developers know that they're more than halving their sales numbers.
There is seriously something wrong with Steam from a developers perspective if developers are willing to lose that many sales.
Are we talking in general or in this particular case? In this particular case the developers chose to use the Steam marketing machine (and their 90M subscription base) to promote their game and then bail with an exclusive deal. A deal they made months before, which is obvious since all the physical boxed codes are Epic exclusive and those were prepared at least two months ago.
The biggest problem a new developer faces on steam is saturation. Giving equal chances to all those indie developers means that you get hundreds of games released per month, a tiny fraction of which will receive some traction.
The Epic store right now is tiny in terms of titles. When it reaches the tens of thousands, then we can start talking about how indie developers are not getting proper attention.
Valve screws indies by taking the cut and providing fairly shit support in terms of facilitating technical concerns from gamer to dev, for one specific example. They do the least possible unless the dev's game has skyrocketed into the strastophere, and they do it because they're holding the gaming population hostage. They dgaf, because they know a struggling or up and coming indie will have to come to them merely for the possibility to have gamers see the title.
They screw gamers by negligently allowing bullshit titles with no prospect of completion and scam artists to linger in their store. Why? Because where else you gonna get solid indie games, except by wading through the bullshit on Steam? They dgaf, because they know you got nowhere else to go if you're interested in the majority of indie titles.
Microsoft update cycles have as much to do with security as anything else. Sure, it isn't all centered around that, but it sure as hell is a huge part of it. And since YOUR PC being vulnerable can, quite literally, cause OTHER PCs to become infected as well, I can't see fault in that.
Like I said, that you guys seem to be ignoring in the interest of just arguing for the sake of arguing: this is not all good or all bad. But competition in general is good, and should be encouraged, even if we criticize the specific decisions of some of the competition.
so i'm guessing you was i]working or its a owner of a indie and had problem with steam, if not that is some bold declaration of someone who don't know what he is saying, because hey a idie dev can launch tehy game over the internet by they own, they don't really need steam for that or epic, plus from what I saw people complaining the pricing on epic don't give people any advantage, so why go there?, course if you live in the US you won't have problem, but if you live in any other part of the planet epic is not even competition on this regard, epic is WORSE then Origin, and both are just a launcher for games
competition is al nice and good, but the way things are, epic is not even it
No, I've read reports from indie devs on Steam's work with them. They do the bare minimum for all but their darlings.
you want steam do the work of developing the game too?
And being OS-gated is a much lower barrier for the vast majority of consumers.
I get where you're coming from. I do, and I'm with you: the fact that programs aren't all OS and hardware and launcher-neutral sucks for consumers. Ideally, it would've never happened. We can rabble-rouse about it if you like; I'm a huge fan of consumers acknowledging a less-than-ideal situation for themselves. Let's sabre-rattle about it, then. I'll bring my antique Civil War-era sabre. We can rattle all night long.
But that's an ideal, and it's far from reality. Once we're done rattling, we have to accept the reality that there's a balance in these things, and one part of that balance is folks need an incentive to put in the work required to innovate. That incentive is, in this world, money. It's competing to extract the most cash from the consumer base. As such, you (and developers) weren't going to get a new platform built by Tibetan monks for the good of humanity to compete with Valve. You'll get another juggernaut attempting to steal some of that sweet, sweet market share from Valve, largely by trying to tie you into their own platform. And how has it been easiest and most effective to draw players from one platform to another (whether it be OS, console, or launcher)? By having titles gamers want to play that they can't get elsewhere. Did you really not expect that?
You're assuming that people will subscribe to the multiple of fragmented little eco-systems. I think the more likely outcome is to have what is happening in the media service provider eco-system (Netflix etc.). People will subscribe to one service and torrent/pirate the rest.
You can already see the signs in this very thread.
Edit: As it stands right now, Metro Exodus really needs Denuvo. Otherwise the majority will stick with Steam and just pirate the game.
Consumers breaking the law isn't a good argument for why competition shouldn't exist, though.
They've ensured that I will be pirating the game instead. Sorry, but that's the truth of it. I simply don't want to build up another library of games somewhere else and that's my choice to make. I'm not waiting a year when I don't have to. My games collection is complicated enough as it is. If it was on Steam I would have bought it in two days when I get paid.
So you are going to steal it?
Gotcha good thing you are sticking to your principals there. Steam or steal!
I've always been open about doing what I think is the best option for myself. I pump way more money into the industry than the average gamer so, trust me, you aren't going to make me feel bad about it.
If I want to make sure games keep featuring on Steam, I need to vote with my wallet, right?
I'm not saying it should only be on Steam.. but I want it on Steam as well.
This is one of the most pretentious things I've read on this site in a long time. Good job I guess?
I guess it would be, if I was trying to impress someone. I'm not, so.....
If I cared about impressing people on this site, I wouldn't have said anything about this. I knew it wasn't going to be popular.
Post edited by TheDarkrayne on
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
If Steam is so great for everyone, including developers, exclusive deals like the ones with EPIC would never be considered. Especially when said developers know that they're more than halving their sales numbers.
There is seriously something wrong with Steam from a developers perspective if developers are willing to lose that many sales.
Are we talking in general or in this particular case? In this particular case the developers chose to use the Steam marketing machine (and their 90M subscription base) to promote their game and then bail with an exclusive deal. A deal they made months before, which is obvious since all the physical boxed codes are Epic exclusive and those were prepared at least two months ago.
The biggest problem a new developer faces on steam is saturation. Giving equal chances to all those indie developers means that you get hundreds of games released per month, a tiny fraction of which will receive some traction.
The Epic store right now is tiny in terms of titles. When it reaches the tens of thousands, then we can start talking about how indie developers are not getting proper attention.
And Xasapis, I have no problem with your taking issue at the strategy applied by one particular game. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
As I said above, I treat exclusives, whether they come from the console eco-system or anywhere else as non existent. The moment this particular game became exclusive, it ceased to exist, as far as I'm concerned.
So let me get this right.. unless the game can be played on all platforms, and sold by everyone, it is not exist to you.. so if it requires a steam account.. you don't play it.. right?
You must have a very small list of games you can play..
If the game is not available in my platform of choice, which is the PC, it might as well not exist.
That is nowhere near the same as being exclusive.
That is akin to saying "I play Play Station Games, and if it's not part of the Play Station, it does not exist to me" but at the same time you will buy, and thus fiscally support and ensure the success of, all the exclusive stuff that Play Station carries.
(end: Changed above analogy to be more game related, I used Target, changed to Play Station)
Console are luxury devices. PCs are the bare bone minimum electronic hardware one has if he doesn't have anything else.
The first furniture in a new house is a bed.
The first electrical device is a refrigerator.
The first electronic device is a PC.
In this context supporting the PC platform means supporting the vast majority of people using electronic devices everywhere.
Remember when every MMO had it's own patcher/launcher?
How is this case of "too many storefronts" a whole lot different than that?
I'm not buying this kind of opinion.
It's like.. we all do our weekly food shopping, right? If we had to get bread from one store, fruit from a different store, milk from another, canned goods and cereal from another, frozen food from a different one, meat from another, soda from another, wine from another, etc. etc.
That analogy makes no sense. Its more like, we have one grocery store (PC) and people claim that one aisle (Steam) is better then another aisle (Epic Store) for one reason or another.
That argument works for consoles though!
Digital platforms on PC that sell games are different shops, literally. The analogy is fine.
We aren't buying games from 'PC' are we..?
Until Wal-Mart, Kroger, trader Joe's, and Food Lion share the same building so going from one to another costs, like, no time at all.. it's a poor analogy.
Time spent is nothing to do with the point I was trying to make, but it is still more effort to use more than one storefront, even if you think it's not enough to bother you. What about people who do online food shopping and get it delivered? Now it takes way less time to buy from different stores.. do people still do it? I doubt it. All the supermarkets are free to access and order from online.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
I'm a little lost as to why people are so enraged about this. On a few other forums I saw literally hundreds of pages of hate for epic for paying the publisher for exclusivity. All the arguments seem to lean towards "EPIC DOESNT HAVE ALL THE FEATURES STEAM HAS" and they post that graphic that shows the differences.
While epic has a ton of money, I'm not seeing the necessity for a new storefront to literally have all the features another store has that has been around for 15 years. Steam didn't start with all of that support and features. It was literally the most barebones store I've ever seen in my life. Sure, I agree with the return policy argument, but the other features I expect over time to be implemented if they are serious about wanting to compete with steam. They are honoring steam purchases anyways, and allowing downloads and updates on steam still, at least for everyone who bought it up until yesterday I think.
Also this is crazy people are freaking out over digital content. I wish physical media would make a comeback because at least at that point I would have a copy of my game if the storefront got shut down. We haven't seen a major digital store get shut down yet, but I want to know how it will be handled if someone like EA went under and origin went away. Or if Valve somehow went under, what would happen to our steam libraries.
And being OS-gated is a much lower barrier for the vast majority of consumers.
I get where you're coming from. I do, and I'm with you: the fact that programs aren't all OS and hardware and launcher-neutral sucks for consumers. Ideally, it would've never happened. We can rabble-rouse about it if you like; I'm a huge fan of consumers acknowledging a less-than-ideal situation for themselves. Let's sabre-rattle about it, then. I'll bring my antique Civil War-era sabre. We can rattle all night long.
But that's an ideal, and it's far from reality. Once we're done rattling, we have to accept the reality that there's a balance in these things, and one part of that balance is folks need an incentive to put in the work required to innovate. That incentive is, in this world, money. It's competing to extract the most cash from the consumer base. As such, you (and developers) weren't going to get a new platform built by Tibetan monks for the good of humanity to compete with Valve. You'll get another juggernaut attempting to steal some of that sweet, sweet market share from Valve, largely by trying to tie you into their own platform. And how has it been easiest and most effective to draw players from one platform to another (whether it be OS, console, or launcher)? By having titles gamers want to play that they can't get elsewhere. Did you really not expect that?
You're assuming that people will subscribe to the multiple of fragmented little eco-systems. I think the more likely outcome is to have what is happening in the media service provider eco-system (Netflix etc.). People will subscribe to one service and torrent/pirate the rest.
You can already see the signs in this very thread.
Edit: As it stands right now, Metro Exodus really needs Denuvo. Otherwise the majority will stick with Steam and just pirate the game.
Consumers breaking the law isn't a good argument for why competition shouldn't exist, though.
You can ignore the pirating if you wish. Just focus on them picking one service and ignoring the rest.
If Steam is so great for everyone, including developers, exclusive deals like the ones with EPIC would never be considered. Especially when said developers know that they're more than halving their sales numbers.
There is seriously something wrong with Steam from a developers perspective if developers are willing to lose that many sales.
Are we talking in general or in this particular case? In this particular case the developers chose to use the Steam marketing machine (and their 90M subscription base) to promote their game and then bail with an exclusive deal. A deal they made months before, which is obvious since all the physical boxed codes are Epic exclusive and those were prepared at least two months ago.
The biggest problem a new developer faces on steam is saturation. Giving equal chances to all those indie developers means that you get hundreds of games released per month, a tiny fraction of which will receive some traction.
The Epic store right now is tiny in terms of titles. When it reaches the tens of thousands, then we can start talking about how indie developers are not getting proper attention.
And Xasapsis, I have no problem with your taking issue at the strategy applied by one particular game. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Why not?
You're clamouring for more competition (which was always here), irrespective of the means of getting there (Restriction of games to force your launcher).
Remember when every MMO had it's own patcher/launcher?
How is this case of "too many storefronts" a whole lot different than that?
I'm not buying this kind of opinion.
It's like.. we all do our weekly food shopping, right? If we had to get bread from one store, fruit from a different store, milk from another, canned goods and cereal from another, frozen food from a different one, meat from another, soda from another, wine from another, etc. etc.
That analogy makes no sense. Its more like, we have one grocery store (PC) and people claim that one aisle (Steam) is better then another aisle (Epic Store) for one reason or another.
That argument works for consoles though!
Digital platforms on PC that sell games are different shops, literally. The analogy is fine.
We aren't buying games from 'PC' are we..?
Until Wal-Mart, Kroger, trader Joe's, and Food Lion share the same building so going from one to another costs, like, no time at all.. it's a poor analogy.
Time spent is nothing to do with the point I was trying to make, but it is still more effort to use more than one storefront, even if you think it's not enough to bother you. What about people who do online food shopping and get it delivered? Now it takes way less time to buy from different stores.. do people still do it? I doubt it. All the supermarkets are free to access and order from online.
Because groceries can't be delivered digitally. That's a separate issue that has to do with the nature of the product being some (physical vs. digital).
If Steam is so great for everyone, including developers, exclusive deals like the ones with EPIC would never be considered. Especially when said developers know that they're more than halving their sales numbers.
There is seriously something wrong with Steam from a developers perspective if developers are willing to lose that many sales.
Are we talking in general or in this particular case? In this particular case the developers chose to use the Steam marketing machine (and their 90M subscription base) to promote their game and then bail with an exclusive deal. A deal they made months before, which is obvious since all the physical boxed codes are Epic exclusive and those were prepared at least two months ago.
The biggest problem a new developer faces on steam is saturation. Giving equal chances to all those indie developers means that you get hundreds of games released per month, a tiny fraction of which will receive some traction.
The Epic store right now is tiny in terms of titles. When it reaches the tens of thousands, then we can start talking about how indie developers are not getting proper attention.
And Xasapsis, I have no problem with your taking issue at the strategy applied by one particular game. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Why not?
You're clamouring for more competition (which was always here), irrespective of the means of getting there (Restriction of games to force your launcher).
Because I can acknowledge that social proof and general laziness among gamers means merely offering the same exact thing Steam does will be a recipe for utter failure.
You guys don't seem to understand. Steam is a plague on the indie and even triple A market - they demand 30% of all sales from developers product.
That's INSANE!
The game distribution platform genre needs this shake-up for Valve to do absolutely anything to keep in competition with Epic, but they aren't doing much. At all. For all I care, and as a person who has thousands in Steam economy currently, I HOPE that Valve crashes and burns for what they did not only to their storefront with the mass amount of garbage, but also to the developers by charging them so much money to host it.
I don't understand why people keep saying "lol no steam no buy" when it's only a detriment to YOU, as a customer, because eventually that 30% cost will trickle down to you as either microtransactions or DLC.
Think about this a little before you open your mouth. Competition is good in any form. Don't tell me Origin tried because they were doomed from the start, being hosted by EA. Epic is the only one currently that can do it.
Who are you to say "That's INSANE!"?
I think you have no idea how much money a publisher needs to pay to advertise his game in "front" of 90 mil ? monthly active users which Steam has. Sure, you will never reach that 90 mil mark, but still .. you'll pay a lot to advertise your game outside of Steam for a fraction of that 90 mil. So I think you will end up at least with the same % invested in publishing your game at the end of the day, if you wish to go "outside" Steam.
The big difference is , if you go outside Steam, you will need to have cash to start promoting your game, while with Steam, they take 30% from the sales. This is a HUGE plus developers , at least for the smaller ones.
Steam helped many companies , including Indie ones, to be at least decent successful. If you want to bitch Steam for taking 30% , that's fine, but saying you want them to BURN, while you invested thousands in Steam games, is a bit .. to much.
Don't get me wrong, EPIC's new Game Store is very, very good for the industry since they will take 12% instead of 30% which Steam currently takes = Competition, but don't expect things to change fast, since well .. 90 mil active users is a big plus for Steam for years to come.
I care if the prices for customers also gets lower on Epic's store, but as far as I can see, I see the same prices as on Steam. Sure, more money for developers is good, but who can guarantee me that they will actually invest in making better games?!
So in the end, more money for the companies , but what about the gamers? Currently The Division 2 , on Ubisoft website is 59.99 euros. On Epic? Same price! 59.99 euros. So why should I choose Epic?
I'm an indie developer with projects in the works, that's who I am to say it's insanity.
And yes, I do know the costs. I know how difficult it to for games to be seen, and I know how much money it takes.
People seem to think games are made on the cheap and this 30% take from steam means absolutely nothing because we're making a shit ton of money anyways, and that's not always the case. In fact, it's about 80% of the time not the case if you game doesn't take off within the first couple of months.
And no, I don't think it's a bit too much to say. Valve knows they have a monopoly in this, and they are pretty much extorting developers because people like you just stay with their platform no matter what they do, and then fight tooth and nail AGAINST competition for no reason other than it's more convenient for you to be on one platform.
As a small time developer making a non-triple A game, usually the max you can charge for your work is about 20 bucks, depending on assets and time invested ( e.g. Supergiant games like Bastion, Transistor, and Hades that just came out on Epic because they experienced the same thing with Steam). After Steam cuts? 14 bucks per copy sold. Taxes? 11. Advertisement on the store front? You profit margin is just slipping away.
So don't tell me that wanting Valve to fail is too much. I want them to slip so they can actually feel the burn of Epic games store front - maybe then they'll update their freaking platform that hasn't changed in 10 years.
Edit: Oh. I forgot to add the BS extra features that every Steam user wants on their games now - a big one is Cloud Saving if you have a single player game. That's another cut from Steam. Good bye money and 5 years of my life to get a return that I could have made in a year of bagging groceries!
So developers aren't allowed to shop around for deals? Only gamers are allowed to? That's some privilege right there.
If a developers can get a 6 figure deal, and a better split of sales... They probably should take it.
It works out for steam users to since in 6 months the exclusivity deal likely ends. So they'll have a game without the launch bugs.
It's disingenuous for a studio or publisher to use Steam as an advertising platform for FREE and then bait and switch at the last moment. Shopping is fine. Saying one thing to your partners and customers and the pulling a switch at the last moment isn't. At least in the US it's generally a frowned upon business tack. If a company wants to shop then they should do so before choosing a partner.
I can see Steam changing how that works in a very short period of time Metro and Ashen (they played Microsoft on this too) got huge exposure on Steam. I'm not sure what, or if they're do anything, but it would be wise to shore that up. Maybe they'll need to adjust their pricing structure, maybe not. The other 30%'ers (stores that also charge 30%) haven't even publicly acknowledged the issue. Also Epic and other studios haven't even tried to break that hold. This is personal with Steam, not because it affects them industry wide. Industry wide 30% and unfriendly terms are still the norm.
TL;DR: This is Epic/Tencent trying to break Valve, not make the industry change for the better.
I agree the timing sucks, but competition has almost always led to innovation within an industry. In that sense, "breaking Valve" is incredibly likely to make the industry change for the better.
You weren't going to some kind of open source, OS-neutral, non-profit with the resources to compete with Valve. It had to be a juggernaut with it's own interests.
How is it going to lead to innovation? Valve has been innovating like hell. In the past few years Valve has helped take WINE and SteamPlay from something that sort of works to making over 80% of my games library work on Ubuntu, no Windows needed. It literally gets better by the week and month.
I wasn't expecting any of that. I was happy with studios publishing on Steam, PlayStation, Microsoft Store, GoG, Xbox, Nintendo, Uplay, etc. I don't care if these studios publish on Tencent/Epic. I care that they exclusively publish on Tencent/Epic. I care that they're openly hostile to my platform mostly because of DRM.
Most of all I'm pointing out that these stores aren't all in one building, aisles away from each other. They're completely different buildings. Epic/Tencent isn't even a choice because they're openly hostile to a truly DRM free OS. They support Denuvo, DRM, and publishers/studios to the detriment of their users.
Gamers have forgotten how exclusives used to screw us over and how we had to fight that philosophy from consoles. Tim Sweeny whine and whined how Microsoft Store exclusives would break the PC industry. Gamers raged at Microsoft and the Store as a great exlcusives evil. Oh the irony of a gullible user base and a predatory company like Tencent/Epic.
Valve has been innovating alright; their sales have gone to shit, they've completely stopped curating their store to the detriment of gamers, and they fuck indie devs hard unless the indie devs reach breakout hit status of epic proportions.
You're acting like this is all bad, and it's not. Growing pains are inevitable. But maintaining the status quo because Valve happens to be taking one iniative that serves a rather small percentage of total gamers (including yourself) doesn't seem very convincing to me.
Steam Controller, Vive, SteamOS, wtf didn't they innovate?
Vive is largely irrelevant. The VR market still blows in terms of total market penetration.
Steam Controller? You act as if PCs can't support any other controller.
You all are acting as if this is all bad and no good. That's, quite frankly, an ignorant way to look at it. Is it all good and no bad? Nope, not that either. But competition in general is good for the parties receiving the products or services, even if there are growing pains along the way.
It must be fun hiding under a rock. No matter your personal thoughts on said product doesn't change the fact it was innovative.
Vive has VR technologies developed inhouse at Valve, it is truly innovative.
The steam controller has true haptic feedback on a track pad, again innovation.
SteamOS is a technical marvel itself, being able to trim all that extra crap background crap a named OS has will make your games run much more smoother/quicker. It's a fuckin OS just for gamers! To be able to create something that games that don't necessarily support and make them work is one hell of an achievement.
I think you let your feelings get the best of you sometime.
[[ DEAD ]] - Funny - I deleted my account on the site using the cancel account button. Forum user is separate and still exists with no way of deleting it. Delete it admins. Do it, this ends now.
While epic has a ton of money, I'm not seeing the necessity for a new storefront to literally have all the features another store has that has been around for 15 years.
I won't speak for everyone else, but certain features are essential if they want people to use their launcher daily.
Discord (for example) just like steam, let's you add games that haven't been purchased in their stores to their launcher.
Having a place to discuss every game is essential.
Being able to create groups is essential.
These start adding up quickly, and so does the overall cost required to maintain the launcher. If they want to "dethrone" steam, they MUST add features for the customers.
Comments
Valve screws indies by taking the cut and providing fairly shit support in terms of facilitating technical concerns from gamer to dev, for one specific example. They do the least possible unless the dev's game has skyrocketed into the strastophere, and they do it because they're holding the gaming population hostage. They dgaf, because they know a struggling or up and coming indie will have to come to them merely for the possibility to have gamers see the title.
They screw gamers by negligently allowing bullshit titles with no prospect of completion and scam artists to linger in their store. Why? Because where else you gonna get solid indie games, except by wading through the bullshit on Steam? They dgaf, because they know you got nowhere else to go if you're interested in the majority of indie titles.
Microsoft update cycles have as much to do with security as anything else. Sure, it isn't all centered around that, but it sure as hell is a huge part of it. And since YOUR PC being vulnerable can, quite literally, cause OTHER PCs to become infected as well, I can't see fault in that.
Like I said, that you guys seem to be ignoring in the interest of just arguing for the sake of arguing: this is not all good or all bad. But competition in general is good, and should be encouraged, even if we criticize the specific decisions of some of the competition.
I get where you're coming from. I do, and I'm with you: the fact that programs aren't all OS and hardware and launcher-neutral sucks for consumers. Ideally, it would've never happened. We can rabble-rouse about it if you like; I'm a huge fan of consumers acknowledging a less-than-ideal situation for themselves. Let's sabre-rattle about it, then. I'll bring my antique Civil War-era sabre. We can rattle all night long.
But that's an ideal, and it's far from reality. Once we're done rattling, we have to accept the reality that there's a balance in these things, and one part of that balance is folks need an incentive to put in the work required to innovate. That incentive is, in this world, money. It's competing to extract the most cash from the consumer base. As such, you (and developers) weren't going to get a new platform built by Tibetan monks for the good of humanity to compete with Valve. You'll get another juggernaut attempting to steal some of that sweet, sweet market share from Valve, largely by trying to tie you into their own platform. And how has it been easiest and most effective to draw players from one platform to another (whether it be OS, console, or launcher)? By having titles gamers want to play that they can't get elsewhere. Did you really not expect that?
EDIT- Oh, and as of recently, they charge more for smaller titles than their darlings, too.
You can already see the signs in this very thread.
Edit:
As it stands right now, Metro Exodus really needs Denuvo. Otherwise the majority will stick with Steam and just pirate the game.
You must have a very small list of games you can play..
There is seriously something wrong with Steam from a developers perspective if developers are willing to lose that many sales.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
For example I treat RD2 as a non existent game. I consider it a much healthier approach than wait for Sony to unshackle their games from their hardware. (Edit) Or even worse, whine about it.
That is akin to saying "I play Play Station Games, and if it's not part of the Play Station, it does not exist to me" but at the same time you will buy, and thus fiscally support and ensure the success of, all the exclusive stuff that Play Station carries.
(end: Changed above analogy to be more game related, I used Target, changed to Play Station)
The biggest problem a new developer faces on steam is saturation. Giving equal chances to all those indie developers means that you get hundreds of games released per month, a tiny fraction of which will receive some traction.
The Epic store right now is tiny in terms of titles. When it reaches the tens of thousands, then we can start talking about how indie developers are not getting proper attention.
If I cared about impressing people on this site, I wouldn't have said anything about this. I knew it wasn't going to be popular.
- The first furniture in a new house is a bed.
- The first electrical device is a refrigerator.
- The first electronic device is a PC.
In this context supporting the PC platform means supporting the vast majority of people using electronic devices everywhere.While epic has a ton of money, I'm not seeing the necessity for a new storefront to literally have all the features another store has that has been around for 15 years. Steam didn't start with all of that support and features. It was literally the most barebones store I've ever seen in my life. Sure, I agree with the return policy argument, but the other features I expect over time to be implemented if they are serious about wanting to compete with steam. They are honoring steam purchases anyways, and allowing downloads and updates on steam still, at least for everyone who bought it up until yesterday I think.
Also this is crazy people are freaking out over digital content. I wish physical media would make a comeback because at least at that point I would have a copy of my game if the storefront got shut down. We haven't seen a major digital store get shut down yet, but I want to know how it will be handled if someone like EA went under and origin went away. Or if Valve somehow went under, what would happen to our steam libraries.
You're clamouring for more competition (which was always here), irrespective of the means of getting there (Restriction of games to force your launcher).
And yes, I do know the costs. I know how difficult it to for games to be seen, and I know how much money it takes.
People seem to think games are made on the cheap and this 30% take from steam means absolutely nothing because we're making a shit ton of money anyways, and that's not always the case. In fact, it's about 80% of the time not the case if you game doesn't take off within the first couple of months.
And no, I don't think it's a bit too much to say. Valve knows they have a monopoly in this, and they are pretty much extorting developers because people like you just stay with their platform no matter what they do, and then fight tooth and nail AGAINST competition for no reason other than it's more convenient for you to be on one platform.
As a small time developer making a non-triple A game, usually the max you can charge for your work is about 20 bucks, depending on assets and time invested ( e.g. Supergiant games like Bastion, Transistor, and Hades that just came out on Epic because they experienced the same thing with Steam). After Steam cuts? 14 bucks per copy sold. Taxes? 11. Advertisement on the store front? You profit margin is just slipping away.
So don't tell me that wanting Valve to fail is too much. I want them to slip so they can actually feel the burn of Epic games store front - maybe then they'll update their freaking platform that hasn't changed in 10 years.
Edit: Oh. I forgot to add the BS extra features that every Steam user wants on their games now - a big one is Cloud Saving if you have a single player game. That's another cut from Steam. Good bye money and 5 years of my life to get a return that I could have made in a year of bagging groceries!
Vive has VR technologies developed inhouse at Valve, it is truly innovative.
The steam controller has true haptic feedback on a track pad, again innovation.
SteamOS is a technical marvel itself, being able to trim all that extra crap background crap a named OS has will make your games run much more smoother/quicker. It's a fuckin OS just for gamers! To be able to create something that games that don't necessarily support and make them work is one hell of an achievement.
I think you let your feelings get the best of you sometime.
- Discord (for example) just like steam, let's you add games that haven't been purchased in their stores to their launcher.
- Having a place to discuss every game is essential.
- Being able to create groups is essential.
These start adding up quickly, and so does the overall cost required to maintain the launcher. If they want to "dethrone" steam, they MUST add features for the customers.