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Epic literally has been giving games away for free for like years now and they’re still unable to make a dent because the epic store loving SUCKS to use
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Sep 29, 2023 06:35
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mycot posted:Unless you hate money though why wouldn't you just sell the game on Epic for $60 and pocket the extra money. Which is what happens in practice. Because if you sell it for an equal price 90% of consumers will buy it on steam instead. So you'll only get a tiny portion of that potential extra free money. This is what is already happening for any game that's on both stores. To convince people to actually buy your game on the platform where you get a bigger cut you need something to sweeten the deal, like a small discount or something.
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Sep 29, 2023 06:39
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People joke that the only reason why people initially put up with Steam was to play Half Life but this goes back to how Epic doesn't actually have any real exclusives other than Fortnite.
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Sep 29, 2023 06:41
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Every exclusive game I've purchased on EGS I've regretted once it went to Steam later.
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Sep 29, 2023 06:50
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gently caress SNEEP posted:Every exclusive game I've purchased on EGS I've regretted once it went to Steam later. Same. I bought No Straight Roads near release and not only did it release a Definitive Edition on Steam, none of the updates were backported to the Epic version 
mycot fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Sep 29, 2023 |
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Sep 29, 2023 06:56
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mycot posted:People joke that the only reason why people initially put up with Steam was to play Half Life but this goes back to how Epic doesn't actually have any real exclusives other than Fortnite. It's a joke now but it wasn't then, there was plenty of pushback and doomsaying about what it could (and did) lead to but ultimately they kept releasing bangers and most importantly kept the platform up and running to cement the idea of it being as close to permanent as people needed to invest in it.
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Sep 29, 2023 08:12
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I never had any issues with Steam in its early days, but when it launched there wasn't much to compare it to. Online storefronts in general weren't very good back then.
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Sep 29, 2023 08:27
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I feel like we'll have to wait a good few more years to find out where EGS is headed. I wonder if the Fortnite generation might be a tipping point if all those kids without income end up building a free library on EGS. By the time they grow into adulthood and disposable income, they might not care for Steam if they already have hundreds of games in their Epic library.
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Sep 29, 2023 08:34
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stev posted:I never had any issues with Steam in its early days, but when it launched there wasn't much to compare it to. Online storefronts in general weren't very good back then. It was shithouse on dial up, which a lot of people were on when it launched too
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Sep 29, 2023 08:37
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I swore off Steam and Valve for 7 years (checked my Steam profile to see the date I finally got it) after the lovely early client was forced on Counter-Strike so it's always been especially funny to me to see people defend EGS with early Steam being crappy.
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Sep 29, 2023 08:39
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I think a lot of the distrust and annoyance people express with storefronts is a legacy of older players having to deal with the growing pains of Steam/Ubi/Bioware launchers and onerous services like GFWL. It was sensible business strategy to try and lock customers into a proprietary ecosystem containing a storefront, chat, drm, multiplayer functionality etc. but all the solutions were half-baked crap. Like, I would probably be very happy with Epic's launcher except my patience is basically zero after having to mess with all the things mentioned above. Luckily it's not a big issue either way because there are so many bangers being released, both AAA and indie, that don't use those services. Good times.
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Sep 29, 2023 08:50
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Steam isn't exactly a great user experience either, they've had literal pop-up ads for some time now, though you can at least disable it I think.
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Sep 29, 2023 08:52
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Steam started out pretty lol, I was a fairly early adopter - I remember getting Portal on there around launch and such - but had like 5 games total for a while before I started using it more actively around 2010 (getting addicted to WOW in the meantime had a lot to do with that too). At the end of the day they were a respected name, kept iterating and improving rater than giving up when it was subpar, and eventually became the de-facto storefront from persistence. Valve didn't have to compete with any comparable storefronts which probably makes the whole difference. The few that existed I recall being utter garbage or having like 5 games total or both. At the end of the day working to repeat the Steam process won't work when Steam (and GOG, Origin, even gamepass) already exists.
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Sep 29, 2023 08:54
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Mercury_Storm posted:Steam isn't exactly a great user experience either, they've had literal pop-up ads for some time now, though you can at least disable it I think. Steam is bizarre. It has 4 different settings panels, all in different places. Total UX insanity. I know how to buy and launch games. Everything else is a mystery.
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Sep 29, 2023 08:55
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Sep 29, 2023 09:02
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Other vendors have price matching in their contracts too. I think it's pretty much standard practice. There's a bunch of stuff in the contracts to prevent developers from favoring one distributor over another besides price too like providing the distributor with updates, DLCs and extras at the same time as they are available elsewhere.
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Sep 29, 2023 09:07
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LMAO thanks, sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one baffled by Steam's UI. Guess not.
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Sep 29, 2023 09:09
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Mercury_Storm posted:Steam isn't exactly a great user experience either, they've had literal pop-up ads for some time now, though you can at least disable it I think. I get a "what's new" box on startup but nothing beyond that. It's hardly egregious. 
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Sep 29, 2023 09:17
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Fajita Queen posted:It's not like there's really a way to "break up" steam, it's a virtual distribution platform. Clearly one of the candidates in the election in the US should be standing on the “regulate Steam as a utility” platform then.
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Sep 29, 2023 10:13
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Mercury_Storm posted:Steam isn't exactly a great user experience either, they've had literal pop-up ads for some time now, though you can at least disable it I think. It's funny that I honestly didn't think of the "what's new" stuff as "ads" before you mentioned in in that context despite that being literally what they are. The term "ads" has gotten foreverally tied to the idea of "useless bullshit I could not give less of a gently caress about ever that's also actively interrupting the stuff I'm doing" like scrolling past foot massage diagrams while I'm trying to doomscroll, vs. Steam's "hey you opened the store page, here's some stuff in the front window that you might potentially actually give a poo poo about"
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Sep 29, 2023 10:34
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FishMcCool posted:I feel like we'll have to wait a good few more years to find out where EGS is headed. I wonder if the Fortnite generation might be a tipping point if all those kids without income end up building a free library on EGS. By the time they grow into adulthood and disposable income, they might not care for Steam if they already have hundreds of games in their Epic library. With digital services, there's very little platform loyalty beyond what's maximally convenient or completely necessary for the thing people actually want. For a lot of those Fortnite players, the EGS is probably the Fortnite launcher and that's it.
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Sep 29, 2023 11:17
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This is my nightmare.
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Sep 29, 2023 11:23
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Reminds me of Josh Strife Plays' video on Adventure Quest, where he spends over 10 minutes nitpicking the UI.
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Sep 29, 2023 11:29
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Ursine Catastrophe posted:It's funny that I honestly didn't think of the "what's new" stuff as "ads" before you mentioned in in that context despite that being literally what they are. The term "ads" has gotten foreverally tied to the idea of "useless bullshit I could not give less of a gently caress about ever that's also actively interrupting the stuff I'm doing" like scrolling past foot massage diagrams while I'm trying to doomscroll, vs. Steam's "hey you opened the store page, here's some stuff in the front window that you might potentially actually give a poo poo about" Yeah its kind of insane that Steam's ads are the only ones I've ever encountered on the internet that have ever been helpful to me as a consumer, and they're also not horribly disruptive garbage like most online ads are either.
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Sep 29, 2023 13:32
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Fajita Queen posted:Yeah its kind of insane that Steam's ads are the only ones I've ever encountered on the internet that have ever been helpful to me as a consumer, and they're also not horribly disruptive garbage like most online ads are either. It's probably in part because it's all pointing inside of its own ecosystem. It's not going to link to a Russian malware site like some random website might, or be hiring a third part ad serve that might get one of its banner ads highjacked or something. It's the closest thing to the comparative safety of a newspaper ad. It can't hurt you the way an internet ad can. Them being typically quite language-light and un-sensational helps them be tolerated too. Actually, the best comparison is probably posters at the movie theater. By me being there, it already knows the audience it can target so it doesn't need to be an ad for something like lawn mowers. Also, that piece of acetate with picture of Steve Carrell's face printed on it can't take steal my credit card information unless you include me exchanging my entire paycheck for a bellyful of laughs. btw I'm Rex Reed ama
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Sep 29, 2023 13:44
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I'll take this over the inevitable low-contrast, thin-title bar, distinctiveness-removing UI revision that some UX person will insist on in 4 years
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Sep 29, 2023 14:02
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another aberration: Steam lets you ignore any product, completely, can't do that on epic or gog (until they get put in the special discount box below the fold)
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Sep 29, 2023 14:02
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The best thing about steam is even though there is a ton of bloat and extra crap, the actual buying and playing a game is easy and all the other stuff is all very easy to ignore.
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Sep 29, 2023 14:22
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People also forget just how long Steam took to catch on, and how initially it was more or less just DRM for Valve's games. And the key part there is that they were really popular games people wanted to play. I remember being pissed as hell that I had to have a Steam account to play HL2. Looking at Steam right now I've been a member since November 24 , 2004 - note that HL2 launched November 16. Meanwhile, you can also view all of your Steam purchases and activations. It took them five years to get me to buy a game straight off them digitally, and then I eventually bought a copy of Empire: Total War that just had a digital code on the inside of the case. That apparently got me to give into digital PC games, and a right after I'm buying Mass Effect and Red Orchestra off Steam itself.  After that it's just a string of Steam store purchases. This is worth noting in relation to EGS because they're at about that same five year point as Steam was in 2009. EGS opened in 2018. They both had a games division that was making their real money while they got the storefront up and running, and for Steam it's right about now that they were able to really lean into being a store and crush everyone's dreams of a HL3. No real argument or point other than it will be interesting to see what EGS does in the next few years. Steam's path to success probably isn't the only possible one, but it's worth comparing EGS to because they actually did it and we can see the timetable they operated on.
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Sep 29, 2023 14:23
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You can see similarities because EGS is straight up trying to follow the same steps steam did. The difference is there wasnt a trusted directly comparable competitor to steam when it was launching. Owning games digitally is for a lot of people (including me) better than owning them physically and forced steam launches got people to learn if they were one of those people - the hump back then was more about digital ownership period than it was steam vs competitor. For EGS there's nothing keeping me there so even getting me to install and launch free games off of the client doesnt drive me to use it over steam whenever I have the option.
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Sep 29, 2023 14:30
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I wonder to what degree The Orange Box buoyed their fortunes as well. Anyone who wanted Episode 2 (me) was already in the Steam world, but Portal was a smash hit and TF2 was very successful to, and had reason to be on Steam unlike the other single player experiences.
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Sep 29, 2023 14:36
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Anecdotal, but that's when me and my friend group all got on Steam. Then the Steam Sales started. Oh god, that's when they started. I have so many cheap games purchased in 2012, more Doom games than I know what to do with
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Sep 29, 2023 14:40
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Magnetic North posted:I wonder to what degree The Orange Box buoyed their fortunes as well. Anyone who wanted Episode 2 (me) was already in the Steam world, but Portal was a smash hit and TF2 was very successful to, and had reason to be on Steam unlike the other single player experiences. The thing that got me to stick around was multiplayer. Even back then I did the majority of my gaming SP, but steam made grabbing a friend for some multi really loving easy. Just having a friends list in the actual launcher that I could see who was online was a pretty big thing. That's the thing about Steam: at various points it added a significant functionality that made things easier as someone who wanted to play games. Interestingly the only similarly kinda-seamless multiplayer experience I recall from that same era was Blizzard. I'm not going to pant a flag on this because lol 20 year old memories but I do seem to recall being able to see what friend were online ca. launch-era WoW. In a lot of ways, Blizzard was probably best positioned to be the giant Steam killing competitor back then. If they'd tried to do then what they did a few years ago with rolling Activision into their storefront they could have been the 800 pound gorilla in the room now, rather than acquisition bait.
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Sep 29, 2023 14:41
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FishMcCool posted:I feel like we'll have to wait a good few more years to find out where EGS is headed. I wonder if the Fortnite generation might be a tipping point if all those kids without income end up building a free library on EGS. By the time they grow into adulthood and disposable income, they might not care for Steam if they already have hundreds of games in their Epic library. The Fortnite generation mostly played Fortnite on ps4 or Xbox
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Sep 29, 2023 15:16
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I don't think people begrudge companies things like the CDPR, Larian, or Paradox launcher where they're minor advertisements for their other games but also sanity gatekeeps to make sure your Mods aren't going to make the game explode the minute you hit launch. People are less fond of uplay and Origin/Ea Launcher or whatever it's called now where they're completely separate storefronts that have to be running in addition to steam in order to play their games. Also according to my purchase history the thing that made me install steam was Torchlight?
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Sep 29, 2023 15:18
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Magnetic North posted:I wonder to what degree The Orange Box buoyed their fortunes as well. Anyone who wanted Episode 2 (me) was already in the Steam world, but Portal was a smash hit and TF2 was very successful to, and had reason to be on Steam unlike the other single player experiences. I've heard it argued that without The Orange Box, Steam as we know it wouldn't exist today, and it's entirely possible Valve wouldn't either. It was one of the best deals in gaming of all time - $50 for HL2: Ep 2, TF2, and Portal, plus if you didn't already own HL2 and Ep 1, you got those as well. It literally built out 2 new franchises for them, one of which went on to be a money printer that helped them develop a model for skins (TF2) and the other of which became another tentpole for Valve as a developer. Checking Wikipedia, it also sold 3M copies in the first year. That's a huge uplift in their user base in that time period - Steam doesn't publish the # of registered users as far as I'm aware, only concurrent users, but that number starts to go up rapidly in 2008. Kurieg posted:I don't think people begrudge companies things like the CDPR, Larian, or Paradox launcher where they're minor advertisements for their other games but also sanity gatekeeps to make sure your Mods aren't going to make the game explode the minute you hit launch. People are less fond of uplay and Origin/Ea Launcher or whatever it's called now where they're completely separate storefronts that have to be running in addition to steam in order to play their games. Instead of looking at Purchase History, look at License and Product Key Activations - it's the button just under Purchase History in your Steam Wallet. A lot of early Steam games (like the Orange Box) were primarily sold as a physical box at retail with an activation code.
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Sep 29, 2023 15:55
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I wonder what percentage of steam users would keep buying games on steam even if they were cheaper elsewhere. Either by ignorance cause they just open the steam client or because they choose to stick to steam despite price Personally I'm one of those freaks that buy things on steam even if they're cheaper/free somewhere else. I stopped getting the weekly free epic games cause I realized I never played them and I ended up buying them on steam anyway. I just don't want to deal with another client even if it's free, if I own a game that isn't in steam it essentially doesn't exist. I've tried gog galaxy but it keeps getting disconnected from stuff and being more of a hassle to use.
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Sep 29, 2023 16:19
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Resdfru posted:I wonder what percentage of steam users would keep buying games on steam even if they were cheaper elsewhere. Either by ignorance cause they just open the steam client or because they choose to stick to steam despite price It sounds like you aren't aware of steam key resellers like Humble, Greenmangaming or Fanatical? I use https://isthereanydeal.com/ and buy games on all sorts of sites because they're cheaper there, sometimes it will take months for Steam sales to match authorized reseller discounts. I guess only about 25% of my games are bought from Steam store. E: For example here are current prices of Last of Us Part 1 
Sininu fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Sep 29, 2023 |
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Sep 29, 2023 16:22
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Resdfru posted:I wonder what percentage of steam users would keep buying games on steam even if they were cheaper elsewhere. Either by ignorance cause they just open the steam client or because they choose to stick to steam despite price I'm pretty much in the same boat. If a game isn't on steam, I'm not aware of its existence. I've bought games on steam only to later discover that I nabbed it for free on epic at some point. I also have bought a game on steam that I could have gotten cheaper elsewhere, and that's thanks to a couple of reasons: - it's really convenient to have all my games in one spot. Also easier to know which games are installed if I need to free up space. - streams refund policy isn't replicated anywhere else for digital distribution (re: what's available to me  ) Being able to refund a game I don't like it or is busted makes it easier to take a chance on a 40+ dollar game.- Thankfully steam keys are often available elsewhere for cheaper (talking about legit resellers, like Green Man Gaming) so getting a game cheaper and on steam is often possible.
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Sep 29, 2023 16:27
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Resdfru posted:I wonder what percentage of steam users would keep buying games on steam even if they were cheaper elsewhere. Either by ignorance cause they just open the steam client or because they choose to stick to steam despite price Not enough, Steam has too much momentum at this point. Ubisoft walked back their decision to stop distributing via Steam because they ran the numbers and saw just how many sales they were losing. A couple different developers of Epic exclusive games have also commented on how it affected their sales; the short answer, IIRC, is that the up front money from Epic mostly offset the lost early sales from Steam, but it was risk free. The best comparison to Steam's dominance is probably iTunes early on. When folks realized they could replace their entire CD collections in a format that could be used drat near anywhere, it was a no brainer - no more tracking physical media, it was a seamless experience to purchase and consume music, and while it functioned as DRM, it was nearly invisible. Why split up your collection among competing vendors? Hell, why bother pirating when purchasing is so drat easy? If Epic really wants to compete with Steam, they need to work on non-Fortnite projects internally and release them as Epic exclusives. Release them for free/cheap, and the games need to be good. There's nothing saying that the Orange Box's success can't be reproduced, but you need more than one game to do it (even if that one game is/was the most popular game in the world). Edit: And of course they need to fix their storefront, as has been mentioned many, many times. Pay through the nose for some top shelf UI/UX folks, get the basic feature/functions up and running, and become a mature competitor. It's not like they lack the cash to do so.
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Sep 29, 2023 16:31
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