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leper khan posted:The way you compete is on price. Steam forbids competing on price. I'm trying to think of it, but I can't remember the word for this behavior. Forced price parity is typically called a Most Favored Nation clause, and a MFN clause by itself isn’t necessarily considered anticompetitive. It does get the attention of regulators when brought up though, especially when used by an entity with a large market share. Although this also depends on how often the MFN is actually enforced. The lawsuit against Steam and Developers by the five dipshits due to steams alleged MFN clause isn’t particularly compelling.
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Sep 29, 2023 16:33
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Everyone is missing the forest for the trees here. Epic just needs to make an actual good storefront / community client like the one Steam has. its plain and simple, EGS is jank E: You can't even chat with your the people on your friends list on the epic game store. Like this is still just a barebones product but they tried to force it on everyone with some limited exclusive games like stuff from Ubisoft and Square Enix. But it still wasn't enough, people waited for those games on steam anyway. The REAL Goobusters fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Sep 29, 2023 |
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Sep 29, 2023 16:34
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https://twitter.com/rockpapershot/status/1707779432155369592
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Sep 29, 2023 16:36
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Shooting Blanks posted:Ubisoft walked back their decision to stop distributing via Steam because they ran the numbers and saw just how many sales they were losing. valve did have to concede somewhat to get that to happen, originally steam had a flat 30% cut but when the big publishers started releasing exclusively on their own launchers they added 25% and 20% tiers for games with revenue in the tens of millions of dollars (i.e. a discount only for the big publishers who do potentially have the leverage to not release on steam, while most smaller players still have to pay 30%) repiv fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Sep 29, 2023 |
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Sep 29, 2023 16:36
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Sininu posted:It sounds like you aren't aware of steam key resellers like Humble, Greenmangaming or Fanatical? Oh sorry, I do get games from legit storefronts like that as well, but they key is it has to be a steam key. But as of late, especially if I'm buying a game brand new, I buy on steam even though it costs more so I can refund if I don't like it
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Sep 29, 2023 16:39
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The REAL Goobusters posted:Everyone is missing the forest for the trees here. Epic just needs to make an actual good storefront / community client like the one Steam has. its plain and simple, EGS is jank Haven't bought anything from the Epic store in years. Do they still not have any kind of Cart functionality in their store, requiring you to buy games one at a time?
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Sep 29, 2023 16:40
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they added a cart two years ago
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Sep 29, 2023 16:41
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The REAL Goobusters posted:Everyone is missing the forest for the trees here. Epic just needs to make an actual good storefront / community client like the one Steam has. its plain and simple, EGS is jank Epic also pisses people off by grabbing crowdfunded games as exclusives by offering a fat pile of cash to the developers, something no reasonable person would turn down. I'm sure they'd keep the games as Epic exclusives in perpetuity if they thought they could get away with it. They've done a lot of self inflicted damage to their own reputation and likely spend more money a month on their free game offers then in a year of working on the store UI. It's sort of a weird situation, because it's got to be really expensive to operate your own independent store front, like how almost all streaming services are burning investor money and operating as a loss, but everyone thinks that they need their own, unique service to hoard their own content. EA Origin was nice for a while but it's gone back and forth between fine and trash during most of its existence.
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Sep 29, 2023 16:43
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Has anyone said Timflation yet
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Sep 29, 2023 16:55
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From my perspective it seems like their biggest issue is that their strategy of buying timed exclusives has largely been a disaster. It just causes a bunch of anger (especially on crowdfunded games that had promised Steam keys) with the PC audience, and with the exception of Borderlands 3 and Satisfactory, it doesn't sound like any of them sell particularly well. The games just go there to die in a marketing black hole for a year. If the games are exceptionally good, they might get lucky and still have some hype when they are eventually released on Steam. By all accounts giving away free games has been very successful and tons of people will claim them. They just then aren't able to convert any of those users into paying customers. I imagine that would require them actually improving the store and client, but they seem to have little interest in spending even the bare minimum to do so. While it is great to point out that Steam sucked 20 years ago, Epic doesn't have the luxury of competing against 2003 Steam. I wonder if expanding their publishing will work well for them. It would give them exclusive games and it is harder for the audience to be angry about it when the games wouldn't even exist if Epic wasn't paying for the development. Guess we will find out when Alan Wake releases and if people even realize it is on PC a few months later.
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Sep 29, 2023 16:55
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Epic has spent millions to offer free giveaways on the store and spent $0 on reasons for consumers to spend money on it besides the exclusives. I don’t know how much more money they need to throw down the hole before they realize it isn’t coming back, or why they thought it would come back in the first place.
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Sep 29, 2023 17:01
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I presume that Epic knows that the millennials are lost cause, but the current day teenagers are still up for grabs. Attract them with Fortnite and free games and hope they buy from your store in the future.
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Sep 29, 2023 17:02
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pentyne posted:Epic also pisses people off by grabbing crowdfunded games as exclusives by offering a fat pile of cash to the developers, something no reasonable person would turn down. I'm sure they'd keep the games as Epic exclusives in perpetuity if they thought they could get away with it. The worst part, from the developers perspective, would be the fact that by the time their product came off the exclusivity agreement and came to steam, I (as a potential customer) no longer cared about their product. My circumstances had changed and my enthusiasm had waned because I am easily distracted by shiny objects. I don't think I have bought a single thing that's gone epic exclusive, there were other things I could access and play and so I did that and now I lack both time and inclination to give other older things a try when there are new shiny things coming to play with.
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Sep 29, 2023 17:02
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pentyne posted:Epic also pisses people off by grabbing crowdfunded games as exclusives by offering a fat pile of cash to the developers, something no reasonable person would turn down. I'm sure they'd keep the games as Epic exclusives in perpetuity if they thought they could get away with it. The funny thing is that they really aren't that different from steam, buying physical copies have just given you a slip with a steam key and a mostly empty disc for over a decade, but apparently that isn't seen as being exclusive. For all the talk about locking people in EGS is way less enforcing than steam since it let's you install the games to the same place as your other ones, instead of steam placing them 3 subdirectories down. Likewise they don't have their own modservice that lowers the value of games bought on other sores by making it incompatible. So Epic might pay for exclusives, while steam just encourages you to make other stores version worse for modding or multiplayer. Don't get me wrong Epic is still a company that sucks, but people are still just letting valve off easy on points where they are even worse than Epic. Games selling low during their exclusivity is probably mostly because people are weirdly loyal to Valve rather than anything Epic does. Also I'm not really sure how expensive it really is to operate a store, technically it's probably pretty cheap, the real costs probably comes from figuring out taxes/EU VAT. Which you probably have people for anyway when you are that big. And sure Valve spends effort redesigning the UI, but it's not really an improvement.
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Sep 29, 2023 17:02
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Steam and GOG are also the only launchers who ever remember my login credentials no matter how often I tell the drat thing to remember a computer. It doesn't really matter how often I do or don't load it up, but Ubisoft, EA, and Epic launchers are way more likely than not to just forget my login stuff and regularly demand an extra passcode like this was the first time I used it on this computer. Given I don't like leaving 5+ clients running at all times, unless I'm mainlining one of their games then the other launchers often get closed down until I want to play something again. And going through that whole song and dance every time often ends up warding me off from even wanting to play something. GOG has its own other issues with the launcher constantly loving up its updates and demanding I reinstall the drat client.
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Sep 29, 2023 17:09
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Resdfru posted: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. If you're still in the market for something like this, Playnite is pretty good. The only library I regularly have problems with disconnecting from it is Blizzard, and if you try to launch a game it just re-launches blizzard and then plops you in the game no problem at all. It's pretty solid, and what I landed on after GoG Galaxy kept loving around like you described.
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Sep 29, 2023 17:11
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My main complaint with Steam is their complete lack of customer service other than basic computer-assisted. I bought two copies of Final Fantasy 14, one for me and one for my wife. It's an MMO so it has its own patcher, infrastructure, etc. I gave one keycode to my wife and kept one. About 5 years later Steam forces Square to enforce Steam unique logins in *their* patcher. Turns out my wife's account is from my Steam account, which never mattered before that point. FFXIV is the only game she plays, and her character in that game now has 5 years' playtime investment so "just buying a new copy" won't help. Square CS says they aren't allowed to move characters between two Steam accounts, or Steam and non-Steam accounts. And Steam CS is completely non-existent because Valve believes, like every other successful tech company, that paying human beings to do customer support is crazy talk. So a 30 second fix in some accounting database never happens, and now every time my wife wants to get on her MMO, I have to quit out of whatever game I'm in, let her log in my Steam account, let her get past the patcher's Steam authentication check, and then log back in. And probably at some point even that workaround will break. So, yeah, not a fan of monopoly storefronts. Lum_ fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Sep 29, 2023 |
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Sep 29, 2023 17:12
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disposablewords posted:Steam and GOG are also the only launchers who ever remember my login credentials no matter how often I tell the drat thing to remember a computer.
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Sep 29, 2023 17:16
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Hel posted:The funny thing is that they really aren't that different from steam, buying physical copies have just given you a slip with a steam key and a mostly empty disc for over a decade, but apparently that isn't seen as being exclusive. For all the talk about locking people in EGS is way less enforcing than steam since it let's you install the games to the same place as your other ones, instead of steam placing them 3 subdirectories down. Likewise they don't have their own modservice that lowers the value of games bought on other sores by making it incompatible. So Epic might pay for exclusives, while steam just encourages you to make other stores version worse for modding or multiplayer. Don't get me wrong Epic is still a company that sucks, but people are still just letting valve off easy on points where they are even worse than Epic. edit: The "weird loyalty" is entirely taht installing a new launcher is a completely unnecessary inconvenience, and if you are offering nothing for that inconvenience there is no reason for anyone to to it. Steam demanded that inconvenience back when there was no alternative. Which yeah is unfair, but that's how they forced it. Epic cannot expect any mass adoption until it is flatly a superior service to Steam, and it isn't. Terrible Opinions fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Sep 29, 2023 |
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Sep 29, 2023 17:17
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Terrible Opinions posted:Making it so I don't have to use an external mod manager is adding value not reducing it. Same thing with simplifying multiplayer setup. It's really a condemnation of Epic that they haven't been able to achieve even these extremely basic functions provided by Steam. They have their own multiplayer service Which is why bring it up, because it's store, engine and platform agnostic rather than locking you to EGS. And forcing other stores to sell a worse a cut down version of the game is not IMO a value add/decent business practice. Nor is splitting / cutting down on modding communities.
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Sep 29, 2023 17:33
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Hel posted:They have their own multiplayer service Which is why bring it up, because it's store, engine and platform agnostic rather than locking you to EGS. And forcing other stores to sell a worse a cut down version of the game is not IMO a value add/decent business practice. Nor is splitting / cutting down on modding communities. Are there any steam games that lock you out of modding normally? All the ones I'm aware of work just fine if you head over to Nexus or wherever else you're getting your mods from. I use both, the steam mods stuff is useful for games where I only want one minor little fix or something, or an easy to grab total conversion. You obviously need way more powerful tools if you're going to mod Skyrim to the gills or something similar. In my experience in those case the Steam stuff is the total after thought, with a fraction at best of the mods getting ported over to there. poo poo, increasingly there are enough people pissed at Nexus that you have to find an alternative source or, worst case, float around and find the modder's new discord that will give you the secret link to where they host it.
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Sep 29, 2023 17:37
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Steam doesn't stop you from using mods from other services. Is there some plague of people unable to both upload to steam mod servers and other modding platforms? Steam doesn't lock you out of multiplayer with other plafroms either, plenty of games have cross play multipler with steam, windows live, etc.
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Sep 29, 2023 17:39
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Terrible Opinions posted:Steam doesn't stop you from using mods from other services. Is there some plague of people unable to both upload to steam mod servers and other modding platforms? Steam doesn't lock you out of multiplayer with other plafroms either, plenty of games have cross play multipler with steam, windows live, etc. steam doesn't stop you doing crossplay but steams multiplayer services are strictly for steam-to-steam, it doesn't interop with other stores or consoles which is why some developers are shifting over to epics services or rolling their own, even leaving aside EGS, gamepass is too big to ignore now and steamworks doesn't work there
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Sep 29, 2023 17:42
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Hel posted:The funny thing is that they really aren't that different from steam, buying physical copies have just given you a slip with a steam key and a mostly empty disc for over a decade, but apparently that isn't seen as being exclusive. For all the talk about locking people in EGS is way less enforcing than steam since it let's you install the games to the same place as your other ones, instead of steam placing them 3 subdirectories down. Likewise they don't have their own modservice that lowers the value of games bought on other sores by making it incompatible. So Epic might pay for exclusives, while steam just encourages you to make other stores version worse for modding or multiplayer. Don't get me wrong Epic is still a company that sucks, but people are still just letting valve off easy on points where they are even worse than Epic. You bring up people being “weirdly loyal” to Valve for steam. Well they’ve been loyal to steam for like 20 years. How can you expect a new store front client to come in and compete for that loyalty? The exclusives didn’t move people to drop steam. Why would anyone want to start buying games on a barebones service when they already have steam accounts with hundreds of games, friends list, community features (forums), community work shop and more? You can’t just expect people to drop steam just because hades and ff7 remake and Shenmue 3 all became epic timed exclusives.
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Sep 29, 2023 17:43
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Cyrano4747 posted:Are there any steam games that lock you out of modding normally? All the ones I'm aware of work just fine if you head over to Nexus or wherever else you're getting your mods from. Steam Workshop mods can't be downloaded outside of steam( yes there are workarounds), so unless you buy the game there or the creator uploads them elsewhere, they are inaccessible. So pushing the Steam Workshop flow as the way to mod a game means that the mods are only for the steam version and any other store is out of luck. The REAL Goobusters posted:You can’t just expect people to drop steam just because hades and ff7 remake and Shenmue 3 all became epic timed exclusives. Because I'm not asking people to drop steam, you can just buy from multiple stores, just like with every other type of product. Hel fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Sep 29, 2023 |
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Sep 29, 2023 17:43
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Isn't it sort of silly that Steam should make the user experience worse (by just not having a mod platform or manager) because it's unfair to other stores that don't have those things?
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Sep 29, 2023 17:46
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mycot posted:Isn't it sort of silly that Steam should make the user experience worse (by just not having a mod platform or manager) because it's unfair to other stores that don't have those things? Isn't it sort of silly that EGS should make the user experience worse (by just not providing extra funds for games) because it's unfair to other stores that don't have those things?
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Sep 29, 2023 17:48
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The thing is most Epic exclusives like the Kingdom Hearts compilation and Final Fantasy remake would exist without Epic money, which just adds to the public resentment. Maybe the smaller games like Darkest Dungeon 2 would have been pared down without that money, but from the customer's POV they just made something slightly more inconvenient for no gain.
mycot fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Sep 29, 2023 |
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Sep 29, 2023 17:51
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Hel posted:Steam Workshop mods can't be downloaded outside of steam( yes there are workarounds), so unless you buy the game there or the creator uploads them elsewhere, they are inaccessible. So pushing the Steam Workshop flow as the way to mod a game means that the mods are only for the steam version and any other store is out of luck. But those creators are free to upload their mods wherever they want. Hel posted:Isn't it sort of silly that EGS should make the user experience worse (by just not providing extra funds for games) because it's unfair to other stores that don't have those things? I think most people think that would make the user experience better, by letting users buy the game on Steam, which they consider a superior platform.
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Sep 29, 2023 17:52
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Hel posted:Steam Workshop mods can't be downloaded outside of steam( yes there are workarounds), so unless you buy the game there or the creator uploads them elsewhere, they are inaccessible. So pushing the Steam Workshop flow as the way to mod a game means that the mods are only for the steam version and any other store is out of luck. Hel posted:Because I'm not asking people to drop steam, you can just buy from multiple stores, just like with every other type of product.
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Sep 29, 2023 17:53
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mycot posted:The thing is most Epic exclusives like the Kingdom Hearts compilation and Final Fantasy remake would exist without Epic money, which just adds to the public resentment, because from the customer's POV they just made something slightly more inconvenient for no gain. Except that most of the cases brought up earlier in the thread were indie/crowdfunded games, which would absolutely have a risk of collapsing/ being worse/unfinished without the extra funding. Terrible Opinions posted:Well yeah but most people don't want to install another program that does nothing besides operate as a store front. If Epic allowed for direct downloads without a client like GoG people would probably be way less hostile to it. Hel fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Sep 29, 2023 |
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Sep 29, 2023 17:53
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Hel posted:Steam Workshop mods can't be downloaded outside of steam( yes there are workarounds), so unless you buy the game there or the creator uploads them elsewhere, they are inaccessible. So pushing the Steam Workshop flow as the way to mod a game means that the mods are only for the steam version and any other store is out of luck. Maybe I'm out of the loop and there are some real banger mods that are only being released on Steam, but this seems more like a theoretical problem than a real one. I've never, ever run across a mod that was published only on Steam. Quite the contrary, the problem with Steam modding is that so few modders bother to put a version up there or, if they do, it never gets updated. If you're going to one-stop shop it's Nexus, with the usual nod to the Nexus drama and modders leaving it and alternative ways of getting things etc. But I don't think anyone's said gently caress nexus I'm only releasing on Steam. Which, don't get me wrong, I understand the point you're making and closed ecosystems suck. If someone publishes a awesome mod only on steam that would be unfortunate. I just don't see that happening any time soon, at least based on how the modding communities I pay attention to work. Maybe there are some that are profoundly steam-centric that I'm not aware of.
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Sep 29, 2023 18:00
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I think the Hades method of having Early Access exclusivity on Epic and the full release on Steam/multiplatform is definitely the smartest from an indie dev's perspective, but it doesn't help Epic's case because now there's an association with EGS having the incomplete versions of games. Actually the closest I can think of is Apple Arcade, where a lot of the "exclusives" are actually the worst on their platform. e. I agree in this case it's not really Epic's or Apple's fault, it is on the developer's for selling unfinished versions of their game, but the results are the same. mycot fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Sep 29, 2023 |
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Sep 29, 2023 18:01
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Hel posted:Except that most of the cases brought up earlier in the thread were indie/crowdfunded games, which would absolutely have a risk of collapsing/ being worse/unfinished without the extra funding. There's no way to compare how those games turned out with the hypothetical universe where Epic didn't buy exclusivity, but they generally bought out exclusivity of games that were near release and didn't seem in danger of failing - there usually wasn't any feeling that Epic was saving games that wouldn't otherwise come out. The reaction would be different if it was only stuff like Bayonetta 2's Nintendo exclusivity, where the game would never have existed without Nintendo funding it.
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Sep 29, 2023 18:01
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Fruits of the sea posted: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 18:17
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Arsenic Lupin posted:I remain very cross that I have to go to a completely different website to refund. This is not, of course, accidental. Website? It's like three clicks in the client to put in a refund request.
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Sep 29, 2023 18:23
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I just remember Shenmue 3 and how they grabbed the Exclusivity deal for it after it had been kickstarted and Steam keys promised. For good or ill when I think of EGS exclusivity that is what I think of.Arsenic Lupin posted:I remain very cross that I have to go to a completely different website to refund. This is not, of course, accidental. You can refund within Steam itself, I've done it multiple times from the deck. It's like 3 clicks.
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Sep 29, 2023 18:25
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I can't remember what game it was (I think it was a stardew vallley-like) but there was one indie developer who got their epic games payday and just went full joker mode on everyone who complained. Like "nah i got my payday honestly I don't have to care if the game does well at this point also gently caress all of you." which soured me a bit on EGS as a platform.Shooting Blanks posted: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. Yeah, that's Torchlight. Honestly I'm as confused as you.
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Sep 29, 2023 18:29
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ImpAtom posted:I just remember Shenmue 3 and how they grabbed the Exclusivity deal for it after it had been kickstarted and Steam keys promised. For good or ill when I think of EGS exclusivity that is what I think of. Not like we missed anything. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpNAKDx4CwY
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Sep 29, 2023 18:29
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Inspector Gesicht posted:Not like we missed anything. Oh no, not at all. Shenmue 3 was an absolute garbage fire but it was still crappy at the time.
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Sep 29, 2023 18:31
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