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Jack Trades posted:Have you tried changing your region under Steam Settings - Downloads? hanging around 200 mbit/s for a 1 gbit is just curious, and i could have sworn it ran much faster i'm assuming it'll fix itself when i get an nvme drive i'll just install a fresh windows 11 on, but it's a weird issue. the game drive i'm using is also an nvme, although the system drive is a regular ssd
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Sep 30, 2023 19:32
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chglcu posted:My main problems with EGS, apart from it being yet another launcher, are that the app randomly decides to use 100% CPU in the background until I kill it, and frequently locks up for 30 seconds when I attempt to scroll down to the free games. Oh, and half the times I open it, it forgets my login info. It’s just a terrible user experience, and Steam mostly isn’t these days. so you hate developers huh? wont even have a launcher bsod your pc to support them?
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Sep 30, 2023 20:20
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Grayshift posted:EGS doesn't seem to have any idea how to become profitable. BeanpolePeckerwood posted:MS seems like the only entity with enough institutional knowledge and deep enough pockets to be a significant Valve competitor in the future.
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Sep 30, 2023 20:32
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OneEightHundred posted:Well, one big thing to ask is: Why does Epic even need this to be a thing? Like what is the strategic business purpose of EGS? It's not like there's a big booming market in being a low-commission secondary seller in the PC games marketplace, and Steam isn't a threat to either of their main income sources. It seems like the whole thing was supposed to be value-added for the Unreal Engine ecosystem. In 2021 Valve made 11 million dollars per employee. Pretty good business I would say. No Wave fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Sep 30, 2023 |
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Sep 30, 2023 20:44
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Epic is trying to leverage their immense young user base from Fortnite to stick within their ecosystem. I don’t think it’s too hard to see why they would want to try leveraging that many people into giving them more money.
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Sep 30, 2023 20:57
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No Wave posted:There's a huge booming market in being a storefront for PC stuff, it's straight up free money. Being a storefront for software is the best business in the world you do very little and make lots of money off of everyone's hard work. But they didn't get anyone off of Valve. That's so disingenuous lol. Valves infrastructure didn't build itself or pop out of nowhere one day. They have put a lot of money and effort into building a distribution system that works for everyone and they did it long before 'the cloud' became a ubiquitous backbone for everyone else's distribution systems I forgot to make the post I meant to make. I wonder what the terms are between EA and Valve for EA access. 30% of the sub or something more/less. I also wonder if Microsoft would ever put gamepass on steam and give valve a cut. Would that be worse for Microsoft or valve. I'm guessing valve. They lose a ton more potential money in this unlikely scenario Resdfru fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Sep 30, 2023 |
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Sep 30, 2023 20:59
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I only buy my games on the Discord Game Store
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Sep 30, 2023 21:02
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Resdfru posted:That's so disingenuous lol. Valves infrastructure didn't build itself or pop out of nowhere one day. They have put a lot of money and effort into building a distribution system that works for everyone and they did it long before 'the cloud' became a ubiquitous backbone for everyone else's distribution systems
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Sep 30, 2023 21:05
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OneEightHundred posted:Well, one big thing to ask is: Why does Epic even need this to be a thing? Like what is the strategic business purpose of EGS? It's not like there's a big booming market in being a low-commission secondary seller in the PC games marketplace, and Steam isn't a threat to either of their main income sources. It seems like the whole thing was supposed to be value-added for the Unreal Engine ecosystem. If you yourself are a large developer, you probably want your own publishing infrastructure so as to not pay a publisher ~30% of your gross. If you have a publishing infrastructure, you probably want to act as a publisher for other developers such that they rather than you pay for the fixed overhead. It's the same strategic business purpose as Steam itself, just one was made to get out from under Sierra and the other to get out from under Valve.
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Sep 30, 2023 21:06
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No Wave posted:What about my post is disingenuous? Making money off of other peoples' work is literally the point of a platform it's why its such a dominant model. The free money part I guess? They didn't just click deploy steam button and deploy bank account button Even today when they could sit on their laurels collecting free money they spend a lot of money on r and d for steam deck, proton, VR. I'm not going to pretend theyre doing that for charity but it still has the side effect of making gaming on Linux a real life thing for the average Joe. The deck has likely also (assuming here) caused an influx in deck friendly games which are usually indies. Of course it locks people even more into steam but they do let you install other stores if you want Edit: I'll give you that it is making money off other people's work. But at the same time they are providing value. I don't know. I get that devs hate valve and steam and wish it didn't exist because it takes their money and offers nothing except... An audience of people to buy the game and a seamless way to deliver the game. Without steam we would be downloading games from a bunch of different dead links or paying per mb to whatever giant Corp filled the void. I think it's safe to say that without steam pc gaming would still be a niche thing super nerds did and the real money would still be in consoles like it used to be. Pc would be a piracy wasteland aside from a few devs that managed to find a place Resdfru fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Sep 30, 2023 |
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Sep 30, 2023 21:10
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Resdfru posted:The free money part I guess? They didn't just click deploy steam button and deploy bank account button
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Sep 30, 2023 21:12
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If you wrote the Team Fortress 2 Meet the Team vids you deserve 11 million dollars in perpetuity
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Sep 30, 2023 21:16
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OneEightHundred posted:MS was clearly setting up to try doing that during the Windows 8 era but it failed because they were getting too high on their own farts with the UWP disaster. Oh yeah, no doubt. I don't know if they'll come close to pulling it off but they sure seem to be signalling intent in these last few years to get a big slice of that pie.
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Sep 30, 2023 21:33
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Orv posted:
Good Old Games did exactly this for a while. If you owned a Steam game, they would give you a GOG copy for free. It's not like they're losing much in the way of sales, and if it'll fatten up your GOG library so you'll look at their launcher, why not? I would imagine it didn't work out as well as they hoped, given that I described this using the past tense. BeanpolePeckerwood posted:MS seems like the only entity with enough institutional knowledge and deep enough pockets to be a significant Valve competitor in the future. Post Acti-Blizz they own so much of the landscape that it does seem possible, but they also have huge chunks of bureaucratic bloat built into their structure so it remains to be seen whether they can adapt fast enough. Generally it feels like their 10 year plan is moving beyond the relatively boutique hardware ambitions of Sony/Nintendo. Given how many times Microsoft has said "we're re-re-re-re-dedicating ourselves to PC gaming," I think any attempt at this would be an enormous uphill battle. It's not Google levels of bad, but it's pretty loving dire.
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Sep 30, 2023 21:39
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Complications posted:Epic needs to start with bringing EGS to at least feature parity with Steam and then add spice like better sales on top. People are willing to pay a premium for features and devs for big audiences, so just sales aren't a big enough lure. Feature parity with Steam would be a start. Spending through the nose on some number of UI/UX folks to have a better front end than Steam would go a long way. Better CS staffed by actual people would be huge. But what really needs to happen for EGS to be sustainable is for Epic to have more actual exclusives that people want to play. Whether they build new studios from the ground up, or fully fund development for exclusive publishing rights (as opposed to paying for exclusive publishing rights when development is 80%+ done), that's their path. Think of it as Sony vs. Microsoft - MS historically has had very few exciting exclusives that people want to play. Halo? Gears? Forza? I can't think of any others offhand. Sony, meanwhile, has Horizon, Spiderman, Uncharted, Last of Us, God of War, Ghost of Tsushima, and others that generally get far more press. Sony has done a stellar job of building up an ecosystem of studios that they support, even though PS+ is a decidedly worse deal than GamePass. Valve hardly makes games any more - at least not any new IP. Their last several games that I can think of were either sequels or acquisitions of existing mods (DOTA, TF2). I think L4D was their last new IP. Of course, while everyone trusts Valve to hold on in its current form, the other question is how long will they remain in that form? Gabe Newell is getting near retirement age, and he owns a majority stake in Valve (I don't know how much offhand). Does he sell his shares to employees? Does it go to an IPO? Does it sell to Microsoft/Sony (this would absolute be investigated by antitrust folks)? Sell it private equity, ala Embracer group? In what form does it continue?
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Sep 30, 2023 21:46
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MechaCrash posted:Good Old Games did exactly this for a while. If you owned a Steam game, they would give you a GOG copy for free. It's not like they're losing much in the way of sales, and if it'll fatten up your GOG library so you'll look at their launcher, why not? Wasn't that done extremely early on in GOG's life before they really had much in the way of modern games at all? I imagine that's a fairly special case where you're not losing out much on the twenty people who bought the really bad, completely un-fixed-up Steam versions of early DOS games or whatever.
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Sep 30, 2023 21:47
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I don't remember exactly when it was, but I think it was after they created GOG Galaxy, and definitely after they started featuring games other than "we pre-bundled and configured everything you need for this ancient DOS game" and smaller indies. I know I never bought the Saint's Row games on GOG, but I have 3, 4, and Gat Out Of Hell in my library.
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Sep 30, 2023 21:52
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Huh, okay I guess I just completely missed them doing that, fair enough.
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Sep 30, 2023 21:54
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Orv posted:Wasn't that done extremely early on in GOG's life before they really had much in the way of modern games at all? I imagine that's a fairly special case where you're not losing out much on the twenty people who bought the really bad, completely un-fixed-up Steam versions of early DOS games or whatever. No, not at all, it was after their string of "we're shutting down TOMORROW" PR debacles at least. I wanna say it was back half of the 2010s from memory, and the big issue is it relied on publisher support (thus why most of the participants were only ever indies). In fact, according to Eurogamer, it was 2016-2023.
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Sep 30, 2023 21:55
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GOG mostly stopped caring about getting old games going like they used to, which is a shame. New old releases are generally fine but a lot of the older stuff is as broken as it is on steam now Also that shut down gag they pulled soured a lot of people I think
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Sep 30, 2023 21:55
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Shooting Blanks posted:Valve hardly makes games any more - at least not any new IP. Their last several games that I can think of were either sequels or acquisitions of existing mods (DOTA, TF2). I think L4D was their last new IP. Artifact is silently weeping over in the corner. E: Wait I forgot it was the DOTA IP tied to that, shows how much I remembered Artifact 
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Sep 30, 2023 22:00
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Didn't they make and destroy some auto-chess thing too?
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Sep 30, 2023 22:01
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dota underlords, yeah.
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Sep 30, 2023 22:02
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As someone who works in retail, I highly doubt any of these people buying $600 of Razer Gold store cards per week are actually playing any video games.
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Sep 30, 2023 22:17
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Less Fat Luke posted:Didn't they make and destroy some auto-chess thing too?
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Sep 30, 2023 22:19
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they did put underlords on mobile (going as far as to port source to android/ios just for that game) but the game still fizzled out https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.valvesoftware.underlords https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dota-underlords/id1465996312
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Sep 30, 2023 22:21
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repiv posted:they did put underlords on mobile (going as far as to port source to android/ios just for that game) but the game still fizzled out
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Sep 30, 2023 22:23
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How is the League autochess doing? I feel like that was one of the fastest new trends to flare up to massive popularity and then almost immediately die out that I've seen in gaming.
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Sep 30, 2023 22:28
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going by twitch viewership it's doing alright, currently it's sandwiched between dota 2 and warzones viewer counts it's the least dead of any of the autochesses by far
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Sep 30, 2023 22:29
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The way Valve does development, it’s a wonder they produce anything.
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Sep 30, 2023 22:31
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there's been some twitch streamer tournaments, but the riot ecosystem is pretty good at getting the same streamers to play different games and vice versa for their viewers i still have no idea how to get into it, when you don't know anything about the league characters. the runeterra card game is the same
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Sep 30, 2023 22:32
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Invalid Validation posted:The way Valve does development, it’s a wonder they produce anything. their development has always been haphazard but it's got worse over time, up until around 2013 they released something every year or two but since then their output fell off a cliff, and had two major flops whether alyx was a "success" is pretty nebulous since we don't know if it made its production cost back, and it certainly didn't jumpstart PCVR the way valve wanted it to
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Sep 30, 2023 22:35
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i dont think alyx was a flop at least
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Sep 30, 2023 22:36
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Invalid Validation posted:The way Valve does development, it’s a wonder they produce anything. I am amazed Half-Life: Alyx actually released and was decent to good.
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Sep 30, 2023 22:37
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regardless of how well it sold it's a REALLY well put together game. definitely among their best work
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Sep 30, 2023 22:37
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repiv posted:their development has always been haphazard but it's got worse over time, up until around 2013 they released something every year or two but since then their output fell off a cliff, and had two major flops Honestly they don't really even need to make anything. They can just maintain and update steam and till print money.
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Sep 30, 2023 22:39
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If Valve ever releases a non-VR version of Alyx I would play it.
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Sep 30, 2023 22:41
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CodfishCartographer posted:Honestly they don't really even need to make anything. They can just maintain and update steam and till print money. yeah they don't need to make anything, but they're ostensibly still trying to make new games, and hardly anything is getting finished and what they do manage to ship has in large part been trend-chasing failures feels like a waste of potential that their game development side has practically unlimited resources but it's stalled out, and all they know how to make is counter strike again
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Sep 30, 2023 22:42
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CodfishCartographer posted:Honestly they don't really even need to make anything. They can just maintain and update steam and till print money. According to interviews with previous Valve employees, this is basically their strategy now. Things like the Steam Deck were the pet project of a handful of senior folks that were looking to move into hardware (and I'm told the Steam Controller was very good), but who knows how it will pan out. repiv posted:yeah they don't need to make anything, but they're ostensibly still trying to make new games, and hardly anything is getting finished and what they do manage to ship has in large part been trend-chasing failures Valve is a very flat organization, and projects only gain momentum as people sign on. Games are seen as risky, whereas distribution is both highly profitable and well established. When a significant chunk of everyone's compensation is tied to corporate performance, nobody wants to rock the boat.
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Sep 30, 2023 22:47
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Orv posted:How is the League autochess doing? I feel like that was one of the fastest new trends to flare up to massive popularity and then almost immediately die out that I've seen in gaming. It's pretty successful. Development staff has doubled in the last year, and they are a month or two away from their new delivery cadence (a new 'Set' every 4 months). I wish Riot released metrics, they claim it's the largest strategy game in the world. I wouldn't be surprised if it's true. The competitive scene is thriving. There's a 500 person Invitational in Vegas in December that sold out real quick.
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Sep 30, 2023 22:48
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