|
Pirate Jet posted:PC gamers might be too prideful to admit it but the whole reason PC gaming saw a second golden age in the late 2000s/early 2010s is because of Steam and the fact that it brought many of the advantages of consoles to the platform while sacrificing almost none of the advantages of PCs. Imagine if you had to log in to a competitor to Xbox Live for every game you owned on your Bone, and think about how much of a headache that would be. Why would anyone be too prideful to admit this? Maybe kids that don't remember a time before Steam but for any one that does Steam was one of the biggest shifts in PC Gaming.
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2019 21:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 6, 2024 07:40 |
|
|
CharlestonJew posted:I don't do a lot of PC gaming so I don't have much of a horse in this race, but this seems awfully similar to what's happening with streaming services now. Dozens of storefronts popping up and it's too much of a hassle to juggle credentials/subscriptions so people are just going to start pirating a lot more. Pretty much this yeah, the plus side is that each store won't be asking for your credit card to even look at what they have, the bad side is the store fronts have as much effort as the publishers feel they can get away with, in epics case its basically no effort. the whole tencent thing is real too and even though they do own only 40% of the company, if they wanted epic to do something, epic will gladly do it even if out of fear of loosing 40% of its investors
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2019 21:57
|
|
|
Can we talk about the games on the storefront or is this just about the storefront itself? I think the storefront itself and it's UI are garbage and I get the feeling that the higher cut they're giving to devs/publishers is unsustainable if Fortnite suddenly stopped printing money, but Hades and Operencia are both cool.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2019 22:17
|
|
|
I'll admit that I flipped out on Twitter when Battlefield 3 required Origin and wasn't happy when Splinter Cell Blacklist installed Uplay, but Tim Sweeney is a gigantic hypocrite. The guy ran around yelling the sky was falling when Microsoft started selling games on the Windows Store because he somehow thought it meant Windows would become a "closed platform". Never mind that Microsoft would essentially kill their OS by doing that; he tilted at this particular windmill for months while saying exactly nothing about iOS. Now he's buying up exclusives and happy to take Tencent money despite their links to the biggest and most malign closed system on the planet (the Communist Party). As for Steam, their attitude seems to be actively avoiding work until someone steals their users and even then merely half-assing it. The new chat is a woefully inadequate response to Discord and is actually worse than what they had before. Their sales and content policy has been a significant self-inflicted injury to their reputation. The ultimate irony is that the Windows Store is actually better than EGS because it can do cloud saves and XBox cross-sale / cross-play for the few games that have listed there. I'd sooner buy there or on a publisher-owned store than Steam, and I don't have enough time for games to pick up EGS just for free stuff. Hell, I have backlog big enough that I haven't even played 90% of the free stuff Origin used to give away.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2019 22:46
|
|
|
One of my friends had a massive hassle with the EGS just trying to get it working, several times trying to get support to help her with it to no avail. It doesn't help that it's barely even barebones, it's just lacking so many basic features that it seems like they aren't even trying to make a good service at all except from the free games they give out. I was pretty excited for some of the games that are now exclusives but I'm pretty patient, I can wait for a year because as nice as the new games are going to be I have more than enough of games already to keep me busy until they're out on other platforms I like to use more. I do think that Steam should get their thumb out of their rear end though and stop garbage from flooding the store though.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2019 23:11
|
|
|
Pirate Jet posted:Tim Sweeney is worth 7.1 billion dollars. Most of the poo poo Steam does was useful when it launched, but these days Discord would probably do a better job. I don’t believe hosting the shittiest forums this side of GameFAQs deserves a 30% of the industry cut. There’s reason to be against EGS, but it’s more like “it needs a shopping cart” or “there’s no two factor security” or even “offering a discount on engine licenses if you launch on their store should be grounds for an antitrust lawsuit” and not like “developers should appreciate this half finished controller support and mediocre social features.” Shumagorath posted:Tim Sweeney is a gigantic hypocrite. The guy ran around yelling the sky was falling when Microsoft started selling games on the Windows Store because he somehow thought it meant Windows would become a "closed platform". Never mind that Microsoft would essentially kill their OS by doing that; he tilted at this particular windmill for months while saying exactly nothing about iOS. Valve did this too, which is why they spent three years submitting fixes to WINE while the people who write the narratives for their games retired and Half-Life 3’s plot leaked with the names changed.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2019 23:24
|
|
|
Pirate Jet posted:Tim Sweeney is worth 7.1 billion dollars. what does "deserve" mean? valve is an insanely profitable company and has been for years. if it changed its cut from 30 to 25, it would still be insanely profitable. epic thinks they can take a big part of their market share by buying up exclusives and offering a better deal to developers. valve will probably eventually respond by lowering their cut. instead of everyone whining and taking sides with one faceless corporation or the other, let them duke it out and reap the rewards of better funded game studios.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2019 23:37
|
|
|
I like that devs get a higher percentage of revenue. I don't like exclusivity deals, but I can totally understand why a small dev would want to only work with a company that gives them a bigger piece of the pie. I don't like that it doesn't have even the most basic features you'd expect from a storefront. The last I checked, there was still no shopping cart, which means you'd need to buy multiple products with separate transaction for each, which is a good way to have your CC company put a hold on your account. The localconfig.vdf seemed concerning, but I found this post very informative: https://forum.facepunch.com/general/bvnqr/Epic-Games-Store-Is-poo poo-But-It-s-Not-Spyware/1/ I hope Valve encrypts that poo poo in the future. I liked Ashen. il serpente cosmico fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Apr 10, 2019 |
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2019 23:48
|
|
|
Shumagorath posted:I'll admit that I flipped out on Twitter when Battlefield 3 required Origin and wasn't happy when Splinter Cell Blacklist installed Uplay, but Tim Sweeney is a gigantic hypocrite. The guy ran around yelling the sky was falling when Microsoft started selling games on the Windows Store because he somehow thought it meant Windows would become a "closed platform". Never mind that Microsoft would essentially kill their OS by doing that; he tilted at this particular windmill for months while saying exactly nothing about iOS. Now he's buying up exclusives and happy to take Tencent money despite their links to the biggest and most malign closed system on the planet (the Communist Party). This is a huge misunderstanding of Sweeney's issues with Microsoft at that time. Basically, Microsoft baked a bunch of features for developers into its new Universal Windows Platform (UWP) but in order to install UWP apps that weren't obtained from the Windows Store you had to dig through a bunch of menus to enable the functionality to install third-party apps (similar to how Android still is, actually). So the fear was that Microsoft was making the Windows Store the *only* place to sell UWP apps.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2019 23:50
|
|
|
Craptacular! posted:Most of the poo poo Steam does was useful when it launched, but these days Discord would probably do a better job. I don’t believe hosting the shittiest forums this side of GameFAQs deserves a 30% of the industry cut. they literally tried and failed and have closed their game store lmao. So no they didn't do a better job
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2019 23:51
|
|
|
Shumagorath posted:I'll admit that I flipped out on Twitter when Battlefield 3 required Origin and wasn't happy when Splinter Cell Blacklist installed Uplay, but Tim Sweeney is a gigantic hypocrite. The guy ran around yelling the sky was falling when Microsoft started selling games on the Windows Store because he somehow thought it meant Windows would become a "closed platform". Never mind that Microsoft would essentially kill their OS by doing that; he tilted at this particular windmill for months while saying exactly nothing about iOS. Now he's buying up exclusives and happy to take Tencent money despite their links to the biggest and most malign closed system on the planet (the Communist Party). the Microsoft store is like the communist party is a real galaxy brain take
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2019 23:53
|
|
|
Mr.Unique-Name posted:Can we talk about the games on the storefront or is this just about the storefront itself? I think the storefront itself and it's UI are garbage and I get the feeling that the higher cut they're giving to devs/publishers is unsustainable if Fortnite suddenly stopped printing money, but Hades and Operencia are both cool. TBF Epic Store probably still sustains even when Fortnite dies due to UE4 license revenue. The Fortnite money sure doesn't hurt their ability to woo devs and publishers with fat sacks of cash money. On the whole I can't get worked up about one store or the other, Steam's friends and chat and forums are not very good while EGS is just flat out missing handy features that Steam has. BexGu posted:Why would anyone be too prideful to admit this? Maybe kids that don't remember a time before Steam but for any one that does Steam was one of the biggest shifts in PC Gaming. Both stores have this. I do not miss the days of needing to find out a patch was released from the news feeds of PlanetQuake or ShackNews and then trying to find a working mirror for it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 00:01
|
|
|
Pylons posted:This is a huge misunderstanding of Sweeney's issues with Microsoft at that time. Basically, Microsoft baked a bunch of features for developers into its new Universal Windows Platform (UWP) but in order to install UWP apps that weren't obtained from the Windows Store you had to dig through a bunch of menus to enable the functionality to install third-party apps (similar to how Android still is, actually). So the fear was that Microsoft was making the Windows Store the *only* place to sell UWP apps. Shumagorath fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Apr 11, 2019 |
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 00:41
|
|
|
Craptacular! posted:Most of the poo poo Steam does was useful when it launched, but these days Discord would probably do a better job. I don’t believe hosting the shittiest forums this side of GameFAQs deserves a 30% of the industry cut. Valve’s controller support is literally the best in all of PC gaming so calling it “half-finished” is more than a little disingenuous. Nobody’s arguing that Steam’s social features aren’t subpar especially in the age of Discord, but if you think the solution to that is to cut them and take a smaller cut then I’m not sure what to say? Like, they’re still there. They still need to be maintained. Concerned Citizen posted:what does "deserve" mean? valve is an insanely profitable company and has been for years. if it changed its cut from 30 to 25, it would still be insanely profitable. epic thinks they can take a big part of their market share by buying up exclusives and offering a better deal to developers. valve will probably eventually respond by lowering their cut. instead of everyone whining and taking sides with one faceless corporation or the other, let them duke it out and reap the rewards of better funded game studios. If you honestly believe that competition is going to result in a net gain for consumers, you haven’t been doing capitalism for very long.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 00:42
|
|
|
Steam allows me to use my nintendo switch pro controller without having to download some 3rd party software to map the controller to 360 buttons or whatever. The system is really good
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 00:46
|
|
|
Jenny Agutter posted:the Microsoft store is like the communist party is a real galaxy brain take
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 00:51
|
|
|
Pirate Jet posted:If you honestly believe that competition is going to result in a net gain for consumers, you haven’t been doing capitalism for very long. true, there is a very long history of monopolies delivering a superior quality product
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 00:57
|
|
|
Concerned Citizen posted:true, there is a very long history of monopolies delivering a superior quality product fam we're never getting a quality product. period
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 01:00
|
|
|
I don’t understood why the epic store in particular needs to have everyone pee their pants when you already have pointless company specific launchers like origin, battle.net no blizzard launcher no it’s battle.net again, and uplay that you need to play way bigger games. There was some junk people made up about spyware that was bs but is there any other complaint besides it lacks features? I cannot get over the feeling this is yet another arbitrary gamer tantrum. Did Fortnite devs announce they think it’s ok for women to dye their hair purple and that they hate racism? This really sums up what I have seen from EGS haters: Jenny Agutter posted:the Microsoft store is like the communist party is a real galaxy brain take Using the Microsoft store and Xbox app to play sea of thieves sucks major poo poo so why is it an example of a good thing? The cross play is very cool I will give them that. Also someone else posted discord closed their store? I didn’t realize and that’s too bad. I bought something for minion masters on there back in December I think. Made sense to me for discord to try to push into steam’s market since everyone is already running their software.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 01:06
|
|
|
Comrayn posted:lso someone else posted discord closed their store? I didn’t realize and that’s too bad. I bought something for minion masters on there back in December I think. Made sense to me for discord to try to push into steam’s market since everyone is already running their software. Yeah that was me. Someone I know that works for an influencer agency took notice a few weeks back. They quietly changed the store menu icon back to just Nitro and then quietly removed the store over time. You can still get games on Discord but they're only the ones you would get if you are in the Nitro subscription for the client. Epic basically ate Discord's lunch by announcing their store right after Discord had announced they were entering the game.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 01:11
|
|
|
The REAL Goobusters posted:Steam allows me to use my nintendo switch pro controller without having to download some 3rd party software to map the controller to 360 buttons or whatever. The system is really good Being able to use a Dual Shock 4 without running a third-party program in the background (that never worked quite as well as I wanted) is very nice. The steam link also lets me use my main PC as a media hub, which is dope. The main problems with Steam that I can think of are that Discord does chat / friends much better. If Valve would have integrated a good voice chat into Steam from the get-go, we'd see much better implementation of voice chat in multiplayer games across the board. Instead, you get stuck with whatever system the devs decide to put in their game and you use Discord if you actually know the people you're playing with. Curation is also an issue, but there is so much stuff on that storefront that proper curation is almost impossible. Their curator program feels like a half-solution. Most people are getting their information from third party sources. I can't think of a single thing that Epic does better than Valve, aside from the superior revenue split for devs.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 01:13
|
|
|
https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/ You can also just take a look at how barebones the store is. Its just: here are all the games! There are no tabs for different genres or types of games (single player, multiplayer). The search bar only works with game titles. No shopping cart as its already been mentioned. Its just a really poor store. Yes there are dumb rear end people online complaining about dumb poo poo but imo these basic features aren't even here and they expect people to just lap it up? I don't know about that one chief
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 01:18
|
|
|
epic either made capitalism more tedious, which I cannot abide, or they spent all that fortnite money on free games for the people I choose the more positive and optimistic take.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 01:22
|
|
|
Comrayn posted:I don’t understood why the epic store in particular needs to have everyone pee their pants when you already have pointless company specific launchers like origin, battle.net no blizzard launcher no it’s battle.net again, and uplay that you need to play way bigger games. There was some junk people made up about spyware that was bs but is there any other complaint besides it lacks features? I generally agree but there will be some negative consequences for consumers when Epic throws money at devs for exclusivity. The deals are structured in such a way that will deter companies from putting games on sale during their exclusivity window, which will keep prices higher for longer. I don't hate the idea of multiple platforms, but I do worry that we'll end up with weird situations like when whatever COD came out on the Windows store and they weren't able to play multiplayer with Steam users. If we're going to have all these platforms, cross-play needs to happen. The REAL Goobusters posted:https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/ Steam's curation isn't the best, but at least they've tried some stuff, and their failings primarily come down to how expansive the library is. EGS only works at all because of how small it is. As it expands and continues to add games, it will become nearly unusable unless you know exactly what you want, which isn't ideal for a storefront.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 01:26
|
|
|
NuckmasterJ posted:My issues comes from; 
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 01:32
|
|
|
Cao Ni Ma posted:So far even EGS has just kinda stood there without being able to actually make a congruent argument as to why the lower cut is good for the consumer. Instead they just make the whole argument that its "good for the industry". Its bullshit, its good for publishers and their shareholders and nothing else. Metro: Exodus cost $10 less in the US on EGS than it did on console and Steam, presumably because of the superior split. So you'll have cases where the superior split will mean cheaper games at launch, but that may not be very common. More money in smaller developers pockets will give them more resources to develop their games, though, which means better / less broken games, ideally.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 01:36
|
|
|
il serpente cosmico posted:Metro: Exodus cost $10 less in the US on EGS than it did on console and Steam, presumably because of the superior split. So you'll have cases where the superior split will mean cheaper games at launch, but that may not be very common. More money in smaller developers pockets will give them more resources to develop their games, though, which means better / less broken games, ideally. Or maybe EGS ate that cost at that time to pump their brand?
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 01:57
|
|
|
SilkyP posted:Or maybe EGS ate that cost at that time to pump their brand? That's completely possible. Supposedly their exclusivity deals are based on guaranteed money up front (they pay X amount for a Y time period, and if sales in that time period don't exceed X, Epic eats the cost), so I don't know how much the exclusivity deals will tell us about this in the long run. Now that I think about it, it's usually possible to get Steam keys from sites like GMG for new games and pre-orders around 20% off, which obviously aren't available on Epic exclusives. So certain games costing less probably doesn't make any difference. So yeah, the main benefit would be more money for small devs to hypotheically make better games or support them for longer after release.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 02:11
|
|
|
Exclusivity is a dumb way to build a forced market that hates your product and I stand by it that EGS will fail unless they prop it up with other money for a long, long, long time. It also promotes piracy which is cool too. I realize that Steam is functionally the exclusive provider of most games, but there's a difference between the monopoly you're cool with and a newer, shittier competitor that is forcing monopolism without most of the benefits of the original monopoly. Like, imagine if a new telecom provider decided to buy out the rights to service all of NYC and no other telecom could operate there, but also it was far less reliable and far more slow than Verizon/AT&T/et al. "Competition is good!" is a true sentiment if the competition wasn't via anti-consumer practices like exclusivity deals and a lack of features.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 02:18
|
|
|
Concerned Citizen posted:true, there is a very long history of monopolies delivering a superior quality product Do you honestly think Steam is a monopoly? Again, we're talking about platforms, not stores. Your average Steam game gets 28% of its sales from stores that aren't Steam.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 02:23
|
|
|
Its a tricky issue, totally see both sides of the argument. My gaming PC ate poo poo so I don't have a dog in the fight but anxious to read more goonpinions
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 02:29
|
|
|
jokes posted:Exclusivity is a dumb way to build a forced market that hates your product and I stand by it that EGS will fail unless they prop it up with other money for a long, long, long time. It also promotes piracy which is cool too. I realize that Steam is functionally the exclusive provider of most games, but there's a difference between the monopoly you're cool with and a newer, shittier competitor that is forcing monopolism without most of the benefits of the original monopoly. There's just no way a new entrant is going to compete with Steams inertia other than that though. With the size of people's existing game libraries on Steam, if you offer people the opportunity to buy it on two stores, they'll just choose Steam, every time. If you want to break through, you're going to have to do two things: 1. Give a bunch of stuff away for free (expensive) to build people's initial libraries of games so they at least leave the storefront installed on their systems. 2. Purchase exclusives people want (also expensive). Epic did both. EA has the size ($30 billion company) to make their own platform, but even then it's faced tremendous hurdles getting people to install Origin. And EA has had to do it through third party exclusivity too (NFL, FIFA). Steam absolutely needs some competition, 30% is absurd especially considering how much cheaper live services are to run in the era of cloud computing. Obviously people are right to be wary of Epic (Tim Sweeney seems like your typical libertarian chud), but someone needs to go through the expense and pain of building a store from nothing if we're going to have a viable competitor. As for features, that doesn't bother me, Steam was an absolute shitshow on release. It was a couple of years before you could really describe it as stable and reliable. Stuff like that just takes time.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 02:36
|
|
|
I’m so mad I can’t play ashen on the same launcher as hentai puzzle extreme XII
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 02:41
|
|
|
Vietnom nom nom posted:There's just no way a new entrant is going to compete with Steams inertia other than that though. With the size of people's existing game libraries on Steam, if you offer people the opportunity to buy it on two stores, they'll just choose Steam, every time. I would argue you need great games that get people excited to install the other client. For EA Origin for years I would say that was the sims or games like FIFA (but sports games usually do better on consoles). Ever since APEX Legends came out, everyone downloaded Origin (me included). Reply to the bold part: Steam launched in 2003. Literally more than a decade ago. If we're going to compare stores lets compare it to a more recent one like GOG. Even at release GOG had a much better store than Epic has right now. It took them time to develop their store for sure, but it was not the literal skeleton of a store that the EGS is right now.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 02:51
|
|
|
Pirate Jet posted:Do you honestly think Steam is a monopoly? with a market share of around 80%, steam would generally be considered to fall under monopoly status
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 02:54
|
|
|
The entire community aspect of Steam is just pointless bloatware and I wish there was a "lite" version of the program that didn't have any of it included so I could just use it to buy/download/launch games and configure my controllers so I can keep avoiding going back to DS4Windows. I will never log onto steam Friends again.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 03:01
|
|
|
Concerned Citizen posted:with a market share of around 80%, steam would generally be considered to fall under monopoly status That's not what a monopoly is.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 03:11
|
|
|
CJacobs posted:The entire community aspect of Steam is just pointless bloatware and I wish there was a "lite" version of the program that didn't have any of it included so I could just use it to buy/download/launch games and configure my controllers so I can keep avoiding going back to DS4Windows. I will never log onto steam Friends again. A-freaking-men.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 03:23
|
|
|
Pirate Jet posted:That's not what a monopoly is. That is almost universally classified as a monopoly in any industry, but it varies according to legal authority. In the UK it's a much lower threshold.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 03:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 6, 2024 07:40 |
|
|
il serpente cosmico posted:Metro: Exodus cost $10 less in the US on EGS than it did on console and Steam, presumably because of the superior split. I hate this poo poo. I have posted about it elsewhere but the fact the game was cheaper in the US but the same price or in some cases even more expensive for the rest of the world is a bullshit game of optics I imagine Epic is all too happy to play. To me it feels like Epic is fully aware the vast majority of game coverage is based in America and so most media outlets will be happy to report the benefits for americans without bothering to mention everything else. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has shittier prices not only because these magical discounts only exist for the US but because Epic is all too happy to make people pay extra for using certain payment methods. Historically Steam has always covered that kind of thing out of their own pocket but that is seldom mentioned in the coverage of this little feud. It's a very "gently caress you got mine" kind of thing. Honestly, to me it feels like Epic's target demographic is either people that are duped by headlines like that or the kind of hyperbolic person that pretends reviews (or any other Steam feature) are useless when in reality they more than likely don't use them.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2019 03:38
|
|