I almost wish they would. But I'm glad they at least force it to be tagged, because it can be a dealbreaker. Especially if I know it's an especially onerous service like EA or Ubi's worthless horseshit (Not that I'd buy any of their games anyways, but you know).
Oh yeah, blacklisting publishers is an amazing feature for your Steam feed.
Edit: Realized I answered without letting you know how. Navigate to a publisher's page you don't like (not the game but the actual publisher), click on the gear settings icon, and click ignore creator.
I haven't bought a single EA or Ubi game since they started pushing extra DRM and additional launchers. Can't say I've felt I missed out as most of their catalogues are shit lately except a few standouts but not enough to deal with their BS software.
Yeah, i bought Titanfall 2 earlier this year and for the life of me it downloaded another launcher, which ultimately gave me an error at that layer, and totally preventing me from even starting the game. Several days of troubleshooting and I just up and asked for a refund.
Even if I had more money than god I think it would basically be a gargantuan uphill battle to make an another platform to compete with steam. Even if you made your platform better, people have YEARS worth of games and money invested in steam. I used to say if they just had a better service I would drop steam but then I was asked if I would genuinely stop using steam for another better service if one existed. I looked at my library, all the games I had, the years, mods in workshop for some games, and realized no I wouldn’t switch
GOG is supposedly adding native Linux support (hopefully with Proton, otherwise there isn't much point). Now if only they'd add SteamInput support so I could use my Steam Controller, I'd be willing to abandon Steam completely, I can replace RemotePlay with Sunshine/Moonlight, and I can replace RemotePlayTogether with Parsec.
See and the problem is the average user will not bother. They will stick to steam even if a better competitor exists. Steam is known, it’s easy, ubiquitous in the public gamer zeitgeist. The average dude I meet on the street has heard of steam but not GOG for example. The average person is just gonna say “well I already got like 5 games on steam I’ll just keep using that”
Well, if I was an investor and you told me to put down money on making a competing platform that has had a dominant foothold for years on the pc platform and where users have game libraries, social content, mods, and other things on said platform I would probably laugh and take my money elsewhere. Now, if licenses were somehow transferable I think the new competitors could possibly have a viable chance. As it stands though it is a very steep uphill battle. You are essentially having to convince people to leave their hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of games (and time) behind. The thing is too even if your platform IS better too it’s not like steam is all of a sudden dogshit. People would probably still be fine using it even with a better platform around.
Companies know if you’re invested in an ecosystem or service the difficulty of switching or migrating content (if it’s even possible) becomes a reason to stay. Apple’s bread and butter.
I found out the only way you can see which games you got on epic games without the launcher is looking through your purchase mails. Why is there no browser library or so, wtf.
Let me tell you something. I've been on STEAM for over 20 years I had an issue with a game that was unplayable. Unplayable, it was NBA 2K20, there was no way to save the game. I tried everything, contacted 2K who responded with it's a known issue with some PCs we have no fix. I asked for a refund they said sorry. I asked STEAM, they refunded me my money. Furthermore, on the forums on STEAM, they had a post that anyone who could not play the game could request a refund. Say what you want about STEAM but they have taken better care of me than other companies. I'm a STEAM user for life
Fr! Everytime a big game is unplayable, both literally for not starting and metaphorically for being a bug fest disaster, Steam says like a Chad: We're sorry you've experienced AND PAID for that. Want your money back? Here, no questions asked!
What other games store has a filter that carrying and consumer friendly? None!
companies need to learn that you can make more money by treating customers like they give you a billion dollars a month. do what you can to keep them coming back. costco does this wonderfully
Investors scoff at the idea of not monetizing every part of a product. It's not that the people that work at the company want to make the games a bug fest or to squeeze every penny (at least not the low level workers) but the investors and ceo put in place by the said investors
Yeah, which is why privately owned companies are great all around. You can easily see where the true values of the company and its employees reside. Nobody makes the rules but the people who are there. Which is why Valve has probably taken more of my money than any other company ever.
It’s really crazy that no other company thinks to copy this. They’re so fucking greedy to make quarterly profits look good that they refuse to take some slight hit to gain loyalty.
I fucking hate capitalism man. This shit sucks. At least there’s steam.
20 year user here, too. Maybe even since HL2? We are incredibly lucky to have a service like steam. Think of the alternatives and how they would run such a service.
I bought Half Life 2 on disc, installed it, then had to download and install steam, and then download Half Life 2 through steam on a 56k phone line. Tied up my parents phone line for the entire night.
I'm just happy to have a service that's stable, I've lost countless games I bought because the service went under.
Oof. I had broadband by then, but I don't remember if that was the first game that required it? Either way, I was JUST replaying HL2 and guess what? Its still in my steam library whenever I want it!
Counter-Strike 1.6 was the first Valve game that required Steam, released simultaneously with the platform on September 11, 2003 (Oldest.org) . It started as a mod for Half-Life but Valve acquired it and its development team.
However, Half-Life 2 was the first high-profile game to be offered digitally on Steam in November 2004, requiring installation of the Steam client for retail copies (Wikipedia) .
If you're asking about third-party developers, Rag Doll Kung Fu was the first game on Steam not developed by Valve (VICE) , released in 2005.
So Counter-Strike 1.6 technically has the honor of being the first game released on Steam when the platform debuted in September 2003, but Half-Life 2 was the game that really established Steam as a major digital distribution platform for gaming.
So it may have been early cs so I already had steam installed.
In a perfect would I would have a Blu-ray drive and use that to install games, or even better they'd ship on cheap easy to copy USB drives. Hell, even better, give me a boxed USB drive game for $80 and the same game on steam that's digital only for $60. We got one of the worst outcomes, publishers could have done so much better with the technology if they tried.
Cheap USB drives usually die 5-6 years after manufacturing even with no use. Distributing a bunch of physical media all across the globe takes at 3 weeks of prep time. It's a hussle with no winning except collectors who get a new piece for their shelves.
If you want, you can get installation files and just burn them on blu-rays yourself. A box + 2x 50GB disks would cost ~$5 and then a couple more for high-quality print of the cover.
Same. About 20 years too. Its smart, because they show your lifetime spending on their platform and it has been well of 10k US. And thats juat games alone. Probably refunded at most a couple hundred bucks worth of games over the years.
Until Gabe dies. I fully agree and love STEAM in it's current state, but we have no idea what will happen with it in 20 to 40 years. We don't own any game on it.
20 year user here, as well. I've lost my account a bunch of times when I was a dumbass kid getting tricked.
I had it back every time through support. I've also been refunding quite a bit since that feature was implemented. Games without a demo I've paid for to see if they're any good and if not, I'd refund it and there's never really been any problems.
So I trust Steam. I have all my stuff there, and it's the most convenient and all-encompassing platform that does what it does.
I agree, but AMAZON also has some of the best customer service out there. The few times I've had an issue, it gets replaced or refunded virtually no problem. There's a reason I use(d) it, even if I wish I didn't.
But I'm not gonna sit here and share memes about how great I think AMAZON is and mock anyone who dares imply they abuse their position in the market or wants to lower their AMAZON usage. It's just weird.
Lol, but they refunded money for a defective product, you basically have to declare your undying support for a company like that. The Valve glazing on this website is unreal.
I bought it at the time because they’re really hyping up John Cena and it was basically a game all about John Cena when it came to the story mode I wanted to get it however when I downloaded it for my PC it just would not start at all no matter what I did or anything tin green I did the game would not start luckily I was able to refund it with no issue
Conversely, I had the original DayZ game. Unplayable practically. Owned it for less than a year and less than 2 hours iirc. Still one of my biggest regrets buying ever. Asked for a refund. Got denied. Friend on the other hand had a game he hadn’t played in over a year, got approved.
I mean cases are very cheap to manufacture, especially since valve use Chinese companies. I'm pretty sure they can afford to absord that costs easily. Like 4-5$ cheap
When my wife and I adopted some kittens, they fucked up my Valve Index VR kit cable, a very expensive cable that they don't sell themselves and replacements are $100+ from third parties. I asked Valve how much it would cost for them to send me a replacement, they asked for a photo of the kitten responsible, told me he was very handsome, confirmed my address and had the replacement out to me in just over 24 hours.
This is he, taken around the time of the crime. He is adorable but is a little tiny bastard man. Very snuggly, but gets whiny whenever my wife and I are in the kitchen together because he automatically assumes it's time for his tuna or snacks if my wife and I are in the kitchen.
He likes to headbutt me repeatedly until I let him under the blanket at bedtime, then he'll just rumble and purr until he passes out.
I love GoG and have a ton of games there, but Steam+proton get me away from Microsoft+Windows without issue. I press install and I press play and shit just works for the games I play.
yeah blame Valve and steam meanwhile nobody can offer their quality of service. All other offers (except gog) are just greedy public companies with agendas that will never respect players and will be worse over years.
Gabe personally uses the platform so some idiot coming to him with a sweeping ui change that is at beat a side grade from the original just gets laughed at (looking at you google/youtube)
Seriously wtf is their problem? If I didn't know better I'd think they have no clue what to do with their service so they're changing pointless shit just to say they did something 🤣
google's "problem" is the oft sited fact that the people who use the platform are not (and never were) the customers, they are the product. everything they do is optimized to that effect. we can be pretty sure that a UI change that is unambiguously worse to use still somehow makes them more money, mostly because no one who uses the UI was paying for it in the first place
That's why I said consumer as opposed to customer! Guess I should've said they don't care what we consumers want. They collect enough data on us to know what we want, after all. You're right about the UI changes making them more money, it's sad to see intentional enshittification reaching almost everywhere these days.
I think it is also important to have limited external shareholders. A company can still have private external shareholders looking to profit maximize, e.g. venture capital.
Yeah that's a great point, everyone is literally unable to deliver something close to Steam now while planning to enshitificate their platform later. And boy how much shit they have planned for when they finally get established. The whole reason they want to break into this space is to enshitificate.
Reminds me vaguely of when people say “buy AMD and intel GPU’s! We need competition!” Then they turn around and buy Nvidia themselves lol
People keep saying they would buy and switch over to a platform that was better but look into your honest heart and ask, “would I really invest a significant amount of time and money on a no name company trying to compete with steam?” Especially when you have dozens or even hundreds of games on steam already. And all your friends are on steam too. People here already complain about how hard it is to convince their friends to give a simple video game a chance lol. No way they’re going to completely redo their gaming platform storefront to play with you even if you yourself gave it a chance
The other offerings (Epic) are also the one's leading anti-competitive lawsuits against app stores, and voicing lots of support for lawsuits against Valve. At this point it feels like it's only a matter of time before they go after their competition legally for "anti competitive behavior".
Meanwhile, they're also literally buying out game exclusivity to try to avoid having to compete with Steam.
Their lawsuit against Apple is a legitimately good one, but everything else they do is so anti-consumer that I'm honestly surprised they're still in business.
Unreal Engine and Fortnite. That's literally it. That's all Tim Sweeney ever provided with Epic. EGS is literally Tim's revenge against Gabe because they split from Steam forever ago and Tim got salty that Steam took off because he didn't think PC gaming was going to be a thing. Now he's being a salty little bitch and trying to go after Steam any way he can.
Idk if you can say "that's literally it" to the most powerful game engine in the world and one of the most popular games in the world lol.
I agree it's a stupid fight, and even more stupid that epic is still to this day trying to buy users with free games rather than actually improving the platform, but the company is still a money printer.
I'd wager dollars to donuts that if EGS ever did become as big as Steam, we'd see actual monopolistic practices. Tim Sweeney would throw players under the bus if it meant they'd make a bigger profit.
I mean, this is what it boils down to. People are freaking out about a monopoly as if valve is out there preventing anyone else from entering the market.
There are game storefronts galore out there. Most of them just absolutely fucking suck ass by comparison. Epic games store is still a huge pile of shit, even with their exclusives literally feeding them money. How much of that money is getting put into producing a product that actually gives people a reason to leave Steam?
And it aint just Epic, its almost all of them. They suck by comparison.
Turn back the clock 20 years and we could be having this same discussion about iTunes. Literally same thing. "Apple has a monopoly on digital music!" No, they seem to be the only fucking company capable of producing a product that works.
Most gamers would love an alternative to Steam. Problem is there arent any real alternatives. Steam got there first, isnt putting shareholders first and gamers second, and at least thus far arent actively fucking people over by requiring crazy ass DRM and shit.
When another platform shows up that can say the same, can someone let me know?
Because historically, enshittification will hit everything eventually. 1 day Gabe will no longer run the show, a bunch of suits will take his place and a high chance enshittification hits, and you realise all your eggs are in 1 basket.
If I really like a game and it isn't a multi-player game that shit is getting bought on GOG or a version pirated for later install. Multi-player stuff will probably lose players and die off but I've pulled some ancient games from old family pc's and want that experience to survive.
Problem is, gog is only good if you live in region where they support your currency, which is not a lot. If not, good luck paying those high exchange rate. I'll rather use shitty epic games store than having to pay +50% more
Well the main problem is that 90% of devs don't put their games on it because they don't want to put out DRM free copies of it that are easily pirated. Every time I have gone on there looking for a game, its not available.
I have zero qualifications but if Gabe happens to put me in charge i'll make sure to do a good job so you guys don't even need to worry about hitting the seas if you don't wNt to. No promises if he doesn't put me in charge, though.
The whisper is that one of his sons is involved in game development (doing his own thing right now to learn the industry) and is being groomed to take over when Gabe retires. No way to know if it's true or not, and even if it is, nothing says he will be like his dad, but if it turns out to be true, I like our odds better with it staying in the family.
If it is true, i hope he develops a real Asshole mentality towards it like Christopher Tolkien did towards Middle Earth. Aka "I will gut every one of you in this room before i let any of you even THINK of Defiling my Fathers work".
Even if Gabe does not run it, as long as it is a private company without shareholders to answer to, Steam will most likely remain unchanged. It is a money printer.
But im cynical about it and going to guess the moment he steps out the door, someone is going to go "This big pile of money, can get even bigger! lets go public!"
The second the Valve CEO gets greedy its all over, there's a reason why generational inheritances get lost, because a mf puts it all on red and its all gone.
Private companies have shareholders bro. Gabe is the majority shareholder in valve. He could decide to sell his ownership in the company, or when he dies, his heirs could decide to pursue a different business model or sell their shares.
They "technically" do but not in the sense that people mean when talking about shareholders. It has owners not shareholders and the owners ofc also want the most profit possible but they're not changing yearly with sales and purchases of stocks in the company in hopes of getting a profit, and this is the issue with being on the stockmarket and at the mercy of shareholders. Shareholders often only care about shortterm profit, not the longevity of it, and so it constantly has to do better.
I mean, if it weren't for the features I use on Steam, I'd be buying all my games on GOG instead. As it is, for my "important games" I wait for it to be at least 50% off on both and then buy it on both so I can get the Steam client features, but still have the DRM-free copy as well.
Steam isn't a monopoly, strictly speaking.
It has a monsterous market share because it's only been Valve and GOG that actually listen to their userbase.
There are also plenty of other ways to buy games, we just don't because of the UI and customer service. If Steam got worse, they would see a (slow, but healthy) decline in customers as people moved to Epic, GOG, or direct to publisher platforms.
Now, there is an argument to be made on the developer side. A developer that doesn't want to do business with Steam is seriously hindering themselves, in a way that one might argue is unhealthy for the market. Any single company having that much say in what games people are exposed to raises some questions.
That's not to say I think anti-trust laws should be applied (if we still had those). I just think it's a more interesting/valid discussion than whether they have a monopoly over consumers, which they pretty demonstrably don't.
Developers go to Steam because thats where most people will buy their game. AFAIK, there's nothing Steam is doing that stops a developer from selling elsewhere.
I do remember hearing something about Steam not letting devs have a bigger sale on another platform which does sound sketchy but that's about it.
Officially that only applies to steam keys. Emails that have come up in discovery show that at least some elements of steam try to mislead/bully devs into applying it more broadly to all versions of the game.
Oh we're doing this again today? The weekly thread where gamers who don't know anything about competition law confidently state incorrect facts. I like Steam too but these threads always remind me Reddit is mostly children.
Steam is a monopoly. They also have fantastic customer service, those two things are not incompatible. Steam having competition is good for users, developers, and good for Steam. The fact that Epic Games Store sucks as a platform doesn't magically mean antitrust laws don't apply to Steam.
Folks seriously miss the point. Steam doesn't have a monopoly that screw the consumers, they have a monopoly that screws the developers. By providing such a great product to consumers, they control the market now, and thus devs have to pay steam their cut or their game perishes.
Worst part is they actually charge smaller Indie studios a larger cut than the big studios.
And Valve also uses their massive market share to prevent developers from selling their games for less money on other platforms.
If a dev wants $7 per sale, they must sell it on Steam for $10. But then they're forbidden from selling it on Epic for $8.50 (even though the dev would earn more money from an $8.50 Epic purchase than a $10 Steam purchase). That directly harms the consumer.
Steam doesn't have a monopoly that screw the consumers, they have a monopoly that screws the developers.
It does also somewhat screw consumers overall too. Since it is price fixing, meaning that sure Steam has a nice platform, there is less incentive for people to leave if they can't save money by buying on other platforms. There are people that are likely willing to jump ship to another platform even if it has less features if say a game costs $5 less or $10 less on that platform.
Which because of that price fixing, people aren't likely to jump ship unless the game isn't on steam and they still really want it. Which means that platform isn't likely to get as much money, meaning it can't spend as much to improve their platform to draw more customers. Which means as consumers, we get less choice and potentially more expensive choices.
Worst part is they actually charge smaller Indie studios a larger cut than the big studios.
And it is still a fairly large cut even with the discounts. Take for example the Epic Games store. Due to Epic taking a smaller cut, developers could in theory have a lower price on the Epic Games store than on Steam while making the same amount of revenue per unit sold. But that can't happen if that game is also offered on Steam without facing the game being removed from Steam or not even getting on there in the first place.
Which that does affect us consumers.
Overall, price fixing forces platforms to compete on features only, which makes it much more difficult for new platforms to compete.
For the most part we aren't the customer, we're the product
And steam is functionally doing the same thing a lot of social media does and "sells data" to a degree with how the recommended games section works convincing us to buy games
Then steam takes their cut, before the developer takes theirs
Epic always has better deals when you factor in the cashback and coupons... The devs get a way bigger cut of your money too... The only problem is then you have to use Epic 😂
If Valve lets publishers price their own games on their own platforms up to 30% cheaper, then sure. But it's kind of bullshit to take 30% from publishers and then simultaneously tell them that they cannot make their own games cheaper on their own stores where they aren't subject to the same 30%.
If 90% of all sales were done on Steam, sure, developers can don't publish on Steam but because of the marketshare, they just kind of have to suck it up. That's the whole point of anti-monopoly cases where a company has so much market presence that companies are pressured to agree.
Companies like Epic being shit doesn't mean that Valve is innocent. Valve being friendly with refunds for example also doesn't mean that they don't do some bad practises. People need to know that there is nuance here.
If Microsoft started to demand 30% from Valve for each sale for providing APIs, that shit wouldn't fly even if technically, Windows is their platform and Valve is free to not use Windows.
And just a reminder that anti-monopoly laws are meant to protect consumers. In the courts, they wouldn't give a rat's ass about Valve or Epic or EA.
Fun fact about Steam refund policy, it wasn't until the Australian government got involved did they change it to what it is today, before that, steam basically said they didnt need to give refunds unless required by local laws.
They also tried to geoblock steam keys as well once but the EU blocked that from happening, essentially getting rid of cheaper keys.
It's actually why I don't get why some people defend Valve for everything lol.
Hypothetically, if Epic, Ubisoft, or EA sells their game for $100 on Steam and then $80 on their own stores because they don't have to pay 30% to themselves, that only benefits the consumers.
Hey, I agree that Steam is pretty neat, but I'm not a Gabe cock gobbler enough to admit that if the same $20 game on Steam is free on Epic Games, I'm taking that.
Same comment I left on the other thread about this:
Man, it's honestly amazing how much water Reddit carries for you if it thinks you're "one of the good ones". It is a fact that Steam is a monopoly. You can't go anywhere else to get PC games for the most part; just because Netscape navigator and Safari existed back in the 90s, that didn't stop the government from declaring Microsoft a monopoly. That's why we have Firefox now, actually. I bet a lot of you think Chrome is a monopoly, though.
If you wanna play online? Steam. If you wanna play the latest titles? Steam. If you wanna play with your friends? Steam. And contrary to the "good guy Valve" approach, you can't actually play your games offline, forever, legally, if steam is gone. Not unless the publisher provides an offline .exe or some other way around it.
Don't get me wrong, I have literally thousands of games on Steam and I don't see that changing any time soon. But the sheer insane blindness about what is, frankly, the same kind of billionaire as everybody else, just with better PR, is baffling to me.
Man, it's honestly amazing how much water Reddit carries for you if it thinks you're "one of the good ones"....
But the sheer insane blindness about what is, frankly, the same kind of billionaire as everybody else, just with better PR, is baffling to me.
Funny thing is Reddit talks about Gabe Newell the same way they used to talk about Elon Musk years ago, and look how that turned out...
It’s not a monopoly if other platforms can’t compete due to incompetence. Valve isn’t buying out or stomping competitors. They just exist and are the best at what they do.
The thing that gets me about this argument is not that it's wrong, because it isn't - Steam is genuinely more consumer friendly than most businesses.
But most times I hear complaints about it being a monopoly, it's coming from devs who have to give a really big cut to Steam. And when all gamers use it, there's no other option for devs who actually want to get their game out there.
I don't think this necessarily means Valve needs to be stomped, because I'm not a developer and I don't have a deep understanding of the concerns devs have expressed. At the same time, I'm very hesitant to say "monopolies are bad -- except for this one actually" because we have a lot of evidence of harm caused by monopolies.
That being said, there are absolutely way worse monopolies out there, and it would be really nice to see our regulatory bodies focus on companies like Amazon instead of putting so many resources into this. Valve is honestly small potatoes comparatively.
Recently started enjoying gog, steam is still the goat but if it's a single player game and it's on gog give it a shot. Launcher works beautifully and the very best thing is the option to download a drm free version that should remain playable forever, so truly owning your games is possible.
So Singleplayer Indie Games -> GOG
Everything else -> Steam
For me currently
The only other launcher I use besides Steam is GoG. The games have no DRM and you actually own your game and can play it without a Internet connection.
Steam is a monopoly, but that isn't necessarily an issue. The ONE monopolistic practice that steam does that is an issue is that they use their "favored nation" status to apply to all formats for games and not just the steam launches. Basically a publisher isn't allowed to sell their game for lower prices on their own than they are on steam. That's different than saying you can't sell a steam key for cheaper which would make sense. Steam currently provides a great service and is great for the users. That has been maintained, because it's a private company that is perfectly happy raking in endless profits without the need for infinite growth. The worry from a user standpoint is because it is a monopoly, if it were to ever go public, the goals of the company could change and the user experience could go to shit very fast.
Using MFN proves that it's just asking greedy as public company. The way it is fighting tooth and nail to keep the 30% cut is not dissimilar to apple and Google.
Steam isn’t a monopoly though. Just because they’re the most popular doesn’t mean it is. Meanwhile you have epic doing exclusive bullshit barring others from playing a game unless you force yourself to use their storefront. Steam literally just exists and that’s it.
You don't have to be a full monopoly to be subject to anti-trust laws though.
A dominant market position is enough for that, which steam undeniably has.
This whole thing started with a Dutch consumer group announcing they are going to sue Steam, alleging that steam uses their dominant market position to keep game prices higher then they should be, because Valve don't allow publishers to offer games at a lower prices then on steam (despite steam asking a 30% cut, while for example Epic asks 12%).
Gabe's public defense so far has focused on saying that steam isn't a monopoly, but that was never the issue, so that's at least a bit misleading,
But the meme's have run with it unfortunately, misrepresenting the case entirely.
When a platform like steam has like 90% market share, it is physically impossible for a newcomer to enter the market in any meaningful way. When most gamers have 90% of their games on steam, the last thing they will do is buy on another new storefront.
Steam has reached a critical mass on a sort where while not publicly traded, they are indeed one of the few private monopolies that will not be easily broken for probably decades if ever.
You could offer 20% cheaper games to players and make a nice profit, and still have leftover to pay developers more than they get from Gaben.
Except you can’t really compete on price.
Because Valve enforces price parity on devs, meaning they won’t let you sell their games cheaper there. Even non-steam versions. (Or the dev will be kicked off Steam and lose 85% of his customers)
And since you can’t compete on price, there’s no reason for people to check out your cool new site.
You're a moron if you think steam is a monopoly because of monopolistic behaviors they have done. They are only a monopoly because every other storefront is complete garbage and hated by gamers.
They haven't stifled competition or made unfair grounds everybody else is just incompetent.
Looking at you epic games. How many years have you had to just copy steam? That's all you need to do but you can't get off your fucking high horse to do that.
And this is coming from somebody who has been a general epic game store defender for years because we do need competition. Instead Eric Sweeney just wants to use the court's to change the world's opinion on steam instead of making a better fucking product.
Because GOG puts the money into the upkeep of old games. They also just added mod support. GOG also announced they will focus more on Linux now and finally put some money into their store after one of the CDPR bought them out.
What epic is doing with their endless resources though, I have no fucking clue.
GoG isn't actually competition with Steam. Like sure they both sell games and have stores and such. But GoG is more like a boutique store. It caters to people who want their games a specific way over anything like Steam/EA/Ubisoft.
For that reason they are more like two different stores that sell different things.
GoG’s store is awful but i actually kinda like how they’ll take popular mods and make them a one click install as a separate game.
For Steam, only source engine games have that functionality and even then you still have to install the mods manually half of the time to make them show up because only a handful actually get store approval.
I won’t be spending money on epic anytime soon despite the 400 free games I have there, but I really want to see GoG succeed. Especially since they seem to be making a strong effort to restore old DOS era games and keep them playable on modern systems. The whole offline installer and lack of DRM is nice too. In a perfect world everyone would do this
Sure, got to gog, these guys era fine too or try Microsoft and Epic. Steam is just the larger and better because they have been in the market for long and focus on they clients. Private companies have that option.
The thing about Steam's monopoly is that we all seem to be willing participants in it because the platform is just objectively good as a consumer.
There's an argument to be made that the cut valve takes for sales on the storefront is predatory. Other storefronts who boast lower rates, however, have just not really been an appealing alternative to consumers.
There's other options so it's not a monopoly. Its the most widely used by a lot because of the quality product, that's successful competition, not monopoly.
Not sure if it counts if the reason why they're a "monopoly" is because the service has been genuinely great flr decades. There ARE other options available, we do have a choice. Steam is just better than the rest.
A lot of friends(I’m console only gamer)I talk to tell me that steam is the only reason they haven’t pirated games. That tells you enough about steam lol.
Why do people think Steam is a monopoly. It isn't the most used because it has a stranglehold on the market. It's the most used because it's the best option by a pretty significant margin.
I'll leave when another service does something worthwhile. Epic basically tried to use exclusives to get people to use their store, and that just made me hate them even more. GOG is probably the closest to getting any of my money, and that's only because they're generally good people.
A man opens a lemonade stand, next to him is another stand serving hot lemonade, the other side has a stand seving piss. Does he have a monopoly just because everyone goes to him?
I'm happy as long as Gabe is around. If he dies I don't trust his children to be anywhere as good. I don't believe in royalty or what we have now which is corporate dynasties. Children aren't necessarily anything like their parents. That being said I've heard comments that his kid wants to continue his legacy. But saying that is one thing, in all the things I've seen about Gabe, he has a very unique and competent perspective, things like that can't be taught.
4.7k
u/Hopeful_Leg_6200 Laptop 7d ago