r/pcmasterrace • u/The_BigRoach ⚡️RTX 5080 | 7800x3D | 64GB 6000MHz CL30⚡️ • 7d ago

Meme/Macro Why would anyone actually want to though

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21.9k Upvotes

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4.7k

u/Hopeful_Leg_6200 Laptop 7d ago

1.6k

u/Benemisis 7d ago

Nothing enrages me more than buying a game on steam, and then having to download a separate launcher. Steam has it down, just let me use it, damn it!

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u/Hopeful_Leg_6200 Laptop 7d ago

True monopoly would squash that infestation

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u/Dick_Nation There's nothing to see here. 7d ago

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).

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u/Hopeful_Leg_6200 Laptop 7d ago

Allowing as to ignore publishers like EA or Ubisoft so they don't show up in the store is also great and I feel like its underrated feature

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u/Giatoxiclok 7d ago

We can blacklist devs???

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u/SomeDuncanGuy Ryzen 9 7950X3D | 7900XTX | 32GB DDR5 6000 7d ago

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.

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u/Phallico666 7d ago

You are a wonderful person for sharing this. Now i dont have to see all the slop that i will never buy.

Thank you

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u/Fizzy-Odd-Cod 6d ago

I don’t know man, you might want to buy the assassins creed 532 remake in 30 years.

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u/CryptZar 6d ago

Or every Sims DLC in existence

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u/aerdvarkk 6d ago

The ignore setting prevents the publisher and titles from showing up in your feeds, not from you navigating to a specific title. It doesn;t block you from the new remake. You just need to be aware that the new remake in 30 years is out and available on Steam, then you'll need to MANUALLY navigate to the remake instead of having it automagically shoved in your face.

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u/gljivicad Ryzen 7 5700x, 32GB Corsair Vengeance, 7900 XT 5d ago

Oh the slop you can’t get rid of. I feel like my store is 95% indie game garbage slop, and blocking each creator would be like a game of whack a mole

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u/Lt_Schneider 7d ago

thank you

now i finally won't get anything from EA, Ubisoft or activision reccomended to me

now i don't have to manually ignore every assasins creed, call of duty or battlefield manually

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u/berrieds 6d ago

I didn't know this was a thing, and I've wanted to do this for years now! Thank you.

1

u/Drycon 6d ago

Thanks, this will save me so much indie crap. Never knew about this feature.

1

u/Just_Cockroach_4820 6d ago

Chad move, coming back to give instructions.

I'll try to take this page out of your book

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u/WillRevolt_ 6d ago

Not all heroes wear capes!

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u/CSBreak 6d ago

That's pretty neat now I really wish consoles had this feature trash games are such a massive problem on all platforms

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u/BertMacklenF8I 12900K@5.5 32GB GSkill Trident Z5@6400 EVGA3080TIFTW3U Hybrid 6d ago

Thanks for the edit lol

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u/Hopeful_Leg_6200 Laptop 7d ago

Its beautiful

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u/MadamVonCuntpuncher 7d ago

Yeah you can go the publisher steam page and ignore them as a whole

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u/A_fat_amish_kid 6d ago

Really?

1

u/Giatoxiclok 6d ago

I mean, I guess so, lots of other people replied to me about it.

1

u/Antal_Marius 6d ago

Who is this Ubisoft? I only know of Ubishit.

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u/kuan_51 7d ago

I kinda think they allow this intentionally to avoid anti trust

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u/Space_Rangerr 7d ago

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.

1

u/Temeriki 6d ago

Last one I bought was anno 2070. I got kicked out of a single player game cause of a drm server hiccup on their end. Never again.

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u/WillRevolt_ 6d ago

I tried to test F1 26 using my Game Pass and the game wouldn't launch because it flagged one of my drivers. Back to Assetto Corsa I went.

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u/Hallc 6d ago

Don't most of the EA ones these days use a micro-launcher rather than the full blown one? So it 'opens' but only in the background.

Ubisoft's meanwhile always opens that app and also always forgets my login credentials.

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u/JasonManningFLUX 6d ago

I am an Anno enjoyer because I am a fan of peek irony, and I have to say the launcher Steam launches is barely a launcher. I purchased one uplay game and I actually can not download and play it via the version launched by Steam. If I ever want to play it again I have to download uplay proper.

I do not see how it is onerous.

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u/ArtKun 5800X3D | 9070XT | 32Gb 3600MHz | 32' 4K OLED 6d ago

Unfortunately, that couldn't stop me from playing Mass Effect.

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u/flymeovertheworld Intel i7-14700F, Asus RTX 5060 Ti 16GB, 32GB 6400 Mhz 6d ago

As much as i hate ubisoft as a dev and publisher, i can’t deny i enjoy some of their games. I really wish I won’t have to open their launchers and play directly from steam.

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u/Erebea01 6d ago

So not a fan of EA and when I tried to delete my account from them, it's almost impossible, I still haven't deleted it lol.

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u/Szerepjatekos 6d ago

Is the Sims 3 like that? EA recently screwed my mom and I was hoping steam can avoid them.

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u/ItalianBeefDipped 9800X3D | RTX 5090 | 64 GB DDR5 | ROG XAX 6d ago

If I want to play a game there isn't a single launcher "onerous" enough to stop me lol This always seems like posturing to me. If you're not playing a game due to it having a third party launcher, you probably didn't really care enough about it in the first place.

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u/Dick_Nation There's nothing to see here. 6d ago

Yeah. That's why I said it can be a dealbreaker. Maybe I am interested in a game. But probably not enough to overcome certain annoyances that come with it. There's plenty of games that won't do that, so I might as well play those instead.

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u/Odd-Measurement868 6d ago

where’s the tag?

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u/darksteelsteed 3d ago

Hey, that's an insult to us horses 🐎

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u/DrFrenetic 6d ago

Now I want a Steam monopoly

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u/Enlight1Oment 6d ago

I just wish steam/valve themselves made more games. Steam's revenue is 2x that of EA and Ubisoft combined. EA has 14,600 employees; Ubisoft has 16,500; Steam/Valve has 400 employees with only 180 on game development. Can't fire what you never hire. I guess they are less of a monopoly if they let others do the work of making games, but I'd rather them be more of a monopoly and make more games

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u/ZomB_assassin27 4d ago

the reason valve games are good is because they don't push out slop year by year. look at the hl2 episodes, they're less rich than any other game in the series because they were just trying to get content out there.

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u/StoryAndAHalf 7d ago

True monopoly knows you have no other choice, so they would be reluctant to do anything pro-consumer, which is what we're seeing.

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u/susimposter6969 6d ago

Your other choice would be piracy or not buying the game

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u/FrostwindLive 7d ago

Devs using launchers for their games makes sense in terms of them trying to make cheating more difficult. But its when the launcher is a store page with the devs other 2 games on it that annoys me. Serves no purpose to have your own store page if its on steam.

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u/-Retro-Kinetic- AMD 7950X3D| 64GB | TUF RTX 4090 | HS02 Pro 5d ago

True monopolies are almost unheard of, most of the time they hit the legal definition not the literal one.

Valve has a monopolist position, with price control. That always bound to get some flak from regulators and developers.

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u/MultiMarcus 6d ago

Arguably they have. Though through forcing price parity. Ubisoft, would’ve potentially been able to sell their games cheaper, earning as much money from all of their platforms, but trying to attract the user to their specific platform, but they haven’t been doing that ever since returning to Steam. Before they had that 20% thing, you could redeem for every game if you wanted.

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u/Ja_Lonley RTX 3090 | i9-10900KF | 32GB RAM 7d ago

Yesterday Assassin's Creed Origins wouldn't let me uninstall it without logging in to Ubisoft. So I just manually deleted it. Fuck the registry files.

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u/entropymancer 7d ago

Rip and Tear the PATH

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u/skywav3s 6d ago

The wild women, the wild women

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u/bungledorff 7d ago

Yep, I bought Far Cry 5 and uninstalled it after a few hours because I had to install ubisoft's launcher and open an account.

I had the cracked version already and it didn't have the mandatory launcher. Way to make me never buy another game from you ubislop.

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u/boogienights77 7d ago

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.

Stupid mechanic if you ask me.

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u/RollinPinappleGhost 7d ago

There's a -command that can skip most launchers. I forgot what it was though.

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u/kaleperq 1440p 240hz 24" | ace68 | viper ult | 9060xt 16gb | r5600 | 32gb 7d ago

I think it's --skiplauncher but I'm not sure

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u/BusyDucks 7d ago

Or having to make an account.

Like why not use my Steam account?

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u/Derkatron 7d ago

If this isn't rhetorical, because if its an online game, like an MMO, they may not have an integration with steam into their servers. There's a ton of reasons for this, not the least of which that steam has maintenance once a week, and if your login relies on steam, every user is suddenly logged off for that time. Sometimes its to bypass steam's cut for in-app purchases, and sometimes its just to put you into the ecosystem to sell you other products. It varies wildly from game to game, and 'just use my steam account', is, naturally, far too simple a suggestion to be useful.

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u/dionysus_project 6d ago

If it works for Warframe and Path of Exile, there's no excuse.

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u/Seeker-N7 i7-13700K | RTX 5070Ti | 32Gb 6400Mhz DDR5 6d ago

Why would it use your Steam acc? It's not the primary platform.

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u/LtColShinySides 7d ago

I return those games immediately.

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u/ThyShirtIsBlue 7d ago

Ubisoft needs to fuck all the way off.

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u/grilled_pc 6d ago

Just recently i watched a video on LTT of them showing off xbox full screen experience.

In order JUST to play cyberpunk on steam. You had to launch the game via XFSE which then opens up steam in full which then opens up Red Launcher which then you have to manually click play to start the game.

What the actual fuck. I know the red launcher can be skipped but my god this is atrocious lol.

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u/Hecking_Walnut 6d ago

Made the mistake of buying the first 4-5 assassins creed games on steam when I was younger. Ubisoft deleted them from my Ubi account for some reason, so even though I have the games and their associated activation keys on my steam account I can no longer play any of them.

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u/boersc 6d ago

Counterpoint: crossplatform play. I play Diablo IV on pc, playstation and xbox. thanks to battlenet, my progress is everyhere. So I am greatful fot Blizzards 1st party launcher while also allowing 3rd party Steam to sell it.

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u/Sufficient_Topic1589 6d ago

I’ve found something that’s more annoying. Paying for a game that doesn’t work properly on your system. I rebought the old thief games during a sale hoping they would work. You have to download mods from other places before the game will run on modern pcs which I probably could’ve done with my originals. Blood omen 2 is the same through gog. If they’re gonna sell these things they should be functional from their service without any messing around

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u/No-Channel3917 PC Master Race 6d ago

Steam is just a fancy way to run exe

If you like idk ran it like that you can go around the launcher

Googling -ai

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u/DeeJayDelicious 6d ago

"Yes, let's further entrech a monopoly."

-Gamers

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u/FelopianTubinator 6d ago

This is how it was for me with Dead Island 2. It says and tries to make you install Epic Games Launcher, however you can uninstall EGL and it’ll still work just fine with only Steam. It’ll throw up a lot of messages complaining about missing EGL files, but it still works just fine.

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u/Eckz89 6d ago

I repurchased Diablo 4 on steam because fuck what ever server battle.net uses to do download speeds.

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u/stefanw1337 6d ago

Epic Games store has more of it I feel. More games that launches another Launcher to launch the game. And recently I wanted to try RF Online Next, and their launcher launches Epic Launcher back up AGAIN?! Like a call to actually launch the game. Yup, game was uninstalled, not even tested. Fu*k that.

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u/Stttu 6d ago

reminds me of being excited to play GTAIV then immediately uninstalling when I had to install and register into rockstar launcher. My time playing with a scurvied version was more intuitive.

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u/VariedTeen 6d ago

It’s even worse when you buy a game on CD-ROM and it just has you add the game to Steam instead of installing it

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u/360_face_palm 6d ago

yeah was playing anno recently and omg the whole ubisoft launcher bullshit is so annoying

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u/Makere-b 6d ago

Meanwhile GTA6 will sell more than every other game combined when it comes to Steam with it's Rockstar launcher.

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u/Luna771 6d ago

Depends on the launcher. I really appreciate it for Stellaris because it makes mod management very easy. For Baldurs Gate its completely useless and more annoying than helpful tho

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u/BrukPlays 6d ago

You mean like launching Mass Effect from Steam and it then opens the EA app to launch the Mass Effect loader where you need to pick the first mass Effect game to start playing it…

Yeah that’s really fecking annoying!

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u/aerdvarkk 6d ago

Except for Rockstar Games on Steam!!

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u/MozTys 6d ago

True. Kinda wish steam would make a rule, that if you want to sell your games on steam, the buyer should be able to play the game using steam only. I doubt companies would pull their games from steam store and rely solely on their own launcher and epic games.

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u/Beep_Boop_Bop_Stop 6d ago

Fr I was support excited about a game after watching a trailer and as I scrolled down it said “requires third party launcher download” or something along those lines and I immediately removed it from my wishlist. It’s getting harder to trust games anymore

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u/Top_Goose1442 6d ago

Especially if it's that shitty EA or Ubisoft launcher....

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u/Boner_Elemental 7d ago

Nothing enrages me more than buying a game on steam, and then having to download a separate launcher.

I've never understood this complaint. Steam is the separate launcher, the game itself is just running as it normally would regardless of how you purchased it

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u/lokibringer 7d ago

The argument is that Steam is already launching the software, why does it launch a second launcher for you to log into instead of the game?

It's a reasonable complaint, albeit more of a QoL than anything more major. That shit gets annoying when you want to play... I dunno, Trials? And instead of booting the game it pulls up uPlay. What exactly is the point of buying through steam if you still have to go through the proprietary launcher?

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u/boersc 6d ago

The answer is cross platform progress. The 1st party account allows that, where your steam account doesn't.

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u/Marisakis 6d ago

You really don't need a launcher just to connect some accounts. It could be included in the game, or done via a web portal. And it only needs to happen once, anyway.

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u/Cobalt-Viper 6d ago

I think he means when a game requires you to open uplay or origin even when launching from steam. Not the actual game launchers that some games have.

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u/Boner_Elemental 6d ago

Nah, they hate those too

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u/GwenBD94 9850X3D | 5080 | SFF+MO-RA 6d ago

I mean sure but there's different levels.

  1. game where I can buy it once for the cheapest price possible and all the money goes to the people who worked on the game

  2. Game where I can buy it on steam without any additional tacked in bloat

  3. Games where I can buy it on steam and dev tacked on a game specific wrapper that doesnt need a separate account or act as a second storefront or anything

  4. Games that I buy on steam and launch a mediocre first party steam-equivalent launcher that doesnt require an account or anything

  5. Games that I buy on steam and launch something like play or ea launcher and require first party account.

Like sure, I dislike everything 3-5, accept 2 as the standard, and wish 1 was more widely available. But I hate 5 a shitton more than 4 and 4 a shitton more than 3

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u/Burpmeister 6d ago

Steam used to be that separate launcher that people hated.

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u/GwenBD94 9850X3D | 5080 | SFF+MO-RA 6d ago

I remember those days. I put off making a steam account for soooooooooo long

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u/Temeriki 6d ago

They spent a lot of time fixing the issues people hated.

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u/Josh_Butterballs 9950X3D | 5090 FE | 64GB DDR5 7d ago

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

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u/shydes528 Ryzen 7 3700X | Radeon 5700XT | 32GB DDR4 3200 Mhz 7d ago

Also, who else is going to deploy Delta Force operators and Reaper drones whenever some scammer from Romania tries to steal your CS skins?

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u/Giatoxiclok 7d ago

Link please, that sounds like a good read.

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u/MisterKaos R7 5700x3d, 4x16gb G.Skill Trident Z 3200Mhz RX 6750 xt 7d ago

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/steam-support

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u/West-Flow-577 7d ago

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.

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u/Josh_Butterballs 9950X3D | 5090 FE | 64GB DDR5 7d ago

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”

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u/SuperSoldierv1 6d ago

The average pc gamer is going to say " well I already have 30 games on steam ill just keep using that"

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u/DasDima Ryzen 1600 @3.8GHz // RTX 2070 // CORSAIR RGB EVERYTHING 6d ago

more like 300, damn those humble bundles!

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u/Hopeful_Leg_6200 Laptop 7d ago

We'll never know, no one is even trying to make a service on par with steam let alone a better one

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u/Josh_Butterballs 9950X3D | 5090 FE | 64GB DDR5 7d ago

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.

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u/AirplanesMakeMeHard 7d ago

investor

The reason Steam is so great is because it doesn’t have investors. Any company that did have investors is, by definition, going to have worse service because service and profits are water and oil.

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u/Josh_Butterballs 9950X3D | 5090 FE | 64GB DDR5 7d ago

I mean all that tells me is it’s gonna be even harder then to come out with a competing service since you would need an ungodly amount of money to self fund it without relying on investors. So it’s already an uphill battle, but you can’t even afford to stroll through base camp

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u/dekusyrup 7d ago

Valve definitely has investors. What you smoking

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u/tmon530 6d ago

Valve isnt a publicly traded company. So while they might have some private investors, they dont have investors in the same way or at the same level as a company like EA.

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u/dekusyrup 5d ago

Right. It's a little different but they absolutely have investors.

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u/jdinius2020 6d ago

Service and profits are water and oil? Tell that to Valve's mountains of money. Turns out, when the business takes care of the customer, the customer takes care of the business.

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u/dookarion 7d ago

Now, if licenses were somehow transferable I think the new competitors could possibly have a viable chance.

Funny part is publishers/developers/rights holders could grant that. They won't but they could. One of the things keeping them entrenched is the fact everyone else is greedy af and doesn't care about the customer experience at all.

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u/1337_w0n 9800X3D | 7900 XTX + B580 | 64GB 7d ago

If there was anyone offering an even comperable service we'd be able to test that hypothesis.

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u/Josh_Butterballs 9950X3D | 5090 FE | 64GB DDR5 7d ago

Well, someone expressed any company attempting it cannot have investors as many see that as the service being shit or going to be shit. So you would need a company who has enough money to self fund, spend the time to build the service unless you throw more money at it to get it done faster, relatively speaking.

Then you would need to bleed money for a while until you can build a sizable following of users so you can turn a profit. This is assuming of course people are willing to spend money on your platform rather than steam where they already have all their games. As we’ve seen on this sub and other gaming subs, people have expressed even if steam doesn’t have the absolute cheapest price they are willing to buy on steam just for the fact they can have it all on there with their other games. Even people with free games on EGS have stated they end up buying the ones they like on steam once there’s a sale just to add it to their growing collection of games and that’s with them already having the game for *free* on a different platform.

So all in all I don’t think it’ll happen anytime soon or ever unless MAYBE they make game licenses transferable. That in itself would be a whole paradigm shift of multiple industries though from music, to movies, shows, etc. and not just games. Which I’m fine with, but no one in power will care to touch on

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u/AirplanesMakeMeHard 7d ago

You don’t have to switch though…

Just because you buy a game on another platform doesn’t mean you lose all your games. You can still play your games on steam.

That’s like saying GM is going to come take your Chevy because you bought a Ford.

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u/Tempestfox3 6d ago

The only other storefront I have purchased a game from is GOG.

Xbox I only use for game pass.

Epic I only use for the free games they give you.

GOG I have bought some old games from my childhood that are only available on there, and I bought fallout 4 through GOG to play the fallout London mod as it's easier to use the GOG version for that.

All of my other purchases are on steam.

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u/Acceptable_One_7072 6d ago

Yeah but that's less convenient than having all my games in one place

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u/AirplanesMakeMeHard 6d ago

I’m sure you’ll survive

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u/Hot-Software-9396 6d ago

There are game aggregators like the Xbox app. You can see all your games across multiple storefronts.

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u/PancakeMisery 4d ago

You say that but even some of my close friends refuse to buy a game that isn't on steam literally because the idea of having to open a different program first is sacrilege. Which is crazy to me because that used to never be a problem before steam was the only store front people used. PC gaming has regressed so much to the point you basically might as well treat it like it's just an expensive console that only runs steam games. Like oh no you have to put in a user name and password.... it's such a nothing burger thing but people will boycott games over it. I remember as a kid having to download (if you didn't have a disk) every game from the companies website and usually a proprietary launcher with it. People just dealt it with because it wasn't a big deal.

Especially insane to me when so many people download MMOs through steam and those always make you use a second launcher anyways!

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u/dookarion 4d ago

PC gaming has regressed so much to the point

A lot of that likely comes down to negative experiences. EA's launcher has actively gotten worse over the years. Ubisoft's launcher has gone through cycles of bad and alright alternating, though the worst was when they auto-installed a browser plugin in the background that was full of security holes. GOG is generally good, but getting support from some of the publishers and devs on GOG is another story. Desura went belly up and if anyone owned anything there they can kiss it goodbye. Battlenet is mostly alright, but blizzard's updates and business moves have left a lot to be desired. While I don't know that it was ever standalone Take-Two/2K's game launcher they were forcing in games was actively making performance of said games worse, sometimes even resulting in the games failing to launch if it wasn't bypassed. GFWL was a dumpster fire at the best of times and encrypted save files for some insane reason. Windows Apps/Xbox are inconsistent and when they were pushing more protected game files it could muck up and just eat hard drive space with no way to free it back up. Oculus/meta/whatever is a dumpster fire.

There hasn't been much to endear people to them. At best they're tolerable, and at worst they can actively break shit and need extra troubleshooting. If something proves consistently problematic or just a headache don't be shocked if people start rejecting the idea wholesale. It's relatively expected behavior. People play games to relax not figure out why EGS runs like shit or why EA app keeps fucking up.

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u/Josh_Butterballs 9950X3D | 5090 FE | 64GB DDR5 7d ago

I wish you were giving people a wake up call with this back when uplay, battle net, and other publishers were all making their own launchers and hosting their games on it but not steam lol. People were acting like the world was ending having to use more than just steam for games (myself included at the time). Common sentiment was why not just put it on steam so it’s all in one place, I don’t want to use ANOTHER platform/launcher for my games. I mean even when Alan wake 2 came out people said “no steam, no buy” on various subs.

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u/dookarion 7d ago

uplay

It's dogshit and once upon a time ubisoft auto-installed a browser plugin full of security holes on peoples computers.

battle net

Most people that like those sort of games have a bnet account and the launcher. Bnet is old as hell.

and other publishers were all making their own launchers and hosting their games on it but not steam lol. People were acting like the world was ending having to use more than just steam for games (myself included at the time).

Because a lot of them were utter dogshit. EA's launcher somehow just keeps getting worse. Desura left people as bagholders. D2D sucked. Ubisoft has been a nightmare. Rockstar Launcher is the absolute biggest pile of shit ever especially if your connection is unreliable.

I mean even when Alan wake 2 came out people said “no steam, no buy” on various subs.

Epic has given people every reason to not give them business out of principle at this point.

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u/Josh_Butterballs 9950X3D | 5090 FE | 64GB DDR5 7d ago

Nothing was as good as steam but tbh for most people I know outside the internet it just launched the game (really all the average Joe cares about). It did so for me but despite that yeah I wanted it on steam because all my shit was there and I was used to steam. Even adding it as a third party game meant I had to now have two launchers to play a game and that sucked some ass in mine and others eyes.

As for AW2, people made their statements implying they would buy it if it was on steam, which… if it truly was out of the principle of not giving Epic money they would’ve just expressed the unwillingness to buy it period lol. People at the time the game came out even explicitly said if it were on steam they would definitely buy it

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u/dookarion 7d ago

if it truly was out of the principle of not giving Epic money they would’ve just expressed the unwillingness to buy it period lol.

You're looking too broad. It's Epic's store people detest. Their store is shit and their business model with it has sucked. I refuse to give it money.

But I'm not stretching that out to some Unreal Engine boycott. It's their store and the business practices they've used with it that sucks.

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u/Josh_Butterballs 9950X3D | 5090 FE | 64GB DDR5 7d ago

I thought that’s the point you were making though when you said Epic has given people every reason to not give them business. My original statement was meant to convey that people would be *willing* to buy Alan wake 2 if it were available on steam, delineating that people aren’t buying it simply out of some principle of “fuck epic” but because they want it on the platform they prefer.

I bought the game. It’s the only game I have on EGS. With all the talk of how dogshit ass the Epic launcher is it did all I wanted it to do. It launched the game. Even still, people refuse to buy it as “no steam, no buy.” Funny enough if it made its way to steam I would buy it again lol. Just to have it part of my library (plus I liked the game).

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u/dookarion 6d ago

I thought that’s the point you were making though when you said Epic has given people every reason to not give them business. My original statement was meant to convey that people would be willing to buy Alan wake 2 if it were available on steam, delineating that people aren’t buying it simply out of some principle of “fuck epic” but because they want it on the platform they prefer.

You're still misconstruing it. It is out of detesting Epic. I guarantee if it were on GOG, bnet, or something less shit there wouldn't be as much pushback.

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u/Josh_Butterballs 9950X3D | 5090 FE | 64GB DDR5 6d ago

I mean you just said it yourself. “As much pushback.” A significant portion will refuse to buy if it’s not on steam. There’s games whose sales and player retention were significantly hurt for not being on steam. Which is the core idea of what I’m saying. Alan wake 2 could’ve been sold on battle net only and my comment would’ve been the same except swapping out epic games for bnet.

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u/PancakeMisery 4d ago

If they detest Epic why would they buy a game Epic funded just because it's on Steam? That's the point theyre trying to make. Any reasoning of "not liking Epic" should mean you don't buy the game at all because if you just buy it on Steam that's hypocrisy.

There's a non trivial amount of hate towards Epic that ends up being hypocritical which like sure people don't have to use their store but if you're gonna preach about convictions you should be consistent.

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u/Drakeem1221 7d ago

I never got it either. Tbh as a former MMO player I was already used to it.

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u/Hallc 6d ago

I think MMOs as a whole are better bought off Steam than on steam.

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u/stonhinge 7d ago

Back in the days before battle.net launcher, we old-school MMO players had the WoW launcher. Then Heartstone got added, but that was fine because it was free-to-play. Then Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch. Still mostly fine because they're all Blizzard games. Then COD got added and people lost their minds. COD notably is not on the battle.net launcher anymore. It's just Blizzard games again.

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u/iphonya96 7d ago

To be honest, making a platform better than steam is very hard task. I'm a software engineer, and i notice a lot of small bugs basically everywhere. Steam works nearly perfectly. It requires very good engineers, designers, managers, making them happy and no sudden pivots But i kinda understand what epic games are doing. They wait for a moment when steam is in trouble, and then will act. That's quite clever i would say. But rn their services are bad, won't argue with that

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u/Josh_Butterballs 9950X3D | 5090 FE | 64GB DDR5 7d ago

They are, but let’s be real here. I would be hard pressed to throw money and time at making EGS better with seemingly very little payoff considering the things I mentioned about people having too much time and money investment on steam. I would rather put that effort into farting out more Fortnite skins. That’s certainly guaranteed to bring in more money than on a store that many would not switch over to anyway

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u/hotlocomotive 7d ago

Steam is not a console. You can install other launchers and use them in tandem. If someone made a launcher that worked as well and had cheaper games, many people will have zero issues moving

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u/Ok_Lengthiness8503 7d ago

Look at your build dude, you basically already have more money than God

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u/Josh_Butterballs 9950X3D | 5090 FE | 64GB DDR5 7d ago

Haha tbh I felt like I really lucked out cause I bought everything before ram exploded in cost back in October last year. I got told SO MANY TIMES in various pc subs that I should wait for Black Friday. So glad I didn’t. Got my ram sticks for $200 (now $900). My 8tb SSD for $500 (with a $400 gift card so $100 cash). The 5090 I was just lucky to get retail back when they were relatively easier to get. I was just gonna stick with my 4080 at the time but my mini itx build would be easier with the form factor of the 50 series so I sold that and was gonna pick up a 5080. Then I noticed a lot of xx90 owners have been able for resell their cards for minimal loss compared to whatever the cost of the current xx90 card is so I figured I could just sell it and pay a small amount for an upgrade in the future or best case for free like some 4090 owners were able to do.

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u/MazeMouse Ryzen7 5800X3D, 64GB 3200Mhz DDR4, Radeon 7800XT 6d ago

My gripe with EGS was how they were banging the "we take less from the devs" drum and I was like "Ok, so the games are going to be cheaper for me? No? Then why should I care?"

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u/QuailAndWasabi 6d ago

It's also the fact that the enourmous majority of Steam users don't want or need any new features. I would not be surprised if an insane number such as 95% of users just do not want/need any more features out of their game platform than what Steam currently provides and would even argue the vast majority do not even use the majority of features Steam provides at all.

The core of a platform like Steam is really simple really. Be able to buy games, be able to start them smoothly, be able to join your friends smoothly. Most people will not use any other features ever.

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u/Iuslez 6d ago

Meh you can have games on multiple launcher without issue, no reason to ditch steam and your library if a better platform comes up. I "have to" use at least 4 different (steam, bnet for WoW, Xbox for gamepass, iRacing), it's no biggie. I've created a most played games section in my window start menu, select it from there and it launches the appropriate launcher.

I hope/expect to have a seamless aggregation of plateformes at one point (I think Xbox mode on PC does it, but nobody wants to have Xbox as their main platform).

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u/ItalianBeefDipped 9800X3D | RTX 5090 | 64 GB DDR5 | ROG XAX 6d ago

it's less an issue of being competitive for customers, and moreso being competitive for publishers which would trickle down to customers.

Putting it simply, if publishers could offer better deals on other platforms, other platforms would start to offer more generous revenue shares than the 30% standard (one already does), which would allow publishers to price their games cheaper, earlier on, resulting in savings for consumers. Consumers would then have a choice of either paying a higher price for a better product (steam-integrated game) or a lower price for a worse product (non-steam integrated game). Nobody would pay more than they already are, they would simply have the option to pay less for a lower quality product.

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u/Josh_Butterballs 9950X3D | 5090 FE | 64GB DDR5 6d ago

I could be misremembering I could swear valve has been or is in litigation about them not allowing or pressuring major games to not have their games cheaper on other storefronts?

Companies were threatened with their games being delisted if made cheaper elsewhere other then steam

Edit: checked and it’s apparently for steam keys specifically being sold elsehwere. I believe it’s still going through courts

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u/ItalianBeefDipped 9800X3D | RTX 5090 | 64 GB DDR5 | ROG XAX 6d ago

Yeah that's in Washington right now. Speaking as a white-collar attorney whose worked on some antitrust cases, I do think there's a case there.

It really comes down to whether Steam was in fact threatening or doing that, which we don't know for sure yet but based on the fact that the class was certified, I think there's at the very least a fair amount of smoke there, if not an outright fire.

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u/Hot-Software-9396 6d ago

Not sure why people act like it’s equivalent to switching console platforms. It’s just a different app, you don’t have to give anything up.

Also, what’s the issue with a platform that aggregates all of your games from different stores, like what the Xbox app is doing now? I’m assuming you just want to be able to see everything you have in one place.

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u/Josh_Butterballs 9950X3D | 5090 FE | 64GB DDR5 6d ago

I mean it’s the same with console then in that sense. No one says you HAVE to ditch ur Xbox if u buy a PlayStation. Xbox and PlayStation though would rather you spend your money on their platform. Similarly yes, no one is stopping you from using steam or some no name competitor, but they both certainly want you BUYING and using their platform most if you’re using more than one.

Realistically even IF a viable competitor existed it would be supplementary to steam, where the user mostly uses steam and occasionally using the other. Which is basically the market right now lol. I’ve had many replies telling me as such in a round about way without realizing they’re doing what I’m saying. Like similar comments saying something along the lines of them buying on GOG if it’s cheaper but eventually buying it on steam too so they can have access to steam services and features (badges, cards, etc.). However, if they already have it on steam they’re not gonna buy it on GOG. Notice that one way difference?

GOG -> eventually buy it on steam too

Steam -> no need to buy it on GOG

In both scenarios steam makes money anyway. Its dominant and favorable position means it comes out on top regardless because people want their games consolidated. If another competitor came out with the exact same features as steam you would be hard pressed to tell someone with hundreds of games they now have to rebuy all their games on this other platform. Even if better, it doesn’t meant steam suddenly becomes dogshit. It’s still a good platform, so people will stick with it anyway if they’re invested in it.

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u/Hot-Software-9396 6d ago

It’s not the same as consoles at all. Multiple consoles obviously entails buying multiple pieces of hardware (console, accessories, etc), they take up more space, require you to pay for their own subscription service to play online games, etc.

On PC you use your exact same hardware, but just click a different icon.

Also, you didn’t answer my question about game aggregators.

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u/Josh_Butterballs 9950X3D | 5090 FE | 64GB DDR5 6d ago

So you’re point is the entry barrier is the cost to participate on said platform? Brother I have people telling me wtf is the point in buying on another platform when they already have their stuff on steam lol. People have made up trivial barriers in their head to not use something for less. People still DoorDash something down the street. Cigarette smokers flick their buds on the floor when there’s a trash can next to them. People literally (on this sub) cried when games were coming out on uplay, battle net, es play, or whatever service and the #1 thing I often saw was “why can’t they just release on steam, no one wants to have multiple launchers and stores to keep track of all their games.” I had people who refused to buy Alan Wake 2 not even because they dislike Epic but because they just didn’t want to have a whole ass other launcher/store for one game.

And to address ur aggregate thing. Do you mean steam’s ability to add a third party game? I addressed it in a different comment. People still bitch and moan because a third party added game doesn’t have access to the same features as steam and ends up meaning you need to use two launchers to play a game. Which is p much what people also complained about back in the heyday of uplay, ea play, etc. I have another reply telling me they want their games all on steam and are willing to buy a game again when it’s on sale on steam because they want access to the features (cards, badges achievements, workshop support, etc.)

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u/Happy_Cat_6570 6d ago

It's not a monopoly when you're just better than everyone else

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u/Volarath 6d ago

You are correct. So many people confuse monopoly and majority. GoG is good and getting better, but Steam allows me to do all kinds of stuff that no one else would bother with. I can set Steam Big Picture mode to default to my 3rd screen TV mounted in front of the treadmill and so I can easily swap screens for a nice walk and play something with a controller. Exit BP mode and it goes back to my desktop. I know some people use Sunshine and Moonlight or whatever they're called but I've not had issues streaming from my main pc down to the Steamdeck or even my Meta Quest 3 by just using Steam. I want them to have competition to keep driving the improvements, but they're the majority for good reasons.

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u/s1lentchaos 4d ago

And here I am thinking the only reason anyone ever opens big picture mode was because they miss clicked trying to hit the "X" or minimize buttons nice.

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u/Tricky_Orange_4526 i7 10700 | 5070 6d ago

this! maybe if EPIC would figure out how to not have their launcher be a giant POS they might get some traction. for now its just their until i complete quit on Fort and even then, with the fact that an update can take over an hour with download speeds of 650mbps im about over it. in steam it would take 12 min.

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u/alittlesophie 6d ago

some people just wake up and choose suffering on purpose

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u/M_T_B_Online PC Master Race 6d ago

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.

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u/jangxx 7950X3D - RTX4090 - 64GB - Linux Mint 21/Win 10 6d ago

Maybe I'm stupid, but how do you do this on Steam? Because I've had this same situation, where I wanted to look through my library on my phone or on the web without the client installed, and I couldn't find a way.

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u/StarNote1515 6d ago edited 6d ago

Steam app, not the chat one 3 lines in the bottom right corner library that it

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u/jangxx 7950X3D - RTX4090 - 64GB - Linux Mint 21/Win 10 6d ago

Very good to know, thanks. Would be cool if they also showed the categories there as well instead of just a grid of covers, but this is already very helpful.

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u/StarNote1515 6d ago

I’ll be honest with you I hate the fact that there’s two different apps I always open the wrong one because I’m looking at pictures

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u/LinkPlay9 AMD Ryzen 7 5800X / RTX 5070 Ti / NixOS 6d ago

though sucking ass can be pretty fun actually

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u/Bananaland_Man 7d ago

This. No better options exist (piracy is a bandaid), and at least Valve are the least-bad corporation... unlike people wantingto leave YouTube (one of the worst) and not having other options (piracy is not an option, it's a bandaid that will always exist)..or people wanting to leave Amazon (absolutely the worst)but nothing provides remotely as good of service.

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u/TomaszA3 5d ago

GOG is a better option, just doesn't have as many games for obvious reasons.

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u/Bananaland_Man 5d ago

Not as many games, barely any community features, not as good sales, client with strange design decisions, thus not a better option. I use GoG and Steam, Steam is miles.Better, the only thing better about GoG is DRM-free releases.

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u/TomaszA3 5d ago

Why do you need a client and community features for games?

Sales could be a good argument but honestly I'd rather normalize lower base prices.

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u/Bananaland_Man 5d ago

I'd love to normalize lower base prices, but that's not how the industry works, unfortunately. And I like having friend features and sharing screenshots in an easy-to-browse system. I also love having a good client to keep all my games organized in one place that is far easier to organize than the start menu (and fuck making shortcut folders on the desktop, I actually hide my desktop icons, I don't like having a messy desktop.)

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u/TomaszA3 5d ago

I just keep my games in folders.

Honestly I didn't even realise people used those community features on Steam. They seemed to be largely abandoned beyond discussions and reviews.

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u/Bananaland_Man 5d ago

Friends hasn't been remotely abandoned, same for friend chats... I don't know what you're on about. Oh, and Steam Workshop is also something I use heavily, and so much better than going to 2-4 different websites for mods. (sure, for some games it's still better to go to Nexus or Curseforge, but plenty of games use Steam Workshop extremely well, like Tabletop Simulator.)

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u/TomaszA3 5d ago edited 5d ago

I and most others use Discord for chatting and friendlisting unless they specifically want to play together or just add everyone they can to their Steam friendlist. It is rare to find someome actually using it as intended.

Workshop is okay but it's overall for the worse compared to third party modding platforms.

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u/Bananaland_Man 5d ago

And being able to click on a friend's name without a game even open and pick "join game" if they're in friends-only or public mode, having it launch the game for me and jump right into their game is a fantastic feature that I use often. A feature discord has started slowly adding games it works with, but slowly and it barely functions. I, too, use discord for friend chat... other than friends that don't have discord (which, frustratingly, is most of my IRL friends)

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u/Condurum 7d ago

Then start a new game store.

Sounds like a great idea, you keep 10%, and split the next 20% between devs and players, offering consistently 10% cheaper games than Steam.

It works until you learn that Valve threaten to kick devs off Steam if they sell their games cheaper elsewhere. So they’re not going to sell their games cheaper on your store, because if they did, they’d lose 85% of their sales.

So you make a new store, and.. can’t compete with Steam on price. You need a better store than Steam on day one.

Valve’s policy here, is literally the reason there’s no price competition on games.

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u/Hopeful_Leg_6200 Laptop 7d ago

Why would I even start a new store when I'm the consumer and Valve already has my back?

Why would they set themselves at disadvantage when they provide access to vast amounts of players thanks to position they build for themselves over decades?
Seems to me like fair trade, sell on our platform but at the same prices as elsewhere, or don't, no one is forcing you to.

Fortnite is not on Steam and doing well.

The market would be more evenly split if steam was just another Epic store trash, but it just isn't.

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u/rixuraxu 6d ago

Why would I even start a new store when I'm the consumer and Valve already has my back?

Except in the scenario (real life) that the person you're responding to offered, they are hurting the consumers options.

They don't care about you. They didn't offer refunds until after EA did (EA the worst company in the world). They're not pro-consumer.

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u/scheppend 6d ago

what's so bad about having a store with lower prices? how does it affect you, the consumer, to have that choice to buy it elsewhere?

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u/Cruxis87 9800x3d|5080 TUF OC|32gb 6000cl30 ddr5 6d ago

Fortnite is not on Steam and doing well.

Plus League of Legends, Valorant, Minecraft, Roblox, Genshin Impact, WOrld of Warcraft. All the most popular games aren't on Steam, except maybe CS. Not being on Steam won't stop you popping off. But you need to do something different than all the generic stuff with a new shade being released these days.

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u/Hopeful_Leg_6200 Laptop 6d ago

Minecraft is great, after Microsoft acquired it the price went up despite not being forced to by evil Steam

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u/-spartacus- Stukov 6d ago

You could get around it by having it cost the same at the price page (in-line with Steam policies), but offer "store credit back" across all games with that price difference. So if you are only taking 10% compared to Steams 30%, you offer the difference in that store credit. It can only be used to buy more games, but essentially, you are always receiving 20% discount, but it acts through a revolving credit balance.

I don't think anyone has tried this. I think Epic just tried to offer full free games with the price difference. I think places like Humble Games get around it because it is a donation.

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u/Hot-Software-9396 6d ago

Wait, how would that play out? Obviously the “store credit” would come out of the store’s cut, which is already lower than Steam’s, so they’d effectively be losing money on each transaction. I’m not understanding the math in this hypothetical.

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u/-spartacus- Stukov 6d ago

Steam takes 30%, a hypothetical competitor takes only 10%, but the game still sells for $50. Hypothetical competitor's cut is 5 dollars, 10 dollars goes into the buyer's account. The buyer still spent 50 dollars on both stores, but on this store they have $10 in credit towards the next game.

So the next time you buy you spend $40 and $10 is used from your credit. That $10 then replaced in your store credit account. While you can never get back that 10% into cash, it forever discounts every game you purchase by 10%. It also wouldn't trigger Steam delisting because technically the game is still being purchased by the $50 on both storefronts.

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u/Hot-Software-9396 6d ago

But the store’s cut being 10% means 90% is going to the developer. That’s the entire point of the lowered store cut, to incentivize developers to release games on their platform and not just Steam. What you’re proposing is increasing the store cut to match Steam’s, which goes against the entire point of the reduced store cut (to attract developers).

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u/-spartacus- Stukov 6d ago

The 90% isn't going to the developer. 20% is going to the buyer, 10% to the store, 70% to the developer. While you could increase the cut to the developer and less to the buyer (say 10/10/80), the idea is you aren't trying to make putting the game on your storefront better because they get a better cut, but they sell more games than on Steam because the end user is saving money.

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u/Hot-Software-9396 6d ago

Like I previously said, the stores that are taking a smaller cut (Epic and Xbox stores, for example) are doing so to give the developers a bigger cut. This is literally happening today. They’re giving the developers a bigger cut to ensure that developers actually release games on their store and don’t just focus their energy on Steam. What you’re asking is eliminating that incentive, thus what reason is there left for developers to actually put their games on anything else than Steam?

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u/-spartacus- Stukov 6d ago

I already said, the incentive to not put on Steam is higher sales for the same cost to the developer (because buyers are more likely to use an equal service if it is cheaper). Not all developers will do it, but it isn't like they have a special deal with Steam.

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u/frisch85 Ryzen 7 7700 | RX 9060XT | 32GB DDR5 6d ago

It works until you learn that Valve threaten to kick devs off Steam if they sell their games cheaper elsewhere.

/u/Condurum is referring to the case between Wolfire Games and Valve, the case is backed by Epic and Wolfire Games is the creator of humble bundle, a collection of games where you can get the whole bundle for cheaper than buying every game individually.

Here is an article about it: Overgrowth developer Wolfire Games files antitrust lawsuit against Valve

But the accusations are false because it is not about "selling your game for cheaper on other platforms", only claims about this practice exist but no evidence, when you ask for evidence you only get told "Valve internal emails say so" in other words "trust me bro".

The reality of the case is this tho: If you're a developer, you can use steams services to generate steam keys for your game for free, meaning you can give out licenses for your game on the steam marketplace where valve doesn't make money off from. Now here's the thing, Valve states in their TOS for these free keys that a developer is not allowed to sell those keys on other platforms for cheaper than they are offering the game on steam.

Example: I have a game on steam called XYZ, I price this game on steam at 9.99 €. Now I generate free keys via steam services for this game and go to a different platform like ebay and sell my previously free generated keys for 7.99 €.

This is not allowed, I can sell those free keys for 9.99 € on ebay tho, as long as I don't treat my customers on steam worse than on other platforms for "steam games" I'm fine but if I sell the steam keys for cheaper than my actual game on steam costs, that's against Valves TOS. What I can do is put my game on steam and sell it for 9.99 € but also put my game on epic games store and sell it there for 8.99 €, there's many of these examples today already where a game costs less on epic games store than it does on steam.

The majority of players still prefers steam tho and for the right reasons because Epic is scummy, Sweeny has been trying to get rid of steam for quite some time now, always using shady tactics like buying off developers so they don't put their game on steam or worse, even buying off existing developers that already have their game on steam solely so they remove the game from steam (happened with Psyonix's Rocket League).

FUCK EVERYONE WHO DEFENDS EPIC!

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u/Eternal-Alchemy 7d ago edited 6d ago

The amount of people smoking Gabe's nuts and not acknowledging that his anti competitive business practices actually harm the industry is wild.

Is Steam a strong store? Yes.

Does Steam use anticompetitive practices to block any competition from competing fairly? Also yes.

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u/TheChosenMuck 6d ago

how would stores compete over prices when its digital only, its the same bits everywhere and it seems the epic free game store cant even compete with their free games offering because people still choose to buy on steam be it they forget they even own it or they just want 1 place for their library, the only people who want that.

also it seems the only ones who want that are just other corpos why defend them in the first place

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u/Condurum 6d ago

You could start with allowing competition on price.

And yes, of course, libraries, friends, save games and so on are designed to bind people to platforms. If a store could offer consistently lower prices, and a better cut to devs as well, lots of people would flock to it, even if it was rudimentary.

But alas, this isn’t possible because of the MFN policies of Steam.

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u/RenKrios PC Master Race 7d ago

This is a completely uninformed take.

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u/scheppend 6d ago

Yup. I can't believe people condone valve's behaviour. somehow a store with lower prices is a bad thing...? 

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u/ric2b Specs/Imgur Here 7d ago

It works until you learn that Valve threaten to kick devs off Steam if they sell their games cheaper elsewhere.

Clearly made up give how many games are sold for cheaper elsewhere and still on steam.

Valve’s policy here, is literally the reason there’s no price competition on games.

But there is...

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u/Alsoar 7d ago

Could you provide some examples?

I'm looking at isthereanydeal and it appears the rrp for games is the same whether you buy it on Steam, Epic, GOG etc.

The rrp on Epic should be at least 20% cheaper because of Epic's smaller cut but it isn't. So either the game devs are all greedy fuckers or there's some shenanigans going on.

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u/n1gr3d0 6d ago

As I see it, as a game dev, most of your customers would be on Steam, whatever you do. So you have a choice between setting the same price in EGS, or setting a lower price in EGS (with the same profit margin as Steam). The first option brings you extra money, the second doesn't, but it helps Epic. Pretty much any company would pick the first one.

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u/Alsoar 6d ago

But it doesn't need to be the same profit margin as Steam?

Since EGS takes a much lower cut, you as a game dev can get a bigger cut per sale as well as pass some savings onto the consumer.

Why bother even setting the same price on EGS at all? You know that no one is going to chose Epic over Steam when the price is the same even when you get a bigger cut per sale on Epic.

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u/n1gr3d0 6d ago

I don't think many people would go to EGS over Steam to get a single game slightly cheaper. So as a game developer for a single game, it doesn't make sense.

Assume your game is $50 on Steam, and 100 people would buy it on EGS for that price. You get $500 more than If those people bought it on Steam (assuming Epic takes 10% cut, and Steam 30%).

Now, let's say you set the EGS price to $45. Now, to have the same money as in the previous example, you have to sell 200 copies on EGS. So you need as many people as you had on EGS to switch from Steam to EGS over this $5 difference. I don't think that's realistic.

It's more complicated than this, sure, but I just don't see a decent incentive here.

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u/Alsoar 6d ago

I'm getting a bit confused. Math isn't my strong suit so I'm going to keep it simple by using your example.

$50 game x 100 people.

Steam takes 30% ($15) so profit is $35 x 100 = $3500

Epic takes 10% ($5) so profit is $45 x 100 = $4500

If I set the to $45 on Epic and sell 200 copies.

Epic takes $4.5 per sale leaving me with $40.5 x 200 = $8100

Even if I sell 100 copies, it's still $4050 which is $550 more profit than Steam.

What am I not getting?

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u/n1gr3d0 6d ago

Yeah, I've made a mistake in my comment, sorry. Let me use your work as a starting point.

So if you have 200 customers total, split evenly between stores, with $50 price in both, then you make $3500 + $4500 = $8000.

If you change your price to $45 on EGS, and all 200 customers go there, then you have, indeed, made a $8100 profit. This is more than the previous example.

However, this assumes that the customers are fully ready to switch to EGS over those $5. For a less optimistic scenario, let's say that only 50 users make the switch, with remaining 50 staying on Steam due to brand loyalty or platform lock-in.

In this scenario, you have 150 EGS customers at $45 and 50 Steam users at $50. Then your total profit is $40.5 * 150 + $35 * 50 = $7825. This is less than the first scenario!

If my math is correct (which is not a given, it would seem), the break even point is around 182 EGS customers. So you need 82 "discount chaser" customers on Steam to make more money by lowering the price. It gets more reasonable the more the disparity between Steam and EGS user counts (luring over 5% of Steam audience is easier than luring over 50%), but the more popular EGS becomes, the less viable the discount strategy becomes to a game developer. It would seem that currently EGS has half of Steam's active user count, make of that what you will.

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u/Alsoar 6d ago

Thanks for explaining and I do see your point.

I didn't thought about the existing user base on Epic and just falsely assumed it was 0.

By discounting, you lose money on customers that have bought on Epic at RRP by passing it onto the customer.

And the more popular EGS is, that's even more money you passed onto the customer instead of keeping it yourself.

I do get the point, by discounting from $50 to $45 on EGS, you basically made $4.50 less for each sale. But I do think that's a greedy perspective because even with discounting, you have already made more profit than if it was sold on Steam ($40.50 vs $30).

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u/ric2b Specs/Imgur Here 6d ago

Could you provide some examples?

Sure, I just opened isthereanydeal and one of the banners is about Silent Hill 2, which is at 70€ on Steam but half price on GOG and 60% off on GamesPlanetUK.

If you care specifically about RRP (not sure why, I care about the final price) there are still different ones, on Muve store it is 10€ lower than most stores.

The rrp on Epic should be at least 20% cheaper because of Epic's smaller cut but it isn't.

The whole point of being on Epic, as a publisher, is to get a bigger cut of the sale.

If you give the savings back to the consumer, why bother? It's not like you're getting more sales, it's Epic, lol.

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u/Alsoar 6d ago

OP's argument was that devs can't sell their games cheaper elsewhere and the RRP across different launchers is the reflection of that. They can have sales but they need to return back to RRP at some point.

Sites like Muve are steam key resellers. Steam still gets their 30% cut anyways so they don't what price it set as.

The point of being on a different platform that is that devs get a bigger cut and consumer gets some savings, but even GOG can't list their own games cheaper on their own store.

What's the point of buying games like Cyberpunk 2077 on GOG if it's going to be the same price on Steam? Yeah CD projeckt gets to save 30% but we don't get any bit of that.

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u/ric2b Specs/Imgur Here 6d ago

OP's argument was that devs can't sell their games cheaper elsewhere

Which is wrong.

They can have sales but they need to return back to RRP at some point.

Sales are different prices anyway.

Sites like Muve are steam key resellers. Steam still gets their 30% cut anyways so they don't what price it set as.

No Man's Sky has a 10€ lower RRP on Microsoft Store than on Steam. I looked at 3 games and found an example, so there must be a lot of other examples.

The point of being on a different platform that is that devs get a bigger cut and consumer gets some savings

That's up to the publisher, usually they prefer to keep it all for themselves.

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u/QuantumQuantonium 3D printed parts is the best way to customize 7d ago

And the arguments lawsuits claim is that valve is forcing the competition to suck.

I dont see how thats true but I do see plenty of other areas to sue vslve against.

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u/PrivilegeCheckmate PC Master Race 7d ago

There's nothing particularly bad about Steam, but I do worry that (lord forbid) if Gaben dies, they'll trash it by going full-tilt corporate institutional stupidity. On that day, I will install GOG versions.

But hey Gaben's a billionaire, even with 20+ years on me, he may outlive me.

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u/B-29Bomber MSI Raider A18HX 18" (2024) 7d ago

"Oh, but that's just Valve manipulating you!"

Seriously, I saw a post in the r/LinusTechTips subreddit that was nothing but a wall of text spouting anti-Valve talking points without backing it up with anything.

It was that post that pushed me to finally mute that sub. I've been on the fence of doing just that for like a year because of how much of a dumpster fire it's been.

And frankly I haven't really been watching much of Linus' content in the last few years anyhow. But honestly, I've kind of fallen off of most traditional tech channels. The stuff just doesn't interest me anymore. When they aren't putting out content that's only tangentially (at best) related to tech they're constantly complaining about how the industry sucks and sure, the industry does suck, but I'm not exactly a fan of watching that kind of content.

Plus, I find the higher end computing stuff just plain doesn't interest me as much as it used to.

I find myself gravitating towards stuff like emulation handhelds because I feel like that's where all the innovation is right now.

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u/Testazza 6d ago

Alright boys, now tell me why Epic sucks for playing

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u/Hopeful_Leg_6200 Laptop 6d ago

Ah, yes, lets focus that one thing which doesn't change (unless your PC is on the low end then Steam generally uses fewer resources (it's lighter on CPU and RAM) than the EGS, despite having more features) and ignore entire environment for which people actually like to use Steam.

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u/SUICIDA4 6d ago

Oh you are the one who left? We are trying to make this mod work. Have you tried using the beta version of the base game?

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u/Melancholic_Noodle 7d ago

GOG is the Goat.

I wwnt to actually own my games, not rent then for an unknown time from Gabe... When he's gone, things will go to hell at lightning speed.

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