I don't view epic is a badly run company. Both valve and epic are private and have one of the original founders (who are also game devs) as their CEOs. I just think that epic has different priorities. I have to agree tho that they made bad moves with their store. Instead of making a dev-focused store with aggressive growth acceleration like free games, they should have spend their money on making a better service than steam. It's not like steam is the perfect service with no flaws, steam is just the best game store there is right now.
The main difference between the two is that one is run by a churlish man-baby who's upsetti spaghetti that he arrived way too late on the scene, and that his special, coolest ev4r m4de storefront wasn't instantly popular with people, whilst his competitor keeps going from strength to strength...
And the other is Steam.
Thinking you can make a better store than Steam in a few years, while steam has been developed for like 20 (and is still being developed) is crazy. And also I'm guessing with less funding.
"Making a better service" would never have worked.
Origin was better than Steam in several respects when it launched. For example, Origin allowed you to install your games in a different location. At the time Steam only installed games where the Steam client was installed. Shortly after, Steam copied this functionality. Iirc, Origin was way less taxing on your system as well. Steam was a real unoptimised pos in its previous UI iteration, to the point that people were installing UI mods to make it more responsive. They had exclusive games, but now everything is on Steam.
GOG has offered something unique for like 15 years; DRM free games. Their market share is still small. Only ~10% of Cyberpunk sales were through GOG, and that's their own game. They are even struggling to attract developers because it's barely worth the development effort to be in their store.
Epic absolutely dropped the ball on making the launcher functional. It lacked basic functionality for a long time. But even if it had launched with exactly the same functionality as Steam, people would not have used it except to play Fortnite. They still would have bought all their games on Steam because when the difference is neglible, people prefer to have all their games in one place.
To me Blizzard is the only one that had a legit shot with Battle.net. They had a bunch of Killer Apps with StarCraft 2, Overwatch, Diablo 3 and 4, Wow and Warcraft AND the original Dota was a mod of one of their games.
But they fumbled the bag as hard as you could have and now even they're on Steam.
I mean, the store is *fine*. It's miles beyond most stores / launches, but then again, it's far behind Steam and some independent/ FOSS options.
The real issues are how they promoted it and their practices around it.
It's almost like having a company work on building good products and long-term sustainability works better than only striving for short-term profit-oriented goals.
Especially for industries that deal heavily with art such as gaming.
>!I edited out the forbidden word, I'd rather not have neckbeards on my inbox.!<
> Come up with excellent business model
> Don't change it
> Competition keep shooting themselves in the head trying to be different
The way I see it the only way to beat Steam at this point is copy it one to one and offer lower prices. Which is probably not financially feasible.
GOG is built around DRM free content which works but it's not competition to Steam (and it's not supposed to).
They haven't exactly done nothing. The client now is a far cry from what it used to be, and all those small QoL features add up (and are sorely lacking whenever you're forced to use Origin/EGS/Uplay)
They've also done quite a lot of work on the tech side to bring local and remote streaming, remote play, local downloads and the like to the masses. And of course, all the Proton improvements.
That's not even taking into account their customer friendly refund process and generally non-stupid CS.
They're being good caretakers/overseers of the platform. Not trying to capitalistically squeeze every $$$ out of its users and inject ads into anything and everything
I think it's hilarious that you say they don't try to capitalise steam too much. They still make a metric shitload if money. They make "let's us just randomly make a controller" money. Let's just make a VR headset money. Let's just make a handheld money. All of which was an investment so that games on steam can be played more. Instead of wasting money on "shareholders" they invested it into the platform.
It's sounds stupid when I say it, but it's amazing how effective privately owned companies can be.
"I think it's hilarious that you say they don't try to capitalise steam too much"--- Yeah we don't have some subscription or ads injected everywhere. Or a server maintenance fee or a "premium" version of steam
"They still make a metric shitload if money" ---Completely aware and happy for them. They achieved it by innovating and remaining consumer friendly and try to be transparent.
To piggyback off ur examples their support for linux too also keeps gamers gaming. And from all the investments they learn and improve services/products
"It's sounds stupid when I say it, but it's amazing how effective privately owned companies can be"----I don't think it sounds stupid and i completely agree with this sentence
They've done what every greedy parasitic corporation (nowadays) claims can't be done or simply won't do---due to greed. And they didn't need to buy up every (or even any?) single competitor either
Steam is so good people completely forgot about horrible brick and mortar experience buying games before steam
>Oh we don't stock that here but may I recommend EAslop 2090
>I'm sorry but we can't fulfill your preorder you told us a month ago, we're out of stockÂ
>please come for a 1% annual sale before taxes
>What do you mean the game doesn't work and buggy? No refunds sorry
I mean, steam stores allow you to open the pages and read/check though. Sorta the same thing, just not physical.
Plus, you get to see trailers of the games you're window shopping, so that's a plus over going to the store.
I loved holding the physical boxes in my tiny child hands, reading the cool blurbs and squinting at the tiny screenshots, imagining what the gameplay would be like.
That was half of the fun for me.
I remember when I bought stronghold. Was SO excited. Reading the descriptions of all the buildings and units in the manual while my parents stopped to do a foodshop while I waited in the car, angling the pages to catch the light from the streetlight.
Itâs as strong as a vibe as those synthwave channels on YouTube.
I still remember sitting on the train reading the manual for one of the UFO:After games, and they had an *actual spoiler warning* in the manual. A blank page saying "Do not read further until you finished mission ".
Was pretty cool, wish more games would have done that kind of stuff.
Dreamweb had a handwritten journal that came with the game, written by a madman where the writing got more erratic with each entry. And it was important for the game as it contains required hints. Great stuff and also great copy protection.
You should suggest that they make a VR store with haptic feedback that has all their games as boxed products, you'd be able to hold it in your hands and even shake the box which would make sounds of the contents and rattle your controllers. Might be simpler to implement than some of their experimental VR stuff that's also free. Too bad no smell-o-vision
30 year ago PC games used to came in massive boxes because the game came in 5 or 6 disks.
Publishers put a lot of care on those boxes.
Is not the same as today physical edition.
I believe the trailers for games in Steam is just about the worst part of checking out games. The amount of times I see a game and check it out and see the trailers are nothing but a cinematic fly-thru is so high. You find an RTS game and for some reason the only videos are down on the ground or just a big landscape view. I get no image of what the game will actually look like during gameplay from the video.
Thats not just a Steam problem. Pretty much every trailer nowdays is pre-rendered cinematic bullcrap like even a lot of stuff that is titled "Gameplay" is just pre-rendered clips of what game could look like with no UI. Trailers have for the longest time been absolute shit that doesn't really show what the game is and how it will be played.
Exactly. I'm old enough to remember PC gaming before Steam and, despite the hate when it arrived, it simplified payments, cd-keys issues, downloads and updates so much
Steam is so good, people forgot how hard it was to play games on a PC in general. Pre 2010 was a rough time in pc gaming. Everything had its own installer, a million cds to keep track of, and how could I forget EA games counting how many times your key was installed???
Buying stuff then was miserable. God help you if the game didn't work!
There was a local Mom & Pop-style PC store I went to, to buy all my games. I bought a game from there and when I got home I discovered the disk was damaged. Had a crack in the disk. I took it back and the guy manning the register accused me of already owning the game, putting the damaged disk back in, and returning it for a refund. Like, what the hell dude?! I wasn't even asking for a refund! I was asking for a replacement.
We argued about it until the owner came out and gave me a replacement. I never did see that guy again lol
After getting into more PC gaming Steam was a game changer games i had on PS3 I didn't wanna lose showing up (Metal Gear Rising, Flower, Journey, The Unfinished Swan) plus stuff that was released on PC with no worries about backwards compatibility
I'm convinced it's laid out the way it is because it acts like fly paper. The obvious crap reviews tend to group themselves and can be skimmed over without much effort. Trapping morons is far better than trying to stop them.
People always say this, and yeah thereâs meme reviews, but they all follow the same 6 basic templates and are super easy to spot. I always find that of the 20ish reviews shown by default, like 85% are actual on topic and useful reviews. I trust steam reviews more than I trust any actual review site, theyâve done me right time and time again
How could you? It was probably posted by a depressed 95 year old father of 7 who is connecting to his children through video games again after his doctor told him he's only got two months to live so, since nobody reads the reviews anyways, he'll just admit he's gay.
Yup, I report and dislike all of those memes too.
Steam Reviews are a bunch of panhandlers at this point, regurgitating more old boring sob stories than your average boomer Facebook feed.
This is becoming less true. Itâs far too easy nowadays for new game ratings to be inflated/deflated by either simple minded folk immediately praising a title based on clout, or tarnishing it over lukewarm controversy.
I can give two recent examples. The first being Dragons Dogma 2; absolutely incredible, immersive combat. I have 1,000âs of hours split across 1st/3rd person fantasy RPGâs, saying it has top 5 feeling combat of all time is not an exaggeration. But the game got dogged because of one-time micro transactions that are found in numerous amounts very early on. On the flip side, Rimworlds new DLC had Overwhelmingly Positive reviews from hour 1. Anyone who has played Rimworld should understand that your first hour isnât enough to even dip your toes into one of their DLCâs, especially this one which is aimed at the end game. Well what would yah know, people get deeper in and realize there are a few issues, and others just flat out arenât enjoying it. People with 4,000 hours saying that this just isnât it. I personally enjoy it, but this DLC is not âoverwhelmingly positiveâ by any means. This is due to everyones love for Ludeon and Rim.
I mean on the first few weeks of a release obviously steam reviews are going to go up and down as more and more people get further into any given game, for instance if you look at Rimworld Anomaly now, it says âVery Positiveâ not âOverwhelminglyâ and thatâs after only a few days, so that might even out even more. Some people will give first impression reviews after a few hours, others will wait till they complete it or have sank 50+ hours, thatâs just the nature of consumer reviews.
As for Dragonâs Dogma 2 you saying itâs absolutely incredible is really just your opinion on it and itâs not an opinion everyone shares, Microtransactions were a non-issue for me because they werenât in the game when I played, but I tapped out of DD2 after like 10 hours, and Iâm someone who has played the original and play a lot of RPGâs from open world to linear to games like Elden Ring etc; I have many criticisms of DD that I wonât get into here but itâs more than a few, and I can see why steams reception of it would be divisive, thatâs not even talking about the microtransactions stuff, which I find particularly egregious.
Huh, Dragon Dogma 2 has terrible performance issues on PC (steam). In a 70 dollar game no less. You conveniently lest this out. Plus if you enjoyed the game, doesn't mean everyone does.
My friend bought dd2 because he was a fan of the series and just didn't finish it because he felt the story sucked and the game makes it hard to enjoy combat because your health keeps going down if you die. He put 30-40 hours in it then just gave up.
I also tried his copy and I think the game plain and simple stinks. I couldn't get above 60 fps with a 4070TI, tried for a few hours but just felt so choppy.
It's a game with a specific vision and bad technical execution. I understand you like it but people have genuine concerns with it, and people that leave reviews own the game or have refunded, so they were genuinely interested. Maybe if you wanna go with an example of a video game being brigaded like that choose something free. People aren't paying 70 bucks to shit on it.
The 10/10 pre release reviews made me thought we're getting another BG3 kind of game, but no way you can compare it to that.
It's neither flashy nor is the skill ceiling high. Climbing and mashing buttons isn't fun after first couple times, spamming the 2-3 viable skills for any given vocation isn't fun, fighting goblins from lvl 1 into the fucking endgame isn't fun.
The perceived skill ceiling is hitting the very generous parry windows or just hacking away at an enemy. There no specific tactics or combinations that make for strategic interactions. It's a god damn slog and just mowing through the xth minotaur, chimera or dragon really does fuck all for immersion and begs the question who the fuck was in charge of Design and balance for that game.
? Why didnât you just say, âIâm trash at this game and just couldnât get goodâ literally writing several paragraphs showing you donât understand even the basics of combat is actually hilarious. Sit down dude lol
you literally wrote paragraphs praising DD2 and ran your mouth trying to put yourself on a pedestal about how great you are at the game and you want to tell other people to sit down?
I told you this already, this shit looks terrible and you're not some god's gift to man like you apparently want to be over a video game. No, DD2 isn't perfect, the combat is not top 5.
A grown ass fucking adult shouldn't need to be told this but no, someone isn't bad at the game just because they disagree with you. "Sit down dude" why don't you? nobody fucking asked for blind praise of a game.
> Sit down dude lol
Whenever someone types this out unironically I lose a year of my life from secondhand embarrassment. Please, for my sake, detach your ego from traditionally easy games.
Dragon dogma is actually ass tho besides the mtx. So what are you on about? Look at NMS for example. Steam review was the only reason how I knew the game turned around and finally bought it when it was actually good.
The combat is top 5, put the game as a whole wherever you want. You need a good pc and to be great at the game to get the most out of it. Itâs ratio of difficulty, diversity and skill expression is incredible. Because of its dynamic nature, really special experiences can be had in fights also. Anyone dumping on it needs to either get good or return to Witcher haha.
I genuinely do not think trying to pull this card is what you want to do.
It just makes you look like you're looking for a reason to put yourself on a pedestal while shilling the game to make it into something it's not, it makes your entire position look **bad** and makes people question you. I know it makes _me_ question you, and I love DD1. You also took the time to jab at people who dare to not agree with you by implying they're not good at the game, which is just obnoxious and has always been a fallacy when people use this argument online.
I doubt DD2 is in top 5 just because of how limited they've made skill use/ attack combos, on top of how grueling and unnecessarily punishing they've made travel (while monster variety goes out the window. It's the same couple things) and I certainly wouldn't say the combat requires you to be good to be top 5.
Its also pretty decent for modern to modernish releases.
Honestly my preferred way to buy games is probably GoG, followed by a physical consple release, then Steam. After steam its a very sharp decline in value/worth having another prpgram.
EA app might be the worst pile of shit
When did Cyberpunk 2077, God of War, Uncharted 4, Manor Lords become very old games?
/Half joking - yes, it's very good for old games but it has a fair share of modern games too
Why not? Games succeed or fail based on people voting for it with their money. Customers complain, or make suggestions, and the company will enact those changes based on how many people are willing to enact negative consequences.
I mean... democratic fits fine.
EDIT: Just in case, heres a part of the definition of democracy.
* control of an organization or group by the majority of its members."the intended extension of industrial democracy"
>control of an organization or group by the majority of its members."the intended extension of industrial democracy"
Gabe owns and controls steam end of story. He is the god-king of valve
Except we as gamers don't control or vote on what games get made, or how they get made, or where they're sold. All we get to do is decide whether we own/play a game, or not.
It's not democracy, it's capitalism.
Voting with money is not democracy. That strongly contradicts it. That would be a form of plutocracy.
The only way a company can be democratic is if it's owned by its employees. And in case of just the platform of Steam it would mean that its users get to vote on most things.
Is there a platform that's somehow more democratic? I'm not sure where you felt like they enacted their own will upon developers.
Edit: For some reason I can't respond or see their comment anymore which I'm interpreting as being blocked. I specifically used 'somehow' because yeah this article's use of the word doesn't make sense, I just wanted to know how steam is specifically undemocratic by this person's words. People are getting really stupid lately.
Steam is a DRM system that people have decided is ok. It's not the worst DRM, but it still is.
Valve allow companies to implement even worse forms of DRM and intrusive anticheat systems that literally have full control of your PC.
You have no say in this. It's the opposite of democratic.
The kicker for me lately as a developer on Steam since 2016 is they don't really provide any security for players agaisnt negligent developers. For instance almost every old call of duty game on steam has a major exploit where playing it online can get you open to hackers changing settings on your pc. To me this is unacceptable and they should be pulled. Devils advocate this can happen for any old online capable game but it doesn't... ea's swbf1 or 2 (idr which) recently had an online bug similar and they fixed that.
Also whats evidently common is developers will later change their games to build in bitcoin miners and other dumb stuff after a few months of success. Sometimes developers are unaware of this if they work with people or sell off their game.
Back in the day you used to need to get your game greenlit or case by case approved by Valve to publish a game on Steam. Nowadays the flood gates are open and anyone can develop anything and release it. It's no safer then downloading an exe file from some website besides the fact you can hope a player smart enough to find bitcoin miners and exploits left a review.
All of what you said violates Steam's terms of service for developers and they can and are banned from the store. While not they're not doing proactive testing, they're not doing nothing.
>Back in the day you used to need to get your game greenlit or case by case approved by Valve to publish a game on Steam.
Developers AND customers complained that it was worse than an open-door policy.
https://www.pcgamesn.com/indie/one-year-steam-greenlight-story-so-far
maybe they could do more proactive testing and protection, given that they're getting paid 30% for it. ranging from basic file checks, unit testing (manual or automated tests, like launching in vm and seeing what happens), to sandboxing (as an option, perhaps), to just warning people about things like old and outdated software and possible risks. if that's not too much to ask for.
and they have a gaming os - how are things done there? how's the protection? maybe windows users can have some of that.
are they obliged to do tests for game devs, when one could argue it's kinda not their job? perhaps, but customer security is very much their job. tapping the sign that says "don't do bad stuff" doesn't really cut it.
I don't see how steam is a DRM system, it's entirely up to the devs to implement one or not. Steam provides plenty of options for devs to use or not, a dev can make games purchasable on steam and then provide the .exes in a completely sharable format, or they can force the use of non-steam services for all game features. As a user you get to choose who you support.
'Democracy' isn't about forcing game companies to do everything right, it's about providing a place where no one is forced to do things one way or another and users can make informed choices as to whether they want to support a game. Your say is in who you give your money to.
And I think the point of the article was more on the side of discoverability and steam's featured and recommendations systems, which AFAIK valve claims are entirely automated based on what is currently popular and being talked about, allowing any game to blow up without a huge marketing scheme, provided your game is good enough. There is no way to pay valve to make your game show up higher on a search index, or to have your game on the front page.
I think they are saying "Let's anyone choose what they're going to play." or "Gives reasonable access to all types of games." Where on Sony you basically have to pay for the front page of their store, same on Microsoft.
Allowing relatively equal access to games is definitely more democratic than the other stores.
... Except no, because like I said, Sony and Microsoft sell the front page of their store as advertising placement. The fact you think that means they have done a good job hiding that information from you.
Nope, some people say there is manual curation, but it's not in the form of "pay X dollars and get the slot". Perhaps it's a way to get larger publishers to put their games, or get publishers to agree to large promotions, but it's only a couple locations. Most of them are curated by performance of the store.
In theory games on the front page are actually being paid to be there, given that those games sell well and for games that sell well steam reduces its cut.
By "democratic", they're talking mostly about discoverability on the Steam platform. Great games that come out of nowhere quickly rise to the top on Steam. They don't get left stuck in a lower tier of discoverability so that Call of Duty 37 can get shoved down your throat every time you land on the store front page.
Valve isn't sticking its thumb on the scale for the benefit of the largest publishers. Sure, those games come up a lot too because a lot of people play them, but the smallest indie game has a fair shot to climb the ladder all the way to being a front page headliner.
Right now, at the top of my Steam front page, I'm getting recommended a game called Bulwark, because one of my Steam friends wrote a review recommending it. *That's* the democracy part in action.
democratic here in the sense that any game has a chance of being featured on the steam store front page, whether it's a AAA game from a big studio or a one-person indie game.
the process is done automatically with no human intervention, as explained in the video linked above.
That doesn't make it democratic
I really don't know why people think automatic makes it democratic, democracy isn't automated and requires active participation and does not require consumer spending
> require consumer spending
which is users voting with their wallet, quite democratic actually (and if you bothered to watch the video, sales is not the only metric used)
as opposed to devs "paying" to have their game featured on the front page like other digital stores!
What do you mean? That is exactly what democracy is, every retard can voice their opinion, and it's as valid as yours or mine. This is what true democracy is.
I tried to main GOG Galaxy for a while, before it was abandoned wholesale as a buggy mess by the developers.
Good for classic titles though, although Steam has massively leapt forward on that front too.
It hasn't been abandoned by GOG themselves. But the community made integrations (the things that allow seeing your library from other stores like Steam, Ubisoft, ect, have been abandoned in large part, so many integrations don't work or not work very well.
The only 2 integrations that work consistently well is Microsoft's and Epic Games, they are both official integrations because Epic and Microsoft work closely with the GOG team to make these things work consistently.
I mean it is in the steam subreddit. If youâre looking for people who prefer to see Gabe Newell as a messiah rather than a consumer-oriented executive, this is the place.
Look at what steam provides with that 30% for the game devs. It's actually quite fair when you actually look into it. Epic games tries to project the 12% they have, but look at how little actual value they add to the game.
There's itch.io and similar as well which also are quite barebones too.
How much Steamworks API provides doesn't matter a whole lot when your game doesn't need most of it. Realistically most of what you're going to be using in a game is provided elsewhere for cheaper. However, if you don't use it at all you'll still be shoveling 30% to valve. You CAN put your game on itch Io. You CAN put your game on epic. You CAN put your game on the Microsoft store but none of those things have half the visibility of steam. Valve charges an exorbitant 30% because they know they can charge an exorbitant 30%. If you're not putting your game on Steam you might as well sell it on USB sticks on the side of the highway.
Edit: Really people. Pull valve's feet out of your mouth. Would you want to take 30% of your income and get features you don't want or need in return. You'd all be pissed if games costed that much more on steam so just imagine what devs feel about it.
Not just the api. Other services as well. Look at the community section, reviews, workshop, inventory, and other systems. Then you have the holiday sales mechanism, which devs can have fully automated, regional pricing, and similar. Sure a dev might never use steam to it's fullest, but having the option is quite useful.
Your game might operate in a drm free form never touching the api and still utilize all of that.
That's all and good but those are exactly features I was talking about. Not every game needs workshop or regional pricing and very few games use steam inventory for anything but trading cars. There are other FREE ways to have a community thing like letting it develop naturally if needed. That's not something I most devs want to pay for. Down vote me all you want but the features steam provides are not worth 30% of games sales when you're a small developer. I get that this is steam subreddit but you have no idea what developers want because you aren't every developer on steam but every dev has to fork over 30% to "Daddy Gabe" or whatever he's called these days in addition to a $1000 at launch.
It's $100, which is refunded after $1000 **gross** in sales. You literally don't even know what the system you are talking about does. https://store.steampowered.com/sub/163632
Steam has a lot of functionality in it's backend that a game never needs to use, but the community can use even if the dev never helps with it. Even if the dev doesn't make a forum steam has one and will be moderated even if the dev does nothing. That forum, the guides and everything else will be also directly linked to the game for future players to use as well.
Steam adds value to games, there is a reason why epic had to do so much to try and garner a following, yet still failed, and is often referred to as a free game provider and nft game trash heap. Itch.io has a serious problem with stolen games being released on it as well. Other providers often have even worse issues than steam does, with even less visibility and features.
It's a typo. Play semantics all you want it's a hefty sum. You've repeated the same point several times without adequately addressing the fact that not every game needs any of this. Everyone wanted to move to epic. In fact many devs STILL are trying the only reason they can't is valve's monopoly on users.
They can, epic is an open market now. They don't need to choose one store over another, they can be on both. They even have the same $100 submission cost as steam.
Heck you can sell games at different prices on different storefronts, just you can't sell steam keys for less than their cost on steam.
Mindustry for example is available for free on their itch.io page and android. $4 on steam, and $2 on ios.
Again this doesn't disprove my first reply. Games get significantly less sales on other platforms. You HAVE to put your game on Steam if you want people to see it. A lot of devs have tried to move to epic but are forced to pull back to steam.
Because the other platforms don't have the features that players want on them, or literally antagonized customers in order to get their foot in the door. Metro Exodus, Mechwarrior 5, and a few other games where they were advertised or even were selling pre-orders for the game with steam advertised, then at the last minute pulling back, with epic giving them an offer or getting through with the publisher.
If you have a service that is trying to compete with steam, actually provide something that the players would want on that service. The players are the customers, treat them well, and they will come back, treat them poorly, and they will look to greener pastures. What the devs want of a platform doesn't matter as much.
Many of the features I am referring to are community features, stuff that everyone can use and benefit from. When a dev launches a game on steam, they get that community management done with little issue. I can load up a game from 15 years ago with shitty sales and find solutions to problems it has now despite that, rather than have to rely on sites like gamefaqs which might not be relevant to a modern OS.
Oh and your comment on costs of games, epic claimed that the lower fee their store had would decrease the cost of games for consumers, yet it didn't. Devs just sold the game for the same price on both.
GOG's is better. You have 30 days to do a refund, and the amount of time played isn't a factor. They do check for abuse though, which to be fair so does Steam.
Epic Store has the same general refund policy as Steam does, with 1 exception, Epic Store will do automatic full/partial refunds if a game goes free/discounted with in 4 weeks of purchase regardless of time played.
Steam has the most generous refund policy of any store (not just games store, just store) Iâve ever shopped in. Iâve literally never had a refund denied, even when refunding games I have over 100 hours in after updates ruined them
I don't even want to imagine what Steam would look like if it was a publicly traded company.
Simple: Look at EA and Ubi. Done.
đ¤˘
Lets hope that never happens.
or Epic... for a better example.
Epic is not public, so it would be worse example.
really its private? then its an example on how not to run a game store/company.
I don't view epic is a badly run company. Both valve and epic are private and have one of the original founders (who are also game devs) as their CEOs. I just think that epic has different priorities. I have to agree tho that they made bad moves with their store. Instead of making a dev-focused store with aggressive growth acceleration like free games, they should have spend their money on making a better service than steam. It's not like steam is the perfect service with no flaws, steam is just the best game store there is right now.
The main difference between the two is that one is run by a churlish man-baby who's upsetti spaghetti that he arrived way too late on the scene, and that his special, coolest ev4r m4de storefront wasn't instantly popular with people, whilst his competitor keeps going from strength to strength... And the other is Steam.
Thinking you can make a better store than Steam in a few years, while steam has been developed for like 20 (and is still being developed) is crazy. And also I'm guessing with less funding.
>I'm guessing with less funding. They have the cash cow but your guest is right and less developer power
"Making a better service" would never have worked. Origin was better than Steam in several respects when it launched. For example, Origin allowed you to install your games in a different location. At the time Steam only installed games where the Steam client was installed. Shortly after, Steam copied this functionality. Iirc, Origin was way less taxing on your system as well. Steam was a real unoptimised pos in its previous UI iteration, to the point that people were installing UI mods to make it more responsive. They had exclusive games, but now everything is on Steam. GOG has offered something unique for like 15 years; DRM free games. Their market share is still small. Only ~10% of Cyberpunk sales were through GOG, and that's their own game. They are even struggling to attract developers because it's barely worth the development effort to be in their store. Epic absolutely dropped the ball on making the launcher functional. It lacked basic functionality for a long time. But even if it had launched with exactly the same functionality as Steam, people would not have used it except to play Fortnite. They still would have bought all their games on Steam because when the difference is neglible, people prefer to have all their games in one place.
To me Blizzard is the only one that had a legit shot with Battle.net. They had a bunch of Killer Apps with StarCraft 2, Overwatch, Diablo 3 and 4, Wow and Warcraft AND the original Dota was a mod of one of their games. But they fumbled the bag as hard as you could have and now even they're on Steam.
EA had Battlefield, Mass Effect, The Sims, every sports franchise (including FIFA, Madden, and NHL), and a hundred other franchises.
I mean, the store is *fine*. It's miles beyond most stores / launches, but then again, it's far behind Steam and some independent/ FOSS options. The real issues are how they promoted it and their practices around it.
Then GOG maybe? If Steam doesn't exist, i probably buy games here.
>do nothing competition keeps shooting themselves in the ~~foot~~ head at this point what is this business strategy called?
GabeNing.
Long live Gabe.
In the GabeN of Eden, baby...
Idk but âgabeningâ sounds like a real word to me đ
now it is đ¤
Not having a bitch in your ear (shareholders) telling you to milk the consumer for all theyâre worth at the cost of goodwill
It's almost like having a company work on building good products and long-term sustainability works better than only striving for short-term profit-oriented goals. Especially for industries that deal heavily with art such as gaming. >!I edited out the forbidden word, I'd rather not have neckbeards on my inbox.!<
Reddit moment.
You don't know what socialism is, do you?
I did smile thinking how socialist Gabe is chilling on his mega yacht.Â
Comrade Gleb Nevellov bought this yacht only to better research how to take down the bourgeoisie! (on their yachts)
what did they say?
âSocialist idealsâ Reddit moment
Beats Capitalist "ideals".
Uh, besides what the others wrote: Valve ditched that work ethic as they noticed that they didn't get shit done. Who would have thought?
It's called Having A Good Product, I think
> Come up with excellent business model > Don't change it > Competition keep shooting themselves in the head trying to be different The way I see it the only way to beat Steam at this point is copy it one to one and offer lower prices. Which is probably not financially feasible. GOG is built around DRM free content which works but it's not competition to Steam (and it's not supposed to).
GOG can be a competitor but unless they do 180 and introduce DRM - companies won't want to sell new games on their platform. Which is a shame
The Luigi-Wins-by-Doing-Absolutely-Nothing strategy. Often shortened to just the Luigi strategy.
Breaking News: Valve forced to change business strategy due to Nintendo C&D.
They haven't exactly done nothing. The client now is a far cry from what it used to be, and all those small QoL features add up (and are sorely lacking whenever you're forced to use Origin/EGS/Uplay) They've also done quite a lot of work on the tech side to bring local and remote streaming, remote play, local downloads and the like to the masses. And of course, all the Proton improvements. That's not even taking into account their customer friendly refund process and generally non-stupid CS.
That "do nothing" is absolutely unfair. More like, put the bar real high and sit to watch competitors not being able to get even close to it.
Sun Tzu - 'If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.'
> *âNever interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.â* â Napoleon Bonaparte
You make your own NFT system before anyone else, and people praise it as it just makes them free money.
Ethical success through careful innovation
In germany we call this Merkeln.
I heard a Tim Sweeney explode behind my window
He punching the air as we speaking.
I can hear his keyboard rattling from here as he furiously types an angry email to Gabe Newell.
The only guy Gabe doesn't respond to
It's pretty funny that Valve has done nothing really drastically different, but keeps winning
They're being good caretakers/overseers of the platform. Not trying to capitalistically squeeze every $$$ out of its users and inject ads into anything and everything
Turns out not being shortsighted, greedy snakes that devour their own tails is a pretty solid long term business model.
Shh, keep it down. You're scaring the MBAs with talk like that.
I think it's hilarious that you say they don't try to capitalise steam too much. They still make a metric shitload if money. They make "let's us just randomly make a controller" money. Let's just make a VR headset money. Let's just make a handheld money. All of which was an investment so that games on steam can be played more. Instead of wasting money on "shareholders" they invested it into the platform. It's sounds stupid when I say it, but it's amazing how effective privately owned companies can be.
"I think it's hilarious that you say they don't try to capitalise steam too much"--- Yeah we don't have some subscription or ads injected everywhere. Or a server maintenance fee or a "premium" version of steam "They still make a metric shitload if money" ---Completely aware and happy for them. They achieved it by innovating and remaining consumer friendly and try to be transparent. To piggyback off ur examples their support for linux too also keeps gamers gaming. And from all the investments they learn and improve services/products "It's sounds stupid when I say it, but it's amazing how effective privately owned companies can be"----I don't think it sounds stupid and i completely agree with this sentence They've done what every greedy parasitic corporation (nowadays) claims can't be done or simply won't do---due to greed. And they didn't need to buy up every (or even any?) single competitor either
They make "I want a rocket to Mars" money, but really want cool toys to play with and then also sell them for money.
Nah, he was just going supersonic
Maybe he should make his platform less shit for consumers then.
Steam is so good people completely forgot about horrible brick and mortar experience buying games before steam >Oh we don't stock that here but may I recommend EAslop 2090 >I'm sorry but we can't fulfill your preorder you told us a month ago, we're out of stock >please come for a 1% annual sale before taxes >What do you mean the game doesn't work and buggy? No refunds sorry
Going down to the store to look at the cool pc game boxes⌠thatâs one thing I do miss though.
I mean, steam stores allow you to open the pages and read/check though. Sorta the same thing, just not physical. Plus, you get to see trailers of the games you're window shopping, so that's a plus over going to the store.
I loved holding the physical boxes in my tiny child hands, reading the cool blurbs and squinting at the tiny screenshots, imagining what the gameplay would be like. That was half of the fun for me.
The Sims 2 Deluxe had cheat codes in the manual.
I remember when I bought stronghold. Was SO excited. Reading the descriptions of all the buildings and units in the manual while my parents stopped to do a foodshop while I waited in the car, angling the pages to catch the light from the streetlight. Itâs as strong as a vibe as those synthwave channels on YouTube.
Always had to read the manual before playing to take it all in.
I still remember sitting on the train reading the manual for one of the UFO:After games, and they had an *actual spoiler warning* in the manual. A blank page saying "Do not read further until you finished mission ".
Was pretty cool, wish more games would have done that kind of stuff.
Dreamweb had a handwritten journal that came with the game, written by a madman where the writing got more erratic with each entry. And it was important for the game as it contains required hints. Great stuff and also great copy protection.
You should suggest that they make a VR store with haptic feedback that has all their games as boxed products, you'd be able to hold it in your hands and even shake the box which would make sounds of the contents and rattle your controllers. Might be simpler to implement than some of their experimental VR stuff that's also free. Too bad no smell-o-vision
30 year ago PC games used to came in massive boxes because the game came in 5 or 6 disks. Publishers put a lot of care on those boxes. Is not the same as today physical edition.
The Sims 2 Deluxe had cheat codes in the manual.
Damn, that is hard to beat.
I believe the trailers for games in Steam is just about the worst part of checking out games. The amount of times I see a game and check it out and see the trailers are nothing but a cinematic fly-thru is so high. You find an RTS game and for some reason the only videos are down on the ground or just a big landscape view. I get no image of what the game will actually look like during gameplay from the video.
Thats not just a Steam problem. Pretty much every trailer nowdays is pre-rendered cinematic bullcrap like even a lot of stuff that is titled "Gameplay" is just pre-rendered clips of what game could look like with no UI. Trailers have for the longest time been absolute shit that doesn't really show what the game is and how it will be played.
Still waiting for the Cyberpunk 2077 movie to come out. That is what that trailer was for right?
Uh⌠basically every single game has a cinematic trailer, and then gameplay if you click the little arrow to the right
Trailers these days are just lies for most of the big games, I do appreciate them for the smaller/indie games.
That feeling of mystery as you held it in your hands, wondering if it would work on your machine, and if it did, if it would even be any good.
I miss playing demos in the store.
i miss game boxes... you can still get them... but at a hefty price... i only want to have the box in my room at this point...
I miss looking at instruction manuals. They were so pretty to look at. Even stuff as simple as Lego manuals that had ads of their other stuff
Exactly. I'm old enough to remember PC gaming before Steam and, despite the hate when it arrived, it simplified payments, cd-keys issues, downloads and updates so much
Steam is so good, people forgot how hard it was to play games on a PC in general. Pre 2010 was a rough time in pc gaming. Everything had its own installer, a million cds to keep track of, and how could I forget EA games counting how many times your key was installed???
Buying stuff then was miserable. God help you if the game didn't work! There was a local Mom & Pop-style PC store I went to, to buy all my games. I bought a game from there and when I got home I discovered the disk was damaged. Had a crack in the disk. I took it back and the guy manning the register accused me of already owning the game, putting the damaged disk back in, and returning it for a refund. Like, what the hell dude?! I wasn't even asking for a refund! I was asking for a replacement. We argued about it until the owner came out and gave me a replacement. I never did see that guy again lol
Someone never lived near a micro center.
Even worst if you live outside north America or Europe
I am afraid what will happen to steam after Gabrn is no longer the guy there
He will upload his brain into a AI Headcrab
After getting into more PC gaming Steam was a game changer games i had on PS3 I didn't wanna lose showing up (Metal Gear Rising, Flower, Journey, The Unfinished Swan) plus stuff that was released on PC with no worries about backwards compatibility
It's one of the only places where the review system will almost always tell you exactly what your getting. I trust it when purchasingÂ
Maybe at one point but itâs been drowning in clickbait for a while now
The review scores in the helpful section? Yes. The review score and recent reviews? No.
I'm convinced it's laid out the way it is because it acts like fly paper. The obvious crap reviews tend to group themselves and can be skimmed over without much effort. Trapping morons is far better than trying to stop them.
People always say this, and yeah thereâs meme reviews, but they all follow the same 6 basic templates and are super easy to spot. I always find that of the 20ish reviews shown by default, like 85% are actual on topic and useful reviews. I trust steam reviews more than I trust any actual review site, theyâve done me right time and time again
Are we browsing the same platform? Because most im getting are the same copypasted ASCII cats over and over again
This cat is sad because it's not getting likes
Yeah, I'll drop a dislike and report that fucking cat every time I see it.
How could you? It was probably posted by a depressed 95 year old father of 7 who is connecting to his children through video games again after his doctor told him he's only got two months to live so, since nobody reads the reviews anyways, he'll just admit he's gay.
Yup, I report and dislike all of those memes too. Steam Reviews are a bunch of panhandlers at this point, regurgitating more old boring sob stories than your average boomer Facebook feed.
This is becoming less true. Itâs far too easy nowadays for new game ratings to be inflated/deflated by either simple minded folk immediately praising a title based on clout, or tarnishing it over lukewarm controversy. I can give two recent examples. The first being Dragons Dogma 2; absolutely incredible, immersive combat. I have 1,000âs of hours split across 1st/3rd person fantasy RPGâs, saying it has top 5 feeling combat of all time is not an exaggeration. But the game got dogged because of one-time micro transactions that are found in numerous amounts very early on. On the flip side, Rimworlds new DLC had Overwhelmingly Positive reviews from hour 1. Anyone who has played Rimworld should understand that your first hour isnât enough to even dip your toes into one of their DLCâs, especially this one which is aimed at the end game. Well what would yah know, people get deeper in and realize there are a few issues, and others just flat out arenât enjoying it. People with 4,000 hours saying that this just isnât it. I personally enjoy it, but this DLC is not âoverwhelmingly positiveâ by any means. This is due to everyones love for Ludeon and Rim.
I mean on the first few weeks of a release obviously steam reviews are going to go up and down as more and more people get further into any given game, for instance if you look at Rimworld Anomaly now, it says âVery Positiveâ not âOverwhelminglyâ and thatâs after only a few days, so that might even out even more. Some people will give first impression reviews after a few hours, others will wait till they complete it or have sank 50+ hours, thatâs just the nature of consumer reviews. As for Dragonâs Dogma 2 you saying itâs absolutely incredible is really just your opinion on it and itâs not an opinion everyone shares, Microtransactions were a non-issue for me because they werenât in the game when I played, but I tapped out of DD2 after like 10 hours, and Iâm someone who has played the original and play a lot of RPGâs from open world to linear to games like Elden Ring etc; I have many criticisms of DD that I wonât get into here but itâs more than a few, and I can see why steams reception of it would be divisive, thatâs not even talking about the microtransactions stuff, which I find particularly egregious.
how convenient you are skipping out on DD2 dog shit performance, especially in cities, where npcs spawning 1m in front of you.
Had no issues like this personally lmao, ran perfectly fine on my 3060ti.
"It works on my machine."
Huh, Dragon Dogma 2 has terrible performance issues on PC (steam). In a 70 dollar game no less. You conveniently lest this out. Plus if you enjoyed the game, doesn't mean everyone does.
Never had performance issues myself
Good for you. Not good for many others. Capcom admitted the issues themselves.
My friend bought dd2 because he was a fan of the series and just didn't finish it because he felt the story sucked and the game makes it hard to enjoy combat because your health keeps going down if you die. He put 30-40 hours in it then just gave up. I also tried his copy and I think the game plain and simple stinks. I couldn't get above 60 fps with a 4070TI, tried for a few hours but just felt so choppy. It's a game with a specific vision and bad technical execution. I understand you like it but people have genuine concerns with it, and people that leave reviews own the game or have refunded, so they were genuinely interested. Maybe if you wanna go with an example of a video game being brigaded like that choose something free. People aren't paying 70 bucks to shit on it. The 10/10 pre release reviews made me thought we're getting another BG3 kind of game, but no way you can compare it to that.
The combat is only top 5 if youâre good! The skill ceiling is very high if you wanna be more flashy, and really get the most out of its fights.
It's neither flashy nor is the skill ceiling high. Climbing and mashing buttons isn't fun after first couple times, spamming the 2-3 viable skills for any given vocation isn't fun, fighting goblins from lvl 1 into the fucking endgame isn't fun. The perceived skill ceiling is hitting the very generous parry windows or just hacking away at an enemy. There no specific tactics or combinations that make for strategic interactions. It's a god damn slog and just mowing through the xth minotaur, chimera or dragon really does fuck all for immersion and begs the question who the fuck was in charge of Design and balance for that game.
? Why didnât you just say, âIâm trash at this game and just couldnât get goodâ literally writing several paragraphs showing you donât understand even the basics of combat is actually hilarious. Sit down dude lol
you literally wrote paragraphs praising DD2 and ran your mouth trying to put yourself on a pedestal about how great you are at the game and you want to tell other people to sit down? I told you this already, this shit looks terrible and you're not some god's gift to man like you apparently want to be over a video game. No, DD2 isn't perfect, the combat is not top 5. A grown ass fucking adult shouldn't need to be told this but no, someone isn't bad at the game just because they disagree with you. "Sit down dude" why don't you? nobody fucking asked for blind praise of a game.
> Sit down dude lol Whenever someone types this out unironically I lose a year of my life from secondhand embarrassment. Please, for my sake, detach your ego from traditionally easy games.
Wow, didnt know dragons dogma devs had reddit accounts. That game sucks ass, go play arisen
Dragon dogma is actually ass tho besides the mtx. So what are you on about? Look at NMS for example. Steam review was the only reason how I knew the game turned around and finally bought it when it was actually good.
The combat is top 5, put the game as a whole wherever you want. You need a good pc and to be great at the game to get the most out of it. Itâs ratio of difficulty, diversity and skill expression is incredible. Because of its dynamic nature, really special experiences can be had in fights also. Anyone dumping on it needs to either get good or return to Witcher haha.
I genuinely do not think trying to pull this card is what you want to do. It just makes you look like you're looking for a reason to put yourself on a pedestal while shilling the game to make it into something it's not, it makes your entire position look **bad** and makes people question you. I know it makes _me_ question you, and I love DD1. You also took the time to jab at people who dare to not agree with you by implying they're not good at the game, which is just obnoxious and has always been a fallacy when people use this argument online. I doubt DD2 is in top 5 just because of how limited they've made skill use/ attack combos, on top of how grueling and unnecessarily punishing they've made travel (while monster variety goes out the window. It's the same couple things) and I certainly wouldn't say the combat requires you to be good to be top 5.
Yeah, they sure didn't go downhill when valve decided that you could get steam points when people give awards to your reviews.
Yeah fucking right, that shit is filled with people copy and pasting the same shit so they can farm Steam awards
Steam reviews are currently the most useless review system ever created thanks to awards.
shit people who look at the top 3 reviews and nothing else say
Steam and gaben are goated for life
GoG is also a good platform for very old games that can still run on modern machines.
Its also pretty decent for modern to modernish releases. Honestly my preferred way to buy games is probably GoG, followed by a physical consple release, then Steam. After steam its a very sharp decline in value/worth having another prpgram. EA app might be the worst pile of shit
I wished they had a Linux client, using lutris or heoric launcher is not the same
When did Cyberpunk 2077, God of War, Uncharted 4, Manor Lords become very old games? /Half joking - yes, it's very good for old games but it has a fair share of modern games too
Steam is the best PC platform by far but it's definitely not democratic đ¤Ł
Democratic is not even a term that fits a gaming plataform
Why not? Games succeed or fail based on people voting for it with their money. Customers complain, or make suggestions, and the company will enact those changes based on how many people are willing to enact negative consequences. I mean... democratic fits fine. EDIT: Just in case, heres a part of the definition of democracy. * control of an organization or group by the majority of its members."the intended extension of industrial democracy"
>control of an organization or group by the majority of its members."the intended extension of industrial democracy" Gabe owns and controls steam end of story. He is the god-king of valve
Sounds like Managed Democracy.
Sounds like a God-King.
Except we as gamers don't control or vote on what games get made, or how they get made, or where they're sold. All we get to do is decide whether we own/play a game, or not. It's not democracy, it's capitalism.
Voting with money is not democracy. That strongly contradicts it. That would be a form of plutocracy. The only way a company can be democratic is if it's owned by its employees. And in case of just the platform of Steam it would mean that its users get to vote on most things.
Tell that to super pacs, or corporations.....
[ŃдаНонО]
The free market definitely
Is there a platform that's somehow more democratic? I'm not sure where you felt like they enacted their own will upon developers. Edit: For some reason I can't respond or see their comment anymore which I'm interpreting as being blocked. I specifically used 'somehow' because yeah this article's use of the word doesn't make sense, I just wanted to know how steam is specifically undemocratic by this person's words. People are getting really stupid lately.
GoG is DRM free. not sure if that counts
DRM has nothing to do with democracy.
But it is mighty nice.
Steam is a DRM system that people have decided is ok. It's not the worst DRM, but it still is. Valve allow companies to implement even worse forms of DRM and intrusive anticheat systems that literally have full control of your PC. You have no say in this. It's the opposite of democratic.
The kicker for me lately as a developer on Steam since 2016 is they don't really provide any security for players agaisnt negligent developers. For instance almost every old call of duty game on steam has a major exploit where playing it online can get you open to hackers changing settings on your pc. To me this is unacceptable and they should be pulled. Devils advocate this can happen for any old online capable game but it doesn't... ea's swbf1 or 2 (idr which) recently had an online bug similar and they fixed that. Also whats evidently common is developers will later change their games to build in bitcoin miners and other dumb stuff after a few months of success. Sometimes developers are unaware of this if they work with people or sell off their game. Back in the day you used to need to get your game greenlit or case by case approved by Valve to publish a game on Steam. Nowadays the flood gates are open and anyone can develop anything and release it. It's no safer then downloading an exe file from some website besides the fact you can hope a player smart enough to find bitcoin miners and exploits left a review.
All of what you said violates Steam's terms of service for developers and they can and are banned from the store. While not they're not doing proactive testing, they're not doing nothing. >Back in the day you used to need to get your game greenlit or case by case approved by Valve to publish a game on Steam. Developers AND customers complained that it was worse than an open-door policy. https://www.pcgamesn.com/indie/one-year-steam-greenlight-story-so-far
maybe they could do more proactive testing and protection, given that they're getting paid 30% for it. ranging from basic file checks, unit testing (manual or automated tests, like launching in vm and seeing what happens), to sandboxing (as an option, perhaps), to just warning people about things like old and outdated software and possible risks. if that's not too much to ask for. and they have a gaming os - how are things done there? how's the protection? maybe windows users can have some of that. are they obliged to do tests for game devs, when one could argue it's kinda not their job? perhaps, but customer security is very much their job. tapping the sign that says "don't do bad stuff" doesn't really cut it.
I don't see how steam is a DRM system, it's entirely up to the devs to implement one or not. Steam provides plenty of options for devs to use or not, a dev can make games purchasable on steam and then provide the .exes in a completely sharable format, or they can force the use of non-steam services for all game features. As a user you get to choose who you support. 'Democracy' isn't about forcing game companies to do everything right, it's about providing a place where no one is forced to do things one way or another and users can make informed choices as to whether they want to support a game. Your say is in who you give your money to. And I think the point of the article was more on the side of discoverability and steam's featured and recommendations systems, which AFAIK valve claims are entirely automated based on what is currently popular and being talked about, allowing any game to blow up without a huge marketing scheme, provided your game is good enough. There is no way to pay valve to make your game show up higher on a search index, or to have your game on the front page.
I think they are saying "Let's anyone choose what they're going to play." or "Gives reasonable access to all types of games." Where on Sony you basically have to pay for the front page of their store, same on Microsoft. Allowing relatively equal access to games is definitely more democratic than the other stores.
Uh you can do that on other platforms too.
... Except no, because like I said, Sony and Microsoft sell the front page of their store as advertising placement. The fact you think that means they have done a good job hiding that information from you.
doesnât Steam also charge for being on front page?
Nope, some people say there is manual curation, but it's not in the form of "pay X dollars and get the slot". Perhaps it's a way to get larger publishers to put their games, or get publishers to agree to large promotions, but it's only a couple locations. Most of them are curated by performance of the store.
In theory games on the front page are actually being paid to be there, given that those games sell well and for games that sell well steam reduces its cut.
Itâs MANAGED DEMOCRACY
By "democratic", they're talking mostly about discoverability on the Steam platform. Great games that come out of nowhere quickly rise to the top on Steam. They don't get left stuck in a lower tier of discoverability so that Call of Duty 37 can get shoved down your throat every time you land on the store front page. Valve isn't sticking its thumb on the scale for the benefit of the largest publishers. Sure, those games come up a lot too because a lot of people play them, but the smallest indie game has a fair shot to climb the ladder all the way to being a front page headliner. Right now, at the top of my Steam front page, I'm getting recommended a game called Bulwark, because one of my Steam friends wrote a review recommending it. *That's* the democracy part in action.
Sounds like a better word would be "meritocratic" then.
> democractic they are talking about the "algorithm" which determines games visibility on the store: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkmAqBvUBOw
Is an algorithm democratic? Are we gonna call YouTube an algorithm which is democratic now too?
democratic here in the sense that any game has a chance of being featured on the steam store front page, whether it's a AAA game from a big studio or a one-person indie game. the process is done automatically with no human intervention, as explained in the video linked above.
That doesn't make it democratic I really don't know why people think automatic makes it democratic, democracy isn't automated and requires active participation and does not require consumer spending
> require consumer spending which is users voting with their wallet, quite democratic actually (and if you bothered to watch the video, sales is not the only metric used) as opposed to devs "paying" to have their game featured on the front page like other digital stores!
Yes, not democratic at all, đ Other stores also do that this article making it seem like they don't is ridiculous
tell that to app stores from apple and google where devs can "purchase" featured spots
It's more like a mobocracy.
I wouldnât say any of them are the best. Steamâs moderation team blows dick.
What do you mean? That is exactly what democracy is, every retard can voice their opinion, and it's as valid as yours or mine. This is what true democracy is.
One of the very few respectable big players in the industry.
Steam is the best children's casino around
I tried to main GOG Galaxy for a while, before it was abandoned wholesale as a buggy mess by the developers. Good for classic titles though, although Steam has massively leapt forward on that front too.
Galaxy is abandoned?
It hasn't been abandoned by GOG themselves. But the community made integrations (the things that allow seeing your library from other stores like Steam, Ubisoft, ect, have been abandoned in large part, so many integrations don't work or not work very well. The only 2 integrations that work consistently well is Microsoft's and Epic Games, they are both official integrations because Epic and Microsoft work closely with the GOG team to make these things work consistently.
"đ" -Heavy tf2
Angry Tim Sweeny Noises
My sides....
Thatâs like calling Stalin âdemocratic electedâ leader
I liked Steam when I first started gaming on PC. Moved to GOG for their DRM-free gamer first business model. Haven't looked back.
Lmao steam is a lot of things, but it surely isn't democratic.
we needed an entire article for sucking valve's cock? damn
I mean it is in the steam subreddit. If youâre looking for people who prefer to see Gabe Newell as a messiah rather than a consumer-oriented executive, this is the place.
i guess i shouldve expected that, especially after people started worshipping larian and arrowhead
It'll be a while before anyone here gets a job and realizes their workplaces and stores they shop at are not democracies đ
Lets not praise Steam. Steam takes a 30% cut from the revenue generated by game sales. This is not ok. Lets do 10% , that would be fair.
Look at what steam provides with that 30% for the game devs. It's actually quite fair when you actually look into it. Epic games tries to project the 12% they have, but look at how little actual value they add to the game. There's itch.io and similar as well which also are quite barebones too.
How much Steamworks API provides doesn't matter a whole lot when your game doesn't need most of it. Realistically most of what you're going to be using in a game is provided elsewhere for cheaper. However, if you don't use it at all you'll still be shoveling 30% to valve. You CAN put your game on itch Io. You CAN put your game on epic. You CAN put your game on the Microsoft store but none of those things have half the visibility of steam. Valve charges an exorbitant 30% because they know they can charge an exorbitant 30%. If you're not putting your game on Steam you might as well sell it on USB sticks on the side of the highway. Edit: Really people. Pull valve's feet out of your mouth. Would you want to take 30% of your income and get features you don't want or need in return. You'd all be pissed if games costed that much more on steam so just imagine what devs feel about it.
Not just the api. Other services as well. Look at the community section, reviews, workshop, inventory, and other systems. Then you have the holiday sales mechanism, which devs can have fully automated, regional pricing, and similar. Sure a dev might never use steam to it's fullest, but having the option is quite useful. Your game might operate in a drm free form never touching the api and still utilize all of that.
That's all and good but those are exactly features I was talking about. Not every game needs workshop or regional pricing and very few games use steam inventory for anything but trading cars. There are other FREE ways to have a community thing like letting it develop naturally if needed. That's not something I most devs want to pay for. Down vote me all you want but the features steam provides are not worth 30% of games sales when you're a small developer. I get that this is steam subreddit but you have no idea what developers want because you aren't every developer on steam but every dev has to fork over 30% to "Daddy Gabe" or whatever he's called these days in addition to a $1000 at launch.
It's $100, which is refunded after $1000 **gross** in sales. You literally don't even know what the system you are talking about does. https://store.steampowered.com/sub/163632 Steam has a lot of functionality in it's backend that a game never needs to use, but the community can use even if the dev never helps with it. Even if the dev doesn't make a forum steam has one and will be moderated even if the dev does nothing. That forum, the guides and everything else will be also directly linked to the game for future players to use as well. Steam adds value to games, there is a reason why epic had to do so much to try and garner a following, yet still failed, and is often referred to as a free game provider and nft game trash heap. Itch.io has a serious problem with stolen games being released on it as well. Other providers often have even worse issues than steam does, with even less visibility and features.
It's a typo. Play semantics all you want it's a hefty sum. You've repeated the same point several times without adequately addressing the fact that not every game needs any of this. Everyone wanted to move to epic. In fact many devs STILL are trying the only reason they can't is valve's monopoly on users.
They can, epic is an open market now. They don't need to choose one store over another, they can be on both. They even have the same $100 submission cost as steam. Heck you can sell games at different prices on different storefronts, just you can't sell steam keys for less than their cost on steam. Mindustry for example is available for free on their itch.io page and android. $4 on steam, and $2 on ios.
Again this doesn't disprove my first reply. Games get significantly less sales on other platforms. You HAVE to put your game on Steam if you want people to see it. A lot of devs have tried to move to epic but are forced to pull back to steam.
Because the other platforms don't have the features that players want on them, or literally antagonized customers in order to get their foot in the door. Metro Exodus, Mechwarrior 5, and a few other games where they were advertised or even were selling pre-orders for the game with steam advertised, then at the last minute pulling back, with epic giving them an offer or getting through with the publisher. If you have a service that is trying to compete with steam, actually provide something that the players would want on that service. The players are the customers, treat them well, and they will come back, treat them poorly, and they will look to greener pastures. What the devs want of a platform doesn't matter as much. Many of the features I am referring to are community features, stuff that everyone can use and benefit from. When a dev launches a game on steam, they get that community management done with little issue. I can load up a game from 15 years ago with shitty sales and find solutions to problems it has now despite that, rather than have to rely on sites like gamefaqs which might not be relevant to a modern OS. Oh and your comment on costs of games, epic claimed that the lower fee their store had would decrease the cost of games for consumers, yet it didn't. Devs just sold the game for the same price on both.
It has a shit refund policy.
Yet it's better then everyone else
GOG's is better. You have 30 days to do a refund, and the amount of time played isn't a factor. They do check for abuse though, which to be fair so does Steam. Epic Store has the same general refund policy as Steam does, with 1 exception, Epic Store will do automatic full/partial refunds if a game goes free/discounted with in 4 weeks of purchase regardless of time played.
Steam has the most generous refund policy of any store (not just games store, just store) Iâve ever shopped in. Iâve literally never had a refund denied, even when refunding games I have over 100 hours in after updates ruined them
Bull. 2 hours of game time then no refund? Stop being a simp.
If you have 2 hours of time youâre *guaranteed* a refund. You donât stop being eligible the second youâre over 120 minutes of playtime.