Yeah, I get there’s complications and scummy statements, but at the end of the day people complain a.Lot about a free, reasonably simple and low fee storefront that’s missing tons of features but… works fine? And they have like a 0% chance of ever getting a monopoly.
Hence I never really understand being so vehemently “fuck EGS.” Unreal has given me some sweet games, especially compared to some failures of custom engines. These court cases are another, even if they’re for their own benefit.
I don’t like them because they took games that were perfectly functional on Linux and MacOS and made them not function anymore. I paid for Rocket League with the understanding that I’d be able to play it, and now I can’t.
Which is understandable, but also feels overblown seeing how Steam has a defacto monopoly and “soft” exclusivity (eg they will allegedly delist you if you try to price lower on lower fee stores). And that there have been exclusives on other stores, albeit less common ones for big games.
I don’t think steam is perfect, but they have shown over the years they will go above and beyond to make a good experience for the consumer, including tagging all kinds of negative things on games such as specific DRMs and drastically advancing the ability to run windows games on Linux
No publicly traded company will ever develop that kind of track record even if you give it a chance.
The only exclusives AFAIK are Valve games (understandable) and games that don’t bother listing elsewhere. I also think Valve’s “no undercutting” policy is reasonable. They give you free keys to sell elsewhere if you choose, and you can have sales happen elsewhwre at a different time (or the same) vs Steam, the only requirement is that you don’t undercut Steam.
That’s very far from monopolistic behavior. Adding to that, Valve also invests heavily in their own platform, providing features like Steam Input, Proton/Steam OS, etc.
Epic, on the other hand, bribes users to come via free games, bribes devs via paid exclusivity, and hasn’t meaningfully invested in their platform, they’re still lightyears away from Steam, and even GOG is way better from a features standpoint.
Which is showing more monopolistic behavior? Epic, and it’s not even close. The only “monopolistic” behavior from Valve is being really popular, and I think they’ve earned that.
They give you free keys to sell elsewhere if you choose
To be clear, this is a different system than stores listing non steam key games.
That’s very far from monopolistic behavior.
I mean, imagine if, say, Walmart or Amazon did this (assuming they don’t already). Every price is every other store has to be at or above theirs, or their product gets delisted, which is apocalypse for a supplier.
How does that not sound monopolistic to you?
Imagine if Amazon took 20% more cut that Newegg and passed that to hardware prices for literally everyone.
EGS literally can’t be monopolistic because they have like no market share, but yes, they’re being anticompetitive and bribing in an unsustainable way. It’s not good either. And their store is barebones, no question.
But the double standard of bothers me. Valve doesn’t get a free pass just cause they have a better platform and they’ve been fine in other areas so far.
Steam is full of de-facto exclusives that cannot be purchased and played elsewhere, meaning that you have to accept the Steam price, policies, practices, and their launcher in order to play those. Borderlands 2 was de-facto exclusive to Steam from 2012 to 2020, when Epic effectively rescued it from the exclusivity by paying 2K to give it away and add to the Epic store. If anything, Epic rewarding developers for doing what they’ve been doing on Steam is better than them not getting paid.
Yeah, I get there’s complications and scummy statements, but at the end of the day people complain a. Lot about a free, reasonably simple and low fee storefront that’s missing tons of features but… works fine? And they have like a 0% chance of ever getting a monopoly.
Hence I never really understand being so vehemently “fuck EGS.” Unreal has given me some sweet games, especially compared to some failures of custom engines. These court cases are another, even if they’re for their own benefit.
I don’t like them because they took games that were perfectly functional on Linux and MacOS and made them not function anymore. I paid for Rocket League with the understanding that I’d be able to play it, and now I can’t.
Yeah that parts awful.
To be fair, a lot of the games on EGS are nicely DRM free (so no trouble in proton), but Rocket League is not one of them.
Rocket League seems to work fine with Proton GE.
Via EGS? I just assumed DRM for multiplayer broke it or something.
I think it’s anti cheat, not DRM. But recent protondb reports don’t indicate any problems. I haven’t checked areweanticheatyet
Probably a large part of the hate is because of the all exclusivity deals that they made at the time.
Which is understandable, but also feels overblown seeing how Steam has a defacto monopoly and “soft” exclusivity (eg they will allegedly delist you if you try to price lower on lower fee stores). And that there have been exclusives on other stores, albeit less common ones for big games.
I don’t think steam is perfect, but they have shown over the years they will go above and beyond to make a good experience for the consumer, including tagging all kinds of negative things on games such as specific DRMs and drastically advancing the ability to run windows games on Linux
No publicly traded company will ever develop that kind of track record even if you give it a chance.
The only exclusives AFAIK are Valve games (understandable) and games that don’t bother listing elsewhere. I also think Valve’s “no undercutting” policy is reasonable. They give you free keys to sell elsewhere if you choose, and you can have sales happen elsewhwre at a different time (or the same) vs Steam, the only requirement is that you don’t undercut Steam.
That’s very far from monopolistic behavior. Adding to that, Valve also invests heavily in their own platform, providing features like Steam Input, Proton/Steam OS, etc.
Epic, on the other hand, bribes users to come via free games, bribes devs via paid exclusivity, and hasn’t meaningfully invested in their platform, they’re still lightyears away from Steam, and even GOG is way better from a features standpoint.
Which is showing more monopolistic behavior? Epic, and it’s not even close. The only “monopolistic” behavior from Valve is being really popular, and I think they’ve earned that.
To be clear, this is a different system than stores listing non steam key games.
I mean, imagine if, say, Walmart or Amazon did this (assuming they don’t already). Every price is every other store has to be at or above theirs, or their product gets delisted, which is apocalypse for a supplier.
How does that not sound monopolistic to you?
Imagine if Amazon took 20% more cut that Newegg and passed that to hardware prices for literally everyone.
EGS literally can’t be monopolistic because they have like no market share, but yes, they’re being anticompetitive and bribing in an unsustainable way. It’s not good either. And their store is barebones, no question.
But the double standard of bothers me. Valve doesn’t get a free pass just cause they have a better platform and they’ve been fine in other areas so far.
Steam is full of de-facto exclusives that cannot be purchased and played elsewhere, meaning that you have to accept the Steam price, policies, practices, and their launcher in order to play those. Borderlands 2 was de-facto exclusive to Steam from 2012 to 2020, when Epic effectively rescued it from the exclusivity by paying 2K to give it away and add to the Epic store. If anything, Epic rewarding developers for doing what they’ve been doing on Steam is better than them not getting paid.