3136

It’s just another store. If you care about missing features, then it’s a worse experience for you, but I’m not sure what extra features Borderlands would really benefit from. It will have gamepad support on PC and they don’t support mods. I guess forums?

3137

Lack of Steam forums would be a good thing, given how they’re the current GameFAQs.

The game I play the most, 90% of the forums is nothing but whining or claiming the game is dead.

3138

Depends. In some cases, the Steam forums are the only tech help available.

3139

Pretty much. I guess a gamer could hunt down some e-mail to be ignored by some dev for months, assuming they support the game at all.

There some high profile forums that have problems, from repeat offenders, but the forums are mostly a place to get help from other players for many games.

3140

I disagree with saying, “it’s just another store”. For some people, it may be the case. That certainly isn’t the case for me though.

If you’re the person who buys a new game at full price, plays it, and then is done for good, then yeah, you just need a place to buy a game. But as someone with a huge backlog who slowly digs through it looking for the next thing to play, I look at stores completely differently. It’s a long-term relationship, and the stores are holding onto my games. It’s like buying a movie I really like, and want to watch repeatedly, off a digital service. If the service dies, that movie’s gone. Now multiply that by the thousand games I have in my backlog. Epic need to prove themselves as trustworthy, and every dirty tactic they use, including exclusivity, just makes me more confident I don’t want to store my games on their platform.

Even ‘just another launcher’ is annoying. First of all, nobody has any business telling me what I should be running on my machine. Secondly, every launcher is a piece of crap Electron app that easily swallows 300+MB. Most of them are badly programmed and take up too many CPU cycles. That’s not insignificant, and you can’t tell people to just add another launcher indefinitely as new stores pop up.

Also, as a platform, Steam is the only one that’s willing to take on the actual job of being the PC’s platform. The fact that any game can get to Steam means it’s the universal PC platform. It is PC gaming. Every other store is looking to curate, because they don’t want to take on the burden of having every game on there. That includes GOG, and it certainly includes Epic. Epic is looking to grab the majority of profit from Steam, while leaving Steam to deal with the thousands of games that don’t make as much of a profit. Does it deserve that? I don’t think so.

Finally, who says devs should get more than 70%? Certainly I don’t trust Epic to decide what is acceptable as a percentage – they’re coming in flush with Fortnite and investment cash. There’s no concept of needing to make a normal profit. It’s just like Amazon coming in, using their investors as a subsidy, and drying up whatever market they’ve just attacked. Do I want that to happen to the PC? Hell no. You can see the impact the price pressure is putting on a normal store that has to actually cover its costs, like GOG. Steam takes at least some of that profit and puts it to exceedingly good use. As just one example, they’ve completely resurrected and reinvigorated Linux gaming, to the point that we could all be gaming on Linux machines in a couple of years. Epic, on the other hand, uses their Fortnite cash to bring anti-competitive practices to the PC. Yay!

3141

While I generally share your concern about the longevity of the Epic Store (and I held out buying boxed copies for an unreasonably long time), I think the underlying issue with your problem statement there is that you’re going to find that a mighty hard argument there. All Valve has ever said (and hasn’t said for over a decade at this point) is that if it goes out of business, it’ll unlock the games in your library. If you still believe that, then I’ve got some swamp land to sell you.

My point being: you’re arguing that the status quo isn’t the new quo. If you want to be more on point, simply state that the EPS hasn’t earned your trust yet and move on to another point of contention.

3142

Given the number of actual Linux sales that most games have, it seems like gaming as a whole would get greater utility from giving that money to devs rather than storefronts. I’m more sympathetic to the idea that Steam earns its cut from devs by providing online multiplayer features and stuff.

I’d love to see actual financials on Valve, because the general perception is that they are rolling in cash, which seems reasonable, but without knowing their financial situation it is hard to say if the dev vs. storefront revenue split reflects actual costs or monopoly(ish) rents for Valve.

3143

If either Steam or GOG go out of business, it’ll be a massive burn. At that point, I’ll probably pay for new games on any platform and just play their cracked versions, which are freely available online.

3144

Just a note that you can already do that by buying from Humble, Humble widget, even paypaling the dev and them giving you a free Steam key if you want.

3145

Valve doesn’t have to go on Twitter or get gaming journalists on their side in order to prove to me they are mostly trust worthy; they’ve already proven themselves over the years that they were dedicated to their storefront and aren’t going to walk away.

Epic Games walked out on PC games years ago. They do their PR rounds, make statements, which are either outright lies or just walk them back. They pushed exclusives into the PC market like it’s some sort of damn console, and they played dirty. What they did was Metro was completely unacceptable, and they can’t even own that.

There is zero reason to trust Epic at that point, and they earned that reputation with in just a matter of weeks.

3146

What? This is false and not true. In just the last 1-2 years, Epic has released multiple PC-centric things: e.g. pushed Robo Recall to PC, updates Fortnite regularly, and their store supports various PC titles.

Many criticisms of their store are valid but please stop the exaggerated nonsense.

3147

I am certainly old enough to remember when they decided PC gaming wasn’t worth their time. It’s not false. Valve, fortunately, took a different approach.

3148

I gave data to refute your claim. You are now resorting to vague claims of “I remember” and using Valve as a counterpoint? Really!? Other than Artifact, what has Valve done for PC gaming lately?

3149

Cute. But I am not playing. Epic Games jumped on the train after someone got it going for them. They were certainly not at all interested in PC when it was convenient to ignore it. You can certainly go get data yourself. Let me introduce you to Google.

3150

Big Picture Mode, Linux work, Workshop, direct input controller support, family sharing, work on VR, in-home streaming.

I’m pretty sure you get an answer similar to this every time you ask in the thread.

3151

Big picture mod is the worst and Linux is a waste of time for games. The audience is tiny, and library is worse.

3152

OK, other than the Steam store and marketplace, what has Valve done for PC gaming in the last year or two?

3153

The reason Valve/Steam was able to gain so much market share in the PC digital distribution market space was because companies like Epic didn’t give a shit about this space in the early aughts until recently (excepting the Unreal Engine of course) I think Gears of War 1 was on the PC (via GFWL) then most of their titles were console only. Steam grew so much because most of the big publishers treated the PC market as an annoyance, used aggressive DRM, always-online requirements, or just focused on console sales. In the last few years they all want back in to this space after seeing Steam’s success.

3154

“I can’t give you data, so I’m going to take my toys and go home!”

3155

You’re playing games. I am not playing. Epic Games has history of not releasing their games on PC. Go find it. It’s there. Your “lately” crap is just a juvenile ploy.