Because Valve has control over how much nothing it gets. It decides it gets too much nothing, it turns of the hose.
Sorry, this sentence didn’t parse.
@Paul_cze: They aren’t competing stores, Steam remains the platform.
Indeed. I have been enjoying the good natured discussion. I thought the gentle ribbing all around was in good fun. I honestly dont think anyone here is being crazy at all.
For me I am happy to be a store slut as a customer even recognizing Steam is simply the best right now feature wise. As a developer naturally I see more competition for overwhelming market leaders and/or platforms with single stores as a great thing. I hope Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo & Apple grow their consoles/devices by opening up their stores to competition as well.
I would throw in another wild speculation. The much maligned and dismissed Indie “crap” on Steam will, I predict, end up being what maintains their market position. Steam is now in the enviable position of their chief competitor literally cutting themselves off from a huge chunk of smaller suppliers. Steam can and presumably will start cherry picking the indie winners on their store and either promoting them or quietly offering them terms to be Steam only.
In music terms Epic has gone the Beatport / Pandora route instead of the Spotify/Apple route steam took. The latter usually ends up being bigger and more successful although the former tends to be more predictable and stable.
Anyway rambling but enjoying the discussion.
Sorry, the word should be ‘different’. I guess it is different, but Valve doesn’t get a cut. It does get to control how many keys are given out though.
In your opinion…
Personally I vastly prefer GOGs implementation. Even Blizzard launcher is better I think.
I get a similar issue with Steam and Uplay. Is my Assassin’s Creed 3 on Steam or Uplay? If you purchased it through Steam, you can’t just start uplay and play it from that client, despite there being an entry for it in the library.
This has been a really interesting thread to follow. Last summer, after Valve introduced their “publish whatever garbage you want, we don’t care” policy, I made a concerted effort to move my PC dollars away from Steam. Since then, it’s been a mishmash of Origin, Uplay, GOG, and purchasing Steam keys directly from developer websites – and very recently, Epic.
As @meeper noted, there’s more mental energy required when you’re using multiple platforms. Having almost all of my games on Steam was wonderfully convenient. Bouncing back and forth between multiple platforms is a minor annoyance. But it’s a trade-off that I’m OK with.
Epic’s store is yet one more to add to the mix, but their revenue split makes me willing to take the plunge. I like seeing more of my money going to the developers (I don’t really care one way or the other about the exclusives).
Side note: Origin is really quite good these days. They carry a decent selection of games from other publishers, including Ubisoft(!), and their subscription service has an impressive selection for $30/year.
Can you imagine how much outrage will erupt when Humble Bundle starts issuing Epic Keys?
I agree. I’m particularly impressed with their level of support - where you can chat to someone live about your problem. It’s saved me a good amount of hassle. Especially compared with Steam support which is mediocre at best.
And another one
Personal preference is one thing, objective list of available features is another.
I love GOG too, particularly for the DRM-free approach. But any dev who wants to release DRM-free game on Steam can do so as well.
Sweeeet. As a fan of the classic Might & Magic games, I’m glad to see something new in that sub-genre.
It also reminds me I need to continue my game of Might & Magic X.
OT, but, from the whole genre, what’s the best game? And from the last 10 years?
I think I only played Lands of Lore 1 :)
BTW, I find it kinda amazing that Deep Silver still advertises the game on Steam with new news updates about trailers, while giving a middle finger to steam customers.
But it makes sense, it’s not like they can post these updates on Epic Store…
Draxen, as someone who hasn’t used Origin in years, thanks for bringing this up. I’m not a fan of EA and I give them a lot of crap, but having reachable CSRs is really a feather in their cap.
Back when Origin was new, my friend and I were trying to play… Battlefield 3? 4? Whichever it was that was the first one you had to buy from Origin. My friend was having trouble purchasing the game, because the store was throwing some kind of weird error about the credit card he was trying to use not matching the country of his billing address. This was on a Saturday morning, and he fought the bug for about an hour before he gave up and went to contact support.
We thought our gaming plans were hosed for the weekend as we expected to send off an email and not hear back for a week. We were pretty shocked to see that there was an option to talk to a CSR live, which he was able to do with very little wait. This guy had the problem resolved in about 10 minutes.
That experience absolutely blew me away, and is one area where I feel like Valve has been terrible. They don’t invest nearly enough in tech/customer support. This is one of those things that Epic could knock out of the park and eventually lure me away from Steam.
How long has it been since you last used Steam support? Because my experience (early 2018) has been very positive. And they are quite transparent about the support and response times, which you can check here:
75,000 requests each day is still a big number.
You don’t have a clue what Epic and parties on the store can or cannot do. You should consider halting your bullshit assumptions.
Another game that was happy to use Steam’s framework to advertise and even beta test but is running to Epic’s sacks of cash for release. I’m not sure what to call that beyond “really fucking shitty”.
I think this pisses me off more because they’re taking advantage of the features of Steam, then happily getting moneyhatted and running off to another store - while still keeping their Steam presence for any support issues since Epic doesn’t have community features.
Yeah, I’m always happy to see new entries in that genre. This looks pretty neat, the inspiration from central European folklore should feel fresh, and Zen is a solid developer. Probably worth its own thread rather than being buried in all the platform squabbles.
Show me where that news are posted on epic fail store. I’ll wait.