Devs can’t be pushed as far on Steam, because they take a much larger cut of the action.
I have passed on sale prices for multi-platform games that were on Origin or Uplay because I figured I would just wait until a similar discount on Steam. In fact, I literally have only ever purchased Origin or Uplay native games on those stores. None of those clients hold any games made by other studios
That’s pretty much where I am too.
Could someone come along and make a storefront that works better than Steam and offers at least as many features as Steam does for the customers? Sure, it’s possible. Nothing I’ve seen about the Epic store does that yet, though.
Edit:
I’d also guess that if the Epic store really starts making inroads on Steam due to prices, then Steam will drop their cut to get closer on price.
I would buy it from third party store that also offers 20% off but sells steam key.
But even if that wasn’t an option, probably yes. I prefer convenience and features of Steam over few dollars.
Precisely. I have around 40 games on Uplay and 20 on Origin. All are from Ubisoft and EA.
I do also pay 25 eurobucks to EA per year for Origin Access because that ain’t a bad deal.
I buy purely from Steam and GOG myself. GOG for older games that are unsupported (GOG makes them work), Steam for newer games. I have free games from Origin but haven’t touched the thing. I refuse to buy from Uplay or Origin and wait for their games to reach GOG. I’m completely fine not playing any new games from these guys – there are plenty of other fish in the sea, and Assassin’s Creed X is the same as X-1, as in, I don’t like any of them.
Anyway, it’s not competition if everybody is locking in their exclusives as far as I’m concerned. When they really compete, I’ll consider throwing some money their way.
It seems like the people against this think they are in the majority, when they really aren’t. Battle.net, Origin, UPlay, Twitch, GOG, have all pretty well proven that mainstream gamers don’t care about having multiple launchers. Furthermore Humble, Green Man Gaming, cd keyz, etc… also prove that mainstream gamers have no hesitation in buying games from alternative storefronts. Discord is also getting in on the action and presumably having proved to investors that it’s worth the money to pursue.
Most people don’t have this allegiance to “the one true store” that is being portrayed here. It may not be for you but that’s fine. I on the other hand have Origin (for origin access), Steam, Twitch, Battle.net, and GOG all installed on my machine and I just end up cycling through based on what game I want to play at the time. It’s really not a big hurdle if I find a good deal on Epic’s store to buy from them.
There is so much content out there, i mean just tons of it. It is super easy to avoid a game that’s on a storefront or platform you don’t want to engage in and… it’s not like you won’t have something else to play.
Which one of these do you think approaches Steam in terms of sales, actual money coming in for games that they don’t publish and own?
And just so you know, I think I have accounts with all of those except CD keyz… I personally don’t use them as a storefront like I do Steam. It has nothing to do with the majority. I approach Steam like a storefront. The others have some games locked behind them or temporary niche sales.
That’s not a fair comparison though. One has been around for what, more than a decade and the others are ~5 years old at most? Of course Steam is going to bring in the most money, they have the market leader advantage and have had the time build up significant lead in quantity of products. By that logic no one should ever try because it’s going to be a 2 decade investment before anyone can have sales that eclipse Valve in the best case scenario.
Edit: Again, GMG, Humble store, and many other aveneus show there is real business in providing alternate store fronts to Steam, even if the user ends up on steam at the end. I can play all my Origin games by using steam as a launcher, and presumably can do the same thing with Epic games as well. So there’s very little customer loyalty to Steam as a storefront, especially now that sales have pretty well normalized.
As the subject implies, this announcement is very significant for game devs. As a gamer, if 99%+ of your gaming library is on Steam (like mine), I can understand the criticism or hesitation here. Competition is good for gamers/consumers and if you fail to see or believe that, so be it, but this conversation is basically over.
As others have mentioned, if you don’t like it, you won’t use it. However, things can change. I’ve been gaming long enough that I initially hesitated to go digital (“WTF?! No cartridges or disks?!”) and now I’ve come full circle and hesitate to buy boxed copies.
Regardless of how you feel about Epic or Fortnite, as a gamer, you should understand that more money in dev and publishing pockets is always a good thing for sustained business.
That’s not the logic at all, and others have tried, multiple times. And of course it’s fair. Epic isn’t just opening their storefront. They want to compete with Steam. They’re going after Steam so of course you have to look at Steam not all the little tiny my game is exclusive to my storefront and I have user so there stores.
This is their approach not some sort of logical fallacy i’ve come up with. Their entire argument for why someone should use their storefront, at the moment, is one sided. I don’t care if the developers are going to get a bigger cut of the action and the price is the same for me. That’s a fact. This is not a storefront of charity. If they want Steam’s market share, they have to actually think about the players too.
I haven’t seen any data proving this. I know that I, personally, prefer to get games on Steam. But if I can save 20%, that’s $12 on a $60 game, buying from another service I will. Every service creates shortcuts on your desktop, so it doesn’t really matter.
For all the headaches they can cause, game specific forums are a huge value add for crowdsourcing quick (and free) tech support. Big misstep to not include them.
As a game storefront, why do you want to take on moderation duties? Let Reddit deal with the community, that’s their business not yours.
How exactly is the community Reddit’s business, and not the actual developer? Plus, if you’re going to make me figure out which subreddit I need to hit up, and hope my post isn’t stuck in moderation or downvote hell, I’ll give up and get a refund. Which, at least that should be easy given their planned refund policy.
Reddit’s business is community.
My post was from the perspective of the game storefront, as I noted in that post. If you’re Epic Game Store, why do you want to mess about with forums? Yuck. Let someone else do that.
Maybe because the biggest player in the market thinks it’s worthwhile and you’ve decided to compete against them, directly. I mean Valve is not some sort of rookie here. There might be a reason they’ve decided to continue to support forums, as in a good reason, a reason that helps keep them in the top dog position.
I absolutely see why someone looks at it from a developer’s perspective and decides they don’t want to bother. The forums are not there just for the devs though.
I am not sure if someone asks a dev or publisher when they’re excited or interested in a game where their forums are and the response is, go check out Reddit that that’s going to play at as well as you think it will. You can’t ask for hype and access to your players and at the same time tell them to go pound sand when it comes to access to a community.
User engagement would be my guess? If they’re chatting and communicating on your service, they’re on your client, which means they’re looking at your store.
It’s very well-understood that forums aren’t worth much when it comes to clickthroughs. Engagement is extremely high, people come to forums and stay there, but they don’t buy anything.
Everything Steam does isn’t correct because they’re Steam. That’s a tautology. Gaming forums absolutely do have some value for players, but who’s to say whether they’re worth keeping around when you think about moderation costs? I very much doubt it, myself, and think Epic has the right idea there. Steam is stuck now, if they decided to remove all their forums they would face an uproar.
And of course the gaming forums will still exist, they’ll just be on Reddit-- which is where most people go anyway.
It’s a good thing no one actually said Valve is right all the time. Maybe they have a good reason to keep them there and not just because they’re stuck. You’re making an assumption. So am I.
When you enter a market with fairly clear market domination, the answer isn’t usually to offer less to customers. Channeling my inner O’Leary here, there is nothing proprietary about a digital storefront that sells software. Steam has competition, right now. There are other storefronts that supposedly offer more freedom, better service and even money for devs, and they’re not really making much head way. The only thing that makes this different is one, it’s a seasoned group with one of the largest games on the planet right now and two they have someone who supposedly knows Steam really well. The fact they’re offering more money to devs… nothing is stopping Valve from literally just doing the same thing right now and squashing them before they even start. Perhaps they’re not going to because they don’t see a real threat, yet.
You actually did imply that in your post. Perhaps it was inadvertent on your part.
You’re totally right, Steam could shut them down by matching their cut. If the Epic Store takes off, they will have to respond.