I noticed earlier today when a friend said the most recent Plants Vs Zombies Garden Warfare game was listed on Steam.
Until they put FIFA on Steam, I’d say they are not giving up Origin.
I am hoping for Mass Effect 3 on Steam.! I have never bought anything on Origins and probably never will. Too bad the Origins layer would still be required to play the game through Steam, but at least the money wouldn’t be funneled through EA’s storefront.
Why is that a bad thing? Or worse then funnelling it through the Steam store front?
I don’t want publisher specific storefronts to be successful. If EA realizes that a lot of customers - like me - simply will not use their store no matter what, they are more likely to use third party distribution channels, even at the cost of lower profit margins. If there are few people like me, everything will stay as is and we will continue to see a proliferation of segmented store fronts. It’s happening with video streaming as well, e.g. Disney pulling stuff from Netflix for Disney Plus. I find this extremely annoying. I’d rather have few distribution plattforms that sell a lot of content instead of publisher specific ones that sell much smaller selections of content.
I realize Steam can also be considered “a publisher plattform”, but they were the first and offer store front access to pretty much anyone these days… No competition wouldn’t be healthy either, but for my liking, offerings are too fragmented as of now and I’d prefer to see a consolidation.
I get where you are coming from, the end result is just Steam and barely anything else.
I feel like the outcome you are hoping for is Walmart. Not a huge fan of that outcome myself, because, like Walmart, Steam can squeeze extra revenue out of a product from the people that make it. Yeah, everything is there, but it slowly alters the market, and makes the store more important than the creators. Money keeps funnelling into the middle man, instead of the developers.
That situation isn’t made better by publishers splitting off into their own proprietary storefronts, though. It just makes life worse for consumers. I don’t think the Epic store is actually good for consumers because of the specific tactics they’re using, but they are at least attempting to provide a general market alternative to Steam, which Origin, uPlay, Bethesda.net and Rockstar Social Club are not.
The difference is that publisher specific stores have a better chance of success. Maybe growing into something more. Just like Steam did.
How many generic stores that don’t rely on Steam have failed?
They don’t have a chance of growing into something more if they’re not trying to be something more. And uPlay and Origin at least have been around long enough (most of a decade) that they would be if that were the point.
I bought two games published by EA via Steam. Interestingly the experience was very different.
Medal of Honor: Airborne I remember fondly due to its “land anywhere” level design. It doesn’t launch Origin at all, although it has an in-game login for multiplayer that seems to require some legacy EA account I don’t have. It doesn’t show up in my Origin library.
I also got the latest Plants v Zombies: Something Garden something Backyard something. It launches Origin and shows up in the Origin library - with a Steam banner! Attempting to install it via Origin launches Steam to install the game.
In contrast, buying Ubisoft games from Epic allows you to link accounts. The game is then in your UPlay library and you can ignore it in the Epic store completely.
Seems like you really have no guarantees how any game is going to work if it involves multiple storefronts.
Older games on Origin (like MoH:A) never did require Origin to start, even if purchased directly through that storefront.
Fair. Since it is available for purchase in the Origin app I expected it to magically appear in Origin after purchasing in Steam though.
The basic problem is that a store needs to be by people who love games and want to better user experience. If they don’t, that comes through. The publisher stores are very clearly neither of those things. They’re there simply as a way for the publisher to make more money, and that’s transparent to the user.
Understandable. I think it just comes down to it not really being an Origin game, but clearly some labeling would be a positive thing here.
Isn’t that true about everything though? I mean, Steam is simple a way for Valve to make more money. So is Walmart.
I get the idea of not wanting a fractured shopping experience. We all love our Amazon, Walmart/Target or whatever. The superstores are very efficient, but it’s not a good thing for the people that take part, as our economy shows.
That a publisher doesn’t want to go through Steam seems understandable. That’s a big cut that Steam gets, and everyone wants to cut out the middle man, if possible. If the game isn’t worth the hassle, then I guess not buying the game is the best option, but I won’t fault anyone for wanting to cut out a middle man.
Yes, but you can tell that’s not what they’re about. Same with GOG. When the focus is on the money-making, the product often suffers.
Sure. But that’s the problem – they’re doing it almost entirely for the money, and the end user can sense it. There’s no effort to delight the user and no vision in terms of what a store should provide, because that’s not what they care about. Mercenary capitalism works when the user has no other options, but loses out to companies that make the effort to delight the buyers (and figure out how to do so).
Those are fair points, but I wouldn’t attribute too much goodness to Steam. If something like PlayNite or GoG Galaxy can work, I don’t mind there being a ton of stores though. My only regret is that DLCs are store exclusives.
We know, you tell us every chance you can.
The perfect solution would be publishers following an API that allowed any store to handle transactions with whatever features they want on top.
As is, the closest is always Steam, the infrastructure allows me to buy anything for any OS from a bunch of different places, rarely giving them a penny at all because their prices aren’t quite good enough. And no one else is even competing on any of that, certainly not the new kid on the block throwing money around because they want to own the place and personally choose what gets a chance.
Don’t know exactly where to put this but this is as good a place as any: I fired up Steam yesterday and for some strange reason there were 4 new cards in my inventory…Battlefield Bad Company 2 cards. I haven’t played that game in years and years, so what could explain it? Should I be concerned?