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Valve supposedly has a monopoly but we have to talk about how we got here and what the future may hold. Edited by …
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37515 Likes
Valve supposedly has a monopoly but we have to talk about how we got here and what the future may hold. Edited by …
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I don't hate Epic, the problem Epic has is that to the average consumer it is yet another terrible launcher to add to the bunch that are nowhere near close to competing with Steam. I already have a large library on Steam so I don't want to put more money into a vastly inferior competitor, though I will buy games on GOG as I love their DRM free model and I think it is important to support that
A monopoly implies there are no reasonable alternatives. GOG, epic, etc there are plenty of places to buy games, but none of them are better or good enough to justify making a switch. 30% isn’t crazy considering how much physical stores usually took, and still sorta take.
Let's be honest, they're both garbage corporations. Neither of them actually give a damn about you, and the feeling should be mutual.
It's actually kinda funny how Epic trying to make their own store made valve panic slightly and modernize steam with a bunch of quality of life updates while Epic was too busy trying to add basic features that steam originally launched with.
The idea that Steam is a monopoly is a mockery of language. Words have meaning and a monopoly means you're the only player in a market.
Saying Steam has a monopoly in gaming market is like saying Git has a monopoly in VCS or GitHub has a monopoly on remote repositories
Steam has never made an effort to make anything exclusive to them only. So calling them a monopoly is not right.
Oh, and my two cents on this…
Epic’s store has many issues. They shove microtransactions hard, and Indie devs kinda fall off.
And their AWFUL overlay. So many resources wasted.
Steam just works so much better.
Epic even gets updates so much later than Steam does! It’s not gooood!
I don't hate Epic, they gave me Dragon Quest Inquisition, and many other games, but if I can play them and port my stats to steam, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
Oh hey, 3:35 is able to be answered
That being next month, June 13.
Valve earns more money per employee than any other company in the games industry. This surplus money is obviously taken away from the developers that nurture the platform.
I don't know why is it so difficult to admit. Valve is fantastic for consumers*, but greedy with developers.
*given that consumers are OK with acquiring a revocable license, not a property
I want to give devs more money, thats why I bought CP2077 on gog.
But Epic is a garbage platform
Number one reason for hating Epic: making the Unreal series abandonware for the sake of Fortnite.
that $100 bill transition can go ffff itself.. otherwise a good video.
Monopoly would mean that it would be impossible to play PC Games without Steam, because no other Product like it exists. Other Plattforms exist tho. Nearly every big Publisher has their own, some of them even have advantages over steam in certain areas.
The thing is that we, PC Gamers, have a subconscious interest to use Steam over other Plattforms. Most PC Gamers will have most of their money invested in digital only games on Steam, because its the oldest Platform to offer this service. Keeping Steam afloat is in our direct interesst. Other Plattforms like the Epic Games Store aside from being a Vanity Project of somebody high on Fortnite Money can’t simply replace Steam since it would literally ask us to throw away money to not use steam anymore, so nobody goes full epic store. Aside maybe from childs that barely play anything aside from fortnite, and for whom Epic was there first Plattform
Its unlikely that there will be any change in the Powerdynamic of digital game stores any time soon. But you cant ask really from Valve to do less because that would entail they do stuff
Fortnite launcher sucks
Okay, I've been using Steam for over 11 years. It's a much better platform than Epic Games Launcher. Still, I'm not going to be a brain-rotten fanboy for them. They are a company, not my friend. If they want me to be their friend, bring back localized prices to Turkey, and admit you ruined lootboxes for everyone by designing the first predatory lootbox system in TF2 and CSGO.
Omg why did you use footage from Steel Battalion?! God I miss that game
As Gaben once said – It is all a service issue.
Steam originally had one major competitor – pirates.
Steam's main advantage is user's convenience. Plain and simple. It is easy to use, interface is reasonable for the most part, has most of the necessary features, is stable.
And most importantly of all – you have access to ALL YOUR STUFF from one place.
This convenience allowed Steam to compete with piracy, literally with stuff for free. You don't need to fish for torrent seeds, make backup copies, mess around with cracks, risk viruses.
In a way, Steam's success was mirrored by early success of Netflix. It was again – all stuff you wanted on demand, from one place, for a reasonable fee.
Netflix started losing ground when multiple other platforms started popping up. With movie licencing being weird and stupid – we now have dozens of Netflix-like platforms, all with separate sites, separate logins, separate catalogues and separate fees. And what do we see? Piracy of movies is back with vengeance. Because the convenience of having everything in one place is gone – it again became easier to go for a torrent.
So why is Epic hated? It all boils down to their actions AGAINST user convenience – trying to snatch exclusivity deals – making players unable to obtain stuff the want WHERE they want.
Epic was unable or unwilling to compete with Steam in terms of quality of service, so they used underhanded anti-consumer practice in form of buying out console-like exclusivity – and it bit them in the ass.
The reality is simple – Steam and Epic occupy the same niche of the market and despite the fact that years have passed, Epic Store is still barren in terms of features. GoG lives simply because it offers no DRM policy and offers plenty of older games in a working state – GoG fairly frequently provides solution to run old soft on new hardware.
Truth is – people do not like having to log to a dozen bloody launchers. It is a hassle, plain and simple.
I hate both Valve and Epic Equally.
This is why I still have the original Half-Life 2 CD i brought, a single player game that could not be installed or played without an Internet connection.
Didn't have the internet at the time and I was told I could not return the game. Found out later was a lie. Plus when I tried it Forced you to install a bouncer to access your game.
NEVER will I get a Steam Account, or endorse the Forced Launcher that acts to "Approve" your access to your games.
No Approval is necessary to access my Snakes & Ladders, Chess, Monopoly or Risk boardgames so I can play them. No Approval is necessary to access my Video Games.
Hence NO drm storefronts or launchers like EPIC, Ubisoft, Origin, Blizzard or Steam… Same with Sony Playstation & Microsoft Xbox where account required to authorise game.
I Own the games I buy or MMO-specific the Account I use to access a server for the game… (No WoW or similar models though)
I got outerworlds on Epic for free during one of their give aways. The game was fun the platform was shit. Sure it has the big ticket items needed for a store. It has a rating system, a library to store your games and well curated sales page. But you know what it lacks ? The small key details that I love about steam. The community hub, the artwork section, the detail written reviews. I am a steam gamer because I feel safe with steam. I never been ripped off by steam, never been hacked, never had issues. It works flawlessly offline and online. Has a tone of functionallity like even it's own streaming and vc functions. I had a game that updated which put it out of the range of my pc. I had 50 plus hours on it. Asked for a refund stated the reasons. Got the full refund within hours. Thats why I play on steam. Because it works, it's fair and convenient. If another platform could beat all of that I would go there. But they can't .
Epic can raze to the ground for all I care. They spout shit as if they care about consumer yet they shut down server or have no server to support every region.
I aint going to spent another dime on their store when I cannot even play their game cause there is no server in my region.
Epic is straight up vile, I will never buy anything on that site, steam is much better.
BS Valve and GABE who let out of control letting the haxing in the game and not letting these haxing get banned because GABE wants more $$$$$ he gets over $ billions a year how greedy he is, SHAME ON VALVE
a friend of mine had their account stolen years ago by a toxic ex, they wrote to steam a few months ago and it took under 24 hours for them to get their account back as steam could see and agreed that it was stolen, i have heard about people's epic account being stolen and then epic just ban the account, i ATM have a lot less money then i have had other times in my life, if that was how steam worked, and my account got hacked, then i would not be able to play anything besides FTP games, as i do not have money to buy any new game ATM, it is not wonder that people use steam.
While steam says – "We should be easer then piracy". Publishers/Steam Competitors says – "Fck you. You are not 1st degree race/flag/opinion/region/religion/etc. So we dont sell to you directly. Therefore pay to a 3rd party extra money to play".
I've always preferred steam cause its where all my friends are, but I've never been shy about buying games on other platforms, i have a big library on epic, and ubi, i even use gog galaxy for some things.
I don't use valve because they're the main seller I use valve because I trust them. If I didn't I wouldn't buy from valve, they've shown time snd time again they support their users and the majority as a whole. I'm honestly worried if gaben leaves because there's no guarantee it'll stay like that. Gamers like that steam can be trusted maybe if we trusted the other stores they'd get the same love
using steam and gog alike. have an evenly amount of Games on bith platforms
I remember the last few times I tried to use the epic game store it would load as a solid white background with blue hyper links that did nothing. It was like this for over a month, and when it was finally fixed it had signed me out of my account. Have never even bothered trying to use it again since then.
The biggest reason I stick to steam and say fuck epic, is cause steam gives me all the files for any given game. I can just run the exe without steam and boom it works. steam itself is not required to run the game. i.e. I can do anything I want with the game. for example create modded copies. I'm sure steam is prolly the same bullshit thing with you don't own the game or something, but at the end I have the files. regardless if steam decides to yoink the game I have most of my games on disk. With epic, Whenever I've tried to get exe files for a game I haven't found them. maybe they are there and I'm just blind, but I don't think they are there.
the free games i get from epic is unbeliveable and if i dont have it in steam ill pull out "ill check if i have it on epic".
Steam taking 30 % split is the norm xbox, playstation and nintendo do this
It speaks volumes of how even after giving monthly free games, Epic still cant reach 10 percent of Steam's market
Valve still cant count to 3 😑
As a tf2 player… love is a strong word
As someone else said, valve is less of a monopoly and more of the leader because they keep their asses clean and the competition is trash. I want more competition but the competition is origin and epic and gog. Origin only has ea content so fuck them, epic strong arms exclusivity and gog is just kinda there. Valve does nothing to fuck over the good faith people have and has done nothing but benefit the consumer. They dont force anyone to be exclusive to steam, but really where else are you going to sell your games? You go where the money is and the money is where the consumers are
I no longer use steam due to them cutting down many currencys
my steam account got hacked, i just called their customer service waited 14 minutes then showed them my old steam profile pic and my license pic which were both me and they let me reset the email and password within 20 minutes
I know valve isn't a monopoly because I play pc games all the time and never use steam
I used to pirate games a lot back in 10s but steam stopped me from doing that mainly because of how convinient it is to be on steam. Also thinking about it, maybe a lot from those 30% goes into midweek and seasonal deals, i doubt so many game companies make their games cheeper so often on their own.
As someone in the Indie dev Scene… I do not hate Epic. On the contrary I REALLY appreciate them, and while I have no disdain towards Steam I would choose Epic over Steam because of how they are trying to help indie Devs, which is better for consumers in the long run.
Ain't ever gonna love Valve ever again since they removed the Lira as a currency.
Main thing is that steam is just easy and convenient whereas i groan every time i have to open the epic games launcher.
Well epic has unreal so love them for that
Valve is a monopoly, it's not a monopoly due to shady tactics and lobbying for laws to cripple competitors though. It's a monopoly due to being extremely client friendly. You put your game on steam because that's where the customers are, not because you're forced to. You are fully free to use any other store, problem is, users don't like those platforms. Their user interface isn't as good, their library isn't as good, they're usually slower and demand more resources from your computer, refund policies aren't as good. On top of that, nobody wants to have 30 game libraries so steam as the best one is usually the only one that people get. Oh and also, lack of advertisement, the only pop ups i get on steam are for season sales and notifications on sales for games that i have wishlisted. Which is a lot different from other online stores i've used.
Why do you say everyone hate epic , i don't hate epic
Sure. I could spend the money on the Epic Gamestore, but that would only mean a tiny bit more money for the dev, while when I am spending my money on the Steam Store, I get community features, implementation for modding (not every game though), technology for Linux (as I am not only a Steam Deck user, but also Linux user) and I won't shove my money into a company that kills off games just because "Fortnite is more successfull" (Unreal Tournament).
Epic games cutting 16% of their staff = hundreds of people
Valve cutting 16% of their staff = “My Aaaahhhhrm!”