Don’t be shitbags and at least try customer service.
These fuckers have tried everything except shipping a decent product.
if you’re running a business (like epic), and you feel like you’re somehow just entitled to a certain percentage of the market share dominated by the king of the market (steam), while also giving consumers literally no reason to give you that money (in epic’s case, actually giving more reasons NOT to use them), then-- LOL get fucked. keep shitting on linux and refusing to unfuck your shit tier slopfest UI, while whining about everything. i find it amusing.
Seriously!!
The best part to me is that this is a former “principal animation engineer,” and they still have no self-awareness about why Epic sucks.
It reminds me of an old saying that really good people hire really good people… but mediocre people often hire those that are worse than them to look better. That is, “A” people hire “A” people, but “B” people hire “C” people, and the team (or company) declines.
Essays like this make me wonder if Epic has hired many good people over the years.
It’s not a good sign that the cult of entitlement at Epic is so strong, even their most experienced former technical staff still write entitled essays after they leave. And they post them on X.
unfortunately, narcissists/psychos are often the ones that ruthlessly manipulate and bully and deceive their way to the top, shoving aside higher quality and more human people more deserving of those positions of authority. you see it in musk, bezos, the epic chode, etc… also in govt
you are not the target audience
just assume malfeasance
they bought a game I liked after it was released and now I can’t play it, because I don’t internet without VPN. I’m very upset with them about this.
because they own it now.
and they want my money.
I was gonna say, isn’t this just the “free market” at work? Consumers chose the superior product and the inferior products decided to whine and bitch rather than put time into making their product worth a consumer’s money, attention, and time.
He argues if a better launcher emerged it “would still be of no interest to Steam users”
What part of that sounds like “no reason” to give such a service money? If the guy in the article was talking about Epic I’d be inclined to agree with you, but he’s talking about a hypothetical service that’s better than Steam. I’m inclined to agree with him too, it would be very difficult to make a better service than Steam (he’s obviously wrong for thinking you could vibe code such a thing) but even if someone did at this point I have so much of my gaming life on Steam that it would be difficult to switch.
It reads to me like you’re arguing with Tim Sweeney more than the guy in the article you’re responding to.
It’s all hypothetical though because there is no alternative the matches steam’s features. If there were i have no doubt people would use it, i mean most people tolerate uplay and ea origin and all that, and they are also much worse than steam.
They tolerate those because they open when someone runs their game through Steam. How many people purchase through those platforms though? And what does that have to do with what I’m saying?
In a hypothetical situation where someone develops a service better than Steam, why is it entitlement to think people should use that better service? In the article I read (the one in the post we’re on), the guy that used to work at Epic says that people wouldn’t use the better service because they are enamored with Steam. I think they wouldn’t because they’re likely very invested in Steam already. The comment I responded to is talking about shitting on Linux and other things that are not in the article, they appear to be responding to the company that the guy in the article no longer works at and the guy that owns the company that, again, the person in the articles does not work at. Why respond to those things here and not in a post about those things?
They tolerate those because they open when someone runs their game through Steam. How many people purchase through those platforms though?
I don’t think that’s true. When they open when a game runs through Steam, that’s when they are especially annoying and not tolerated. But there’s plenty of people just buying Assassin’s Creed on Uplay or Fifa or Need for Speed or whatever on Origin (maybe ea wasn’t a good example in current times).
And what does that have to do with what I’m saying?
Well you claimed this would not happen. I’m saying that, if these shit ass tier stores can manage to have a userbase, I’m sure a better store with features comparable with Steam would get a bigger userbase.
He argues if a better launcher emerged it “would still be of no interest to Steam users” […]
I’m inclined to agree with him too, it would be very difficult to make a better service than SteamThose arguments seem a bit contradictory.
Is the problem that a better launcher is too difficult to develop or that it wouldn’t be interesting?Also:
What part of that sounds like “no reason” to give such a service money?
People don’t give Steam any money directly, they buy games in stores, preferably ones that don’t suck.
People also buy on GOG or itch and I’ve never heard either called a superior launcher.And as for having all games in one library, there are tools for that like GOG galaxy. Steam doesn’t block them so there is no real lock-in problem.
Steam doesn’t stop Epic from offering their users a good user experience, their failure is entirely their own.
To be fair, I think Steam’s actual launcher is the worst part of interacting with Steam, but it works well enough and everything else about the steam experience is smooth and all but like 30 of my games are there so I keep using them. My point being, even if someone made a better launcher that wouldn’t be enough in part because there launcher is only part of the experience.
ok. maybe the ex- epic guy still simping for epic is right: steam customers wouldn’t leave steam even if something better came along. and? so capitalism’s “broken” according to whoever tf this guy thinks he is, some ex-has-been from epic talking about economics like everyone should give a shit what he thinks. my point stands-- let him, and epic, and everyone else blaming everything but themselves for steam having a better service and product, keep crying about it
by the way, i’m not a steam fanboi-- if/when they enshittify i will absolutely start buying my games elsewhere
Valve “made a better product than we ever could” former Epic dev says “I don’t think we can ever build something that isn’t slop”
We’ve tried nothing and we’re out of ideas.
What do you mean? They tried the most capitalist of solutions, buying themselves into the space free games and exclusivity! It’s a shame it takes a bit more than just being able to click “play” (and not even that in Linux) to have a shop front people want to use.
Steam has problems, Epic games could fix that. They choose to whine about it on social media instead.
They could, but they won’t.
The major way they broke capitalism was by not going public. Gabe has to answer to nobody, so the usual gang of corporate fucking idiots can’t force him to do short sighted shit to make a short term squeeze at the cost of long term viability.
This is the key. It’s the WHOLE thing. A runaway cap table destroys companies, always. Investors have different exit horizons and they are fundamentally incompatible with long term viability.
All you need to do to compete with a publicly owned company is capitalism is wait for their investors to get too greedy.
I’ve been screaming this exact sentiment into the void for a long time, so it’s nice to see someone else who understands.
The main reason companies are getting so shitty right now isn’t a blanket “capitalism bad”. Companies need to have a clear goal that they pursue with a coherent vision, and that is impossible when you auction away control of the driver’s seat to a comittee of random people with varying interests.
Fixing those problems wouldn’t get anyone to move over. It’s another launcher and store. Who the fuck wants that? Until GabeN dies, Valve is taken public, and things get straight up shitty on Steam, nobody’s going to start buying games on another platform.
BS. Steam offers games simply without the bull. They didn’t break capitalism, they just didn’t enshitten their platform.
Or maybe they broke capitalism in the sense that they are showing that the shit they teach MBAs isn’t the only or even the best path to profit and if enough people adopt (or return to) that way of doing business, they can dominate their markets and compete directly with the venture capital class that tries to compete with its financial weight more than whatever products or services it is currently peddling.
I mean, this part is so obvious to me right now. With all the complete shit products out there that have so many anti-features that I often just stop looking for things rather than get enticed by the good features, I think that competitors that come in with the intent of making good quality shit people want (where “good” can even just mean “doesn’t try to spy on you”) could similarly dominate their markets. And if people don’t chase empires to become billionaires, I think there’s a lot of room in all markets even when certain players come to dominate their local area (considering physical markets more than digital ones, since they scale very differently, though I do think that some thought could be put in to how to do this for digital markets, too… Maybe some drastic changes to IP laws).
They “broke it”?
I mean sure nobody likes capitalism here but have they actually tried making a better product?
To be fair, he’s kinda right about it. You can’t JUST make a better product and hope gamers will move to your platform. Everyone’s got dozens if not hundreds of games on Steam and nobody wants to sit in two gardens.
To get people to move over, Steam would actively have to turn shit too. There’s nothing you can do to make a platform so much better than Steam currently is that it would entice people to move over. Perhaps if it sucked your dick while you’re playing?
That’s a separate point from Epic itself being shit.
That should be easy for them because they’re really good at sucking
Yeah, and their unknowable secret sauce to win capitalism was to not overdo it and enshittify. Wild stuff. Who could tell that keeping your userbase happy is more productive in the long term than chasing “growth” at every turn?
Give it a generation or three, but yes.
Companies that “haven’t gone evil” yet are like dynasties that aren’t ruled by a mad king, yet.
It usually comes after the original founder leaves or dies.
Yeah it’ll be extremely interesting to see the post-Gabe Valve era
I’m terrified, honestly.
It’s just as much that epic shit the bed when they first introduced their launcher/store by very clearly taking the “shitty capitalism” path that tries to compete by killing off competition with exclusivity deals and later throwing money at players with free games. Not to mention not even trying to compete on some of the things that gives steam more value to many users.
It was clear they were trying to do to video games what uber and abnb tried to do to taxis and hotels and use venture capital money to undercut the existing market with the intent of being able to set whatever price later when their competition died off but were even less successful than the other two corps, who still managed to become big players in their market even if they didn’t kill off the competition.
For me personally, not only am I uninterested in epic’s store, but I don’t wasn’t to see them succeed. Even if they started doing the good things, I wouldn’t trust that they’d keep it up if they managed to get to steam’s market position. They showed their cards too soon with trying to open up with exclusives.
Remember when epic invented proton and fex and epic input and made cloud save standard and kept in game advertising to a minimum and …
When Gabe passes one day and the next owner is some business dimwit and makes steam really win capitalism, pretty sure we’ll jump to GoG. That’s my headcanon at least. Because that’s what always happens to private companies when the person who cares about the thing no longer leads the company.
No I don’t want to lose my library 😭
How?
I try to buy GoG over Steam, at any price, but the vast majority of the time the game I want is only on Steam, or Steam/1st party launcher.
They’ve got the whole market.
It’s a chicken and egg kind of problem. But ultimately, it’s where gamers go. Where we vote to put our dollars basically. If it’s GoG or some other platform that becomes open source or something that works to build a good product, that’s where publishers will eventually move to as well after the paying audience moves. But yeah, of course lots of big name studios will fight tooth and nail and won’t supply DRM free versions willingly.
Unless policy gets instituted to force them of course.
https://www.theverge.com/policy/1013521/video-game-ownership-bill-congress-power-to-the-players-act
The paying audience is not going to move though. I hate to say it, but gamers (in aggregate, not individually) have proven they will collectively buy stuff with horrible MTX and other anti-features. If Steam gets these, they will not budge until it is too late.
I don’t disagree. We’ll have to feel pain before anyone changes. That’s how conservative, reactionary thinking works. Until gas in the US went people didn’t give a shit about their neighbors and fascism. Personal harm/gain move people more than empathy or anecdotes unfortunately. Good ole capitalism reinforcing selfishness and narcissim.
Is GoG immune?
For a while, maybe? It’s very tempting to sell out, and most people succumb.
Not entirely, but they’re focused on delivering DRM free copies for your purchases. So if they were to pivot and revoke your library, that part is impossible if you’ve downloaded your DRM free installation files.
Do you keep an up to date copy of all your games installers?
I have some games on GoG. But when I wanted to install games, I got their launcher installer. You need to go through some dark path to find the true installer. At least it was the case a couple years back.
Also a few month ago they putted an announce to hire someone to lead the Galaxy launcher. They explicitly asked for someone that would push the use of AI in their team.
I fear the moment they gain enough traction, the game won’t be as easy to install DRM free. Their launcher will be the DRM, just like steam.
So yeah, they provide an escape hatch for now, but sadly other than that it looks to me they are more like Epic than Valve. I have not much trust for them.
(Maybe Humble Bundle stopping to provide DRM free download of the game + the steam key eaeliy on made me very skeptical of this?)
You need to go through some dark path to find the true installer. At least it was the case a couple years back.
No? Literally just go to your games page on the website, click the game, and “Download Offline Backup Game Installers” is right where it’s been for as long as I can remember.
Gabe doesn’t even work at valve anymore. He passed the torch long ago. Please don’t keep repeating this.
Wikipedia still shows him as the majority owner and president. Could you perhaps go update it with the updated information and sources if you know better?
Really who runs it?
A collective of knives and boats.
To quote the article: “Competition in this space is not only uninteresting to most Steam users, it’s actively denigrated!” He then says.
And then: “As long as Valve is independent and not a publicly traded company,” it looks impossible for Steam to be overthrown as the de-facto PC gaming marketplace.
(Sorry I don’t know how to do quotes)
This entire article tongue in cheek shows the thinking behind these ceos and how out of touch they are. The vibes I get from just scrolling here and listening, plus listening to the market in general, people are moving away from the evil, and ai whomever is least evil, wins the attention.
This guy compeletely ignores the inbetween the lines of his own words, Steam isn’t publicly traded, so doesn’t put shareholders above the actual product and it’s users. The ai isn’t used in the same ways, it’s pretty obvious to anyone who isn’t actively hallucinating , everyone hates ai.
They want an equal share of the market, and instead of listening this article (not bagging the article) highlights how much he instead sucks on sour grapes, and blames the gamers for being rusted on fans, rather than examining where they might have gone wrong, acknowledging and listening. The fact he’s unable to listen is going to actively keep users from Epic.
People just want to feel like they aren’t seen as cows to milk, in ever decreasingly comfortable and trapped ways. They want to feel listened to and be able to use the product. They don’t want to be force fed pigs pigswill and told to like it. There almost seems to be a fetish level hate towards the customers / consumers from these elitist idiot ceos etc. On a base level anyone could tell you that’s not a good business model.
The market is so fed up with all the things said out loud that previously weren’t. The whole “we own you” spiel from the top companies and ceos around the world. Gamers would more likely pack in the internet and retro game or build their own infrastructure (like has been done here) and ignore them all.
This guys egomaniacal take is just absolutely going to sink the entirely ship.
There’s an argument that steam take too high a cut from developers, but if that keeps it stable as is for a very long time, instead of tipping the scale and leading to a publicly traded company, so be it.
You can do the greater than symbol for quotes at the start to do quotes.
“>” Like this
Like this
What’s with all the shade on GOG and itch? They’re great, and arguably serve other segments of the gaming market better already. The only difference is that Steam has a dominant position in online and AAA PC gaming, which is all corpos actually care about.
They are ignored in conversations like this because their existence undermines the monopoly accusations aimed at Steam. Talk like this isn’t about the reality, but trying to tear Steam down so Epic can compete without having to actually provide a good product.
Epic doesnt want to compete. It wants a to have a nice fat profit to he carved out for it so it can keep its investors happy with forever growth.
I guess I could have been more accurate by saying that Epic wants a larger market share without having to provide a quality product.
Tim Sweeney would rather die than see another company get a single cent of income from fortnite.
epic should fucking die and its c suite should be used to reproduce the Tuskegee experiment.
Wish people would start asking Epic why they aren’t letting Alan Wake 2 be released on GOG and itch, since they act like Steam is the only platform and attack it to avoid being asked why they are holding the game hostage from coming out on other platforms.
100% on point
It‘s a quasi monopoly. Their service cannot be ignored if you want your product to succeed on the market. You cannot choose a valid alternative. This is not about malevolence on Valve’s side, but a market reality.
It’s not. The only reason people see it as such is because valve has consumers trust they act in the consumers best interest.
Other companies hate this, because it doesn’t allow them to do some anti consumer practices
There is definitely a strong network effect. If Valve started enshittifying, it is impossible for customers to completely switch to a competitor without losing their community, their game library, their game controller, their gaming portable, and access to steam-exclusive games.
It is very much an early Facebook situation, but Valve has never enshittified.
It is for publishers as customers, not for users of course. You can’t realistically navigate around their service if you want to make money with your game.
You can’t realistically navigate around their service if you want to make money with your game.
Where are you getting this from? Yes you can absolutely do this. Mojang did this for decades a la Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress did this for decades. Roblox is massive. World of Warcraft, I mean, yes you can absolutely make a hit title, sell well, and have nothing to do with Steam.
Edit: The most recent example right now is Hytale, which is purposely not on Steam and reached 1M+ active players in the first week.
blizzard was really doing well with diablo and overwatch before they decided to be stupid af. now those games are on steam LOL
dear blizzard: too late LOL
Destiny too, like it wasn’t like they were doing bad before bringing titles over to Steam. It’s clear they wanted more money which is why they did that lol. They were already making plenty and decided they wanted to make more
You’re listing absolute unicorns. Ask any dev/publisher that want to release a game and they will 100% not skip Steam.
That’s a lot of Unicorns that don’t fit your narrative lol. I could list more, but I think I already proved my point. Yes it’s possible to publish a game and be successful without Steam, and yes it’s been done multiple times across the existence of Steam.
To maximize sales, you do need to put your product on Steam. That doesn’t mean it is a monopoly.
Steam likely could leverage their market position to become a monopoly, but they aren’t one now. Just because they are a vital part to any large scale game launch doesn’t make them a monopoly, quasi or otherwise.
I don’t think it is a particularly healthy market, and I wish there were even more options. That doesn’t change the fact all the monopoly talk has been driven by bad faith actors trying to attack steam without any real cause.
Not maximizing sales, having any sales to speak of at all.
So people put their games on Epic, GOG, itch, Xbox, PS5 and whatever else for funsies? Definitely not because people buy their game from those places. They can even put their game up on those other marketplaces without any penalty from steam. Almost like there are alternatives available. Having the largest market share and having large influence in a market does not equal a monopoly.
quasi monopoly
Saying it again doesn’t make it less wrong. They are in a position where they could possibly use anticompetitive practices to become a monopoly or close to it. Currently they are not, and are not a quasi monopoly either. They simply have created a well rounded service that is preferred by a majority in the PC space.
If you want the store front to take a smaller cut then you can sell on itch. If you want to buy games without DRM then check out GOG. If you like shitty service, venture capitalists, enshittification, and AI slop then Epic has you covered.
Huh? Steam is absolutely a monopoly in PC game sales.
Monopoly doesn’t mean there are no alternatives. It means controlling an overwhelming share of the market.
Even Google has a monopoly w.r.t. search engines despite controlling less of its market than Steam does. If your site is deindexed by Google alone you might as well not exist for most of the population.
People keep saying that and it still isn’t true. It was argued the dictionary definition wasn’t good enough, so how about US legal criteria to be considered a monopoly.
Federal criteria looks at three things: market power, exclusionary conduct, and business justification.
- Market power: “…significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.” You could argue this as I believe Steam has something like 75% of PC game sales. However I don’t think it would be difficult to argue that console gaming is also a market competitor which would bring their market share down some, but I’m not sure by how much. There is no hard limit for what market share is required for the firm to match this criteria. “if competitive forces or the entry of new firms could discipline the conduct of the leading firm, courts are unlikely to find that the firm has lasting market power.” It is likely that if steam began being anti consumer, the existing competitors could take advantage, or other markets could be developed. So this criteria is in the maybe column.
- Exclusionary Conduct: “Obtaining a monopoly by superior products, innovation, or business acumen is legal.” This alone means that even if they have the market share to be investigated as a monopoly, they haven’t broken the law since they allow open competition against them. They have simply provided a superior product to consumers. “Exclusionary or predatory acts may include such things as exclusive supply or purchase agreements; tying; predatory pricing; or refusal to deal.” I am unaware of Steam doing any of this. Epic on the other hand, absolutely does.
- Business Justification: “The monopolist may be competing on the merits in a way that benefits consumers through greater efficiency or a unique set of products or services.” Steam is providing a unique set of services that benefit the consumer. So it seems that have a business justification.
Put simply, Steam is not a monopoly by the dictionary definition and likely wouldn’t be found to be a monopoly in a legal sense either.
- Obtaining a monopoly by [various reasons] is legal
Steam is not a monopoly
Am I missing something here? Just because Steam doesn’t violate the (comparatively weak) US antitrust law does not make it not a monopoly. Especially when there are clearly legal ways to have a monopoly according to point 2 and point 3.
I don’t find the ubiquity of Steam as strong as it was say 15 years ago. People are far more open to having their games on different platforms, they just don’t particularly care for the Epic Games store.
I think the argument you are making is the right one though: you need to offer something different. Serve a different segment, and have some nice features to attract people. That’s kind of it.
Sorry home slice, but those facts you’re dropping are a little too accurate for ol’ Timbo’s liking.
Haven’t had someone hit me with ‘home slice’ in a minute. Flameo, hotman.
Now I can’t help but wonder what the Venn diagram of c/pcgaming and people who get “Flameo, hotman” looks like.
It felt like a safe assumption. I bet even the highly niche agenda-driven weirdos on Lemmy have good taste in cartoons.
At the very least, you sized the recipient up well. Otherwise, it would have been rough, buddy.
All Steam had to do is something that has long been forgotten by lot of companies these days. Treat customers well and make them feel they are the main priority.
Lot of other companies know they can treat customers like crap and still make money, and even outright reject them like Crucial deciding enterprise customers buying millions to billions in bulk sales is all they need.
Many companies think customers can be forced to buy from them. Like Epic did with exclusives and thinking sounds bites taunting Steam would wins hearts and minds. Meanwhile steam just quietly focused on improvements to their own services without acknowledging Epic.
The performance complaints were also stupid.
Valve had their boot time fixed in beta channel for weeks
Only an idiot would have put out a marketing blitz about it when the sword of Damocles is swinging above them.
Capitalism breeds innovation crowd seems awfully silent
