OP
OP
Maybe we have abit different interpretation of "need" in this case i guess. :)
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PCGamer: Microsoft's support of Steam is exactly what Valve needs right now
- Thread starter Theorry
- Start date
I would say they were fine before MS after Bethesda came back, but I don't think people can pretend that Metro, Division, and Anno jumping didn't hurt them at least a little in the short term. It's still millions of dollars of revenue that was swept out from under their feet.
01. The storefront is actually functionally super limited. You cannot add more than one game to your cart at a time, so to buy games on EPIC you have to buy them one at a time, even during sales. If you buy too many games at once, your account gets flagged and you have to work it out through their systems before you can buy/play anymore (multiple users have experienced this during the last sale). Developers have no ways to remove their games from sales except to remove the games from the store entirely during the time of the sale. There is no set regional pricing, so game prices in different regions are either SUPER expensive for other countries or super cheap, and sales are broken in these regions. The actual store is limited in functionality at best, and actually broken at worst.
02. Steam is the standard, and Valve and Steam don't enforce exclusivity to their store, games could be sold on both Steam and EPIC for developers to make players have a choice in what they want based on their services. The only thing EPIC offers is exclusivity for the end user, the developer thing is nice but them trying to bring audiences with that is not going to go well in a platform that prides itself in it's open ended-ness and with the existence of better open options than Steam already, such as GoG or itch.io.
03. PC users are tired of too many launchers. Imagine if when you launched your console, you had to then launch five different programs at once, or separate ones to access different parts of your game library. Epic came on the trail-end of the tiredness of publishers trying this.
04.Epic has a shoddy at best history with PC Gaming, they said some pretty ignorant things about the scene some years ago, and then their return to the platform show their lack of understanding of the scene, what PC Gamers care about, and trying to monopolize for that reason to try and compete and make the PC space more limited rather than open in options. Steam solved the problems of piracy in the PC space by providing a service that was more beneficial than pirating due to increased ease and features for the user. They became so big in the scene due to what their "over-excessive DRM" provided to the end-user. Epic literally provides nothing to the end user except the games that are exclusive to it, it's the only way it competes.
05. Epic isn't really helping the people who need it. All of the games they've picked up were from developers that were already successful in other places, IE "proven" devs. It makes sense to help these guys, but the actual quality struggling games that have no attention but are actually good won't get picked up until they succeed on Steam. Epic's store literally needs Steam to work through their curation methods, because a start-up indie studio has no chance to get onto the Epic Store until they've "proven" themselves elsewhere. Epic as a store literally can only work due to how they curate by trying to buy out people who've already found success elsewhere, which makes them like a vampire storefront. It also creates resentment from people who made a game a success elsewhere on a storefront then have to switch storefronts for the follow-up, especially when said storefront doesn't provide anything really outside of taking up space.
There's more, but a few off the top of my head.
User Warned: Trolling
What if the whole EGC vs Steam thing is a massive ploy from Epic to force Valve to diversify their business model and release some games with a fucking 3 in it?
Edit genuinely didn't mean to troll. Was meant to be light hearted jab at Valve. This is why I should stay out of PC threads, sorry for any negative vibes.
Edit genuinely didn't mean to troll. Was meant to be light hearted jab at Valve. This is why I should stay out of PC threads, sorry for any negative vibes.
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The headline title is a bit of a hot take but the article is fairly sound. I think the MS pivot to Steam is a petty big deal and helps change any narrative about publishers wanting to leave Steam without being highly incentivized with money.
MichaelJordanLaughing.gif
MS has so much fucking cash that they would just sensible chuckle into Sweeney's face if he tried flapping around his, in comparison, pathetic checkbook.
I did wonder if MS bringing MCC to Steam or Bungie bringing Destiny 2 has something to do with Valve giving all publishers access to their private dedicated server network to run MP games on?
I could see MS games coming to EGS, but they're not a priority right now
Bungie I'd say 100% yeah the dedicated servers/extra juice helped
At this point I expect them to sell Office on Steam soon, lol
I assume MS games will still use Azure, that was probably a big pull for Destiny though. Also there is the PR part of it. MS spent the last decade trying to force PC users into their store with no avail, and Destiny obviously has had ups and downs with the community. Going to where most players are and want their games to be makes a lot of sense in both cases.
Also something to note, MS and Epic are directly competing when it comes to cross play services. MS is pushing Live, while Epic is pushing their Epic Friends crossplay service. I doubt MS would want to use Epic's service and vice versa.
First tell me why you're so defensive of a store you've only read about on a gaming platform you don't play on?
Ooh! Do me now! I'm pro-EGS (Well, pro-whatever the hell launcher wants to join the fray, including Epic), and I do PC game. What gif do I get?!
More like GamePass, Stadia, stuff that works on PC but isn't necessarily tied down to a storefront. Epic isn't necessarily the only thing trying to take on Valve, though I think you could argue it's the only one trying to so directly replicate Valve's model. Not to mention Steam key stores / stuff like Humble Monthly, etc. where the cut for Valve is minimal or zero to the point they're regularly cited as existing competition for Steam.
Well of course. Steam dominates and the only way to really get much traction quickly is to do drastic measures like that. Microsoft used to do the same thing on Xbox because the market is already established. Sony did the same thing before them (and are still doing it). Didn't Valve also have this strategy starting out?
More happy of UWP dying and MS actually listening to PC users for once.
That's actually a fair point; games were basically UWP's last stand, and the announcement that Microsoft is going to start accepting Win32 games into the Microsoft Store is a clear indication that UWP is functionally dead.
Yeah, much easier modability, easier to crack the games for preservation issues and not being locked to a format type that was developed for small apps, not for 100GB behemouths.
The game coming to Steam (and probably in the future other stores) is also great as the MS Store is pretty lackluster, although the addition of the PC Gamepass (more info later) AND opening to x32 games sounds great.
It would also be funny if Proton manages to run MS games in Linux. A brand new world.
Steam don't "need it" (just look at SteamSpy), but I'm sure Halo will be a hit. Can't wait to play it for the first time.
Well I'm really happy. AoE is one of my favorite franchises.
Well I'm really happy. AoE is one of my favorite franchises.
How do you know that? For all we know Valve countered Epic by courting MS.
No, MS new strategy is to have their games available everywhere. You think Nintendo paid for Cuphead?
Thanks for the great post. I hope you don't mind if I save it for later use when someone will eventually ask again.
Yeah absolutely, atleast personally speaking. I wouldn't mind so much using their own store, if I haven't heard severe complaints from all of my friends who have any experience with it. So having those games available on Steam greatly increases the potential of me buying their games. We both win!
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Gaben actually stated that Phil and his team came to them.
And there's no history of Valve paying any devs/pubs to get their game(s) on Steam.
but valve were definitely on the brink of dying before this happened.
No shit, established store with wide market penetration needs to do less to convince publishers it isn't a risk than brand new store that's working out the kinks and trying to establish itself.
GOG didn't needed it, their marketing was the DRM free that we all love.
Gaben actually stated that Phil and his team came to them.
And there's no history of Valve paying any devs/pubs to get their game(s) on Steam.
Haha, alright. Gif game on-point. I could feel the disgust through the monitor.
Valve's fans could work for them, bugging Microsoft to put their games on steam. Valve never really have to seek exclusives, like gravity, for pc it's was pretty much the only option. Publishers like Square-Enix, and Capcom put there games there and call it a day. Square-Enix not even having time or care to patch the games they put on PC unless it's a service game like FFXIV, oh and to update Denuvo or add it.
I mean, steam has been around for years and has a user base of millions. Epic doesn't. It's not rocket science.
Oh absolutely. Man had Halo not come to Steam it would have died next week and Valve would have immediately lost billions and billions of dollars... Instantly!
They might, they've been talking about giving people choice and all that. The thing is Epic can't really buy exclusivity from them.
I've heard ISP's outside the US don't suck too much. And streaming's mainly targeting non-gamers that don't want to spend money on a device just for games.
I'm psyched myself Just waiting for this shit to launch already so I can dive in again! Granted it could have launched on origin for all I care and I'd still be there day 1. I'm fucking hyped
If anything, I think Microsoft supporting PC gaming is what we need right now. PC gaming is an increasingly fragmented mess where various parties keep splitting games you want to play across many different launchers with varying levels of features and support. It can be easy to forget you even have certain games because they are on launchers you don't open frequently.
While every game doesn't share the same PC platform, they all do share the same Windows OS. As the owner / maker of Windows, I think Microsoft is potentially in a unique position to offer a solution to the fragmentation. Something like Galaxy 2.0, but taken even further. All your games, friends, chats across all launchers accessible through a single interface (with a controller friendly interface), and also cross-launcher game searching, so you can search for any game and be brought to the appropriate store page for it, regardless of launcher.
Would be amazing having access to all that just by hitting Win + G for the Game Bar, or being able to boot into the interface.
While every game doesn't share the same PC platform, they all do share the same Windows OS. As the owner / maker of Windows, I think Microsoft is potentially in a unique position to offer a solution to the fragmentation. Something like Galaxy 2.0, but taken even further. All your games, friends, chats across all launchers accessible through a single interface (with a controller friendly interface), and also cross-launcher game searching, so you can search for any game and be brought to the appropriate store page for it, regardless of launcher.
Would be amazing having access to all that just by hitting Win + G for the Game Bar, or being able to boot into the interface.