Didn't know in such a progressive environment stuff like reading threads was actually optional for some people.
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Steams "Competitors"
- Thread starter brokenswiftie
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Didn't know in such a progressive environment stuff like reading threads was actually optional for some people.
What a fucking shittake.
How is caring about the features you like to use on the platform you play your games on being "ready to die in the smallest hill"?
And how in God's name does any of this relate to being progressive?
Doesn't being progressive mean evaluating the facts and making decisions based on them rather than in-group/out-group tribalism?
OP
OP
cross-buy is something developers implement, not really dependent on the storefront.
Steam also supports it by the way eg. Portal 2 for PS3/Steam
Yes let's ignore everything else steam does
just because steam is the market leader doesn't mean it has any monopoly. All these different storefronts demonstrate that steam does not have a monopoly.
I don't know, making a list about what features a longest and biggest store has is cool and positive, but adressing the problems the platform has should also be taking more in consideration
Steam as a shop has a competition. Steam keys can be bought in a lot of other stores for different prices because Valve allows the developers to generate as many free steam keys as they want.
Steam as a game platform where steam keys are used, has competition. PS and Xbox for instance. Heck, even Origin or GOG if we go into PC.
Some of the most popular games on PC are not on Steam. You dont need Steam to be successful. It just helps a lot.
Valve isnt a monopoly not from the store side (where they could easily charge 5% to the developers to generate steam keys or outright not allow it) nor from the platform side. It being dominant doesnt make it a de-facto monopoly because they allow competition against them! (And in fact actively encourage competition against their store by allowing developers to generate steam keys)
Maybe if people actually addressed real problems instead of made up ones or old ones it would be helpful. "Valve doesnt make games wawa" "Valve support is shit!!!" and all those things that have been solved are not good points. The fact is that Steam as a platform is the one that offers you the most as a consumer when compared to all other gaming platforms (with some stuff such as subscriptions in Origin or Xbox being better and would be nice if they could be implemented in Steam).
The PC Gaming thread had a nice discussion of issues we have with Steam today (and there were many!). The fact that none of the "reasons" that appear in this sort of threads were there kinda points out to one conclusion. That the reasons are made up by people that dont really play on PC.
Steam as a game platform where steam keys are used, has competition. PS and Xbox for instance. Heck, even Origin or GOG if we go into PC.
Some of the most popular games on PC are not on Steam. You dont need Steam to be successful. It just helps a lot.
Valve isnt a monopoly not from the store side (where they could easily charge 5% to the developers to generate steam keys or outright not allow it) nor from the platform side. It being dominant doesnt make it a de-facto monopoly because they allow competition against them! (And in fact actively encourage competition against their store by allowing developers to generate steam keys)
Maybe if people actually addressed real problems instead of made up ones or old ones it would be helpful. "Valve doesnt make games wawa" "Valve support is shit!!!" and all those things that have been solved are not good points. The fact is that Steam as a platform is the one that offers you the most as a consumer when compared to all other gaming platforms (with some stuff such as subscriptions in Origin or Xbox being better and would be nice if they could be implemented in Steam).
The PC Gaming thread had a nice discussion of issues we have with Steam today (and there were many!). The fact that none of the "reasons" that appear in this sort of threads were there kinda points out to one conclusion. That the reasons are made up by people that dont really play on PC.
This is the feature I wish had much more effort put into it. It's hard to totally criticize since sometimes I want something almost exactly the same as something else I've played and other times I want something similar but mostly different, and it's hard to guess at options for both, but there has to be something better than recommending games based on 'because you played games tagged with x'
Well, that's already a different point you're making indeed. :p
OP adresses what you said first: Competition isn't some magic word that makes everything better. If anything, that thread shows that so far, with these competitors no competition happened and instead they nearly all built their own little monopoly by locking their games behind, yet never bringing anything to the table like fonctionalities or stuff like this.
So let me make it simple for everyone:
- Steam has the best and complete features
- The competitors severly lacking such features
And what you want is for Steam to improve their features further than it is now? Instead of to demand the competitors to make their stores better?
I don't know how much of an issue could be the lack of moderation, for example.
I think Epic said they were going to have an actual staff looking through that kind of stuff? I read it from someone, not from Epic themselves, so I could be wrong
it is in the interest of every publisher to drive customers to their storefronts AND launchers to keep and retain customers. Why should they sell keys to be redeemed on a competing launcher?
So saying there's no reason whatsoever for making games exclusive to their own launchers is rather naive.
Yes. Walls will come up, but these are exponentially softer walls than what we have in the console space where you have to go buy another console to play exclusives. In the PC space, Just muster the effort to click on another icon to play the game you want.
Nah. I'm saying I could easily live without for example leaderboards, trading cards and some other features which are not really that imporant FOR ME, if that means a better and healthier place for devs and users as like.
You know what i don't like? People crying foul of game exclusivity (e.g Gwent) but are OK with Valve doing the exact same thing because its 'their prefered platform', seriously fuck off with that shit you hypocrites.
But they're already implemented. Do you want Steam to simply remove those features instead so that the competitors would have a much better ground to compete?
Lack of moderation has been greatly improved this year with much more stuff support both in forums and reviews and other community related sides. It needs to get better, as more and more games are released.
Valve does go through the games the first time they are launched to see if they are functioning (as Dusk Golem said), the issue is that you cannot go through all the patches and allow them to instantly release.
If you mean curation? Curation by Valve is not coming back and the fact that indies now complain about wanting curation while before they complained about it just means they belief their game should be in, not others. Sadly, it isnt possible to allow all developers without the free for all approach (and Valve has done intensive job trying to limit exploitation games such as the fee on launching the game that gets returned once you sell a certain amount, limiting achivements and cards for a while and key generation if valve deems you are exploiting it). Again, curation is good if you are in. If you are out, you are kinda fucked.
Okay, explain to me how is this not driveby shitposting? This has been explained in this thread countless times.
Cant wait for the future "if you buy from Steam, you buy from Hitler" hot takes.
I would have to imagine so, but it's bizarre that Ubisoft and EA, both companies that make their bread and butter on consoles don't even think to make their launchers work entirely on a gamepad with an interface sized for a further away television. It doesn't seem crazy to assume that might be worth investing in.
What is weird to me too is how often I'll see forums talking about Valve stagnating or not doing much with their platform, when they keep creating new features, and I'm waiting to hear what other magic company is really bringing anything new to the table. I'd love to see Microsoft become a good competitor, but they can even keep their PC ecosystem condensed into one app.
I think that, over the years, the amount of fluff added to Steam has actually made it less enticing, though I suppose the community features must be really enjoyable for those who choose to engage with them, even if these features have no bearing on the games themselves for the most part. And let's be honest, while trading cards/badges/gems can be a way for players to eke out a little credit for purchasing games on Steam it's really just a way for Valve to make more money.
I really thought they allowed pretty much anything from default to join the store, my bad.
Oh those sweet, sweet, sweeeet competition walls. I rolled my eyes reading this. Cant wait for the future competition where only one storefront can sell a game which requires a certain launcher.
As opposed to this horrible monopoly where storefronts and launchers.. would actually compete while giving customer the power to choose.
This is about system wars, not competition.
Sound plan. I'll note that
Clicking any button on the client (or even loading the client) removes all game files.
Will be a problem that, currently, only the Bethesda Launcher has ever had.
I kind of agree. I'm certain I'm not even aware of every feature the store have, you can also ignore them like I do. They exist and is positive for those who care about them. One thing Epic should have is community guides, god bless those
Not only that still counts, the thing we say "I agree" when making an account is called Steam Subscriber Agreement" isn't it? And all users are refered as subscribers.
GREEEEEEEEN
it's interesting how the conversation on tech blogs, gaming websites and From industry professionals is mainly centered around the increased dev cut and how it could provide a significant boost to smaller devs and indies if it really takes off.
But here where many people don't really give a shit about the health of the industry, it's all about store feature list Wars and the love of monopolies.
We had a recent article here from Polygon where most of the developers surveyed said they thought Valve wasn't doing enough to deserve that 30% cut. That article was greeted with derision here.
Hopefully, increased competition will push Valve into giving indies a fairer shake.
https://www.geekwire.com/2018/valve...-controversy-among-indie-game-developers/amp/
But here where many people don't really give a shit about the health of the industry, it's all about store feature list Wars and the love of monopolies.
We had a recent article here from Polygon where most of the developers surveyed said they thought Valve wasn't doing enough to deserve that 30% cut. That article was greeted with derision here.
Hopefully, increased competition will push Valve into giving indies a fairer shake.
https://www.geekwire.com/2018/valve...-controversy-among-indie-game-developers/amp/
Those can be real convenient, I agree. I still remember opening stuff like YouTube or GameFAQs on the overlay browser to get my tips and tricks.
Those were interviews.
You'd have to have a lot of contempt for statistics to call that a "survey". I too, can find anecdotes that say the opposite.
OP
OP
Devs can sell steam keys for their games on their own portal and take 100% cut. No other storefront allows this in the capacity that Steam does. People tend to forget the PC industry is this healthy today because of Steam and them being dev and consumer friendly
Also sigh.... Steam does not have a monopoly
It doesnt matter, people cannot compute this. Three replies later someone will shitpost about this "alledged" monopoly or how literally constructing new monopolies which a) didnt exist earlier b) forces you to use inferior launcher is great competition.
Most successful indie games we can play today wouldn't happen without Steam. Steam is the only way for indie games to make their name. If the game is good enough, people will buy and recommend it. If it's successful enough, it'll be ported to consoles. They can't do that in any other store/platform because the userbase is too low (on other stores) or it will be rejected (on consoles). Sony and Microsoft did promote indie games in the early days of PS4 and XB1, but that's it. It was only to fill the gap for the lack of games in the early days of a console.
That's why I see myself quoting the final image about 300 times over the next year.
Customers caring about a perspective from customers, shocker.
Don't think anyone is expressing a love for monopolies though, although it's of course convenient to look at it like that.
It isn't the lack of information that enables those people.
Basically it is playing chess with a pigeon. The rules of the game are facts and stats, they'll shit all over it with their ideologically driven arguments.
So if you are a WMR user (like me) and want to play VR games (like me) what alternative do you have but to use steam? When I see Microsoft zealots plotting/wishing for the downfall of steam it is greatly ironic due to this reason alone. But then they don't really care, it's all about how they think people don't use the Windows Store because of the steam "monopoly".
The OP is where the "steam bad" and "muh competition" arguments fall flat on their face. People can say thar steam is full of features that don't matter to them all they want but the fact is that they do matter to some people. It is catering to and making an effort with niche audiences which has enabled them to be as popular as they are today. There is no downside to there being more features on the platform, even if you don't care for them.
Even if you want the most simplistic PC gaming experience possible and you want it to be "console-like" then you can do that as well, steam actually does better here than any other storefront/launcher.
When another launcher has the same amount of features as steam then call me, but until then I will continue to purchase 99% of my PC games there.
The OP is where the "steam bad" and "muh competition" arguments fall flat on their face. People can say thar steam is full of features that don't matter to them all they want but the fact is that they do matter to some people. It is catering to and making an effort with niche audiences which has enabled them to be as popular as they are today. There is no downside to there being more features on the platform, even if you don't care for them.
Even if you want the most simplistic PC gaming experience possible and you want it to be "console-like" then you can do that as well, steam actually does better here than any other storefront/launcher.
When another launcher has the same amount of features as steam then call me, but until then I will continue to purchase 99% of my PC games there.
Yes, greeted with derision here... and elsewhere, including from other developers. Note these two posts, with tweets from Mike Rose, who has written and talked more about Valve and Steam than I think any of us here: https://www.resetera.com/threads/po...-responsibilities.75787/page-11#post-14328780 and https://www.resetera.com/threads/po...-responsibilities.75787/page-11#post-14329009
And, please, don't come all "give a shit about the health of the industry", when without Valve there would be literally no PC games industry.
Edit: Also, Itch.io has had a better cut for developers since it started, and you'll find a ton of people who love that store front.
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Agreed, it's the absolute lack of moderation in these threads. It's funny, really.
Think about this. Why is Steam their preferred platform?
If you don't mind me asking, what's your PC gaming background? Do you game on PC now? I want to write a detailed response and I'd like to know how much of PC gaming's recent history I should explain.
We're the consumers. I care about the health of the industry, but I also care about not hedging my bets on a hot new service that may not be around in a decade (look at Desura for example). I've been using Steam since 2008. Why should I suddenly jump over to another platform and split my library? Not a single good argument has been made for that. Caring about the health of the industry? If you care about the health of the industry, buy an indie game at around launch instead of waiting till it gets on a subscription service or in a bundle or goes on heavy discount. Write something about a lesser known game you liked to get it on people's radars. Buy the soundtrack.
If indies feel like they're not earning enough money off of their work perhaps they should start with thinking about how sales and bundles devalue games both from their perspective as the consumer's.
This could be a convincing position if contemporary gaming's mantra toward indies wasn't "too expensive, will wait for a sale/PS+"
And can you tell me which platform has a marketplace to accommodate trading, VAC, and the other Steam features integrated into the game?
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Who are you to claim that many PC gamers on Era don't give a shit about the health of the industry? Nothing in this thread indicates such a thing, so your claim is pure shit posting.
Also, for the 1000th time: Steam doesn't have a monopoly. Not by a long shot. And no one wants games to be only on Steam. On the contrary: PC gamers want their games on as many stores as possible, instead of being locked to a single store or launcher.
Yet what Epic does is launching another bare bones store that lacks most of the features that PC gamers are used to have on Steam, while using exclusivity to push people into using it anyway. This is what people are complaining about, and this is what this thread is about as well.
And rightfully so. That article was terrible, with a bunch of indies complaining that Steam didn't market their games, while ignoring devs who are convinced that Steams 30% cut is well deserved.
Don't get me wrong: discovery IS a huge problem for indie devs - even with the many tools that Steam provides to find the games you may like - and Steam does have other issues as well. PC Gamer did some much better research about this last year, covering both the positive and negative aspects of Steam.
Yeah, that would be great. But I really can't understand why people are shitting on Valve for taking a 30% cut, while every big digital games store is doing the same - while offering far less features for both devs and consumers than Valve does.
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I think Portal 2 being the first and last time they did cross network purchases is the perfect example that Valve are not into cross-buy.
Why should I demand Steam's competitors add features I don't care about? I just want the games with minimal hassle, and I ideally want some decent customer support, which isn't an area Steam does well at (though to be fair things generally work well enough for this not to matter too much).
Steam offers cross-buy between Windows, Linux, Mac and SteamOS tho. Agreed, it's the same network. But nor Sony nor Microsoft offer cross network cross-buy.
The extra shit that steam adds is a disincentive for me and many others. A store should be a store and nothing else. The rest is just a way to lock you in to one platform.
If 12% is the commission rate for a bare bones store, I'm all for that.
If 12% is the commission rate for a bare bones store, I'm all for that.
Just out of curiosity: Is that machine running Windows or Linux?I played hundreds of hours of Dragonball Fighter Z with it, haha. Like, I'd race home from work to play that shit online. It actually helped bugfix some stuff in Steam Input regarding controller pairing because it was an edge case. Valve had me emailing them logs from my arcade machine when some stuff originally didn't work, and hats off to them, they actually fixed some stuff that really mattered to making steam work on my arcade machine.
Just to drive the point home about how robust Steam Input is, valve got THIS working:
With Steam. That's a for-real JAMMA setup. Steam Input is honestly universal.
These mental gymnastics to portray extra features as a bad thing are pretty good
Please elaborate on how stuff like Steam Link, Steam Input, etc, which works even with non-stean games, is locking you to Steam.
OP
OP
Yes but other developers can freely do this if they want.
Paradox is one the publishers that offer cross buy on steam and their own launcher on some of their games
Things that are helpful to users: Badges? Inventory? Guides?
This is a console war type list.
I don't need the conglomerate client, I have google, youtube, twitch, reddit and discord which do the job much better than the "features" packed inside Steam. I think most people have come to terms that you will not have one app to rule them all, it is all about specialist services being as good as possible. And I hope that no storefront is going to waste their resources into building many of the redundant or useless features which Steam has.
Platform owners investing millions into developing first or third party games benefit me the most. As long as they have smooth basic features, I am set. If they want to release products cheaper - guess who wins again?
If Origin or Uplay got the feature parity tomorrow, NOBODY WOULD CARE. If BFV or Fallout were as good/in-demand as RDR2, there would be a massive spike in Origin/Bethesda launcher downloads. So publishers have to make better products if they want to see those client-installs.
Nobody downloads launchers for these "features"...
This is a console war type list.
I don't need the conglomerate client, I have google, youtube, twitch, reddit and discord which do the job much better than the "features" packed inside Steam. I think most people have come to terms that you will not have one app to rule them all, it is all about specialist services being as good as possible. And I hope that no storefront is going to waste their resources into building many of the redundant or useless features which Steam has.
Platform owners investing millions into developing first or third party games benefit me the most. As long as they have smooth basic features, I am set. If they want to release products cheaper - guess who wins again?
If Origin or Uplay got the feature parity tomorrow, NOBODY WOULD CARE. If BFV or Fallout were as good/in-demand as RDR2, there would be a massive spike in Origin/Bethesda launcher downloads. So publishers have to make better products if they want to see those client-installs.
Nobody downloads launchers for these "features"...
Seriously tho, after reading this thread so far, all i've gathered is that some people are in need of some education regarding Steam and its benefits to its users. Time and time again i've seen many ignorant replies which really don't make sense as an argument against Steam which can only mean that the people saying stuff like that have never really attempted to give Steam a try for a reasonable period of time to evaluate it. At this point, tbh i can only think of doing copy/pastas of posts that straight up as a reply to ignorant posts to educate those people as to what benefits exactly Steam gives to its users as compared to any other Digital storefront/launcher until it gets through their thick heads otherwise i feel like these sort of ignorant opinions will keep coming in each and every Steam thread forever and its extremely annoying to read and derails the thread.
Steam customer support being shitty is basically an old meme. They're mostly automated now and the manual ones are faster than ever to be processed.
When's the last time you tried contacting Steam CS what was the issue?
+1
Seriously this.
It took pressure from the competition in offering refunds before Steam did it. 'Evil' EA out of all companies offered refunds way before Valve did and they even offer great customer service to boot. Valves is customer service is putrid and almost non-existant to this day.
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