My physical PC games that predated Steam required keys to use them.
So much for your used PC game market. Going hot and heavy with the Epic defense for such a young account. Makes you wonder...
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The Epic Brutality Of Unchecked Capitalism (The Jimquisition)
- Thread starter lashman
- Start date
My physical PC games that predated Steam required keys to use them.
So much for your used PC game market. Going hot and heavy with the Epic defense for such a young account. Makes you wonder...
The whole "Steam killed the used PC market" is such a big lie. The used PC market had already died before Steam (and steam was not the first DRM, remember all those keys they asked you to install the game, or random codes you had to pull from the manual, nor even the first ONLINE DRM).
The used PC market died because shops decided in most cases not to accept used PC games (because people bought them and then returned them after cracking) and then the one use only keys appeared. Way before Steam.
The used PC market died because shops decided in most cases not to accept used PC games (because people bought them and then returned them after cracking) and then the one use only keys appeared. Way before Steam.
That was me I think.
I don't think I said "free market with regulation is not free market" more than "free market capitalism includes a lot of doctrines including deregulated free market" and the crazy part is that if you're in the US you don't really know anything else (or at least no one cares about the other version of free market).
The EU on the other hand is more of a "for the people" kind of free market where the goal of the free market is never lost over the means.
Fuck unregulated free market capitalism is my point.
We're not gonna lose innovation with regulations, we're just getting different innovations.
Innovation comes from necessity anyway, in regulated capitalism necessity is still a thing.
It's not popular in the US right now, I guess we need to have minorities start profiting from unregulated free market for the US to lean hard on regulations.
You didn't like viruses monitoring your every move to make sure you didn't steal shit?
This is true. And it's a fucking bizarre troll post as it brings up an installment to a franchise as a "gotcha" moment.
I guess for some, whatever it takes to derail a discussion from the shitshow of what Epic is doing right now to their own staff and the PC gaming industry at large.
That is definitely how people feel now... I wonder how people will feel in five years? I mean, it is obviously impossible to say, but I have seen enough moves, that have angered people initially, pay dividends when all was said and done.
I hope Epic doesn't get away with their shitty strategy, or no doubt other big companies will copy it and brute force their way into pc gaming like this as well.
PC gamers do tend to have a good memory when it's about shitty stuff tho. Go ask Microsoft for example...
No PC players are happy about bringing exclusives and that mindset to an open platform
it still amazes me how much he spends all his other videos bitching about the companies themselves, but use epic to frame anger at capitalism
It's up to the publisher where to put their game. If that means only putting their games on Steam, putting their game on EGS and later Steam, or maybe even putting their game on many game launchers not just EGS, Steam, + nothing else. Unfortunately some publishers are only comfortable putting their games on Steam and nothing else (lot of Japanese publishers sadly).
Where do you think they get the financial flexibility to offer what they themselves have called an unsustainable cut to developers? If the store is not making a sustainable profit then their other ventures are. In this case, it is well known that fortnite is their big money maker. Why? Because it gets constant updates to keep it fresh. How are they able to update it so frequently? Endless crunch.
Money doesn't materialize out of thin air.
Tim Sweeney has told us his EGS store is good for us consumers. I'd like to think that within five years we will actually see exactly why it's good for us consumers. We currently stand at zero reasons outside of bought/forced exclusivity to use his store. Cheaper games, free DLC, new and improved features and more are ways they can compete, let's hope he's a man of his word.
I knew I forgot to reply to something! I remember now, sorry for forgetting :(, my memory is terrible.
I don't think it was you that said the thing about free market and regulation, I think that was someone else so disregard that part.
For the record I agree with pretty much everything else you have said here as well.
Don't worry, again life gets in the way and I can be less than diligent about that too.
I still think that regulated markets are the way to go and 'free market' is basically the fantasy people who profit from market based economy sell to people to give them even more power.
Jim is right in this case, Epic is the kind of competition that was only ever going to happen if you wanted competition to be...well... competitive.
It's really complicated to move an entrenched player in a mature field, this is clearly the quickest and most efficient way of doing it.
Another major way would be disruption but no one with any interest in the current market would want that.
I hope so, I've been PC gaming for close to 30 years, and as much as I did not like Steam when it launched, you cannot deny it was Steam that slowly lowered piracy specially on developing markets and eventually stabilized PC gaming to the point devs that were console only like Square started to port to PC.
Meanwhile as soon as the PC market looked a bit more challenging Epic bailed out and justified it by calling all PC gamers pirates. Definitely not a company that wants to be part of the solution to any market challenge. So pardon me if I do not take any of their holier than thou spiel right now.
Valve Corporation had the foresight to provide a product that people ACTUALLY wanted to use.
Netflix did the same with movies and tvshows.
People don't give a shit if they're pirating or not as long as they're given a fair bargain to get the products they want.
And it wasn't a easy thing to notice as all the failed attempts before can attest.
Epic then and Epic now might as well be different companies.
Epic then : Nintendo is the kiddies and they make shit hardware
Epic now : Come make Unreal games for Switch! Play our latest game on Nintendo's awesomeness of awesome console!
While I disagree with the "Valve does nothing" argument, I do think that the reason for why that argument comes up so much shouldn't be dismissed. I don't think it's just a "shitpost", and more something people legitimately believe. Because while Valve definitely does work on a lot of stuff, they're not very vocal or send much PR out about it. Which usually wouldn't be that bad, but when Steam is getting major competition that's often vocal about what they're doing it does begin to look like Valve's not really doing much in response. And it's very possible that they are, but if they are, they need to talk more about it.
Besides that, they don't do much about the criticisms people have of Steam. Stuff like the library overhaul and Proton are great. But when it comes to the problems that people have with the store's design, they haven't been doing enough to remedy those problems. Developers have complained about stuff like the store not showing lesser known games nearly well enough. As well as Steam allowing just about anything even if it's horribly bigoted or grossly sexist. And with the one problem Valve responded to, review bombs, they couldn't even be clear about what review bombs they'll actually do something about. Only that they'll do something when it's "off topic" to the game.
And again, it's very possible that Valve actually is working on remedying those problems people have. I get the feeling that if Valve becomes more vocal, more clear in their messaging, and more visibly understanding of people's problems with the store, that people wouldn't complain nearly as much about them not doing anything. Because right now, aside from them working on a couple of features, I have no idea what Valve's plans for Steam's future are. I'm not even sure if they have plans.
Something people legitimately believe can easily be a shitpost. If I am ignorant enough to believe that Sony's CEO eats babies and I enter a thread and post that, I am shitposting. If I can't be bothered to do the bare minimum of research to ensure that what I believe is based on facts, I am shitposting.
So like if you ignore the entirety of someone's post aside from the first couple of sentences and respond to just those two sentences as if there's nothing more to the post, does that also count as shitposting?
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If those sentences constitute a valid statement or question and the reply provides a valid point, no.
More to the point, Valve is probably doing the right thing in keeping silent. A massive fanbase knowing about features being "in the works" with an open release date, never ends well, especially since at Valve there is no single directed flow of work. Them being more vocal about features we likely won't see for months - or years - won't help anything at all. I much prefer finding about those things when they're just about ready for deployment, not when they're "in the plans".
Since the reply ignored any context the rest of my post added (and said poster has a history of doing exactly this) I'm just gonna say it counts as a shitpost lol.
And it looks like plenty of people disagree, see how often the "Valve is doing nothing" argument pops up. Which I imagine comes from Valve not communicating enough and/or not doing enough about what those people have problems with.
It's so often people exhibiting cruel pathologies who are at the top. They can say nice things, but they can say anything including lie through their teeth. I can imagine they wouldn't make very good friends.
You can't have a normal person running a be a ceo, tho. A normal person is like "that was a great job everybody. I'm satisfied. Let's go home and enjoy ourselves so we can do it again tomorrow."
You can't have that. You need someone for whom nothing is ever enough and he will never be satisfied. They'll do anything to feed their ego because that's all that exists and it's effectively a black hole. Great to run a huge company.
You can't have a normal person running a be a ceo, tho. A normal person is like "that was a great job everybody. I'm satisfied. Let's go home and enjoy ourselves so we can do it again tomorrow."
You can't have that. You need someone for whom nothing is ever enough and he will never be satisfied. They'll do anything to feed their ego because that's all that exists and it's effectively a black hole. Great to run a huge company.
"Valve is doing nothing" is a pretty empty complaint given that it's easy to counter - they have been doing quite a lot, after all, from SteamVR to Proton.
"Valve has promised a UI rework and it's been a year now" is far more specific, and thus far more valid. The more concrete features you promise "in the plans", the more you open yourself to the risk of encountering issues that can delay the release, or make things not work out at all. And since you can't "crunch time" with a freeform structure like Valve has, there's no way to compensate or focus down those issues. Which means that you end up having to backtrack on features, push back releases, all that wonderful stuff that the usually vocal people love - to loudly complain about.
Basically, promising nothing - while still obviously doing something - leaves your opponents with mostly useless complaints for ammunition. I like to think that way, at least. :)
Valve sells cheaper games than vocal competitors. That's more than enough for most consumers.
User Warned: Thread Derailment
Well yeah, "Valve is doing nothing" is easy to argue against, but like I said in my earlier post, it might be better to consider *why* people feel like Valve is doing nothing.
And pretty sure that if Valve can't give absolutely any concrete plans, that that says more about problems within the company than about how good their marketing is. It's also much easier to not be bothered with Valve not being communicative when you don't have problems with them. For example, one issue I personally have with Steam is that they have zero standards for what they'll allow on the store, meaning that bigoted and sexist games can pop up on the store. I've seen them pop up in the new and trending list as well (here's an example of a game with a transphobic slur popping up in there earlier this month). And as far as I know, Valve has no plans to do anything about this. Of course, it's possible that they do, but Valve doesn't communicate at all about that sorta stuff. And with them not saying anything at all, it's pretty easy to assume that Valve doesn't give a shit about minorities and will continue to allow this sort of shit aside from the times mainstream media catches on.
(EDIT: Actually please just ignore this post cause like warning above says it did get kinda far from the subject this thread is about, sorry about that)
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I'm curious what actual disruption of the gaming market would even look like at this point. Everybody's giving stuff away for free on the regular to try to get traffic to their sites. How do you exploit and undercut that?
Decent video. Most of the content was solid, as it highlighted some of the nuances of the situation we are in (though not all). In the end, he started banging on about Steam's problems a tad too much again- as far as I'm concerned, they are still the successful customer-friendly platform (GOG is better in most aspects, but they are fundamentally limited in their appeal by their anti-DRM stance that limits their potential reach as long as all AAA pubs keep ignoring them)
It's certainly a welcome change from "let's welcome Epic as worthy competitor to Valve at any cost" vibe his earlier video gave off. Goes to show you how much Epic messed up their PR in 4 short months if the message is shifting from "let them do what they want, it's the only way to challenge Valve" to "do we really need this competition if this is what it takes?" from some (not all, looping at you, PC Epic Gamer!) outlets.
It's certainly a welcome change from "let's welcome Epic as worthy competitor to Valve at any cost" vibe his earlier video gave off. Goes to show you how much Epic messed up their PR in 4 short months if the message is shifting from "let them do what they want, it's the only way to challenge Valve" to "do we really need this competition if this is what it takes?" from some (not all, looping at you, PC Epic Gamer!) outlets.
So you choose to ignore the 75 to 100 hours crunch that epic have in place for the content updates. Or the fact that they ise contractors till they burn out and then replace them.
So you dont think that is a symptom of rampant capatilism? Or you are Ok with it and think people should be treated as cattle?
With big players entering for streaming, I imagine they'll be snapping up exclusives. Perhaps every major game between three or four aggressive competitors. Nasty.
But they end up on steam and resellers 6 months or a year later? and then steam is still home for everyone who can't get on one of these curated stores?
This will be annoying for us, annoying for valve, and potentially bloody for Epic, Microsoft, Google, et all. They're all looking at PC now because that's where you can pop up your own store. I think it's safe to say that none of them will assume valve's weirdly slippery posture when it comes to confrontations.
I expect things to get worse before they get better, but I'm pretty sure everything will be fine in the end and all through it. These are huge annoyances (the exclusives and the incessant waves of PR in the years ahead), but I don't think it's going to damage the market.
But they end up on steam and resellers 6 months or a year later? and then steam is still home for everyone who can't get on one of these curated stores?
This will be annoying for us, annoying for valve, and potentially bloody for Epic, Microsoft, Google, et all. They're all looking at PC now because that's where you can pop up your own store. I think it's safe to say that none of them will assume valve's weirdly slippery posture when it comes to confrontations.
I expect things to get worse before they get better, but I'm pretty sure everything will be fine in the end and all through it. These are huge annoyances (the exclusives and the incessant waves of PR in the years ahead), but I don't think it's going to damage the market.
Maybe you should calm down a little bit because I have said absolutely none of that shit? I literally said capitalism has far worse consequences than video games, so, obviously, I am not okay with any of that either.
And? this is a video game forum, of course gaming would focus on aspects of capitallism as it affects video games.
Referring to the title as a first world problem comes across as dismissive of the core argument. The use of crunch hours.
But i am perfectly calm, thanks.
Isn't that the point though? Capitalism exists and works as well as it does specifically because it is a completely amoral and entirely functional system. It's essentially one giant math problem where the desired output is "profit" and the puzzle is figuring out the most efficient way to get there. The actual social effects of capitalism is immaterial beyond how they directly affect the desired output.
The key thing to remember is that this can end up being a very good thing or a very bad thing, but it's not intrinsically one or the other. In a way that's far scarier than any anchored moral imperative because it means the absolute best and the absolute worst outcomes and everything in-between are equally possible depending on the surrounding circumstances. Whatever ends up getting to "profit" is whatever works, all other considerations be damned.
It's not dismissive of the core argument, though, as I made no comment about it. I agree with pretty much all criticism towards Epic. I just thought the title was a tad dramatic when compared to the big picture of capitalism.
I mean, you're not wrong with that capitalism has caused far worse things to happen, but I didn't get the idea that Jim was acting as if this is one of the worst things about capitalism, and is more just talking about how it affects the game industry.
Well that's the thing, Valve is what it is. It's like Nintendo, their approach has definite flaws, but criticizing it makes about much sense as complaining about salty seawater. So with the defining trait(s) being immutable, everything else has to work around them, PR included.
And sorry, but that's one point we're going to disagree on. Steam's lack of pre-curation is about as much of a defining feature as GOG's lack of DRM. It's a platform for everyone. Bad things are going to get on there along with the good, and users have the power to make the good rise to the top. By reviews, by wishlisting, by reports if need be. I made the social media comparison before, and I still think it's apt, because Reddit works the same way. Good posts rise to the top, bad posts are downvoted to oblivion and undesired content gets reported by users and taken down by moderators. It's the only way an enormous platform like this can be moderated with a reasonable amount of effort and accuracy.
(also that word, and I will assume that I'm correct about what word you mean there, is... rather a common bit of jargon? I honestly never saw it used as a slur, or at least it never registered as one - plus it's also a common word with a less loaded meaning, making the title by itself perfectly innocuous. I literally would not have known what you meant there, were it not for the game's tags and had I not encountered the term before in a relevant context.)
(also you kind of have to opt in to ever see that type of content by default, so it must have been a slow day if that got to trending. I keep it disabled in my preferences, less clutter in the feed, plus the concept of paying for it when it's usually on the 'net for free is kind of unnatural. :P)
I mean I guess, but at the same time Jim is someone who spends his time talking specifically about the industry. If we can't talk about the way that problems with our political systems influence specific aspects of peoples' daily lives, then we can't talk about the problems with our political systems at all. This rebuttal is about as useful as "But there are starving children in the greater Detroit metropolitan area" were I to complain to a waiter that my potatoes were overseasoned.
You're not wrong, but this is the whole purpose of regulation. When we "disrupt the unrestricted free market", it is to artificially realign incentives (and disincentives) to cause actors in an amoral system to behave morally.
Most businessowners would probably not install handicap accessible ramps if left to their own devices. But they do it because the ADA says that if they don't they'll be in a lot of trouble, including financially. Regulation is how we keep capitalism on a leash so we can enjoy all of its benefits (like specialization, production sufficiency, wealth generation, etc.) while limiting its harms. It's the best flawed system we currently have.
I don't understand. I am responding to this particular part of your post. Why would I include the rest of it which comments on a different thing?
I'm no disruption scholar but I would assume that something like Stadia could look like it, the important part is that the values of the old market is irrelevant in the new one.
Something like that could fit or a total change in the input method could work as well.
Interestingly we had a disruption of the computer market happen in the mobile revolution.
It affected the lower end of the industry and Google/Apple reaped a huge reward for that.
I don't really think it affected the handheld market that much considering how 3DS woes were really Nintendo not knowing whatever the fuck they were doing at the start and trying to save the market from their blunders.
Switch (and Japan) shows that handheld is still viable and very lucrative after all.
Sometimes free-market advocates forget that the "free" in free market also means free to compete. This absolutely requires regulation as (as you say) the market on it's own will end up with monopolies and protectionist practices. For example how the EU has dealt with MS in the past.
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By no means I'm questioning his criticism or saying he is overestimating the problems at Epic, I was specifically talking about the title, which I thought to be a tad dramatic, that's all.
The whole "Steam popularized DRM" in general is one of the most absurd recurring bullshit you'll hear from a lot of the anti-Valve crowd.
If anything it's the opposite. When Steam started to gain some traction it somehow reverted the awful trend of more and more draconial DRMs that were gaining traction in the PC retail market (Securom, Tages, MOTHERFUCKING STARFORCE), notorious for monitoring a lot of what you installed ("What? You have software for burning CD/DVD installed? I guess you won't play our game!") and at times even for fucking up your hardware, and convinced a lot of devs to jump on the ship with the far, FAR more tame Steamworks, which consistend (and still consists in) simply... an encryption that gets decoded after release. That's it.
It's also still surprisingly effective against pre-launch piracy: while Steam releases are trivial to "crack" after launch, the system is still "unpiratable" before release date.
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think of it this way, for every dollar you spend on Epics store, you're are directly enabling the abuse of people working in a perpetual crunch cycle. Until we hear of reports of Epic seriously addressing this issue, it may be wise to refrain from purchasing or defending their business practices.