I jumped to the end after the first page.
Catching up now, sorry for premature posting.
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The Epic Monopoly - How Epic Store Exclusives are bringing console wars to PC
- Thread starter NNN
- Start date
I jumped to the end after the first page.
Catching up now, sorry for premature posting.
The only issue that hold any merit imo is the unavailability and pricing. Other than that, things which have been worked on and are being worked on, the idea that Epic Game Store is the monopoly and not Steam (you know, the title of the thread) is ridiculous.
You have to understand. These threads are replete with posts like yours. Posted by disingenuous bullshitters, not arguing with people's concerns, imagining that if they just keep up with that nonsense somehow it makes them right.
With methods that many consumers don't like. So they complain and/or vote with their wallet.
Like in every business, actually.
Yeah, its hard to see how this exclusivity strategy is effective. It works on consoles because people are investing hundreds of dollars on hardware, many of them can't afford to buy more than one system. I'm not sure downloading a launcher creates that same level of commitment.
Anecdotally speaking, I have 7 or 8 launchers on my computer (including EGS) and all have games that are exclusively available to them. However, that hasn't made me any more likely to buy games that are not exclusive to them. That's not because I have a shrine to Gabe in my bedroom, its because the feature set really is just leagues above everyone else. If I had my choice I'd buy all my games on GoGalaxy where I can also get DRM free copies. However, I don't because that client stinks compared to steam. I own Witcher 3 on gog but I had to add the exe to steam just so I could stream it to my TV and use my DS4 to play from the bed. Im not even sure how I'd pull all that off without steam.
It'll interesting to see what happens once Epic stops paying people to support their platform.
There's been plenty of competition, but for several good reasons Steam is the most popular PC storefront for games. And Valve allows 3rd party keysellers to thrive too, because they don't take a dime from any sales done outside of their own client.
Epic isn't doing much to actually compete though, moneyhatting few exclusives won't make people stick to their store. They should instead make me want to use their store, not force me to.
Epic's already in the industry. They've developed several games, and their launcher's been around for years.
This is not even close to someone trying to break into the console industry. Their anti-competitive practices would probably be as bad as Nintendo's from the '80s if they had the power to do so.
Why can you decide that all the platform and community features people enjoy using do not have any merit?
Also, while some things might be a question of being worked on (or not), others -- such as the consumer reviews stance -- are a clear difference in the basic relationship desired between the entities involved (customers, publishers, and the distribution platform).
Finally, Epic does pay for and has actively acquired a distribution monopoly for several, and Valve never demanded a distribution monopoly
Do you actually read what people post here? No one wants Steam to be the ONLY store. People just don't want store owners to pay devs and publishers to keep their games away from competing storefronts, because this goes straight against healthy competition. And no, Steam has never done this, nor has any other storefront owner on PC (except for Oculus and they've got plenty of shit for that as well).
Exactly right. My problem is that EPIC seems to be helmed as the ultimate evil and Steam is heralded. I find the notion that competition not being necessary purely because of Steam's existence extremely alarming.
I find this part interesting:
Because the exact same argument can and should be made for every single one of the dozen or so platform-level features Steam offers over EGS.
EA and Ubi are only selling their own games exclusively, well Ubi even doesn't though. New clients and storefronts aren't a problem in itself (it's good, because it's more options and more competition), it's moneyhatting 3rd party exclusives and hence agressively removing competition by having 3rd party games tied to just one store. Going as far as taking out games already sold, episodic game in mid season, games that have ran their betas on another platform. There's the rub. There's a lot of options for storefronts and clients to compete in ways that are consumer friendly. This ain't that. Cherry on the top, the exclusive client (Epic) lacks many of the most basic features. Regional pricing is still largely fucked and it also hurts legitimate key retailers that sell games lower than Steam prices.
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LMAO. What? Am I decrying Nintendo anti-consumer for not including achievements? Nice false equivalence! I'm just saying that from a gamer's perspective, I haven't heard a good reason for having system-wide achievements at all.
When it comes to things that are personal preference the person making the choice. If someone wants to avoid a game because it doesnt have achievements, for example, thats their choice. i wouldnt find any merit in the decision but thats their choice.
Valve didnt have to demand it because they just had it by default of being there first. And its not like Valve was all "Aw shucks, they really like me" with all the dominance theyve acquired, they actively sought out methods to get developers and customers into their ecosystem and keep them there.
The difference is that you see moneyhatting 3rd party games as competition, while many of us don't. At least not the kind of competition that WE want to see on PC.
This is not what healthy competition means. People use terms like distribution monopoly (which doesn't exist if you have dominion over one game), and so many other terms in this thread, it's ridiculous.
Doesn't work. Sometimes someone gets a warning or even a ban but look at all those fresh names in every Epic thread spouting the same wannabe-arguments. There's an endless supply and they're all just honestly asking questions while copy&pasting what has been discussed before. I think this is a lost cause. I mean just see below.
After all these threads, after very long and calm posts arguing why exactly Epic is terrible competition we get comments like this making a mockery of everyone trying to engage those people in a mature way by spouting dishonest rubbish with the goal to misrepresent our arguments.
Steam wasn't planned as a distribution software but after the likes of Yahoo and Amazon decided to not help selling digital games - Valve decided to distribute their games (and only their games) over Steam. And there was actually a time when Valve was like "aw shucks, they really like me" when other Publishers asked them if they could somehow sell their games on Steam as well.
Whether you like it or not, it creates competition, and it's inevitable. The PC market has been pretty fortunate not to have to face it head-on for so long.
No one argues for a completely unqualified "competition is not necessary". Your strawman doesn't help your argument.
What people say is that the way Epic chose to compete doesn't do anything positive for most customers, and in fact actively makes the situation worse for them.
You are arguing in that thread that Nintendo should implement a platform-level feature on their platform because people want it.
Here, some people argue that they prefer Steam as it offers many platform-level features they like. I think the connection is clear.
Yes, primarily by offering a large catalog of features to customers that their entire existing library can benefit from, for free.
People like that. I can't blame them.
You mean like Valve helping and funding development of tools that make it easier for Linux to run Win games so that both customers and devs benefit from it?
Im tired about posting this over and over again, but:
-If you are a chinese customer, you cant even buy games from EGS and if they are exclusive/timed exclusive, you cant ever buy them or have to wait 1 year. Negative.
-No cloud saves: Negative.
-No achievments: Negative.
-No ability to share the game with your family or friends: Negative.
-No way to play exclusive games on Linux now: Negative.
-For some countries it became more expensive: Negative.
-For some countries it became cheaper: Positive.
It negatively affected me by becoming £10 more expensive because i couldn't grab it off my normal keysellers.
Out of brand loyalty and convenience I understand why people would want to support Steam. But I don't get the comparison to console wars. The Epic launcher is free to download and developers get a bigger share from the Epic store. You're not excluded from exclusives that Epic buy to their platform, you just have to download their launcher, free of charge.
Edit: I didn't know the points below.
Edit: I didn't know the points below.
Sure it is for some people. Your problem seems to stem from not understand the difference between wanting as many games as possible on Steam vs wanting those games to only be available on Steam.
You keep using words like hilarious and rubbish to attack other people's opinion, but you haven't even bothered to explain yourself in a decent way.
So what does healthy competition mean according to you? And can you explain to me how forcing people to use a bare bones store to play 3rd party games because of a moneyhat is healthy competition?
In another thread, you said you prefer gaming on your Xbox. No doubt this is because you like Microsofts features and services like Xbox Live, achievements and Game Pass. Surely you can understand why people aren't very happy when they are forced to use another (far inferior) ecosystem because of a moneyhat?
How? The Windows Store has loads of exclusives, but sucks big times. Is this competition for Steam? And what about Bethesda's launcher?
No it's not. We are still the paying consumers and we are able to vote with our wallets.
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Right, and my original sentiment was addressing the latter.
No. Chinese cant just "download" it.
And besides a launcher it's also a store, so pricing might be different.
Im not that sure why that is a bad attitude, when you care for certain features.
I could buy a product at Amazon, get it the next day, have good refunds or I can buy it for 10€ more expensive at another internet shop that takes 5 days for a package to arrive, is 10€ more expensive and doesnt have easy refunds like Amazon does. Why do people prefer to use Amazon as a customer? There is a reason for that.
I mean Epic Store literally doesnt even have cloud saves and achievements. "But I dont need that" unless a PC crashes your HDD during a playthrough of Metro and you have to start the whole game from the beginning.
I have read the topic now and ResetEra user was kind enough to portray to me his experience and problems with this new platform and right now I understand how this can be a huge deal to some people as opposed to my (privileged) experience.
I think that part of this discussion should be centred on what issues are caused by the youngness of the platform versus the strategic decisions of Epic.
Also, if there are to be other store platforms it feels - after so many years of videogame industry - kinda naive to expect this type of deals not to happen.
While the thread title will seem way to strong to many people I fully understand how some people might be impacted the same as someone that has to buy a console to play a specific game.
Thanks Era.
Whether Valve planned Steam to become what it is at the start means nothing when they started to capitalize on it. It didnt take long for Steamworks to come along and offer a drm replacement.
I still think this is a decent tactic to take as a new store front. Exclusive content is used in many markets to get people in the door in hopes of hooking a customer for more down the road including non-exclusive content.
I get that people are pissed, but not to degree they are pissed (I tend to think this on most topics here to be blunt). Steam wasn't great at first either and it's a bit unfair to stack features that took many years for Steam to roll out against a new storefront. I think this is only going to happen more and PC gamers will just need to adapt as plenty of people have done in other places/markets.
I get that people are pissed, but not to degree they are pissed (I tend to think this on most topics here to be blunt). Steam wasn't great at first either and it's a bit unfair to stack features that took many years for Steam to roll out against a new storefront. I think this is only going to happen more and PC gamers will just need to adapt as plenty of people have done in other places/markets.
That's not how monopolies work. Steam, that's an effective monopoly. A competitor making direct moves to break the monopoly isn't a monopoly.... ...not in any realistic way is Epic a monopoly...
Your posts are rather irrelevant then because as far as I can tell no one here has ever argued against let's say Metro being on Epic too.
Monopoly going up on the board with anti-consumer as one of the most overused and misused words on the site.
Valve wasnt doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. It was done to help secure their dominance. It was done to get people into their ecosystem. Once you are in its hard for people to abandon their library.
The amount of internet rage Half Life 2 got when it first released because you had to install and run it through steam was almost to this level back in the day. Now people are complaining they have to use one launcher over the other. At least the launchers are free.
I remember when every game had it's own installer, exe, etc. You wanted support, you called a 1800 number from the manual. You need a patch? Maybe, just maybe, the dev had a website and maybe a patch could be downloaded there. Usually if the game was a success, the next print would include the fix.
We live in a pretty good world to have this be such an upsetting thing.
I remember when every game had it's own installer, exe, etc. You wanted support, you called a 1800 number from the manual. You need a patch? Maybe, just maybe, the dev had a website and maybe a patch could be downloaded there. Usually if the game was a success, the next print would include the fix.
We live in a pretty good world to have this be such an upsetting thing.
Its not just a launcher. Its also a storefront that sells games and is also not available in certain countries, so the argument "just install another launcher" doesnt hold true.
Steam: I can buy the game.
EGS: I cant buy the game.
Yeah and there are movies that launch weeks or over a month in advance in China compared to every where else. It sucks but it's just a form of entertainment. It's not going to kill you to not be able to spend money on a video game. Lets be honest here anyways. There are a ton of people out there that will resort to pirating the game if they don't have an easy avenue for purchasing the game. This will be noticed by the devs and pubs and put pressure on Epic to release the storefront in more regions. Epic will either fix it or fail as a product because of this.
The epic store can't even match the steam version we used in 2009. Nor can they match other platforms like origin when it launched in 2011.
But regardless I don't give a shit.
Epic is paying for exclusivity on games NOW and they want my business NOW so they gotta deliver the basic shit I come to expect from a store NOW.
Why is the onus on me to give this million dollar company time to improve?