Only lazy company doesn't have its own store nowadays. People are fed up with Valve's fees i guess
Comment has been collapsed.
No. Greedy is pretty much the opposite of making bad financial decisions and overpaying for inflated fees.
Comment has been collapsed.
Uhm yeah buddy Bethesda made their abysmal client pushing paid mods and not allowing you to refund Fallout76 out of the good in their hearts. Get real. Inflated fees lmao.
Comment has been collapsed.
You evidently can't read since you are arguing the opposite of what you mean.
He said:
Only lazy companies don't have their own store nowadays
Which you seem to read as:
Only lazy (greedy?) companies do have their own store nowadays
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't want to buy games from each and every publisher/developer, each with it's own launcher and store. Competition is good, but damn it's getting ridiculous now with everyone opening their own store now.
Having a store separate from the publisher is more consumer friendly. Just look at the shit show that is the Bethesda store; no refunds, no reviews. And if when a publisher goes under, your games go with it.
I don't want anymore damn game clients either, I have 6 installed already. I've decided to only buy new games from GOG from now on, and if it's not available there I'll wait for it. If it doesn't make it to GOG, I'll pick it up in a bundle or buy rent it from Steam when it's on sale for 75% off or more.
Comment has been collapsed.
I'm with you. I stopped adding "platforms" after Steam and GOG.
Comment has been collapsed.
we might need a platform fot the platforms, where you just log in and get automaticaly get loged in inton all your accounts (steam, gog, battlesnet,...) wich combines all libraries and sends all instructions automaticaly to the lower platforms (download game x, start game y,...)
would make the world much easier
Comment has been collapsed.
Oh wow, this looks actually quite interesting. It seems to struggle with adding complete libraries for some stores though. Will try again later.
Comment has been collapsed.
Fees? I'm fed up with the swamp of shit Steam has become. Just look at steamgifts.com all page. It's filled with garbage. I cannot block "games" fast enough. But seeing good giveaway when you've cleared a ton of shit ones is very satisfying.
Comment has been collapsed.
I meant from other companies' perspective, they don't give a fuck about shit games on steam, but they do care about this 30% loss. From customer perspective I absolutely agree though. But I am still blocking crap, started few months ago and now my hidden games counter is at 7302 and counting (~5-10 crap games a day, sometimes more). At least I am now seeing much less of this. I genuinely don't understand, why would one buy those and give them away here. One would have to literally create hundreds of giveaways to upgrade CV.
Comment has been collapsed.
I find I can't block them fast enough! I block 1 and 2 more pop up. They need to make it so you can export/import blocked game list. So you can just share a list of blocked crap.
Comment has been collapsed.
People are actually buying those games to give them away? If so, that's kinda crazy lol. I had assumed that they were from really low quality indie bundles. One person's junk is another person's treasure and all that.
Comment has been collapsed.
Just think of SG as 'free' advertising for the game, since you had to see the game at least once in order to block it. (And advertising is a big business!)
Comment has been collapsed.
Wow that's great for developers that choose to put their games on that store. Fortnite has a massive population so people definitely use the client and I'm sure some devs will jump on putting their game it as it will get a high amount of exposure.
Comment has been collapsed.
Still missing the essential part of Steam, being able to sell crap to silly people to buy any game you want for free.
Comment has been collapsed.
... and the friends list, solid downloads/updates, easy way to control downloads (pausing, bandwith control, time when updates trigger), out of game voice communication, family sharing of games, easy configuration of non-standard gamepads and the easy way to filter out games you don't want to see, etc.
People take what Steam has done over the years too much for granted I think. Just using a service like uPlay or Origin for 15 minutes makes me want to pull my hair out. They're awful.
Comment has been collapsed.
Nice to see someone who isn't so blinded by valve hate they miss the fact they ain't got decent competition.
Comment has been collapsed.
people also love to criticize valve for their developer fees and they don't realize customers (yes, us) will pay the same for their games, no matter if the store takes a 30% cut or 0.01%.
so in the end, we will pay the same (because $60 games WON'T drop in price, even if fees are 10% instead of valve's usual 30%) while developers/publishers make more money and we are forced to install 50 clients. ^^
so much for being customer friendly...
i'll stick to steam till it explodes.
Comment has been collapsed.
What about GOG? You dont seem to fill your library with uncurated games. Are you using GOG? If not may I know why? I have no association with GOG but I've complimented them on many occasions. Personally, I think their platform works great and its easy access. Why I'm not using it more often is most other friends and community here is of course Steam users.
Sincere Regards and Warm Greetings! Cruse~
Comment has been collapsed.
gog doesn't have any games i would like to play that i can't find on steam. ┐(ツ)┌
and even if i could find some, they are always more expensive than a steam gifts or keys.
Comment has been collapsed.
Ah yes, GOG has a much smaller attraction certainly. Its draw now is curation, DRM-Free, easy to download, easy to access/stable client. When comes down to budgeting, indeed its a major loss. You can also use GOG-Connect to get your Steam games on GOG which I felt bad for them, i'm not sure its a sustainable model, although it does not mean you are able to 100% replicate your library to GOG. They gift of games quite frequently too, they do not have much bundles which is great to build that empty account. They did recently start having some or more store bundle options which is great value for recent releases games in recent sales.
Thank you for the reply, very much appreciated. There's still some way to go for them. Have a great day ahead, Mully. Cheers, Cruse~
Comment has been collapsed.
My second platform almost 200 games in there :))!
GOG connect was a bliss for me :D!
Comment has been collapsed.
That's great Andrew. I was late to GOG connect and I could have added more games. Sincerely Thank GOG for that function without having to buy double the copies. Which was the idea behind GOG Connect. No more paying Doubles!
Cheerios. Cruse~
Comment has been collapsed.
so in the end, we will pay the same (because $60 games WON'T drop in price, even if fees are 10% instead of valve's usual 30%)
I would have to agree with this, but I'd like to think there would be indie developers that would sell their game for $12 instead of $15 or $16 instead of $20. They could have the same take per game and potentially sell more games because of the lower price. Wishful thinking maybe, but perhaps not all developers are out to maximize profits.
Comment has been collapsed.
Not to mention that the 30% fee (if it is indeed 30, I didn't make any research) doesn't translate to a better customer support. In fact, there's basically zero customer support, no forum moderation and the only thing they does is updating the client every x months with bugs that often stays there for years without being fixed (only recently the youtube video problem got apparently fixed, after years of being there, making any community video basically useless).
Oh but we got cards, hats and trash games.
On the other hand, I can't see any better alternative. I'd choose gog if it wasn't for their prices, and the overabundance of terribly old games (I was a kid when they were released and never got to play them, but I'm actually happy I never wasted my time on 99.9% of them). So what I do is to buy steam games in other stores, so they don't get they cut, until they fix their behavior (I don't have any hopes though).
Comment has been collapsed.
Can't agree more!
Bethesda launcher is an example!
They made the launcher for us; no refunds, 60$, no reviews :)
It is simple, make a launcher that has the same features and all my games in it but better and I will maybe go to it :)).
Comment has been collapsed.
Also worth mentioning is their mobile app, which in addition to acting as a FOB for 2-step-authentication. also allows installing bought games remotely on your main PC.
And the excellent SteamLink.
Comment has been collapsed.
Which is so excellent, they stopped making them and they threw out the remaining stock with extreme sales.
Comment has been collapsed.
I know you're being sarcastic, but they really are!
IMO they're on the same level of innovation as Google's ChromeCast.
Valve originally planned to have several tiers of HW, with SteamLink being the base tier and 3-rd party manufacturers creating the other tiers:
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steam_machines
But that did not succeed, so they're not going to continue investing in HW.
But their software is solid. They now have a Samsung TV app which supports 4K, and are working on Android/IOS apps.
The only way for you to stream 4K games today, is Nvidia Shield or SteamLink app.
So I still think that SteamLink (the app) is the future.
Comment has been collapsed.
Exactly. I'll be sticking with Steam. I have some games on GOG, but to be honest, only because I got them for free, or really cheap. I see no reason to move away from Steam where the majority of my games are. They have everything I want in one place.
As for low quality creators on Steam... we have the gift of free will and freedom of choice. We can choose not to buy those games and there are also wonderful things called filters in place to hide content that we don't wish to see.
Comment has been collapsed.
One more reason for moms to hide their credit cards, as if fortnite wasn't enough.
Comment has been collapsed.
Hmmm... Origin and Uplay gave free games too and never reached as high as steam... but could work... I wonder what would have happened if M$ used Minecraft launcher to sell other games and not push WindowsStore instead...
Comment has been collapsed.
Going against Steam is like fighting a windmill... GOG, Origin, Twitch(?), Discord(?) has free games too... it's mildly attracting. I doubt Epic will give away good games.
Unless they have extra cheap games, I'm not even gonna register. They discontinued Paragon and I'm not even a fan of Fortnite.
Comment has been collapsed.
Holy crap, very cool of them. I'll be honest, I don't know if I'll start using it, considering all the games on Steam, me using BLAEO and Steamgifts and caring about stats. But still, it's competition. My main hope is that Valve improves itself from this pressure, which would be a win/win for me.
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't expect it to be Epic :) but having more variety is not a bad thing.
Comment has been collapsed.
just created account xD
finally activated my Shadow Complex Remastered key from Humble Unreal Engine Bundle ;)
Comment has been collapsed.
fail just like EA and Ubi.
Care to explain why origin store fail? Or EA games=Origin store for u? Cause I don't like EA too, but Origin store is good :)
Steam store failed in past 2-3 years, and its getting worse and worse.
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't get that claim either. EA seems to be doing pretty well. And if they wouldn't, they'd have returned to Steam again a long time ago.
P.S.
I must praise the Origin customer support btw. Had to contact them about 2 weeks ago. I was called immediately and got a really qualified person, with helpful suggestions which resulted in a solution. It was leagues above anything Steam offers.
Comment has been collapsed.
Your Origin customer support experience seems more of an exception to me, from what I saw around. There are lots of people (on reddit, for example), telling stories of just how crazy bad their support is.
Comment has been collapsed.
Possible. But it is always far more common that you hear about bad experiences, than about great ones. So that hasn't to mean much. And I can only confirm from my experience that Steam isn't even close to Origin, in that regard.
Comment has been collapsed.
To be worse than Steam they would need to break into your house and steal your PC or something. :P
Comment has been collapsed.
So does Origin, Uplay, Btalle.net, Windows Store and Twitch breaks into your house and steak your PC? Because from my experience with those they're all worse than Steam.
Edit: Saw that you were talking about customer service only and not the clients. Don't have much experience there. But I've contacted Steam on two occasions and didn't have much trouble with them. But from the two times I had to contact Uplay support the first went nowhere. I had the 2 step verification activated but forgot to back that up so I lost access to my account, the customer service the first time I tried something were rude and very dismissal and I pretty much gave up hope of getting the account back, I did decide to give it another try several months after and that time they were helpful and was able to get my account back. But that first time was just bad.
Comment has been collapsed.
Never needed support for Battle.net or Twitch and not touching Origin, Uplay or Windows Store so wouldn't know. Steam support I tried once, it took several messages and long time before I managed to convince them that a neighbor living 10m away gifting me Portal 2 from a store bought 4-pack wasn't an evil trader in some other region when I couldn't activate it. After that I just decided it's not worth the hassle and will just suffer any losses quietly cursing them.
Comment has been collapsed.
The Origin client is a lot better than the Steam client. It is not moody, it does not have entire wiki worth or arbitrary error codes and support articles on them, it does not try to force installing the same dependency library seven hundred times when it is already present on a system, it can be navigated and does not have a ton of algorithms on the store that may or may not break at any given time. It is not loaded with several features nobody ever uses (like a streaming client).
The only good thing I can say about the Steam client that it functions better than the Bethesda Launcher and it is somewhat less obnoxious than UPlay.
Comment has been collapsed.
I've tried to force me buying DAI GOTY with 85% discount there, but remembered about their other DLC and shit, and moved along
Comment has been collapsed.
Time will tell.
I'm not gonna use a new platform, gonna wait if it lasts for 2-3 years and then maybe?
Comment has been collapsed.
:) Steam also decided to reduce their cuts for big games. But %12 is good for developers
Comment has been collapsed.
It will be a good platform for developers, but customers prefer to stick with Steam...
Comment has been collapsed.
Maybe, but there are alraedy lots of games are coming with exclusive client like battlefield need for speeds, blizzard games and now call of duty released to battle.net. What if ac series and cd projekt games are left steam too? So there is no client choice chance for end customers.
Comment has been collapsed.
blizzard is gone, ea is woke and broke, nfs are gone cuz forza ...
Comment has been collapsed.
Thats not the point, forza is also not released on steam like other popular games fortnite, overwatch, wow etc. Steam still have popular games like pubg cw go etc but as a gamer we need to use multiple clients.
Comment has been collapsed.
Between this, Discord, Kartridge, battlenet, gog, itch.io, uplay, origin, Windows Store, etc. it feels like the number of PC gaming platforms is becoming quite crowded.
Comment has been collapsed.
Well, more competition - better for consumers, gonna grab the free stuff for sure.🙄
Comment has been collapsed.
so nice. first set up a store, later release a client.
Comment has been collapsed.
They've already updated Unreal Game Launcher, looks very nice tbh.
Comment has been collapsed.
Funny how i read an article on Valve reducing their fees by 5-10% depending on how much money you make xD
Comment has been collapsed.
Lol, but steam is too big already so it doesnt really matter. No way im installing and registering for another client. If the game is not on steam, origin or uplay im not buying anymore xD
Comment has been collapsed.
That might be true, but then they would have to give everyone all the games they own on steam on the new platform, otherwise there would be no reason to switch. Or a worst case scenario would be that steam would just shut down and screw everyone.
Comment has been collapsed.
Valve needs competition, not having any has lead to steam turning into a s***show
Comment has been collapsed.
This is getting like everyone making their own version of "Netflix" ... People have only so much patience before you start to spread too thin
Comment has been collapsed.
We really need a hub to bring all these platforms into a single interface.
Comment has been collapsed.
It's a really good idea...we need a launcher for launchers
Comment has been collapsed.
"Import popular libraries
Link games from Steam, Origin, GOG, Battle.net and Uplay services, including games that are not installed! Windows Store (UWP) games are also supported."
Comment has been collapsed.
"Import popular libraries
Link games from Steam, Origin, GOG, Battle.net and Uplay services, including games that are not installed! Windows Store (UWP) games are also supported."
Comment has been collapsed.
This could be a big(!) problem for valve.
The Epic-Launcher is working good and a lot of people already use it because of fortnite.
With some strong publishers on side and some more exclusives this might be the end of steam in longterm...
And it's valves fault for standing still the last years and beeing greedy towards publishers.
The kids today don't think of Valve as a "cool company" and they don't have a deeper binding to steam.
But kids are "epic fans"...
Let's see what the next 2 years will bring. Fact is, valve need to change. Free money is going to end.
Comment has been collapsed.
Maybe they'll have to actually work on HL3 to have a platform exclusive to combat Fortnight on Epic. I would love to see GabeN have to cave in and get his crew to start making games again. Let's face it -- they've made some of the best games ever, and the fact that they're not doing so due to collecting checks as a service company being much more profitable is just soulless and boring. So much so that we have an entire community who has made collecting games on Steam a game in itself. 😁😉 😲🤓🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Comment has been collapsed.
Twitch has been doing the same for months, has a larger active daily user base than Steam ever had, and their store still does not seem like going anywhere.
Even though the market desperately needs to crush Valve's choking and detrimental monopoly.
Comment has been collapsed.
The market needs to offer a better alternative first. Twitch store ain't it to say the least.
Comment has been collapsed.
but nobody is istalling the twitchapp...
But epic-launcher... with fortnite...
Comment has been collapsed.
Yes, but the average demographic of Fortnite is aged what, 11? Hardly the people you can build a store on; pocket money does not go far with game purchases, only microtransactions.
Comment has been collapsed.
Not necessarily...they have parents bankrolling their Fortnight habit, and they're only about 4 years away from being able to start being real consumers. Even if it's allowance money, if they become loyal customers, then this blows up if Epic can hang in there. Just ask Apple. 😉😁
Comment has been collapsed.
Didn't Fortnite make 300 million $ a month? Not too shabby for one game. Though I could imagine that a large share of those was generated on iOS, a market which would be denied to Epic's own store. But Epic certainly would have a door opener that most other stores lack.
Comment has been collapsed.
I didn't even know they had a store to begin with.
Comment has been collapsed.
exactly. Also, a concern is if these companies drive valve to extinction, what happens to my $100s of games from them?
Edit: for some reason, when I first posted this, it told me "warning you already posted this message, so this time we blocked it" or some such. I wonder why?
Comment has been collapsed.
It says in the article. No store-wide drm, but publishers are free to use some if they insist. Or go drm-free.
Comment has been collapsed.
Competition is nice, but why not make one or two stores to rival Steam instead of all these mini stores spawning around the place...
Comment has been collapsed.
They need to start somewhere. No store is going to start out big enough to rival steam, they need to start small, and prove to developers that singing up with them is a good idea, in order to be able to grow. Having your game in multiple stores does incur additional costs, as you need to make sure that your game is up to date and functioning everywhere, and having a steam and a non-steam version does mean that they need to maintain several versions for the game (this is why you find that there might be version differences between the games on Steam and say GOG, and some developers chose to not prioritize the version that is on a smaller store. Some games on GOG are out of date compared to their steam counterparts).
Comment has been collapsed.
Not to start as big as Steam, but to at least start strong enough instead of waiting for later merges, for example, Amazon waited till Souq was popular enough in the Arabic peninsula and the UAE and then took over, but will stores like this or say, the Discord store ever be important enough for any bigger party to offer a process of merger/acquisition?
Comment has been collapsed.
The announcement
By far the most interesting part is the split they'll demand, though that topic is naturally more the concern of developers than gamers.
Seems the guy behind Steamspy had been working on this project for some years.
Edit:
So Epic has something nice to convince customers too: Free games!
Source: This interview.
Edit 2:
Another interview with some interesting insights. Namely how Epic calculates the costs.
Edit 3:
You can download the launcher here
Free games list:
Comment has been collapsed.