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Keeping your data safe. They don't. Their security is a sieve. When they have security flaws, they don't rush to fix them, they wait around but don't tell you that the flaw exists, sometimes for over 6 months. Until hundreds of thousands, or millions, of customers get their data stolen. They're pretty famous for their weak security, as this sort of thing happens every year.
Next, Epic isn't trying to put money in to lure gamers. Epic is spending money to try to put Steam out of business. Their "Epic Exclusives" aren't really exclusive, as many games have been able to sell on other platforms at the same time. The only common thread is that they're never allowed to sell on Steam. That's pretty scummy business practice.
Epic doesn't offer squat in terms of features, and does things like ban people for buying several games in a row. Frankly, their store is still in an alpha state, not even beta, but it's up and open to the public. Cloud saves for every game you buy, for example, can't be cheap when you've been in business for years like Steam.
While I'm not buying from Steam anymore due to how screwed up the library is, at least until they revert it (I hope...a tiny bit), Epic is the last place anyone should be buying games.
It all comes down to EXACTLY this.
Their business practice is atrocious. They get nothing - ever - from me. EVER.
Steam does just fine. It does what I want it to, and even if they aren't throwing money at companies they will still remain so far ahead of the competition it's not even in question.
Electronic Arts did the same thing with Origin, using their own games as to take a tax write off for promotional sales. Guess what, they're going to be selling games on Steam again. EA has a large library of their own games and couldn't succeed with Origin alone.
Another point of Epic is they shy away from having a diverse library. Several Indie titles were rejected as they don't want to be Epic exclusive. Epic doesn't seem anime friendly. Certain genres seem lacking on Epic, fighting games, arcade shooters, etc.
I don't care if people want to go to Epic, that's their choice. I don't like the fact they have no cart for buying multiple items, they won't sell many of the games I want, they don't invest any more than they have to with their store. They have no forums for games and I've had to seek help on Steam with a number of games and made friends with people in the pinball forums (Pinball Arcade/Pinball FX2/3)
I'm also curious how many people taking the free games have actually played them.
I can understand people wanting Steam to do the same Epic does. However we live in the real world this don't really work that way.
First, the expenses would be greatly bigger than Epic's (and Epic knows it. Seeking at a loss to drive away competition is a traffic as old as time itself) and the benefit from doing such promotions would be greatly diminished for Steam.
Why is it so bad letting the smaller companies have a crack at competing. Steam needs to be taken down a peg and we need to encourage less spending on steam alone. You should be happy EG is footing the bill to have such competition.
When is the last time Valve did ANYTHING for competition. They never have. Valve is about Valve. Valve is the Amazon of PC gaming and its nice someone else sees the smaller guys struggle to compete and want to help end the monopolistic ways PC gaming has had to endure for decades now. Even GoG is struggling b/c of the hold Valve has. Thankfully someone came along to fight the beast on as close to equal footing as one can get in this market.
I did not like exclusives and the idea of the console market coming to PC, but once I found out exclusive only meant not steam, I didnt care as much. Even bought my 1st epic game thanks to their awesome sale. $10 off. Nothing to purchase, just a nice coupon to get me to try their launcher. Glad i did, glad they have.
But hey, Valve gave us, Artifact, Dota mobile(Ignore what happened to diablo and lets do the same thing!), and now a VR half life. PC gaming's finest right there. Microtransactions galore + buy our VR hardware to play our new game (you all been waiting a decade+ for) greedy mentality. If that doesnt stand out as greedy and needed to be taken down a few notches I don't know what will convince folks! The worst parts of PC (and now mobile) gaming all perpetuated and GROWN by its biggest player!
That is complete BS, and is nowhere near true. For years before the Epic store we have started to see more and more console developers move to PC ports. It just makes financial sense for them to release to more potential buyers.
If Epic was actually paying them any significant amount of money to get them to come to PC then they would be doing Epic Exclusives. Instead they just pay them for timed exclusives, we know this for a fact as several titles were initially slated for simultaneous releases and switched at the last minute after Epic paid them off for a timed exclusive.
Epic hasn't done anything to improve PC gaming, in fact they are making it worse by bringing the whole concept of timed exclusives which traditionally was only a console thing to the PC market.
No bundles, keys are rarely sold outside Epic, no kart to buy multiple games.
Competition is making a store that tries to do better than other stores, not a cheap mediocre store the owners refuse to invest in improving, and provides less games than GOG.
Epic can only throw money around for exclusives and free games, that isn't good for gamers long term.
Competition means having many good stores to choose from, not a mediocre store trying to bribe itself into popularity.
issue is, Epic isn't about competition. What Epic is doing is anti-competitive, this is what exclusives are about.
Yes, Valve doesn't try to sink the competition and this is a good thing, unlike Epic. Also, GoG is struggling because of their DRM-free stance, not because of Steam.
Yes, Epic give free stuff and coupon to try to get new customers. It was explained numerous times why Valve couldn't top everything Epic does. There's no way in hell Valve could win a money race with Epic.
Well, Epic's main game, Fortnite, also use microtransactions so, what's your point? VR is a new technology and Valve wants to develop it. There's nothing wrong with that. VR would never be an amazing gaming support as it could be if nobody wants to invest in it.
Smaller companies can and do compete. GoG is one. They're doing fairly well for themselves, as I understand it, by being a company that has good service and drm-free games.
As for "When is the last time Valve did ANYTHING for competition" that's easy. Very recently, when they released the library downgrade. That pushed me to do my shopping on GoG, and I haven't spent a penny on Steam since. Many others have done the same.
Jokes aside, companies shouldn't do things for competition. They should try to present the best they can, and crush competition in a fair and straightforward manner, with quality product and reasonable prices. Steam has a lot of features that benefit the consumer, and until their recent downgrades, they were simply the best because of it. Forums for every single game, review sections on every store page, cloud saves for every game you have on here, a place for mods, and so on. They became the biggest by being the best. They did nothing to inhibit competitors, it's just that competition wasn't nearly as good. Epic isn't even attempting to compete, their store is terrible, no forums, no reviews, no cloud saves, etc. They're simply trying to pay people not to put in-demand games on Steam when they release, while letting them sell those games elsewhere if they have to, in an underhanded attempt to drive Steam out of business. That's ANTI-competition. If you favor competition in the market, you should be opposed to Epic.
Most of Steam's competition have been a combination of incompetent, scummy or incredibly greedy so being better than said competition wasn't that hard of a achievement really.
But as Valve have gone increasingly longer without producing quality products themselves to the point that talent started leaving the company, them trying to outdo themselves or even to just keep their good reputation becomes a problem nowadays.
I mean think back on the Hatred debacle. 1(?) person supposedly thought Hatred was too hot for Steam to carry so he banned the title from Steam and it took a massive outcry and a thread on the forums with hundreds of post IIRC easily passing the 1k page mark to change that.
In the end Gabe himself, the face of the company had to step in personally to reinstate it and apologize.
Now think back about atrocious string of decision recently.
"We will not taste police" - "Except what we THINK is illegal or trolling" Basically meaning they still have total non-transparent and opaque biased rules that threaten any title that can't be sold to a 12 year old in the states AND isn't from another company big enough to hurt having
a damaged relationship (OH HI GTA 5 torture scenes and Witcher 3 sex scenes).
Shovelware is flooding the store and its becoming harder for decent titles to find exposure.
Let's just deleted HUNDREDS OF GAMES.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-11-26-steam-removes-hundreds-of-games-after-publishers-abuse-steamworks
Even with the excuse used in the article I cannot believe they could purge literal hundreds of titles without some good ones also being unfairly targeted.
That was their lazy attempt on trying to reduce the power of Epic's argument of having a store comprised of only quality titles.
It could also go against their "not taste police" statement since Valve can say w/e the hell they want as justification.
And to think that a simple filter system was too hard of a alternative to deleting hundreds of games.
Then you also have the review "tweak" in which valve softly censored negative reviews. And I specify negative reviews because I have yet to see a example of a bunch positive reviews being censored.
They had a opportunity with the Assasin's Creed Notre Dame situation in which off-topic reviews were being spammed because Ubisoft decided to donate money for the reconstruction.
But of course those didn't meet a magical % number that only Valve knows about. Definitely didn't have to do with Ubisoft being one of the big publishers and censoring positive bomb reviews about charity is extremely bad PR.
And finally you have the rumors and supposed employee reviews on how the company is run inside floating on the internet. And spoiler warning nobody is actually running it, there is no direction or goal except more money .
A good video on the subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41XgkLKYuic
So the line in a previous Steam announcement that they, the Valve employes themselves argue a lot about how to run Steam in relation to a previous point (IIRC its the reviews one but I forgot) just heavily reinforces the idea that the captain is sleeping and has only given the vaguest of instruction: 1.MORE MONEY 2.DON'T SINK THE SHIP
In conclusion: Nobody is actually running Steam with a unified goal or vision, talent has repeatedly left the company. The ones left working are taking the safest of approaches or focusing on ideas that nobody asked for. And even when just focusing on Steam they make small mistakes that start adding up.
Oh and in case anybody forgot it's existence : Artifact. A whooping 91 player count 8 minutes ago on steamcharts. Just a little bit down from that 60k peak but only a little.
Oh, i have a Epic account ( its easy enough, just use your Google login) but only to grab the free game each week.
Its more out of a curiosity how many and what quality of games they will give away over time.
Dont plan to ever download/install the client, especially since all the free games that are even slightly interesting to me i long own on Steam.
But its still fascinating to see how much money EPIC throws around just to get a leg up on Steam.
EGS as a service is rather lacking: no support for reviews, forums, matchmaking, wishlists, cloud saves.... hell, they still don't have a shopping cart... which is probably the real reason for the $10 discount per game; could you imagine how painful going through the checkout process for each game one by one would be if you didn't feel a little like you were "gaming the system" for the discount. I wouldn't be surprised if they have to do it like that because they can't even track who has used the coupon!
Products at EGS can only be "better" by buying exclusivity on good games: the few Steam users that got Metro Exodus before it was pulled have Steam cloud, what have the EGS players gotten?
Pricing is arguably better at EGS for now, but you can bet they are taking heavy losses trying to build their user base this way, and it is not going to last forever.
...but then, Valve/Steam haters will never be happy. Valve uses the event to highlight newer or less known features, like group and voice chat that render third party programs like TeamSpeak unnecessary, and people complain about how they are being forced to socialize.