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If you really are that cancerous about my comment why doesn't your lazy ass look to see if I play Fortnite to make a comment like that?
Yeah that's how you bump a topic right? Smart.
If you're not on topic, please refrain from starting flame wars.
As far as being one sided, I see plenty enough people who love to jump on the popular hate train of Valve, siding with the underdog multi-billion dollar company Epic that doesn't care for their fleas, when they should analyze as consumers who caters the most reliably to them.
Epic has a few interesting games, most Steam users however can easily wait on those as they plow through their backlogs here, and then play in a year when they can more easily access support from not just a handful of devs stretched thin, but also from millions of other players who have experience, knowledge and quick simple answers delivered without effort or high bars of entry to other isolated special clubs of communities that demand more investment into participating with the community, when most of the silent majority just want to play video games and not stress over making it a big deal.
It's also a bit unfair to imply that I didn't see benefits to Epic, they're listed right there in the topic (less saturation, dev cut, good games available there), alongside the longer list Steam has that most people ignore as they focus on the extreme exotic cases that make the news, while ignoring the bigger picture of what goes on daily, the humdrum banality of hundreds of millions of players just taking for granted all the positive things they get to do and benefit from while on Steam to make their gaming experience more smooth and accessible.
Kind of like you are benefiting right now.
I must agree. You arrived at the same consensus most of the 'savvy consumers' have, Steam is where it is for a few great reasons, they deserve the spot they have worked for, refining their system for years.
For the Epic Game Store to just undercut steam instead of making a worth while 'platform' , it makes them come off as desperate and scummy, they think because they got lucky with a trend chaser, they deserve a part of steam's pie.
There is a right way and wrong way to handle competition, under cutting competition and offering a garbage service in return, dividing the community, that is what Epic will be remembered for.
I won't be getting any product on the Epic Greed Store, even if it releases on steam aswell, its the principle of the matter.
Good Topic for Discussion!
Even putting aside all the community hub features, all the information pooling and resources available on Steam I mentioned above, on top of the Storefront; let's for a moment compare only the store page of a game on Steam versus on the EGS:
Here's Vampyr on Steam
And here's Vampyr on the EGS[www.epicgames.com]
I can't help but feel underwhelmed by how barebones even just the storefront page is on EGS compared to Steam.
Steam shows not only that tiny blurb of text that the EGS has, along side more user friendly screenshots that don't hog the entire page (feels almost like they try to paper over the lack of info with the pictures), along with the system specs, but Steam breaks down more information on what the game offers (About this game - Be the vampire, feed to survive etc), it has official reviews linked, it has the latest news post, so that you can see when it was last updated, user defined tags to help narrow down a bit what kind of RPG we are talking about, more clear info on available translations, customer friendly indication about third-party EULA, sections for controller compatibility and mp/sp/coop methods, metacritic score, better links to social media and more like youtube/twitch...
All clearly signposted for the consumers benefit.
On top of user reviews, links to forums and related news sections and recommendations to related titles and other stuff we've come to take for granted in our everyday shopping evaluations.
Pick Vampyr, Outer Worlds, Subnautica, Transistor, any title on the EGS and Steam, compare their storepages side by side, and tell me that you find the EGS even just as a storefront to provide you with more information that is useful to you as a player in evaluating your potential purchase.
I doubt you can do it with a straight face, and that's not even mentioning all the other robust, reliable features and infrastructure Steam has built into it that we rely upon daily on our gaming experience.
Again, I'll repeat, competition is good, but Epic is lazy, and they are the ones who need to catch up if they want to actually be an equal challenger, and not some petty anklebiter doing slimy powerplays that hurt not Steam, but the true player friendly storefront, GOG.
Stuff like this makes me question why Epic even deserves the 12% cut they take, with such a barebones storefront. The only thing I can think of that might mildly justify them taking money from developers is the marketing they seem to do, as with the EGS I've seen an increase in EGS specific ads around the web for games on there exclusively.
Let me explain, because technically that's a pro-developer component. But if we can agree that:
-- a healthy ecosystem that fosters independent development is good for the consumer
-- the presence of quality control further bolsters that ecosystem
-- a bunch of great independent games competing for your money is going to make those indies even better, and
-- the revenue split in favor of indies could inspire some of these big-named developers working for AAA studios to strike out on their own
then IMO, that puts that single factor above everything you've mentioned except user reviews, which are purely pro-consumer and I would place it nearly at parity with fostering independent development. Just below that: the store page detail is the next most important to me for much of the same reason. Everything else is nice and should be implemented, but those are the only ones that I consider absolutely necessary.
Now that having been said: you're the most consistent viewer on my channel so you know how much I love the indies and know how heavily biased I am. There's no way my take is going to be universal, because the fact is--the PC gaming audience that care about this kind of thing are inherently an enthusiast community. As such, most of us have spent as high a dollar as possible for horsepower, so it's going to take more than Borderlands 3 to put a dent in Steam's de facto monopoly, where even if they *have* sort of monopolized the PC marketplace, they do offer so many pro-consumer features that Epic doesn't presently have a prayer (especially after the article about the insane crunch periods Fortnite's developers endure). Likewise, the AAA titles that have been giving them temporary-to-permanent exclusivity won't continue to do so long-term because Steam has so much value in their storefront that nobody is going to stop supporting steam.
What I'd like to see is for Epic to *become* a worthy place to spend money long-term without forsaking my Steam library, but I'm also not bothered with having multiple clients. What irritates me is that Uplay bullshit where, if you buy their game on steam, you have to launch both Steam *and* Uplay in order to run them. With regards to Steam, I think all they'd have to do is quality control a *little bit* and give independent developers a better slice of the sale than the 30 or so percent they give right now.
It's an interesting time for us as part of the PC market, to say the least.
If you're planning on making a video on Epic, I hope you'll look into the problematic history of the CEO Tim Sweeney's statements and attitude, taken together with the shady tactics and relationships with other corporations, and their own treatment of their developers.
Do I want to see indie developers to be treated more fairly and better?
Yes.
But I want it to be someone else than Epic, because Epic seems even less sincere than Valve; they are sloppy, lazy, and none of their current actions make me confident that in the future the EGS would remain some safe haven for indie developers, quite the contrary, I suspect things will not improve with time, as they haven't even bothered to learn from Valves mistakes but are re-treading them, AND actively flaunting in the media that they want to do thing more poorly for gamers, acting all high and mighty with reactionary claims.
Most consumers as you've seen do not trust Epic to be the arbitrator on what constitutes quality and what constitutes trash, I believe Valve actually has a reasonable point when they feel a need to step back and see what players want, and not dictate what is or isn't allowed -- Within reason, and that's where the messy difficulties arise as you have to evaluate on a case-by-case basis, the difficulty of that with millions of developers releasing hundreds of games daily, and the lack of good enough automation on that process lacking the man power to sift through everything with a mindful eye.
There are games I hope could get on GOG, indie games I've seen topics about where the developers actively want to get there, but suffer some roadblocks (usually with time they eventually do get there though).
This already happens on Steam, I don't see this being a special case for Epic. And remember, Epic isn't competing against other stores with providing a better package of a game there versus on other stores, cheaper than on say GMG, GOG, or Steam, but they are actively removing that price competition from other Stores by their exclusivity; before we had Steam sales versus GOG sales versus GMG sales versus... Now Epic dictates that for players, that isn't the fair competition most want out of capitalism, that's just brute force, not good for players.
------------
A small anecdote from a few months back.
I reinstalled an old game (Aliens vs Predator 2010) that I last played in like 2014 or something, and I had a crash within the first minutes, something I never had before.
So I went to PCGamingWiki, didn't find an answer.
But The Guide section here had an answer, someone had the same issue a year or so ago, made a guide on how they fixed it (Nvidia card, needed a profile change in nvidia inspector), and that solved my problem, smooth sailing for an extended playsession after that.
Steam provided that platform for players pooling their resources and knowledge, and it wasn't collated somewhere else that would have been easy to find and search through.
Just one concrete salient example among millions others have daily that again solidifies the core point many have said about the many features Steam has that is constantly ignored by most people defending Epic and putting down Steam.
And things in Early Access now on Steam, have a ready easy-to-access forum where players can troubleshoot and provide feedback, no need for extra steps, after buying the game the forum is one click away in your library.
Steam has convenience, buy it here, automatically have an account with which to ask questions in the same place.
But even more importantly, what about games where devs understandably have to move on?
Not just old classics in your library where studios might be long forgotten, but 2+ years later when devs have to stop providing active support and move to other projects to provide a salary.
Then they can't be relied upon to support you actively in some discord daily.
Then having an easy integrated forum allows players to continue with their unofficial support, on how to keep a game running smoothly after years of changing hardware and software, or just picking up where devs couldn't at the time address issues efficiently.
The community gets to live on, even when devs have to move on.
It's a hassle to scour separate forums for answers and info with poor information flow between the places, that might not communicate with each other, or been dead for a while, not to mention relevant information being more easily buried while here a quick search, casual look at a few recent reviews or clicking over to the guide section could instantly provide an answer.
Outside of Steam separate forums for games necessarily become niche and walled off, their own bubbles, but within steam they are more easily accessible, public and active with anyone who owns it or is curious about a title they find here.
Sure, before steam we had places that could provide active unofficial support for older titles, but think of how many have shut down after years of activity; so many fixes, archived messages and pooled resources that have been long lost.
I'm still sour that fileplanet and a few other places have disappeared, with all the patches, fixes, mods, community improvements, now lost in time.
This could happen to Steam eventually, and I doubt Epic would be there to pick up the slack and archive it all.
But for now, I can still browse many years worth of old guides and forums for games to find my relevant information to getting a game running smoothly.
https://i.imgur.com/SynNfar.jpg
I keep repeating this also because I recently saw news that the Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said he'd stop doing exclusives if Steam would lower their cut to the 12% (Something I doubt he'd do, but we'll go with that for now), but maybe all of this stuff people constantly avoid talking about, all of this infrastructure and service Steam provides to players daily that we take for granted, maybe that stuff has costs we are neglecting in this conversation?
Ultimately I don't know, but it's worth consideration - And I almost think that Epic doesn't even deserve that 12% given the lack of effort they put into their Store and service.
You might gather from my later comments in this thread and the tone in this one that, though I initially went soft on Epic, nowadays I actually DON'T want to see Epic become a worthy challenger, that is not in its current business model and practices, not until I see a change in philosophy and leadership there. Now, I dread Epic worming its way into the market and turning it for the worse, like all other negative practices from Live Services, Microtransactions, to potential future Streaming of games.
For now, I'm willing to bend over backwards and say Epic has a better cut for devs and a good(ish) nose for quality games to add to their store with less saturation, if people are willing to agree that Steam is just vastly superior in not just service and community features and unofficial support infrastructure, but even in the Store functions itself.
What I've *really* been mulling over from this exchange is actually a post you made before I ever came here: Jim Sterling *has* kind of exacerbated the over-saturation problem, paradoxically.
Your point about Steam potentially needing the extra cut is interesting and one I haven't considered before. I don't think I agree with it on its face, but I need to mull it over a bit.
But basically, yeah: fuck Epic. Although I'd be lying if I said that I probably won't grab Outer Worlds on day 1 there, which I think sort-of bolsters your point. The option is basically to be strong-armed or to wait it out.
That's a lot to think about tbh.
Initially my knee-jerk reaction to learning of Discord getting into the game distribution business back in december was negative, because of a lot of negative experiences I've had with the clunky, unreliable voice chat and connection issues I had whenever I tried to talk with some friends (these days I just use Steam chat and voice :'D), but if I'm being intellectually honest with all the points I've made here and elsewhere, then I have to admit that Discord is the one option that comes closest to providing all the features Steam does, above Epic, perhaps GOG even.
Yeah it's a point I only slowly came to grips with after years of just laughing and crying along with Jim and others looking at the latest trash to arrive on Steam for easy fodder for a weekly video.
(Link for reference to people who have the patience to read my other long rambling comments.)
I still appreciate all the injustice and problems Jim Sterling highlights in his videos, but he doesn't quite realize how much of a victim he is of his own psychology.
If you take this overall picture of a massive pool of games flowing by daily across millions of viewers, and most by definition will be average and fade to the background as forgettable, you combine the nature of our psychology with the availability heuristic and how the rare things stick out by virtue of being exotic from the normal majority, and then we remember those, then you add on top of that the nature of sensationalism and attention seeking from trolls, and then just our own weaknesses of morbid curiosity driving us to seek out the bad examples to gawk at, and then even on top of that just the algorithm that provides more of the same of what you actively seek out to look and play, and you get out of this recipe the distorted impression that the world, or Steam, is filled with just more and more garbage and horrific things.
Seeking out and playing bad stuff, means algorithms will provide more of that, and without stepping back to view how our behaviour, activities change our environment when we're dealing with algorithms, means we fall prey to coming to the - false - conclusion that this gradually accumulating changing picture reflects Steam as a whole, when in reality we end up pigeonholing ourselves into the worst of what is to offer.
This kind of reporting that Jim and others have done changes our view of the world for the worse, we neglect the normal mundane in front of us, which overall is not so bad, just, by definition, average.
It's a highly tentative point I cautiously raise because I'm genuinely curious about the underlying structure of this entire massive edifice, what keeps it running so smoothly that it does, what don't we see daily going on in the background.
I'm no expert and can't defend any concrete number like the current 30% cut Valve takes, but something makes me suspect that there's a higher price to this all than we realize.
I suspect most of our intuitions break down on the scales all of this is operating on.
Yeah, F**** Epic, they're a AAA company trying to don sheep's clothing, claiming that they're helping indies when they're signing deals with publishers, 2k, Deep Silver and others for those exclusivity deals, the publishers will be getting the money, not the devs, who Epic clearly couldn't care less about given their own treatment of their workers.
There are really interesting games there, Outer Worlds, Hades, Maneater, Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, Industries of Titan, all games I've been interested in, but they're exactly the kinds of games that would have benefited the most of a service like steam (or Discord even) has, as they will most likely be slightly janky, or obtuse in mechanics, or have small devteams who need all the unofficial community support in feedback and troubleshooting they can get.
EDIT
I checked out Discord again to see what they've been up to, and sadly they've switched from a store front as far as I can see to a subscription service, which is an instant letdown.
Nathan's recommendations have lead me to look into the situation further and... suffice it to say, my stance has switched.
This kind of "end justifies the means" attitude is what is making them do questionable things (like all utopian visions that are ultimately dystopian in nature).
My comment from you video:
Remember when Epic just used the work the PUBG devs did with the Unreal Engine for their own benefit? Didn't the PUBG devs and publisher make a huge deal out of it, even sue on another thing in the end?
At the time I just thought the PUBG devs where out of line, as I didn't think much of Epic or PUBG back then and they were the ones lashing out unprofessionally in public. But now, with all the stuff surrounding Epic, I'm starting to think that maybe they had a point.
Killing off Unreal Tournament and another of their game (was it Paragon?), putting all of those devs to slave over their cash cow Fortnite, and overworking your devs to the their breaking point, is all again a means to an end, an end I don't want to see happen if the person is willing to sacrifice being good, fair, ethical, in service to that end, as it has historically meant you won't achieve that end, and the end result will just be as unfair, slimy, broken and insecure as the means you used to obtain it.
This is more speculative on my part BTW, but it certainly got me worried.
-------
I've seen a comment on your video say that Valve handles additional fees/taxes for consumers, didn't even think about the fact that Valve just straight up pays behind the scenes most of consumers regional pricing taxes of some kind, not something I've researched, but that's quite pro consumer if that's the case.
That's the context of the Tim Sweeney comment about 12% cut I now believe, he said something like if their store handled those additional transactions on top of the games price for the consumers benefit, then they couldn't sustain the 12% cut they take.
But please someone who knows more about this aspect and has dealt with it, correct me and provide more info!
https://youtu.be/wrvr02SiHY4
Watching that softened my disposition towards Valve a ton. They do a lot of pro-dev things that I don't think anyone really highlights. I'm probably gonna change that soon, tbh.