The creators of Humble Bundle are suing Valve for monopolistic behavior in a class action lawsuit

[Semper]

12 hours ago, JZStudios said:

Trying to find sales figures of Metro Exodus, which was a big shit show a lot of people claimed they'd never buy or just pirate.

According to THQ Nordic's CEO, the vast majority of sales were from consoles.

They claim in the first month on EGS it got 2.5 times more sales than Last Light, the previous game on Steam's launch.

Also sold more than 200,000 copies on Steam in less than a week when the exclusivity deal ended.

 

Not really anything more specific at a cursory glance, but it seems like it did alright after the transition to Steam. I dunno man. Seems like if people want it on Steam, they'll get it on Steam. It's still first week sales.

 

So the basic answer is no, you didn't boycott them for exclusivity. You don't care that EA halted a major portion of automotive racing history in games for 20 years, but EGS paying for a year long deal is some straight up bullshit. It's kind of like go to jail for stealing a candy bar, watching someone walk out with a stolen TV.

 

Okay? And?

 

But would you use any if you could just buy the game on Steam and bypass Origin and Connect entirely? The only reason I'd buy a game on either is because otherwise it would take Steam to go through Origin to launch something rather than just using Origin in the first place. There's also no need for either of those platforms to attempt to compete or do anything special when they specifically and solely sell their games and that's it.

Just saying innovation doesn't mean anything. Realistically, weekly free game giveaways and exclusivity deals are innovative in this market.

Man, digital stores suck, they need some innovation so I can use them better. What the fuck does that mean?

Valve forced their bullshit on people and everyone fucking hated it. It wasn't innovative, it was a more intrusive form of DRM. I'm pretty sure you people all have rose tinted glasses.

That still skirts around the question and your answer is a blanket innovation. It's like when you see the group of people trying to figure out how to draw customers to their new/failing business and they're all sitting around the table brainstorming and making suggestions, and the one guy speaks up;

"Guys, I've got it!"

"What?"

"A really big idea, something innovative!"

"Okay, what is it?"

"That's it, we need a really big innovative idea!"

"..."

"...Shut the fuck up Jerry!"

You're not always able to directly relate sales of two games to each other. There's a dozen or more reasons why 'x' title might do really well, while 'y' title doesn't.

This is one of those times. Metro 2033 and Last Light were both very under-valued games. Relative to how they could have sold, given the potential within them, they didn't sell particularly well. They're absolutely considered a success by THQ, and later Deep Silver. I worked at a Gamestop when 2033 was released. launch day sales basically didn't exist, and for months after, when people would ask for recommendations on a good game to pick up, I'd point them in the direction of 2033. Many had no clue what it was. Some of my regulars were surprised how well the liked it for a game they had never heard of.
Last light had a larger launch with more advertising going on. It sold better than 2033, and was once again well received.
Exodus launched to much fanfare, in no small part thanks to EGS's controversy coverage. It was realtively well received by those who viewed the game from an objective standpoint. It played much less like a survival horror shooter, as it's predecessors, and much more like a semi-open world Fallout, and was met with criticism from the fans of the original style, myself included. To this day, it still has issues, both trivial, and substantial that haven't been fixed.

I've at no point said that someone couldn't purchase it on steam. A few of my friends wanted to pick it up on launch, I encouraged them to wait for the exclusivity deal to end.
I've also not once claimed that the exclusivity deal wasn't time limited. one hour, one day, one year, I still do not agree with it equally across the board.

I've purchased EGS exclusive titles when they launched on steam, one of them happens to be Exodus. The other is Satisfactory. I strongly considered The Outer Worlds, but ultimately passed based upon some recommendations from friends who have similar tastes to me.

"not boycotting them for exclusivity" is entirely a moot point on me. I wasn't going to purchase a Need for Speed game regardless of who was or was not in it, I had hoped that part of my explanation was clear. Racing games are not my forte. It's been more that two decades since I last purchased a Need for Speed game. Since that last title, I've got maybe 10 hours of gameplay collectively in racing games, and i'd say 95%+ of that was in Midnight Club III, back in ~2005-2006. The choice for me to boycott NfS because of exclusivity was never present.

I have opted to purchase titles from other platforms that were also available on steam, yes. Some requiring an additional launcher DRM, some not. I can't make it any more clear that I encourage competition. Exclusivity is not competition. I'd be perfectly fine with EGS competing for market share were they actually trying to compete instead of claiming monopoly, whilst being a monopoly.

I'm not a developer. I'm not being paid to be a developer. I'm not trying to build a game storefront to compete with steam. I'm a consumer of these products. I can see how Steam is flawed. I can see how GOG is flawed, I can see how Uplay is flawed. I can see how EGS is flawed. Because I can identify a flaw doesn't mean that I need to have a solution to fix it. Just because I claim that EGS is a shell of a launcher that can not currently compete with Steam, does not mean that I need to have a solution.
There's some very clear steps that they can take, steps that are sitting idle in their "to-do" list to improve EGS.
You can identify problems without knowing how to fix them. I've had jobs in the past entirely dedicated to doing just that, in fact. You can know that something needs to change, but not know how to go about it.
You can voice your disapproval of something without having a different solution prepared

EGS has a problem: They can not compete with Steam, more than two years after it's launch, it lacks what many would consider to be basic functionality.
EGS Has a solution: Exclusivity.

I have a problem: I do not agree with this.
I have a solution. Do not support EGS.

I've never said that you can't support or believe in what EGS is doing. I've never said that you're not allowed to purchase games from EGS. I've never said that you must agree with me.

With all that said, it's very clear that this discussion is going nowhere. You've not presented me with anything that would make me reconsider my stance. I've not presented you with anything that would make you reconsider your stance. Let's leave it at that - we disagree on the matter, stop wasting each other's time.

[Stahlmann]

9 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

When you're a dominate force in a market, and tell others how to sell a product you pretty much are a monopoly.

Thing is, they don't tell others how to sell a product. Every one of their competitors is free to charge whatever they want. They simply have the largest userbase because they are the most attractive option in terms of features, community, etc. My point is, it's not their fault that their competitors lack competence to get an attractive alternative to Steam running. 

[Kaboom1]

I don't care much for how large valve's cut is, it's their decision.
That said,
Some competition would be healthy.
Most people have been institutionalised to use steam for everything relating to games. (browsing new game releases, buying games, browsing and installing mods, joining your friends in game, achievement tracking, gaming social network (ok this one not that much)).
Even if a dev is selling on both standalone and on steam, most people will just buy through steam (even if the standalone version has no DRM).

[MageTank]

2 hours ago, valdyrgramr said:

Valves had nearly 2 decades, but when it comes to Steam keys, according to the complaint,  they're telling competitors what they can charge and that it can't be more competitve vs Steam's prices.  Say HB or Tecmo Koei wanted to put a Nioh 2 steam key on sale at 75% off on HB, but on Steam they only want to sell it for 50% off.   Valve is saying no to that, and that can be interpreted as abusing your monopoly.   I wouldn't exactly call the steam community attractive as much as I would toxic, tbh.   It's mostly whining, scams, cheaters galore, trolling, and thread locking.   Honestly, I don't understand the excessive hype over steam when it's laggy, buggy, highly unorganized, cluttered with pointless troll tags, generic, etc.  The only thing it has going for it, imo, is more games due to the age of the platform.

I am not entirely sure I understand how steam keys are generated (Don't know if the publisher generates them, or if they request that Steam generate the keys on their behalf) but I will say that it's silly to expect Steam to host download servers for these titles and host pages for the products (and deal with coding services/achievements for said product) and allow the publisher to completely circumvent their storefront by selling it cheaper elsewhere, keeping all of the shares of the sale, yet expect Steam to eat the cost of the aforementioned hosting services.

 

If a developer wants to host their own download link and provide a copy of their game outside of Steam's infrastructure, I don't see anything in Steam's terms preventing them from doing so, even if they want to charge more or less for the product. Gamers likely wouldn't care all that much as they can simply link the executable to their library anyways if they wanted to. Perhaps I am being daft here, but I don't really see the abuse yet, and this is again coming from someone that prefers to buy from GOG over Steam at every opportunity.

[Thaldor]

57 minutes ago, MageTank said:

I am not entirely sure I understand how steam keys are generated (Don't know if the publisher generates them, or if they request that Steam generate the keys on their behalf) but I will say that it's silly to expect Steam to host download servers for these titles and host pages for the products (and deal with coding services/achievements for said product) and allow the publisher to completely circumvent their storefront by selling it cheaper elsewhere, keeping all of the shares of the sale, yet expect Steam to eat the cost of the aforementioned hosting services.

 

If a developer wants to host their own download link and provide a copy of their game outside of Steam's infrastructure, I don't see anything in Steam's terms preventing them from doing so, even if they want to charge more or less for the product. Gamers likely wouldn't care all that much as they can simply link the executable to their library anyways if they wanted to. Perhaps I am being daft here, but I don't really see the abuse yet, and this is again coming from someone that prefers to buy from GOG over Steam at every opportunity.

You can think them as a coupons to get oranges from a certain store. The store does generate their own coupons but the farmer can use the stores system to generate coupons for their use in certain numbers reflecting how well the oranges sell in the store and the store is fine eating the costs to deliver those oranges the farmer sells with their coupons because the sales the store does.

 

What Wolfire Games is probably after is to get to the situation where they can make the store sell their oranges but with either higher price or with only coupons that the store cannot generate to sell by themselves but the only one selling the coupons would be the Wolfire Games through HB or any other storefront. As in they want to sell their games with any prices they want anywhere they want but they want the Steam as the deliverer but without giving them the cut.

 

And again, Valve is 100% fine by developers selling their oranges where-ever they want with prices what-ever they want as long as they don't use Steam to deliver those oranges. As in Valve doesn't care if your game is sold 50% or even 90% cheaper on GoG or EGS because they handle the delivery part by themselves, you might not see your game featured on the front page but what did you ask for? What Valve isn't fine with is that developers selling the Steam keys somewhere with lower prices than on Steam because Valve needs to handle the delivery of those copies besicly without compensation for the costs. Special cases do apply, Valve has been completely fine delivering Humble Bundle, Humble Monthly/Choice and other more charity based copies and offering unlimited keys for those... And that is probably something that has changed and is a problem for Humble (Wolfire Games founders did also found the Humble but they haven't been in the lead of Humble for couple years now so no idea how much this is about Humble and how much just about Wolfire Games) since they did heavily change their systems quite recently to be more money for them and less for everyone else, especially the charities (earlier you could choose how much money you give to the devs, the charity and the Humble almost freely, now it seems to be locked to ~50% to devs, 5% to charity and ~45% to Humble) and Valve probably isn't very happy that their charity has now been turned into a business of making money first and doing charity last.

[MageTank]

26 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

You can think them as a coupons to get oranges from a certain store. The store does generate their own coupons but the farmer can use the stores system to generate coupons for their use in certain numbers reflecting how well the oranges sell in the store and the store is fine eating the costs to deliver those oranges the farmer sells with their coupons because the sales the store does.

 

What Wolfire Games is probably after is to get to the situation where they can make the store sell their oranges but with either higher price or with only coupons that the store cannot generate to sell by themselves but the only one selling the coupons would be the Wolfire Games through HB or any other storefront. As in they want to sell their games with any prices they want anywhere they want but they want the Steam as the deliverer but without giving them the cut.

 

And again, Valve is 100% fine by developers selling their oranges where-ever they want with prices what-ever they want as long as they don't use Steam to deliver those oranges. As in Valve doesn't care if your game is sold 50% or even 90% cheaper on GoG or EGS because they handle the delivery part by themselves, you might not see your game featured on the front page but what did you ask for? What Valve isn't fine with is that developers selling the Steam keys somewhere with lower prices than on Steam because Valve needs to handle the delivery of those copies besicly without compensation for the costs. Special cases do apply, Valve has been completely fine delivering Humble Bundle, Humble Monthly/Choice and other more charity based copies and offering unlimited keys for those... And that is probably something that has changed and is a problem for Humble (Wolfire Games founders did also found the Humble but they haven't been in the lead of Humble for couple years now so no idea how much this is about Humble and how much just about Wolfire Games) since they did heavily change their systems quite recently to be more money for them and less for everyone else, especially the charities (earlier you could choose how much money you give to the devs, the charity and the Humble almost freely, now it seems to be locked to ~50% to devs, 5% to charity and ~45% to Humble) and Valve probably isn't very happy that their charity has now been turned into a business of making money first and doing charity last.

This might be the greatest explanation I have ever received on something I wasn't certain about. Thank you kindly. It will be interesting to see how this turns out, because it sounds like they want Steam to be deemed as a virtual marketplace and that they (HB) be considered a third party retailer on said marketplace, kind of like how Newegg and Amazon allow other retailers to sell on their digital storefronts and dictate their own pricing, even if it competes with the pricing offered by Amazon/Newegg.

 

I think what makes Steam's situation slightly different is that they are also responsible for the hosting of the games (download servers & storage), delivery of updates/patches and integration into their infrastructure (community tracking/achievement system/review system/workshop, etc) that likely has a cost associated that they'll argue is funded by their cut of the games sold on their storefront and willingly allowing others to undercut their store despite receiving all of the perks & benefits of selling on their store will be financially damaging. I am not a lawyer though, so who knows if that would actually hold up in court.

 

Still, this is worth keeping an eye on as it will set a pretty significant precedence in the gaming industry if people can piggyback on Steam's existing infrastructure akin to that of smaller ISP's in the telecommunications industry.

[JZStudios]

22 hours ago, MageTank said:

Now if Epic had pushed the envelope and instead spent their funding towards things gamers have been asking for, they'd probably see far more success. Things such as:

• Better cross-platform compatibility & play (being able to game with ones friends across multiple platforms or playing ones purchased titles on their consoles as well as PC)
• Integrated voice chat/social features (Doesn't need to be on-par with Discord, but this would go a long way, especially if the aforementioned cross-platform support were implemented across their title selection)
• Less intrusive DRM & offline play support (Gamers not liking DRM isn't new and storefronts like GOG have profited quite well with this understanding in mind)
• Support & Incentivize modding & customization
  • This applies to both in-game modding & hosting/highlighting community submitted work but also allowing the client itself to be moddable and customizable with plugins and extensions. Being able to integrate Discord, Twitch or other applications into the client would be a huge deal for gamers and they'd definitely enjoy such a feature

At least you're making some suggestions.

1. They have that already. It depends on the game and the devs, specifically whether or not it's P2P connection, private servers, or Steam servers. Obviously Steam isn't keen on sharing it's servers, but I played Divinity 2 from GOG with some guys on Steam because it's P2P. Similarly Dauntless (and Fortnite I guess) though both being EGS exclusive on PC have cross-play between all of their platforms.
2. Steam doesn't even have that, not even after it's big overhaul. EGS might have the basics, but I don't have any EGS friends to try it with. I'm still of the mindset of if everyone uses Discord anyway just having basic voice and chat features is good enough.
3. They also already do this. Just from the free games I've gotten a fair number of them are DRM free. Even Batman Arkham Knight which famously had major issues with Denuvo is DRM free on EGS where it's not on Steam. Before I switched OS I had Galaxy set to launch the .exe of EGS games directly so it would bypass starting the store.
4. They say they just released the groundwork for mod support and something akin to Steam's Workshop.

 

22 hours ago, MageTank said:

My first time using EGS, I created an account to try out a Monster Hunter style game called Dauntless (which was admittedly a very fun game), used a very secure password with an email I only use specifically for my gaming endeavors and within a week I started receiving login requests for EGS from several different IP locations across the world. I am not entirely sure if 2FA was supported on EGS back then (if it was, I couldn't find it in my security settings) but I changed my password and reached out to support to see if I could either change the email associated with my account or configure it in a way to prevent all logins unless they were from my geographical location or supported device. I was told no on both of those questions. Shortly after that, I learned someone actually managed to log into my EGS account after reaching out to support (received a support ticket I didn't request). To this day, I have no idea how they convinced them to let them in or to change my password given that I had set up the security questions and they were not easy to answer, but they refused to disclose the conversation they had with whomever logged into my account. Instead, they simply did a forced password reset for me and told me to take better care of my account information going forward. That smug response from their awful support, on top of them being at fault for willingly letting someone into my account with nothing more than my email address is what killed EGS as an option for me.

I haven't had that issue. Seems very odd. Dunno about 2FA... I think it does now and I think I just set it to the same email the account is on.

Kind of wish EA would've let me do that when my old email address got deleted and I lost my account despite being able to prove I was me. Bunch of buttholes.

 

[JZStudios]

22 hours ago, KaitouX said:

People didn't like it, but the alternative was going the way of ridiculous DRMs that limited number of installations, always on, DRMs that installed in the system like drivers and a bunch of others, so not sure where you got "more intrusive form of DRM" it was in no way more intrusive than the alternatives that were getting popular at that time. As much as I don't like DRMs, publishers seem to consider it a requirement(see the amount of AAA titles on GOG as example), but at least I can crack the Steam DRM in a minute, so it's the same as if it doesn't exist, while things like Denuvo and similar have the possibility to lock me out of the game without having any way to reasonably crack it. So that is about as much DRM as I'm willing to deal with.

That's an amazingly bad argument.

There were a few services that ran for multiple games. And you can't bitch about having to install those while ignoring the fact that you also had to install Steam and it required an internet connection. At best you're arguing it was the same as others.

The speed with which you can crack DRM has literally no meaning.

 

19 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

You attract more flies with honesy than vinegar. If they hadn't done the exclusives deal they likely would have more marketshare than they do now and would have saved alot of money to do other deals and promotions. The huge hate on epic is almost certainly because of the exclusives and had they not done that people would be way more open minded on using it. Sure some wouldn't because they still prefer steam but at least it wouldn't repluse people away like they did with their exclusive deals. 

I highly doubt that they'd have a significantly higher number of customers.

I just wonder at this point if you people actually know anything about business. I'm tired of repeating myself. Let me ask you this, if EGS didn't do exclusive deals ever, would you switch over to it?

 

16 hours ago, ravenshrike said:

Wow, the sequel to a game received extremely well by its audience, much more so than with its predecessor and with a massive advertising campaign by Epic on a store that you have to download to play fortnite did better than the game it was a sequel to. That's never happened in the history of ever. Color me shocked.

I'm sorry, did you have a point?

[ravenshrike]

37 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

Steam doesn't even have that, not even after it's big overhaul. EGS might have the basics, but I don't have any EGS friends to try it with. I'm still of the mindset of if everyone uses Discord anyway just having basic voice and chat features is good enough.

Wat? Steam overlay allows voice chat and text in every game on their platform.

[MageTank]

32 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

At least you're making some suggestions.

1. They have that already. It depends on the game and the devs, specifically whether or not it's P2P connection, private servers, or Steam servers. Obviously Steam isn't keen on sharing it's servers, but I played Divinity 2 from GOG with some guys on Steam because it's P2P. Similarly Dauntless (and Fortnite I guess) though both being EGS exclusive on PC have cross-play between all of their platforms.
2. Steam doesn't even have that, not even after it's big overhaul. EGS might have the basics, but I don't have any EGS friends to try it with. I'm still of the mindset of if everyone uses Discord anyway just having basic voice and chat features is good enough.
3. They also already do this. Just from the free games I've gotten a fair number of them are DRM free. Even Batman Arkham Knight which famously had major issues with Denuvo is DRM free on EGS where it's not on Steam. Before I switched OS I had Galaxy set to launch the .exe of EGS games directly so it would bypass starting the store.
4. They say they just released the groundwork for mod support and something akin to Steam's Workshop.

 

I haven't had that issue. Seems very odd. Dunno about 2FA... I think it does now and I think I just set it to the same email the account is on.

Kind of wish EA would've let me do that when my old email address got deleted and I lost my account despite being able to prove I was me. Bunch of buttholes.

 

1. Now that you mention it, I do recall seeing icons for Xbox and Playstation in Dauntless, so I stand corrected on this. Hopefully they keep this trend up, as consoles being as heavily based on X86 as they are now, there isn't much of an excuse not to push for cross-platform play, especially with their adoption of Keyboard/Mouse support eliminating the "unfair advantage" excuse. I have many console friends that I'd like to play with, and the recent hardware crisis would be further alleviated if people could play their games on a console as a stopgap measure. Since EGS owns Unreal Engine, they are poised to convince publishers to allow their games to be purchased on one system and played on another (likely with a universal EGS account). THAT would be a feature worth switching over...
2. I thought that they did, but I could be wrong, been forever since I played with someone on Steam. Either way, if they don't have this feature, that is exactly my point. One-up the competition by doing something they can't, or by improving on something they did poorly.
3. I wouldn't know sadly, only ever really tried Dauntless before my kerfuffle with their support team, but glad to hear it's moving in that direction.
4. I think this is one that will win a lot of gamers over, especially if they can implement a mod-loader into the client to manage mods and deal with potential compatibility issues like the Nexus client. Or simply allow custom extensions for things like Nexus as that would probably be far easier. 

 

23 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

I just wonder at this point if you people actually know anything about business. I'm tired of repeating myself. Let me ask you this, if EGS didn't do exclusive deals ever, would you switch over to it?

The sad truth is, very little, but I've been successful in winging it thus far so I'll continue to do so until my luck runs out. As for if I'd join epic if they didn't do exclusive deals, I'd say yes, assuming I ever forgave them for their poor support and handling of my account info. Exclusives worked for console gamers, but I don't think it translates over well for PC gaming. In fact, I think it gets quite the opposite reaction because of the polarizing difference between the two types of gamers.

 

If EGS came out and said "Hey Gamers, we killed off DRM completely and made a store that doesn't feel clunky and 15 years old with updated features and extension integrations for your favorite gaming tools", I'd imagine plenty of people would jump ship for that alone. Sadly, EGS isn't as altruistic as some people give them credit for with their free game giveaways and there is a purpose behind every decision (as is expected in the business world). 

[JZStudios]

15 hours ago, NZgamer said:

People prefer to keep their eggs in one basket, especially when that one basket is better than the rest.

That might be important to you, but some people like the features that Steam offer.

Good for you, but some people think that the launcher is important to them and the features that the launcher offers.

Uh, yeah, doi. That's my point. People won't switch to another platform. Thanks for agreeing.

 

15 hours ago, NZgamer said:

Here are some features that Epic lacks that Steam has:

• A shopping cart.
• A Steam Workshop style mod repository.
• Official Linux support including native Linux games and compatibility layers. This might not be important to most people but I can assure that Linux gamers would be very happy for this
• Epic is slow to launch. I just timed Epic launching (from an SSD) and it took around 6 seconds to get to the default opening store page. I timed Steam opening (also from the same SSD) and it took less than a second to open my game library. 
• Epic still can't detect existing game installations.
• Still no user reviews.
• Game gifting.

• Sure, whatever. I still think it's a very minimal issue people latch onto with little reason.
• They have one.
• Very small market share. They have MacOS. Again, sure, but not a major issue for the mass market.
• Really? EGS loads way faster for me from a cold open.  EGS took ~11 seconds, a second open ~9.5. Steam took 15 on the dot to open the library, and then an additional 2-5 seconds to actually load the store page. And that was a faster start than normal. A second open took about 18 seconds. I have never had Steam open in a reasonable time frame. I have no idea how you got it launching in less than a second unless it was already open, in which case, yeah, doi. EGS actually closes on exit. Steam minimizes.
• For about the 15th time, yes it does. It's stupid, but it does.
• User reviews prevent you from using a store?
• Ditto.

15 hours ago, NZgamer said:

Wait, so who did Valve bankrupt and shut down? If we're talking about Origin - it's not been shut down. you can still purchase games there. 

No. EGS still has somewhat of a chance in the market. They should stop throwing money at free games, and start spending that money on features which compete with Steam's featureset. Epic doesn't have as big of a catalogue because of the fact that publishers know that Epic's users to paying customers ratio is low.

 

Epic needs to change their direction to competitve with Steam. They have the potential.

 

Look, I want to see competitors on the market. Actual competitors. But whether you like Steam or not, it's a fact that nobody offers the same set of features that Steam does.

Please don't call me insane when I'm just trying to have a conversation with you.

 

This will be the end of the conversation. I can't justify spending time on this conversation when it's unproductive, and I think we can both agree that neither of us will be able to convince the other that our views are correct. You don't need to reply to this, you'd be wasting your time.

Your arguments are contradictory and oxymoronic.

 

"I won't buy on EGS because they don't have these features. Why would people not buying games mean they're losing money? If they had the same features I wouldn't buy there because I'm used to Steam. Maybe if they competed I would use the store. I want competitors in the market, I just won't use their platform."

 

It's a good thing I have way too much free time on my hands, but this argument is getting tiresome. The answer to "How do we compete with opposing business" isn't "Do the same thing." That's what you're all failing to understand. If you buy a bar and it's across the street from another bar that's been there for years, your conclusion to draw customers in is to do exactly what the other bar across the street is doing and failing to understand why that's not working and you have a low customer count. And if someone comes in they bitch that you don't have 50 droughts of tap like the one across the street, and all you can really say is "I don't have enough customers to pay for that."

But then we're circling back to needing a massive investment for this startup.

 

[MageTank]

26 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

It's a good thing I have way too much free time on my hands, but this argument is getting tiresome. The answer to "How do we compete with opposing business" isn't "Do the same thing." That's what you're all failing to understand. If you buy a bar and it's across the street from another bar that's been there for years, your conclusion to draw customers in is to do exactly what the other bar across the street is doing and failing to understand why that's not working and you have a low customer count. And if someone comes in they bitch that you don't have 50 droughts of tap like the one across the street, and all you can really say is "I don't have enough customers to pay for that."

But then we're circling back to needing a massive investment for this startup.

 

The flipside of this analogy is that if you expect to establish repeat customers, constantly giving away liquor and establishing exclusive deals with various alcohol imports will end up tanking your bar before you get a solid foothold. Then you'll end up on an episode of Bar Rescue with John Tapper yelling at you in front of a camera with his chunky hotdog fingers pointing at your face.

 

I don't think everyone is against the idea of EGS being successful, or for Steam to have solid competition in this field. I'd argue that if you ask your average gamer, they'd tell you they do not care who they buy their games from as long as the platform is stable and they can actually access the product they've paid for without jumping through hoops to get it. Steam having a dominant position in the market is obvious, it's no easy task to set up shop where someone is already successful and expect to compete without bringing something unique to the table, but I just don't think giving away games for free and paying off publishers for exclusive publishing rights is "unique" enough of an incentive. It just feels alienating to the userbase to be told "If you want to play your favorite games on launch, you have to come here to do it, but don't worry, you'll like it here because we care about you and give away free games". That last part isn't to be taken literally, but you catch my drift.

[JZStudios]

13 hours ago, Semper said:

Holy crap redundant info dump.

Why even say all of that? It has no relevance. You mentioned sales numbers. I tried to find sales numbers of Steam vs. EGS first week sales. Like, how did your brain even make the connection to talk about that when we were discussing first week sales?

Steam did well on first week sales, a year after launch, after people said they'd never buy the game. That was it.

 

After that first paragraph of nothing I skimmed the rest and it's also nothing. Like... wow.

If you don't like racing games but buy EA games otherwise (even though I know you don't, this is what's called a hypothetical so you don't make an entire paragraph discussing how you're not buying EA games for other reasons), how is that different from simply not buying exclusive titles on EGS and instead buying the ones that are also available on Steam?

 

19 minutes ago, ravenshrike said:

Wat? Steam overlay allows voice chat and text in every game on their platform.

And it's basic as shit. Why do you think they did a big overhaul of the chat system? And people still use Discord in favor over Steam with friends or in game chat. I'm acutely aware of this because I was forced to get Discord instead of just using Steam chat to play with friends.

 

30 minutes ago, MageTank said:

If EGS came out and said "Hey Gamers, we killed off DRM completely and made a store that doesn't feel clunky and 15 years old with updated features and extension integrations for your favorite gaming tools", I'd imagine plenty of people would jump ship for that alone. Sadly, EGS isn't as altruistic as some people give them credit for with their free game giveaways and there is a purpose behind every decision (as is expected in the business world). 

That's basically GOG. While they have a fanbase, they aren't nearly a competitor for Steam.

[MageTank]

1 minute ago, JZStudios said:

That's basically GOG. While they have a fanbase, they aren't nearly a competitor for Steam.

It also worked for GOG. I've spent more time on DOS2 and Baldurs Gate 3 (as well as my DRM free copies of the Witcher series) than I have playing anything on Steam as of late (with the exception of King's Quest).

 

It worked so well, people kept giving CDPR the benefit of the doubt with CyberPunk and the delays. Though sadly, even that level of blind faith in a company couldn't save them from the release of that game, lol.

[ravenshrike]

2 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

And people still use Discord in favor over Steam with friends or in game chat.

People use discord because it can be used everywhere and is not limited to gaming on Steam. Steam chat is explicitly for the purpose of letting you chat while playing games on Steam. You are suggesting Valve make a standalone chat program.

[JZStudios]

4 minutes ago, MageTank said:

The flipside of this analogy is that if you expect to establish repeat customers, constantly giving away liquor and establishing exclusive deals with various alcohol imports will end up tanking your bar before you get a solid foothold. Then you'll end up on an episode of Bar Rescue with John Tapper yelling at you in front of a camera with his chunky hotdog fingers pointing at your face.

True. I said when they started doing the giveaways there was no way it would last more than a few months. Here we are years later, I have 126 EGS games, not including titles I skipped and I legitimately have only bought maybe 3 games in the past 2 years since EGS gives me a new one (or two) to play for a week. It's honestly way too many games too quickly to play through them and then want to buy something else. Even MS and Sony only do 2 games per month, EGS is doing like 6-9.

 

9 minutes ago, MageTank said:

I don't think everyone is against the idea of EGS being successful, or for Steam to have solid competition in this field. I'd argue that if you ask your average gamer, they'd tell you they do not care who they buy their games from as long as the platform is stable and they can actually access the product they've paid for without jumping through hoops to get it. Steam having a dominant position in the market is obvious, it's no easy task to set up shop where someone is already successful and expect to compete without bringing something unique to the table, but I just don't think giving away games for free and paying off publishers for exclusive publishing rights is "unique" enough of an incentive. It just feels alienating to the userbase to be told "If you want to play your favorite games on launch, you have to come here to do it, but don't worry, you'll like it here because we care about you and give away free games". That last part isn't to be taken literally, but you catch my drift.

I mean... I like free stuff. But my point remains. You're right, you can't just give away free booze and expect people to stay when it ends. EGS otherwise doesn't have a gimmick. Maybe you could be a gay bar, then you'd draw in a different audience like It's Always Sunny. But EGS isn't broadcasting to that community. Maybe they should. I dunno.

 

Point is, Epic is fighting a very uphill battle to try and get customers and if they just copy what the other guy is doing no one has any incentive to switch.

[JZStudios]

6 minutes ago, MageTank said:

It also worked for GOG. I've spent more time on DOS2 and Baldurs Gate 3 (as well as my DRM free copies of the Witcher series) than I have playing anything on Steam as of late (with the exception of King's Quest).

 

It worked so well, people kept giving CDPR the benefit of the doubt with CyberPunk and the delays. Though sadly, even that level of blind faith in a company couldn't save them from the release of that game, lol.

It works moderately. in terms of sales and revenue they aren't even close to Steam. And they have the gimmick of everything being DRM free, EGS doesn't.

 

6 minutes ago, ravenshrike said:

People use discord because it can be used everywhere and is not limited to gaming on Steam. Steam chat is explicitly for the purpose of letting you chat while playing games on Steam. You are suggesting Valve make a standalone chat program.

No, I'm suggesting the do a better chat system. Actually not even that. Using Steam chat in game is basically the same as alt-tabbing and using Discord. They could remove chat entirely and it would have very little impact.

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, JZStudios said:

That's an amazingly bad argument.

There were a few services that ran for multiple games. And you can't bitch about having to install those while ignoring the fact that you also had to install Steam and it required an internet connection. At best you're arguing it was the same as others.

The speed with which you can crack DRM has literally no meaning.

 

I highly doubt that they'd have a significantly higher number of customers.

I just wonder at this point if you people actually know anything about business. I'm tired of repeating myself. Let me ask you this, if EGS didn't do exclusive deals ever, would you switch over to it?

 

I'm sorry, did you have a point?

Tbh I don't really care for the most part. I have most launchers anyways. Admittedly I also have the epic game launcher as well because one of the free games that came with my graphics cards was through epic games store and some of the other free games deals they had. So yeah I probably would still use both steam and epic games store like I currently do. Would I primarily use epic games store? That ultimately depends if the platform becomes more convenient than steam. Currently steam is still more convenient to me so I use that the most.

[Blademaster91]

2 hours ago, JZStudios said:

Uh, yeah, doi. That's my point. People won't switch to another platform. Thanks for agreeing.

No, people won't switch when the other platform is lacking in basic features.

I also don't see the point in "Switching"? Why can't anyone use more than one game store?

2 hours ago, JZStudios said:

• Sure, whatever. I still think it's a very minimal issue people latch onto with little reason.
• They have one.
• Very small market share. They have MacOS. Again, sure, but not a major issue for the mass market.
• Really? EGS loads way faster for me from a cold open.  EGS took ~11 seconds, a second open ~9.5. Steam took 15 on the dot to open the library, and then an additional 2-5 seconds to actually load the store page. And that was a faster start than normal. A second open took about 18 seconds. I have never had Steam open in a reasonable time frame. I have no idea how you got it launching in less than a second unless it was already open, in which case, yeah, doi. EGS actually closes on exit. Steam minimizes.
• For about the 15th time, yes it does. It's stupid, but it does.
• User reviews prevent you from using a store?
• Ditto.

• A shopping cart is really important if I want to buy more than one game,and especially if I don't want to be locked out of the store for buying a certain number of games at once.
• Their workshop isn't nearly as good as the one on Steam, and the only incentive for devs on EGS is getting a pile of money.
•  A handful of games for macOS doesn't compare, and It's an issue if Valve sees Linux as enough users to spend the money on support.
• The loading time argument seems subjective IMO, it might depend on the library of games someone has, and how fast their ISP is to load the Steam homepage. Also I don't see how Steam minimizing is a bad thing, it doesn't take any significant resources running in the background.
• I've seen enough complaints that EGS doesn't detect game installations, and a few claims that it does. Does that mean it works about as well as EA Origin for detecting game installs? Which is about half the time, the rest it would rather be dumb and download a game again.
• I'd like to see what the community thinks of a game before I'm buying it, sure reviews from one source isn't the best thing to base a purchase on but it's something.
• Game gifting seems like a basic feature, something I think EGS should've had from the start.

2 hours ago, JZStudios said:

Your arguments are contradictory and oxymoronic.

 

"I won't buy on EGS because they don't have these features. Why would people not buying games mean they're losing money? If they had the same features I wouldn't buy there because I'm used to Steam. Maybe if they competed I would use the store. I want competitors in the market, I just won't use their platform."

 

It's a good thing I have way too much free time on my hands, but this argument is getting tiresome. The answer to "How do we compete with opposing business" isn't "Do the same thing." That's what you're all failing to understand. If you buy a bar and it's across the street from another bar that's been there for years, your conclusion to draw customers in is to do exactly what the other bar across the street is doing and failing to understand why that's not working and you have a low customer count. And if someone comes in they bitch that you don't have 50 droughts of tap like the one across the street, and all you can really say is "I don't have enough customers to pay for that."

But then we're circling back to needing a massive investment for this startup.

Well if Epic would've competed instead of handing out money to publishers to get them into the store, and make a decent platform that people actually want to use instead of giving out free games then Epic would be competitive.

And a company with 300 million to spend on a game store isn't a startup at all lol.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, Blademaster91 said:

No, people won't switch when the other platform is lacking in basic features.

I also don't see the point in "Switching"? Why can't anyone use more than one game store?

• A shopping cart is really important if I want to buy more than one game,and especially if I don't want to be locked out of the store for buying a certain number of games at once.

It has one. Just it's not on the games side, it's on the Unreal Engine side. That tells me this was a deliberate decision.

 

1 hour ago, Blademaster91 said:

• Their workshop isn't nearly as good as the one on Steam, and the only incentive for devs on EGS is getting a pile of money.

On steam it's still an after-thought, and it requires way too much moderation efforts on behalf of the developer to police infringing materials.

1 hour ago, Blademaster91 said:

•  A handful of games for macOS doesn't compare, and It's an issue if Valve sees Linux as enough users to spend the money on support.

Ideally, developers would build cross-platform engines, but it always comes down to two issues:

- Not every platform is equal. You can have PC's that are well underpowered compared to mobile phones, but then you have mobile phones that are only about 2% the performance of a low end PC.

- Not every game engine supports everything. Right now, Unreal, Unity, Godot, Gamemaker, and a few other game engines support "most", not "all" platforms. You have to pay gobs of extra money for licenses to build the game for consoles, and none of these game engines come with the components needed to build the game for those consoles. Likewise building something on UE or Unity highly restricts you to high-end devices, where as using game maker or cocos2dx supports low-end devices and HTML5 targets, but usually the native engine is "too good" on high end hardware, and wastes battery life due to poor developer decisions regarding busy-wait loops. 

 

Unity is only in the position it's in, because it took off-the-shelf parts like C# and ran with it. However it's widely regarded as a "crappy" engine because of the low-quality games built with it, and the rendering pipeline restricted to what is possible on mobile devices. Even Unity has to draw a line at how crappy of a Android device to support.

 

1 hour ago, Blademaster91 said:

• The loading time argument seems subjective IMO, it might depend on the library of games someone has, and how fast their ISP is to load the Steam homepage. Also I don't see how Steam minimizing is a bad thing, it doesn't take any significant resources running in the background.

Steam loads instantly, EGS takes seconds just to switch between tabs. GOG Galaxy is worse in this regard as it's an entire CEF interface with a Python backend. 

1 hour ago, Blademaster91 said:

• I've seen enough complaints that EGS doesn't detect game installations, and a few claims that it does. Does that mean it works about as well as EA Origin for detecting game installs? Which is about half the time, the rest it would rather be dumb and download a game again.

It doesn't. If you move the game directory, you have to redownload everything, or start the download, force-close EGS, and then swap the old directory contents back in, and reload EGS.

Steam just lets you arbitrarily move things, and will automatically pick it back up without needing to reinstall it.

1 hour ago, Blademaster91 said:

• I'd like to see what the community thinks of a game before I'm buying it, sure reviews from one source isn't the best thing to base a purchase on but it's something.

Reviews aren't terribly useful, anywhere, because of the penchant for people to take their personal aggressions out on the developer, publisher, or a single programmer/artist involved with the game. Like the amount of worthless reviews that are simply "no linux, zero stars" type of reviews on steam is an example of this.

 

1 hour ago, Blademaster91 said:

• Game gifting seems like a basic feature, something I think EGS should've had from the start.

They won't, because people will just create extra EGS accounts to get duplicate free games and then "sell" the gifts at a discount. The two features are mutually incompatible. Once a game is free, you've let the horse out of the barn.

 

1 hour ago, Blademaster91 said:

Well if Epic would've competed instead of handing out money to publishers to get them into the store, and make a decent platform that people actually want to use instead of giving out free games then Epic would be competitive.

And a company with 300 million to spend on a game store isn't a startup at all lol.

Honestly, people are only pissed off at EGS exclusives because they see it as a delay in getting it on Steam. What would solve this, is to literately allow EGS to generate steam, iOS and Android keys so that they can take their EGS purchase to all other platforms without having to make additional purchases. 

 

That would be the only thing that would get me to "switch" to using EGS, and it would be counter-intuitive for EGS to do it.

[JZStudios]

4 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Tbh I don't really care for the most part. I have most launchers anyways. Admittedly I also have the epic game launcher as well because one of the free games that came with my graphics cards was through epic games store and some of the other free games deals they had. So yeah I probably would still use both steam and epic games store like I currently do. Would I primarily use epic games store? That ultimately depends if the platform becomes more convenient than steam. Currently steam is still more convenient to me so I use that the most.

"More convenient" is a bit vague, and again it's going to take time before that happens. You're immediate response is likely a no, you wouldn't use EGS outside free games if they didn't do exclusives. Which is kind of my point.

 

3 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

No, people won't switch when the other platform is lacking in basic features.

I also don't see the point in "Switching"? Why can't anyone use more than one game store?

No, people won't switch until it's 150% better. Equal stores is at best a toss up for deciding which to use, which is fine if it gets to that point, but it's getting to that point that's the problem.

They can. But if both game stores are equal why would you start using EGS if you have a back catalog and library of over 15 years of games on Steam? You'd be making a new account and having another platform for... no real reason. Thus, switching doesn't happen. Even if someone new came into the PC market at that time, they'd still use Steam because that's where all of their friends would be.

3 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

• A shopping cart is really important if I want to buy more than one game,and especially if I don't want to be locked out of the store for buying a certain number of games at once.
• Their workshop isn't nearly as good as the one on Steam, and the only incentive for devs on EGS is getting a pile of money.
•  A handful of games for macOS doesn't compare, and It's an issue if Valve sees Linux as enough users to spend the money on support.
• The loading time argument seems subjective IMO, it might depend on the library of games someone has, and how fast their ISP is to load the Steam homepage. Also I don't see how Steam minimizing is a bad thing, it doesn't take any significant resources running in the background.
• I've seen enough complaints that EGS doesn't detect game installations, and a few claims that it does. Does that mean it works about as well as EA Origin for detecting game installs? Which is about half the time, the rest it would rather be dumb and download a game again.
• I'd like to see what the community thinks of a game before I'm buying it, sure reviews from one source isn't the best thing to base a purchase on but it's something.
• Game gifting seems like a basic feature, something I think EGS should've had from the start.

• Buying games individually isn't that big a deal when it saves your info.
• Well yeah, no shit.
• Not really. Remember SteamOS and the failed hardware that went with it? Valve didn't give a fuck about Linux before or for the most part after that.
• No, you're just wrong. No fucking way in hell ever is Steam loading from a cold open in under a second. You're maximizing a window. I didn't say it was good or bad, though I do like closing it and having it stay closed. But with how long it takes to open Steam I keep it open so it launches games faster.
• No, people do it wrong. Again, it's really stupid. You have to start the download in a new place until it gets to 2-3%, pause it, and transfer the files into the new location. It's fucking dumb, but it works.
• I've just seen enough troll reviews on Steam that they only care to remove from bank makers or egregious mass review bombing to not care much about Steam reviews. I'm sure you also like something that has shitty audience reviews. Personally I think Captain Ron is a great movie, has shit reviews. They're wrong, obviously, but if I just looked at the reviews I never would've watched it.
• Okay... but that's preventing you from buying, playing, and using the storefront?

4 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

Well if Epic would've competed instead of handing out money to publishers to get them into the store, and make a decent platform that people actually want to use instead of giving out free games then Epic would be competitive.

And a company with 300 million to spend on a game store isn't a startup at all lol.

Do you people read? Purple elephants are the tax paying monstrosities known far and wide under direct rule of the king. It's invariably the leading gestation period leaving the long term effects of the orange solar crowned butter fly fishing. In times like these we need the wisdom of the great jabber nut to stay our path towards the circus of cerulean. At some point the parade must shrink in size to squeeze through the drain pipes on the roof, otherwise the clattering of hooves will awaken the dreamer.

 

 

[JZStudios]

18 hours ago, Kisai said:

Steam loads instantly, EGS takes seconds just to switch between tabs. GOG Galaxy is worse in this regard as it's an entire CEF interface with a Python backend. 

He said from opening Steam, not switching tabs. Even still, like I said Steam is slow at this on both of my systems, and my brothers last I checked. Swapping tabs on EGS shows placeholders, so it's probably mostly loading times for the cover art. Steam uses much smaller images. Really a draw for me. EGS loads faster on open and considering I don't constantly browse the store that's all I care for.

Once Galaxy loads the store it seems fine browsing, and then switching to you game library and back is much faster.

18 hours ago, Kisai said:

It doesn't. If you move the game directory, you have to redownload everything, or start the download, force-close EGS, and then swap the old directory contents back in, and reload EGS.

It does, you can pause the download, transfer the files, then un pause and it will verify.

18 hours ago, Kisai said:

Reviews aren't terribly useful, anywhere, because of the penchant for people to take their personal aggressions out on the developer, publisher, or a single programmer/artist involved with the game. Like the amount of worthless reviews that are simply "no linux, zero stars" type of reviews on steam is an example of this.

Or things like tech support or no controller support. I'm not particularly surprised the game designed for consoles has weird keyboard support and controls but works perfectly on controller. It's a bad review for something obvious.

18 hours ago, Kisai said:

They won't, because people will just create extra EGS accounts to get duplicate free games and then "sell" the gifts at a discount. The two features are mutually incompatible. Once a game is free, you've let the horse out of the barn.

They would have to sell the account which is far more cumbersome than someone else just picking it up for free. This argument also applies to Steam, Humble, and GOG, or anything else that's given away a free game.

At best since you can't resell you'd just gift it to your friends or something if they missed a week.

18 hours ago, Kisai said:

Honestly, people are only pissed off at EGS exclusives because they see it as a delay in getting it on Steam. What would solve this, is to literately allow EGS to generate steam, iOS and Android keys so that they can take their EGS purchase to all other platforms without having to make additional purchases. 

 

That would be the only thing that would get me to "switch" to using EGS, and it would be counter-intuitive for EGS to do it.

Sounds like what Sweeney was aiming at. Good luck getting Steam to do that though. GOG has done it for a couple of Steam games based on dev approval. I know I got at least Alan Wake on GOG after buying it on Steam. Pretty neat. I think EGS and GOG would be on board, but again, good luck with Steam.

[mon1ka]

On 5/1/2021 at 7:26 AM, JLO64 said:

I’m fairly certain that the majority of that $300M has been blown on the weekly free games.

It has. the recent lawsuit showed they lost most of the money.

On 5/1/2021 at 9:34 PM, Mr.SeriousCat said:

I thought that was a way to prevent bots, wich we still have on the platform anyway, and if Im not wrong the system is not quite that way, he cant send you a friend invite but any other account that had already payed for their games can.

It is. not sure how effective it is, but i havent received a friend request from a level 0 bot since 2015. Kinda sucks but if you really want to get around the limit, you can get some cheap $5, theres many that are worth it.

[Kisai]

48 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

 

It does, you can pause the download, transfer the files, then un pause and it will verify.

 

That's literately what I said, and how is this a "good" thing, it's basically a huge pain in the ass and you have to do it for every single game. Steam, just move the directory, and it's done, all 1000 games.

 

EGS is just a mess and nothing it does is better than Steam, because it literately is built on the same flawed bloated frameworks, it's just a web browser. It's not fast, it will never be fast. Steam at one point in time was a lot faster because it didn't use the html frameworks to drive the game library pages, but it also used it first, so that's just EGS copying steam, likely for portability reasons. 

 

Then there is GOG galaxy that just takes the bloat an extra mile and runs an entire python process on it's backend. 

 

[Video Beagle]

I'm unclear on the steam keys issue...

 

For May 4th, Steam had the Jedi Knight pack of 4 games for $9.

CDKeys was selling a steamkey for that (so activated on steam) for $5

 

This didn't seem to be some clandestine or secret thing...so, what's the actual "legal" beef?