In the ongoing saga of the Wolfire versus Valve lawsuit, which is continuing, we've been able to see a funny little look behind the curtain and Tim Sweeney was not happy with Valve.
Tim could easily see a smaller cut from Valve for a big game and say “yeah that’s great sign me up” but he doesn’t. He literally says “You should support the smaller players rather than the large ones”. He’s arguing to give a better rate to struggling developers rather than the successful ones. That’s what the COO says “umadbro” to. Honestly, that’s enough for me to really reconsider buying new games from Steam.
The issue is: This is exactly how Sweeney talks to people on Twitter. There was a particularly good reply to him once, which basically went: I agree with you and support your principled stance, but I can’t trust you because you are such a troll.
This is the problem. I truly believe Sweeney is a good person, and he actually wants more open markets not just for Epic but for everyone. Yes, he ships Unreal which smaller devs use and a sale for them means a sale for him, but really you don’t lean into things like this unless you actually want to democratise making games as a principled stance.
But he can just be such a jerk that people just don’t like talking to him or dealing with him or his companies. It’s frustrating to be honest, because he can be such a voice for good.
OK a bit of a rant from me but here I go:
Tim could easily see a smaller cut from Valve for a big game and say “yeah that’s great sign me up” but he doesn’t. He literally says “You should support the smaller players rather than the large ones”. He’s arguing to give a better rate to struggling developers rather than the successful ones. That’s what the COO says “umadbro” to. Honestly, that’s enough for me to really reconsider buying new games from Steam.
The issue is: This is exactly how Sweeney talks to people on Twitter. There was a particularly good reply to him once, which basically went: I agree with you and support your principled stance, but I can’t trust you because you are such a troll.
This is the problem. I truly believe Sweeney is a good person, and he actually wants more open markets not just for Epic but for everyone. Yes, he ships Unreal which smaller devs use and a sale for them means a sale for him, but really you don’t lean into things like this unless you actually want to democratise making games as a principled stance.
But he can just be such a jerk that people just don’t like talking to him or dealing with him or his companies. It’s frustrating to be honest, because he can be such a voice for good.