I’d love it if they had a comparable service, because competition is good for the consumer, but they just don’t.
Steam has had a relative monopoly for two decades, and we’re lucky they’ve been customer friendly. But if something were to happen to Gabe, or Valve decided to go public or something, we’re screwed.
Epic building a launcher that has equivalent features to Steam would do nothing. Everyone wants all their games in one place, and everyone already has their friends list there.
Getting exclusives and giving away games is probably the only way they could even enter the market. Yeah the launcher kinda sucks, but Valve has decades of development that they’ve poured into Steam, it isn’t simple to just copy everything. There was a time that Steam sucked.
Steam is a de-facto monopoly. They luckily don’t really do anti competitive practices, they just focus on having a great product, and that’s why people (myself included) love them. But I don’t think another company can ever really enter the PC market without a few tricks like exclusives or free games.
If Epic could actually provide a better service, they would be seeing customers and developers actually want to use their platform.
Doubt
Gog is objectively giving you more value for your money but even cdpr had to release the Gwent standalone on steam eventually because people didn’t buy it enough - once it was on steam it sold more than in a year on gog in weeks
People don’t look at the alternatives at all - unless it’s a AAA game with an exclusive deal
Gog is objectively giving you more value for your money
What value do they give you exactly?
The games are mostly priced the same, they don’t have integrated modding support, no input remapping, no remote play, no in-home streaming, no steamcmd for server operators, no VR client, no Linux client and no Steam Deck support.
The only thing they do give you is no DRM, but nothing stops a developer from adding a DRM-free game on Steam.
all of the things you have listed are things we as individuals can and have implemented without steam, theyre pretty good like adding code to wine and pushing linux to the larger audience and i myself have been on steam for 11 years with 320 games, but integrated modding? i mean we had mod managers before steams implementation.
game streaming we have moonlite and shunshine > for amd hosts, and theres more.
input remapping can be done through standalone applications i use sc-controller for remapping my steam controller.
id say steams vr client is more of a negative than a positive, leads to segmentation and issues with device support when we should of focused on a wide approach to vr. like what google did with android, funded a free and open eco-system>(less so now)
steam sells accessibility and DRM, personally i see this as a bad thing. force people to become dependent. and while gog isnt natively on linux there are work around like downloading from gog.com or installing heroic games launcher.
Value is personal, I for one want a game, I dont want a bloated web browser that only connects through steam, which is what the steam client is. All the thing I need steam to do I can do and I can do it in a more agnostic way and less bloated. I use wayland therefore steam does not run without xwayland support enabled and even when enabled I can’t stream my desktop over steam remote.
Can’t use remote play and have an open source implementation that has fine tuning controls.
Installing mods through third party tools or manually is easy enough and allows for multiple distributors.
Dont use vr and even so its a closed ecosystem.
More than happy to visit steam in my own browser to buy and download games if that was possible.
Dont care for skins, cards, or any of the inventory system.
I talk to friends through open source solutions.
If you do however want a streaming, mod manager, vr, forum, store front, download manager, DRM and much more in one bloated application then yes the value proposition is there.
I highly value diy solutions in software, you on the other hand may not. And this is fine. GOG offers more to me than to you as steam offers less for me than for you.
Well, I feel sorry for gamers from those countries but I’m not from there so I’m not impacted by this. Only time regional pricing is not available for my region is when the publisher has opted out of it.
If Epic could actually provide a better service, they would be seeing customers and developers actually want to use their platform.
Instead they try to lock games behind exclusivity deals and bribe customers with free games and they still fail.
So what do they do instead of fixing their own problems? They go after everyone else who’s actually successful.
I’d love it if they had a comparable service, because competition is good for the consumer, but they just don’t.
Steam has had a relative monopoly for two decades, and we’re lucky they’ve been customer friendly. But if something were to happen to Gabe, or Valve decided to go public or something, we’re screwed.
When Gabe dies, we’re SO fucked.
Epic building a launcher that has equivalent features to Steam would do nothing. Everyone wants all their games in one place, and everyone already has their friends list there.
Getting exclusives and giving away games is probably the only way they could even enter the market. Yeah the launcher kinda sucks, but Valve has decades of development that they’ve poured into Steam, it isn’t simple to just copy everything. There was a time that Steam sucked.
Steam is a de-facto monopoly. They luckily don’t really do anti competitive practices, they just focus on having a great product, and that’s why people (myself included) love them. But I don’t think another company can ever really enter the PC market without a few tricks like exclusives or free games.
Doubt
Gog is objectively giving you more value for your money but even cdpr had to release the Gwent standalone on steam eventually because people didn’t buy it enough - once it was on steam it sold more than in a year on gog in weeks
People don’t look at the alternatives at all - unless it’s a AAA game with an exclusive deal
What value do they give you exactly?
The games are mostly priced the same, they don’t have integrated modding support, no input remapping, no remote play, no in-home streaming, no steamcmd for server operators, no VR client, no Linux client and no Steam Deck support.
The only thing they do give you is no DRM, but nothing stops a developer from adding a DRM-free game on Steam.
all of the things you have listed are things we as individuals can and have implemented without steam, theyre pretty good like adding code to wine and pushing linux to the larger audience and i myself have been on steam for 11 years with 320 games, but integrated modding? i mean we had mod managers before steams implementation.
game streaming we have moonlite and shunshine > for amd hosts, and theres more.
input remapping can be done through standalone applications i use sc-controller for remapping my steam controller.
id say steams vr client is more of a negative than a positive, leads to segmentation and issues with device support when we should of focused on a wide approach to vr. like what google did with android, funded a free and open eco-system>(less so now)
steam sells accessibility and DRM, personally i see this as a bad thing. force people to become dependent. and while gog isnt natively on linux there are work around like downloading from gog.com or installing heroic games launcher.
So we can agree that GOG does not objectively give you more value for your money as OP implied.
Value is personal, I for one want a game, I dont want a bloated web browser that only connects through steam, which is what the steam client is. All the thing I need steam to do I can do and I can do it in a more agnostic way and less bloated. I use wayland therefore steam does not run without xwayland support enabled and even when enabled I can’t stream my desktop over steam remote.
If you do however want a streaming, mod manager, vr, forum, store front, download manager, DRM and much more in one bloated application then yes the value proposition is there.
I highly value diy solutions in software, you on the other hand may not. And this is fine. GOG offers more to me than to you as steam offers less for me than for you.
GOG doesn’t have regional pricing. It’s giving me less value for my money lol.
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/2720-4EC7-B95A-1D2A steams regional pricing is basically gone…
Well, I feel sorry for gamers from those countries but I’m not from there so I’m not impacted by this. Only time regional pricing is not available for my region is when the publisher has opted out of it.