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A PC game is either on Steam or GOG or it doesn’t exist to me.
I subscribe to the humble monthly bundle thing and if a game doesn’t activate on one of those two I’m probably never going to play it despite owning it.
I’d maybe have added epic to the list if it wasn’t for the store exclusivity stuff. I know that they’ve dialled it back significantly, but anti-consumer stinks like that don’t readily wash out.
Conversely, GOG is on the list because they’re expressly pro-consumer, particularly with their preservationist initiatives. My monkey brain would prefer everything in one place on Steam, but I recognise behaviour I want to support in these companies, so GOG gets my money too
A PC game is either on Steam or GOG or it doesn’t exist to me
Mostly agree, except I’m okay with it if it’s something I can simply apt install
You forgot patreon. Steam censors the library in places (hello German government & fuck you hard with a rusty rebar). But even outside censorship, patreon game developers usually do not lock in their games into rootkit-protected anticheat/copy protection/whatever bullshit.
Not censored but mandated by a government body so they literally have no other option other than doing that.
If the dev is too lazy to fill out a questionnaire for self-categorizing the age rating why is Valve responsible for that?Not censored but mandated by a government body
What exactly do you think censorship is?
The point is that you can’t legally own it in your country, Steam unrelated.
- I was cursing at the German government, not steam
- I am not talking about the age categorization, I am talking about having to implement a customer age verification which they won’t do for the German market, and again, while this would be easy, I don’t necessarily blame steam for it. But that they do censor is unquestioned, and therefore more options are welcome, as long as those stores do not require a launcher, installer or otherwise intrusive software.
I can live with that as long as we consider that Steam games need to be on Epic and GOG as well.
no, fuck Epic, seriously
Yeah. Those assholes. Taking 12% of the gross of a game sales instead of Valve’s 30% at a time when studios are struggling.
That better overlay and browser is totally worth 18% of the total value of a game and shouldn’t go to the employees making the product or into more features. I need my virtual stickers!
Yeah I love Epic’s cloud saves… Wait… I mean I love their supreme 80% discounts… No wait, I mean I love their integrated friends li… Their API?.. No, I mean their customizable launche…Well, the two free games they hand out once a month are alright.
I love their tags and vast user game reviews the most, myself:
This game that is 🛁 relaxing, has 🌐 diverse characters and is 🐣 great for beginners has 4.7 stars, from the “players in the Epic Games ecosystem.”
It’s the action adventure game GTA 5, of course.
Epic deserves shit for being a shitty company overall. The lower sale tax is great for devs, but most consumers don’t care, because the program is a shitty Unreal application pretending to be a shitty web browser
Valve can definitely lower their sale tax, they get loads of money off trading cards and skin sales, maintenance of that shit is waaay lower than the petabytes needed for games. At least some of the money is spent making better consumer stuff, like Steam deck and increasing the number of games that you can play on Linux with Proton. Doesn’t explain the 30% either way
As a consumer I’m more concerned about Epic’s anti-consumer practices than what they are paying devs.
Steam also has anti-consumer policies. They just hide it better.
You think the reasen that games that are on both platforms don’t cost 20% more on Steam is because the devs love Gabe?
He’s a fucking billionaire who makes infinite money running an app store that takes a bigger cut of the game’s income than the combined pay of all the developers working on the game combined.
He’s not your friend. He’s a leech running a glorified app launcher.
This is a conversation about steam, the platform not Gabe. Yes, he is a billionaire, yes that makes him shitty, but guess what? Steam is a fantastic service for the end user, and that’s what matters.
If they charged less.fpr the platform, they’d still be raking in more than they can spend while also not taking an extra 20% out of game development budgets versus the competition.
Bad companies can make good products.
I don’t know where you got lost with:
As a consumer I’m more concerned about Epic’s anti-consumer practices than what they are paying devs.
Talking about how much they could charge devs does not change my experience as a consumer. It does not provide a compelling argument for me to use a service that does noticeably make things worse for the consumer.
*Infrastructure
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Ah, then that meme sucks and you’re just fanboying. I don’t make the rules.
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Hey, you do you. Just don’t try to sell me a moral high horse about exclusivity. I grew past console wars when the kids in the playground were excited about Terminator 2 coming out. If we’re going to bring the conversation back to that level I demand my knees stop hurting in the proces of de-evolution as well.
Any good thing about Epic Store other than Free games?
Why would anyone want to buy it on Epic if it available on GOG, Steam or Itch? Personally, I will never because it didn’t even provide good regional prices.
One reason is that the Epic Games revenue split gives more to the developers. That being said though, they do enter exclusivity agreements with publishers all the time, which is anti-consumer.
But MudMan’s comment was more about how the meme denounces store-exclusive games, yet games that are available only on Steam are also store-exclusive.
GOG is a bit of an outlier. They allow developers to list their games DRM-free so their customers can truly own their games. If store exclusivity is the problem, GOG is the solution - not Steam.
Yea, I prefer GOG and Itch.
Even I ask dev for GOG releases.
Fuck developers
I can use Heroic Games Launcher and don’t have to use bloated Steam. Steam used to be much lighter too…
I don’t know, I don’t care. I don’t often buy things on Epic, myself. Seems to me that “free games” is a pretty big thing to dismiss out of hand, though. That seems like a good thing, free games.
In any case the fact that Epic isn’t my store of choice for anything but exclusives and free games also means I don’t spend my time posting stuff about how much they suck. That seems like an undue amount of effort and attention for my what? Fourth, fifth favorite online games store on PC.
There’s also nothing particularly bad about it. Bit of a simple, feature-light UX. Free games is nice. They are smart enough about allowing third party logins, so you can easily import your games automatically into other, better launchers like GOG Galaxy, Launchbox or Heroic. Seen worse.
Says he doesn’t care, then goes on to engage in a conversation about it and writes an essay
I buy from epic specifically because they have insanely good regional prices. like 1:10 ratio in some cases.
also gog famously doesn’t have regional prices at all so you’re just talking out of your ass
Some game on Epic cost more for me than Steam(BTD6, Brotato and some other). If a game is available on Steam and Epic, I will buy it on Steam. If a game is available on Steam, GOG and Epic I will buy it on GOG. If it’s available on itch.io then itch.io.
Here’s my priority
Itch>GOG>Steam>Website(World of Goo 2)>Epic
also gog famously doesn’t have regional prices at all so you’re just talking out of your ass
I will pay extra to GOG to get DRM free games. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And make sure to avoid stores that actively promote the store exclusives concept, even for stuff that isn’t an exclusive (anymore). They don’t deserve our money. Looking at you Epic.
I remember when Metro Exodus was about to release, Epic bought them out and they made the game unpurchasable on Steam after people already preordered. So only those who preordered were able to play on Steam for the first year after release. Valve left this statement on the store page.
Ubisoft pulled something like that with Anno 1800. If you pre-ordered it on Steam it was possible to install and play it, as it was only delisted but not removed entirely. Buying the DLC was a bit of a pain as you couldn’t search Steam for it, you had to dig up the direct Steam Store link from one of the official posts on the Ubi forum. It wasn’t ideal, but at least they had the sense to make everything available immediately on Steam for those that already bought the game there.
Store exclusivity is paid, this means that the devs get a guaranteed income instead of relying on the Steam gamble.
Would you work for your employer if you might be paid more than average but no guarantee on that and only in two years if it happens at all as it depends on the number of clients you got and how influencers feel about your work once it’s complete?
I don’t know about you but I look around and I don’t know anyone who would accept those conditions. That’s where exclusivity becomes an option, you might not have as high an income, but that employer tells you ahead of hiring you how much you’ll make in the next year with a commission on every sale you make once your work is complete.
I’m fully aware, and I don’t even blame developers, especially indies, as I can completely understand their reasoning and commercial consideration. But from a user perspective I just see a store trying to buy market share and either forcing customers to wait a year or cave and use that store. Epic doesn’t fork over money to help developers, it does so to grab a piece of the pie and create value for shareholders.
Personally I prefer not buying or using platforms from companies whose policies I don’t agree with. I avoid Amazon for that reason, and Epic’s store is therefore also on my personal blacklist.
It’s a choice I’m allowed and willing to make. Of course you are free to disagree and by all means, do whatever you feel is right.
Do you purchase on Steam? Because it is in a monopolistic position and that’s much more anti consumer than anything Epic or GOG can do in their position.
That’s not even talking about the 30% cut which means less money going to the devs (and before you say they use the money to innovate, devs being able to afford making games is much more important for gaming than developing virtual trading cards or enriching a billionaire with a yacht collection).
Because it is in a monopolistic position
Is it forcing a monopolistic position? Or is it’s “monopolistic position” just a result of it being popular and widely used?
Do we need to wait until they start abusing their position before we react to the fact that they can do whatever the fuck they want with the PC gaming market?
Do we need to wait until they start abusing their position
Should we be punishing Steam for things they haven’t done?
Epic was already trying to abuse their position as soon as they started up.
“You should purchase from the shitty company because if you purchase from the better company they might maybe one day become shitty” is not a compelling argument.
If Steam starts abusing their position and becomes shitty then I will stop using Steam. There is nothing morally or ethically wrong (or difficult) with “pirating” the games I have legally purchased on Steam in order to access them outside of the Steam environment.
I don’t know about you but I look around and I don’t know anyone who would accept those conditions.
except publishers frequently do accept those conditions.
I’m talking about employees, not businesses, people like you and me
and I’m saying your analogy doesn’t work.
Except that yes it does. You’re expecting all devs to spend their life savings to develop a game in the hope that Markiplier or Northernlion or whoever else decide to play their game out of thousands of suggestions they get? Some of them prefer a guaranteed salary in exchange for exclusivity, just like the vast majority of people exchange a guaranteed salary in exchange for work exclusive to a single employer. But somehow you guys expect devs to just gamble while you wouldn’t play slot machine for a living.
I am not a dev. You are also not a dev. Here are some thoughts from an indie dev about Steam and Epic: https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckepic/comments/1dbljev/jason_thor_halls_pirate_software_thoughts_on/
Note the comments he makes about why an Epic exclusivity window is valuable to a dev.
The employees got paid while working on the game. They don’t only get paid based on sales.
I’m making a parallel between those businesses who still need money to come in in order to pay employees and the way people who are complaining about exclusives wouldn’t submit themselves to the same process of working without any guaranteed income. Money to pay employees doesn’t come out of nowhere and plenty of publishers have went bankrupt leaving the employees without anything to show for their hard work.
You’re also completely forgetting about indie devs.
Analogies, you guys should go read about those.
You can’t hide behind a bad analogy simply due to it being an analogy. It’s still bad. McDonald’s doesn’t get paid until someone buys a burger. Walmart doesn’t get paid until a customer leaves the checkout. This is very normal for businesses that you don’t get money until the consumer buys your product. If I start an independent business selling socks I can make all the socks I want, I don’t get paid unless people buy them. That’s a normal risk to starting your own business.
All of this is besides the fact that I don’t blame devs for taking the offer, I blame Epic. If a game later becomes available on another service I will consider it then, I will not let Epic have any of my money.
You’re also completely forgetting about indie devs.
Okay, let’s ask an indie dev.
Does McDonald’s wait 2 or 3 years to get money for the work accomplished to make that burger?
“steal”
Stealing implies a transfer of ownership. Downloading a “COPY” of a digital game only infringes on a copyright or licence or whatever the multi-million dollar company wants to claim it has.
If you don’t own the game by purchasing it, then it’s not stealing if you pirate it.
Maybe he’s gonna break into the publishers office and steal the master copy 🤣
I am, again, mostly fine with that.
As long as that means you don’t pirate anything that has a physical version or is on GOG.
I mean, that’s not entirely true, my views on piracy are more nuanced than that, but in terms of how much I can stand behind that line as an argument.
I am mostly fine with that.
As long as that means the games I buy physical are still manufactured and sold by the publisher and not Joe Bloe on eBay for a 900% “rare retro game” mark-up.
Yeah, see, that’s why my take on piracy is more nuanced than that.
Copyright is weird and broken, digital commerce is weird and broken and certainly the retro physical games market is weird and broken. There are ways in which that slogan works and ways it breaks, both in the direction of being pro and anti-piracy.
But that’s a legitimately tough conversation with a ton of nuance and big implications that goes way past the other “Epic bad” nonsense.
TFW PS5 only.
Console exclusives have a logic to them, it takes extra time and money to translate a game to be playable on different hardware.
Store exclusives do not make sense. No game is only purchasable at GameStop, and the only reason for it is to avoid competition.
Both major consoles run on x86 hardware now. I mean, if a bunch of Brazilians can hack the PS5 version of Spider-Man 2 to run natively on PC, it can’t be that difficult for a AAA studio to port their console exclusives to PC.
Being x86 or not doesn’t have much impact. The CPU instruction set is dealt with by the compiler, and the only differences that show through will be which memory access bugs and race conditions end up having symptoms. The effort comes in because the GPU is programmed completely differently, so a lot of the rendering code needs to be rewritten from scratch, most PCs with good GPUs don’t have unified memory, so you need to manage when things are transferred to the GPU and back, and you’re not targeting one single piece of hardware, but instead many different ones that support different features, perform differently when asked to do the same thing, do different things in cases where the API specification says they can, and do different things when there’s a graphics driver bug.
Things aren’t as complicated as they were when porting things to and from the PS3, which had co-processors that had to be managed separately, or from the Dreamcast, which had a GPU that supported a bunch of things that couldn’t be done on a PC GPU until around 2010. The change wasn’t down to the CPU, and was instead that consoles no longer have weird extra hardware that PCs don’t, so you can typically just try and do the same things in the same ways and it’ll almost always be possible.
does playstation even have exclusives anymore?
Mostly seems to be timed these days.
Bloodborne still MIA though.
I will try your game out on my terms anyways. Soooooo
Put your game on GOG, or I’m gonna steal it.
Put your game on GOG, so I can steal it.
Put your game on gog so pirating it is piss easy.
Whether or not it is on gog doesn’t really impact how easy it is to pirate. For me it’s almost like streaming where the convenience is so high that I’d rather just pay on gog and get the perks that come with that then look elsewhere.
Denuvo has entered the chat.
I just like how they package things, and I’m a Linux user.
Nah, I own most of the games I have stored executables for, I just don’t have the most faith in the future of American internet, so making my own repository of easily installable pirated crap is more like a failsafe.
(pirating is already piss easy)
Shit you’re right. I don’t want to get too lazy.
Wrong button oops
DRM lover
Gog is DRM free, my guy.
Yet another benefit of pirating GOG games.
I must’ve responded to the wrong message, woops
Gog is of course the way
It saddens me what a DRM shill you are
In what way are they a DRM shill?
Steam I am guessing
Steam isn’t DRM though.
Sure bud, sure
There are lots of games you can play without even having steam running.
Yeah, steam offers a free(?) very basic DRM for developers/publishers to use but they don’t have to use it and loads don’t.
Steam is a marketplace.
Imagine a world where steam used it’s monopoly for good.
With great power comes great responsibility, and steam abdicated.
What is it you think Steam should be doing that it isn’t?
👍
Lol at whoever said “downvoting the claim isn’t enough, I also need to downvote clarification of the claim”
GOG is DRM?
Obviously not, don’t be weird
So how is somebody insisting games be on GOG a DRM shill?
They are not doing that, reread OP
