Not to mention family sharing. I’m not sure of another PC store front that does the same, but it’s been a bit help with my friends in being able to show games to each other and letting us try things before buying, similar to sharing discs back in the day.
You don’t even need all of that really. A lot of Steam functionality can be utilized just by adding it as a Non-Steam Game. Steam Workshop isn’t the necessary if you have a modding scene, you just need a good mod manager.
The key point on whether I’ll use your storefront or not is whether your plan for success is to buy out anti-Steam contracts (remember that it’s not exclusivity to EGS, its to not release on Steam) to get customers and low revenue cuts to get developers and most importantly, to run a loss leading business for a number of years until you are profitable. If EGS were to ever become profitable, how long until they switch to squeezing out as much as they can? They’ve already rescinded their “curated” catalog.
This is not a good way to look at it. Competition is good regardless. It doesn’t matter how good Valve is today, if a viable competitor comes out, Valve will be forced to get better in order to compete.
All we need is some way to guarantee valve doesn’t become public.
This is wrong. Valve can enshittify without going public. If you think that public corporations are the only ones that are greedy/evil/anti-consumer, then you’ve never heard of the “private equity” industry. Look up the recent fight between the FTC and U.S. Anesthesia Partners in Texas for a clear example.
In capitalism, free market forces are what keep tug of war between produces and consumers fair, and competition is the fuel that keeps those free market forces moving. The fact that the Valve of today is both good and a monopoly is just a temporary rounding error/outlier. Over time, Valve will go to shit and consumers will suffer simply because Valve has almost no competition. This isn’t a question, it’s a fact of the mechanism of the economic system they exist in. It’s like gravity; just because you haven’t hit the floor yet doesn’t mean jumping off that building was a good idea.
Epic games, whether you hate them or not, is fighting the good fight. They are doing shitty things (exclusivity, etc), so maybe they aren’t the chosen one who will take challenge Valve, but they are on the right side of that fight. Hoping that Valve will stay great forever is foolish.
…but I will add that I don’t think Epic alone should be trying to take down Valve. Valve is way too entrenched in this market to be taken down with any realistic competition (probably why Epic is resorting to exclusivity deals). The FTC needs to step in and regulate the market. Idk what that would look like, but it’s possible to do it in a way that makes everyone happy. For example (off the top of my head, so probably flawed but whatever) the FTC could enforce interoperability between digital marketplaces so that consumers don’t need to install 30 different launchers to access their purchased libraries. That relatively small change could lower the bar to entry for competitors by a lot, and not be a burden to consumers at the same time. EDIT: and it would not be anything drastic like forcing a break up of Valve.
Apologies for the confusion when I said to stop preventing steam becoming public. I was just too lazy to write something along the lines of defining some kind of perpetual way to prevent the downfall of steam. Ideally it becomes an open source utopia tomorrow… but that’s not exactly realistic for a game store or as a business decision by valve and without people beying able to fork it we are never safe.
“hmm… a well thought out, reasoned response. But I disagree! How should I express my opinion effectively, to both this person and others who wander by?”
What a shittake
“Ah, yes. My masterpiece. Everyone must see this.”
It kind of doesn’t, though. Because you can still launch non-Steam games through Steam, and activate retail Steam keys without Valve taking a cut, there are plenty of ways for things to compete against the Steam Store without needing to also compete against the Steam launcher.
As soon as it has linux support for more than wow… people praise valve for proton lots but workshop has also done so much for Linux nmodding which is otherwise a nightmare.
It can’t exist. You can’t launch a new competitor to a mature and well-developed platform and hope to come anywhere near its feature set right off the bat. That’s never gonna happen, especially when a lot of the “requirements” you presented there are expensive shit that takes years of hard work to develop. You’re gonna have to give them time. And money, as it happens. They’re not gonna be able to develop that VR you present as a requirement if everybody refuses to use their platform because there is no VR. It’s a catch 22.
I’d be happy to support any kind of platform aiming to do these things even if it doesn’t have them yet, so long as it was open source or had some kind of structure that prevented enshitification. I’d contribute, probably force myself to use it where possible much like I do with other things. The issue is that the current competition trying to do what steam does (epic) is just trying to do it but worse.
All of the following? Why would you need to be better in every way? There’s a perfectly valid use case for trade offs. Eg, let’s say some competitor had exclusives, no VR, the store interface was a little worse, and it was only roughly comparable on many other points. If it’s simply faster and more lightweight, that’s its competitive advantage. Or if it focuses on being open source and DRM free like GoG, that’s a competitive advantage.
Expecting something to be better in every way (than something with a massive head start) or else it might as well not exist? That’s just unreasonable. I don’t require a clothing store to be better than Walmart to shop there. I mean, the clothing store doesn’t even sell fruit! Why would anyone shop there when you can go to the Walmart and buy some grapes with your jeans?
Except these aren’t two different kinds of stores, they’d both be gaming marketplaces and if one has better features in every regard… Why use the inferior one at all?
If It’s not better in every way why would I swap? I’ll just keep using steam. The only selling point you could use to get me to swap is the promise of feature parity with steam and open source. I would support that even if it hurt a lot along the way, but I doubt it will happen.
Competition sounds great, so long as it has all of the following:
This is of course also ignoring just how efficient, clean, customisable and ergonomic the steam interface is compared to all competition
Oh wait! That doesn’t exist. All we need is some way to guarantee valve doesn’t become public.
I am hoping for aperture science to find a immortality solution for Gabe.
So is it going to be GAbEOS or Gabe Johnson?
I think we need some Australium instead. GabeOS will put neurotoxin in the next Steam Deck.
Oh I see I see… that’s why they made current air vent smell so enticing, so when they release it we all go to smell it.
Not to mention family sharing. I’m not sure of another PC store front that does the same, but it’s been a bit help with my friends in being able to show games to each other and letting us try things before buying, similar to sharing discs back in the day.
… And Steam Remote Play.
Don’t forget that mods often don’t play nice with games off steam
You don’t even need all of that really. A lot of Steam functionality can be utilized just by adding it as a Non-Steam Game. Steam Workshop isn’t the necessary if you have a modding scene, you just need a good mod manager.
The key point on whether I’ll use your storefront or not is whether your plan for success is to buy out anti-Steam contracts (remember that it’s not exclusivity to EGS, its to not release on Steam) to get customers and low revenue cuts to get developers and most importantly, to run a loss leading business for a number of years until you are profitable. If EGS were to ever become profitable, how long until they switch to squeezing out as much as they can? They’ve already rescinded their “curated” catalog.
This is not a good way to look at it. Competition is good regardless. It doesn’t matter how good Valve is today, if a viable competitor comes out, Valve will be forced to get better in order to compete.
This is wrong. Valve can enshittify without going public. If you think that public corporations are the only ones that are greedy/evil/anti-consumer, then you’ve never heard of the “private equity” industry. Look up the recent fight between the FTC and U.S. Anesthesia Partners in Texas for a clear example.
In capitalism, free market forces are what keep tug of war between produces and consumers fair, and competition is the fuel that keeps those free market forces moving. The fact that the Valve of today is both good and a monopoly is just a temporary rounding error/outlier. Over time, Valve will go to shit and consumers will suffer simply because Valve has almost no competition. This isn’t a question, it’s a fact of the mechanism of the economic system they exist in. It’s like gravity; just because you haven’t hit the floor yet doesn’t mean jumping off that building was a good idea.
Epic games, whether you hate them or not, is fighting the good fight. They are doing shitty things (exclusivity, etc), so maybe they aren’t the chosen one who will take challenge Valve, but they are on the right side of that fight. Hoping that Valve will stay great forever is foolish.
…but I will add that I don’t think Epic alone should be trying to take down Valve. Valve is way too entrenched in this market to be taken down with any realistic competition (probably why Epic is resorting to exclusivity deals). The FTC needs to step in and regulate the market. Idk what that would look like, but it’s possible to do it in a way that makes everyone happy. For example (off the top of my head, so probably flawed but whatever) the FTC could enforce interoperability between digital marketplaces so that consumers don’t need to install 30 different launchers to access their purchased libraries. That relatively small change could lower the bar to entry for competitors by a lot, and not be a burden to consumers at the same time. EDIT: and it would not be anything drastic like forcing a break up of Valve.
Apologies for the confusion when I said to stop preventing steam becoming public. I was just too lazy to write something along the lines of defining some kind of perpetual way to prevent the downfall of steam. Ideally it becomes an open source utopia tomorrow… but that’s not exactly realistic for a game store or as a business decision by valve and without people beying able to fork it we are never safe.
What a shittake
“hmm… a well thought out, reasoned response. But I disagree! How should I express my opinion effectively, to both this person and others who wander by?”
“Ah, yes. My masterpiece. Everyone must see this.”
It kind of doesn’t, though. Because you can still launch non-Steam games through Steam, and activate retail Steam keys without Valve taking a cut, there are plenty of ways for things to compete against the Steam Store without needing to also compete against the Steam launcher.
Maybe Nexus Mods’ third mod manager will be better than the first two? lol.
As soon as it has linux support for more than wow… people praise valve for proton lots but workshop has also done so much for Linux nmodding which is otherwise a nightmare.
deleted by creator
It can’t exist. You can’t launch a new competitor to a mature and well-developed platform and hope to come anywhere near its feature set right off the bat. That’s never gonna happen, especially when a lot of the “requirements” you presented there are expensive shit that takes years of hard work to develop. You’re gonna have to give them time. And money, as it happens. They’re not gonna be able to develop that VR you present as a requirement if everybody refuses to use their platform because there is no VR. It’s a catch 22.
I’d be happy to support any kind of platform aiming to do these things even if it doesn’t have them yet, so long as it was open source or had some kind of structure that prevented enshitification. I’d contribute, probably force myself to use it where possible much like I do with other things. The issue is that the current competition trying to do what steam does (epic) is just trying to do it but worse.
All of the following? Why would you need to be better in every way? There’s a perfectly valid use case for trade offs. Eg, let’s say some competitor had exclusives, no VR, the store interface was a little worse, and it was only roughly comparable on many other points. If it’s simply faster and more lightweight, that’s its competitive advantage. Or if it focuses on being open source and DRM free like GoG, that’s a competitive advantage.
Expecting something to be better in every way (than something with a massive head start) or else it might as well not exist? That’s just unreasonable. I don’t require a clothing store to be better than Walmart to shop there. I mean, the clothing store doesn’t even sell fruit! Why would anyone shop there when you can go to the Walmart and buy some grapes with your jeans?
Except these aren’t two different kinds of stores, they’d both be gaming marketplaces and if one has better features in every regard… Why use the inferior one at all?
If It’s not better in every way why would I swap? I’ll just keep using steam. The only selling point you could use to get me to swap is the promise of feature parity with steam and open source. I would support that even if it hurt a lot along the way, but I doubt it will happen.
Don’t let perfection be the enemy of good
Then they should be able to use the same tactics Valve used in the beginning.
But then you Valve fanboys start to cry when specific software requires you to install the Epic store? Which Valve did before.