they charge what they do because it works for everyone steam has more users and does more for them so it costs more to maintain everything which is fine for devs because people actually buy things on steam
the only time anyone ever talks about epic is to shit on them ,talk about the current free game there giving away and … well thats it at least in my experience
Steam is the last company that has held out against enshittification.
Their store UI could be better, searching the database by conditions and clearly seeing why something isn’t available in your region\country\demographic would be good.
But at the same time it’s good enough for me to even be thinking about such conveniences.
Also I’ve remembered recently my dad saying some 6 years ago that nobody makes convenient UIs because it’s bad for commerce. A UI filled with suffering allows you to charge for directed solutions. And if a UI isn’t filled with suffering, there must be something else. Like Telegram and VK which are convenient to use (compared to WhatsApp and Facebook and …), but are Russian special services’ honeypots.
Convenience is a weapon. And a very expensive one, if Steam store’s UI were more convenient, the load on servers would probably be 10x what it is, for a similar structure of purchases, except probably harder to direct.
It feels like all the other corpos are mad and want to sue Valve to force them into enshittification.
I’m all for holding companies accountable - when legal pressure forced Valve into creating a return policy, I was happy for that. But this is a $900 Million nothing burger imo. Publishers are mad they can’t get the exposure and sales numbers on a cheaper platform. Cheaper platforms are mad that they still can’t get people to switch to them by significantly under-cutting Steam. That’s (publishers) customers mad they have to pay a ‘premium’ (basically the ‘market rate’ for the service before epic decided to start under-cutting btw) for a better service and the competition mad that a LOT of (publishers) customers are willing to pay that ‘premium’.
I’m not saying the 30% fee is fair, but every single company charges 30% except Epic and the Microsoft PC store which north charge 12%.
I am pretty sure they only do in attempt to attract devs. Once Epic were to get a majority position in the market they would quickly raise it to 30% too. None of these companies are “good guys” or actually care about the end consumer.
“They charge developers too much!”
“Ok, Tim, so how exactly do you make money for your company, then? Because giving away all the free stuff seems like awfully bad business.”
Never thought I’d be defending a company charging a lot of money but since Steam actually does provide an excellent, stable service with bonuses like Linux development and the Steam Deck I mean, I really ain’t that mad, especially they still offer really good sales.
“They charge developers too much!”
“Ok, Tim, so how exactly do you make money for your company, then? Because giving away all the free stuff seems like awfully bad business.
I think you’re missing the point that Epic’s store is only not profitable at their margins because of scale. If they had even half of Steam’s user base they would be profitable. Their problem is that gamers insist on backing Valve’s monopoly because it’s what other gamers tell them to do online.
And Epic provides Unreal Engine, the gaming engine that powers the majority of modern games, with free and extremely cheap tiers for indie devs, and they provide explicit Linux support for their engine and dev environment. They’ve also used a substantial amount of their Fortnite money to break up app store monopolies on Android and iOS.
They are not the villain that the gaming community thinks they are.
Have you considered maybe Valves monopoly is natural? That is convenient to have all the games in one place and their customers like what they’re selling?
Have you considered maybe Valves monopoly is natural?
Yes that changes literally nothing.
All monopolies, be they natural or otherwise, need to be heavily regulated or else they can:
a) easily do stuff to prevent competition. Stuff like preventing developers from selling their game for cheaper on other stores.
b) charge exorbitant markups, markups like 30% of all revenue for a listing in a store.
I do not understand why gamers have such a hard time grasping that Valve taking a massive cut off the top of every single game sold, just enriches the already rich for doing nothing, at the expense of consumers and creators.
“They charge developers too much!”
So you should be able to undercut them, right? Right?
Not when the Steam Terms of Service prevents them from charging less on other stores.
Exactly. Epic doesn’t even appear to really provide a particularly good service so you’d think a more bare-bones company could get away with charging less, and yet.
Apparently the epic games store isn’t feeling so good, Mr. Stark .
I’m really tired of seeing this idiot quoted.
Out of all the digital stores Steam arguably offers by far the most actual functionality and features for its cut. It’s still too high, but it’s possibly the least egregious example vs Apple, Google etc
It’s only too high if they demand exclusivity.
And they don’t.
They are providing PLENTY of value to anyone who is listing their games there.
Would I like to see them do more now for small and independent outfits? I would! but 30% isn’t that much comparatively to the old days of buying physically distributed things in a brick and mortar store.
I remember buying final fantasy 2 (4) on snes and it cost 95$ US this was 1988 or 1989
Which was about 129 CAD (the exchange rate is between usd then and now is about the same conveniently for this tidbit)
Today after years of inflation it would cost about 250-260 USD or 340-355 CAD
I don’t fucking miss those days at all. And while there are multiple factors here in play, this is entirely fair to charge silksong 6 dollars ish per sale on a 20 dollar sale whilst the failing AAA games 30 dollars on a 90 dollar sale. There is a cost involved and it is because of steam, specifically steam, that made digital distribution what it is today. And by that I mean they have set the standard for what is a healthy location to sell your digital goods.
And to give an example of what garbage (yes you Tim Sweeney you giant whiny fecal faced fuck) digital distribution for games would look like if steam didnt actually do a great job, look at books.
Buying books on through amazon you pay more for them then you used to for a physical copy of the book itself.
Has Tim Sweeney shown up in the Epstein files yet or are we still waiting?
Tim Epic might not have gotten rich enough early enough to be noticed by Epstein
Well… duh. The guy runs a competing storefront who’s only claims to fame are:
- Spending a bunch of money for timed exclusivity and free giveaways, rather than building out core features.
- They give devs a better cut than Steam to claim moral high ground.
… that’s it, that’s all the reasons to use Epic, unless you want to play Fortnite or participate in an Early Access period where they chose Epic to reduce the overwhelming amount of feedback like Hades.
although I like a lot of what Valve does (I have a lot of Steam games, valve games, have a steam deck oled, use steamvr, etc) they are a fairly flawed company. sweeney is so great at shooting himself in the foot though that any opinion he has people will by default believe the opposite of (and probably should)
The only interesting argument I heard about this demand was that when you buy game you are tie to respective store, and you cannot buy content like dlc outside that store. I wpukd be amazing for the customers if thus wasn’t the case
The only reason I had an epic account was for their free giveaway. And now that I’ve switched to bazzite, and considering their poor Linux support, I’m inclined to just cut bait on them.
TBH, I would take their stuff even if I get it for free.
They thank you for your support
Isn’t Tim the guy that advocates for pedophelia through AI generation?
And Hitler was a vegetarian, but that tells us literally nothing about whether we should abuse animals in factory farms
Sure, but I think wanting to fuck children does kind of paint a vivid picture about your general moral character in a way your dietary preferences might not.
Hitler actually did both. Several of his “girlfriends” were 14 when they met.
He also managed to become the guardian of his 14 year old niece at one point.
I feel like this isn’t a reciprocal thing though. “Guy does good thing” /=/ “You shouldn’t question his judgement/his other ideas are also good. ” feels fair
However
“Guy does bad thing” = “You should question his judgement/his other ideas tend to also be bad” also feels fair
There’s an easier way to put this:
“Question everything.”
Stop, stop, I already have so many reasons to hate him, I don’t need more.
Tim… suing everyone else wont make epic store a great place to buy games
Look to GOG for inspiration…
He’s just salty because the only games people “purchase” are the weekly free ones.
Not even. I’ve bought games on Steam that I forgot I had in Epic because Epic is just that trash. Fuck Epic for trying to start their store by bribing developers for exclusivity on their platform. Bitch ass tactics to begin with and then crying and whining when their mob mentality strong arming didn’t work. Best believe if their shit had worked and they became popular those greedy assholes would be asking a higher percentage once everyone was locked in.
I don’t even bother with those anymore. I never play the free ones I have, because I’d have to use Epic’s software.
- Playnite, if you’re on Windows (though Linux might be over the horizon).
- Heroic Games Launcher if you’re on any platform.
Playnite is the better choice if you’re on Windows, but either way, don’t let Tim’s dumb store stop you from ruining his day by generating a bunch of metrics that show you’re only playing freebies!
Keep collecting them. Each one you get costs Epic money and helps counter some of that Fortnite cash that lets Epic keep paying for exclusive contracts. Keep bleeding them and eventually they won’t be able to keep buying exclusive releases.
Epic pays a flat rate to offer games for free, they don’t pay per download.
Downloading them just helps Epic inflate their “active users” number when talking to investors.
I even stopped with those.
Yea. Like one or two good ones and sandwiched with a bunch of trash games no one wants.
Thanks for the reminder.
It’s Definitely Not Fried Chicken.
He’s still right in this instance.
Exactly. The number of people on Lemmy who simp for Valve’s monopoly just because Epic (along with every game developer, big or small) stands to benefit is kind of shocking.
It doesn’t have anything to do with Epic, it’s because Steam provides a great service with a ton of features nobody else offers, and Valve has demonstrated time and time again that they make policies that benefit consumers.
It would be great if Steam had some competition, but Epic ain’t it. What people want is another service of equal quality to Steam. Instead the best we have is GOG and that still falls well short of feature parity nevermind the anti-consumer cesspool of Epic.
Suing Valve isn’t going to do anything to improve the situation. Realistically what could Valve do to be “less of a monopoly”? Lower the percentage they take of sales? Consumers wouldn’t see any benefit from that only developers. Ironically it would also increase Valves monopoly because if they took a smaller cut there would be even less reason for companies to sell on Epic as Epics lower cut is literally the only reason developers (outside of Epic literally paying some of them mounds of cash by way of exclusivity contracts) pick Epic over Steam.
If Epic really wants to do something about Valves monopoly it’s simple, they just need to offer all the same features that Steam does. Things like family sharing, streaming support, a cross platform store and launcher, and an excellent review system so people can better understand the games they’re thinking about buying. Until that happens yes people will stick with Steam because it’s the objectively superior experience.
You know what annoys me about the people defending Epic’s lawsuit? The fact that there are actually legitimate issues with Valve and somehow they’re hyper-fixated on the non-issues. If they were instead talking about CS2 gambling, lootboxes, etc, I would be in support of it. But no, it’s about how they’re a “monopoly” because they’re one of only two stores that seem to care about their customers…
It’s not a reason to charge 30% The $500 million Gabe Newell’s superyacht is here to remind you that prices are too high.
It isn’t a monopoly because they don’t require you to use their store. Epic has a monopoly of epic exclusive games.
How do you call a corporate driving 75% of the digital distribution market for PC games ?
Its an effective monopoly, that’s not really disputable. This lawsuit isn’t even about them having a monopoly, its about them allegedly abusing it.
And ecommerce sellers don’t “have to” sell on Amazon, so they don’t have any market power they can abuse to extract 40-50% fees from sellers, right?
Amazon requires price matching for most sellers, which is shit and makes this an apples to oranges comparison.
Could Steam back down on their 30% cut? Sure, but not a monopoly.
It’s not apples to oranges, because the network effects (and coercive pressures they create) are in fact incredibly similar: sellers have to go where most customers are, and most PC gamers begin and end their search for games on Steam, just like most online shoppers begin and end their searches on Amazon.
I get I am not the average gamer, but even if I find a game on Steam, I tend to check their website too.
Specially for games I like, I try getting the GoG version despite Steam providing regional pricing, which tends to be 0.2xNow if any of Steam’s contracts is preventing GoG or others from providing regional pricing, that’s a point worth considering.
But Steam is providing a much better game finding experience than Epic and others (although GoG seems to be doing well too, recently), so despite me not being affected by the network effect, I do see some value in Steam.From what I see, Steam does give value to gamers. Whether it’s worth 30% of the game’s price or lesser, depends upon information that I don’t know. But if someone provides greater value than the competitors, should they not get more money in return?
They don’t. My small business sells direct from our site instead of in Amazon, and we do okay.
Anecdotes are not data!
While that’s true, counterexamples are great ways to disprove overreaching implications like “companies must sell on Amazon to be successful”.
It is not a requirement. It might be the most profitable way to run an e-commerce business (in which case you’re obviously benefiting from the system Amazon created).
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Is that the Epic that agreed to six-year $800 million partnership with Google recently?
What everyone else is saying, but god do I hate the fortnite art style.
