From the opinion piece:
Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin’ back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.
This is pretty much what I said would happen in some other threads. EGS came and portrayed itself as a savior or developers, but the cost of solution comes from consumers. They didn’t try to compete in quality of service or features, but spent hundreds of millions on exclusive deals. Who in their right mind would switch from something like Steam where sole focus is the consumer.
Yes, Steam takes a huge percentage but it’s not like anyone is forcing developers to go there. Developers go there because that’s where the people are. And people are there because they get many more benefits for the same or lower price. Steam offers so many conveniences and features it’s hard to list them all. From cloud saves to Proton, chat, family sharing and so on.
Steam Input is another underrated feature, makes use of any controller plug and play.
What’s funny though is that a game was exclusive to the Epic Games Store, the devs of the game recommended to launch the game launcher via steam to use steam input as EGS or game had some controller detection issues lol
But like seriously, it’s 2024, all games should support all controllers natively, without the need for steam input/rewasd/ds4windows etc
While some games do support dualsense and dualshock natively, but they don’t support switch controller?!
While we’re at it can we also have both sets of controller glyphs available on PC for games that released on Xbox and Playstation? My ps5 controller works fine but I still see “press Y to interact” in game
some games do show ps5 glyphs, if the game uses steam input api completely it will show
and some other games show glyphs natively like FIFA/FC 24 and other ps games like spiderman, god of war etc
Unfortunately FromSoft missed this memo and only has Xbox/MKB glyphs native. Since Elden Ring uses anti-cheat I can’t even mod the ps5 glyphs in without losing online functionality :(
The games that just let you choose within the options are gold. With GeForce Now, OSX, Moonlight, or 3rd party controllers it is sometimes a total mess to just display as a damn PlayStation or Nintendo controller. I can’t stand the Xbox layout and it is even worse when I get used to playing a game with one layout and then I am expected to use a different one because using X launcher on other system doesn’t see the controller that way.
I can’t help that my brain can’t switch back and forth easily nor mentally remap buttons that clearly say something different when I look down. I have put labels next to the buttons on my 8bit controllers so I can “remember” what the Xbox layout is… The only layout I don’t need labels for is PlayStation.
If Epic had required developers to, say, sell games 15% cheaper (they only take a 12% cut instead of 30%, so the devs would still win out!) then they could have had a really cool argument on their hands. “Look how much Steam costs you as the consumer just from them enriching themselves!”. Then the dearth of features would have been excusable, sure the shop is shit and does ˜nothing but hey, 10% cheaper in return!
Instead, as you say, they wanted to completely brute-force consumers onto the platform by putting their big fortnite money dick on the table, and it backfires and they spent a ton of money on a fat load of nothing.
Plus they’ve nicely trained their consumers that all the EGS client is for is launching it once on Thursdays to get your free game. Not the thing you want customers to associate with your supposedly money-making scheme.
Epic cannot do that because
(source)
However, Epic regularly offers coupons out of pocket. Right now you can get 33% off any game above $14.99 or the regional equivalent, as many times as you want, even if the game is already discounted by the publisher. You also get 10% as cashback.
What’s in your wallet?
Thursday games: they made that harder. I’d have to login in again and 2FA every week. I stopped doing that because it wasn’t worth my time. Uninstalled EGL and didn’t install it on my new computer. Not worth it.
Steam doesn’t allow games to be cheaper elsewhere if they want to also sell on Steam. So the only way Epic can do that is by … (gasp) exclusives.
Pretty anti-consumer of the store that “keeps on winning” if you ask me.
How does that work when there is the humble bundle store, and IsThereAnyDeal with a shit ton of stores almost always cheaper than Steam?
Don’t they sell Steam keys? Maybe the rules are different in this case.
They do but some sell direct downloads along with Steam Keys.
That seems to be incorrect, and quite possibly originating from Tim Sweeney.
The only thing I found is that steam keys, which (as a publisher/developer) you get from steam without paying, cannot be sold for cheaper off-steam. The reason for that is obvious, since steam doesn’t get their cut on keys, but they still have to provide the support and infrastructure for those users.
If you have a source on that claim though, I’d love to see it - I tried finding anything else on it once and failed.
Even if your initial premise was correct (the comment from KubeRoot suggests it’s not), you claim that only Epic exsclusives were a way around that is obviously BS. The most obvious way around Steam would be to sell everywhere except Steam, so EGS, Microsoft Store, GOG, EA Origin, Uplay,… and whatever else is out there.
Yeah but while they’re not allowed to be on sale within X time of launch, I’ve seen games be part of variable discount bundles or run coupon systems before. Clearly Steam isn’t investing infinite resources into tracking this, and probably doesn’t actually care for anything but AAA games.
That is assuming the language in the contract even includes such coupon or bundle schemes.
And you can properly UNINSTALL games on steam. Epic is a joke when it comes to this. Have to right click and delete folder contents like it’s a 90s version of hacking a game illegally downloaded. They just need a little key generator with an 80s game sound you can’t mute. I thoroughly hate my experience with epic. Archaic POS.
Fuck Epic with a rusty shovel.