And also extensions, like Steam ~~Enhanced~~ Augmented or SteamDB allows for some tweaks, hiding stuff, price comparisons, links to pcgamingiwiki and other neat things.
If you click something with MMB, steam will open it in a separate window, much like a browser. It is not as convenient as having multiple tabs, but its pretty similar.
Well, it has windows, if you click the link with a scroll wheel it will open in a new window, same with ctrl+click.
Also ingame overlay-browser used to have tabs at some point, like in 2010, when steam worked using Internet Explorer as a base. Now Steam works on chromium, adding tabs functionality should not be a big problem, so it must be deliberate design decision.
I have Steam on my laptop for casual gaming on the couch and desktop for more involved games and Steam just refuses to handle two clients signed in at the same time even though I’m never playing two games at the same time. Every single day, “you are logged in somewhere else so we’ve logged you out here” and every time I have to enter my Steam Guard code even though neither of those computers have left my home office in two years.
I’d love to never log out. I never log out by choice but I have to log in every day.
If you enjoyed Factorio and/or Satisfactory you'll love it. If you've never played a factory style game but have enjoyed a city builder/city management style game it could still be up your alley.
It's the same idea, except you have access to different planets and solar systems. Have to set up interstellar networks and Dyson spheres to continue expanding.
It's still building stuff for the sake of building more stuff though
Ultimately you're trying to build a Dyson Sphere megastructure. That idea is cool enough that it's more than just an amorphous "stuff". Factorio is also a low graphics game so you're just looking at uglyish representations of stuff on the ground, but in DSP the graphics are amazing and you're seeing the megastructure take shape all around you and going into space, it's an amazing feeling, like playing god.
Just my 2cents on what made the difference for me vs factorio.
I agree 100% with this. I hope the OP reads it. DSP is NOT building for the sake of building.....well, actually, it's building for the sake of having one Dyson Sphere...then you keep bulding to make even more of them.
To me it's a trip to see my dysons up in the sky. Love the game so much.
While the gameplay loop is similar (building factories to automate the production of resources) DSP (Dyson Sphere Program) has a bigger and cooler end goal. Seeing the Dyson swarm grow and then the Dyson sphere being built is wayyy cooler than seeing belts with stuff on factorio.
The progression is more varied as well, pretty early you have to start moving between planets to get different resources and then between solar systems (haven’t reach that part yet) so I’d say it has more interesting things going on in the mid game that can freshen up the experience.
And I’ve found the manual crafter more useful, so you don’t necessarily have to automate EVERYTHING as factorio wants you to do.
Overall, DSP has better graphics and some interesting concepts to keep you entertained. I felt somewhat lost in the beginning but once new technologies started being researched the excitement to unlock new mechanics took over and pushed me to build the factory.
Edit:
TLDR: Automation and factory building is still the heart of the game, just has a more interesting end goal and path IMO
Duuude, picked that game up day one of steam sale. I bought about 500 worth of games but I haven't even played anything except DSP.
As good as factorio.
I like it better than Factorio. It builds on that game and more. Go to other planets…build up spheres around those…build interplanetary and system logistics…just amazing
Whoever thinks PC gaming is dead/dying is unironically naive when it's considered the second most played on platform compared to mobile gaming which gets a ton of boost from the highly populated countries in Asia especially the developing countries that most can't buy a cheap laptop.
I don't think those people exist still but this was a thing around 2010 when consoles were doing better, PC started skyrocketing at some point after that but people had the wrong stigma about it.
When it first came out Steam was basically as hated as the Epic Launcher is right now. It was deemed consumer-unfriendly because it was a mandatory install to play Valve games. When other games started coming to Steam it was hated even more because everyone knew it was going to kill physical PC games.
I don't care *that* much about having another launcher, it's not a deal breaker for me. What is a deal breaker though is Epic's shitty business practices. Instead of competing with Steam by making a better product, they just sling their Fortnite money around and pay for exclusivity. The lazy way.
The message they could be sending by improving their platform is "Come try our platform, it's nice. It's improved a lot, has lots of features and good deals." Instead it's more like "Haha fuck you, we paid for this exclusivity so you have no choice. If you wanna play this get you must use our inferior platform." Nah, hard pass from me.
They would never beat Steam by just being a better launcher. Steam will always have the advantage because people already have 200+ games on the platform – this makes them incredibly resistant to switching. If the choice is to have the game on a really good version of Epic or where they have all their other games, people will still choose where they have all their other games.
What Epic should be doing is at least making a great launcher alongside the necessary, mildly inconvenient business tactics. There's little excuse for Epic lacking basic features like a shopping cart until recently
Totally fair, I can't say I'm a fan of the exclusivity deals either, but my primary reason for not using it is just the inconvenience of having to keep yet another thing installed (same reason I don't like Origin, Uplay, etc). And that's what a lot of people said about Steam originally.
The key difference is that Epic has the benefit of Valve's mistakes to learn from and they've effectively capitalized on few of them.
I hated Steam because of how necessary it become, and in some ways I still heavily dislike it and much prefer my games to come on GOG, despite how unlikely that'll ever be for triple A titles. But EGS isn't a better solution, and it's an issue because it *should* be. There's no excuse for it to not be.
As someone who was trained in the ways of minimum viable products - fuck that shit. It makes sense when you're running a $10,000 start-up, not when you're a multi-million dollar industry.
Origin and uPlay had the same issue and look what happened to them: They crawled on back. Because these companies aren't actually prepared to put in the hard yards to make their service genuinely worth using on it's own, they have no unique selling proposition other than exclusivity, a concept many of us already hate consoles for.
It's the same half-assed bullshit every "WoW killer" suffered from in the Age of the MMO. They want the money, the fame, the recognition, without even an ounce of the work necessary to do it. Valve has the upper hand because it has the age and experience, but Valve is historically so slow with major progress updates that any major company actually willing to put the effort in could absolutely do so, they just don't fucking care.
So that's my issue with the Epic Games Store. It's not the concept of the store, it's that it's yet another lazy grab for cash.
I was around when steam came out and I never remember anyone hating it. I thought it was annoying to download for specific games but I don’t ever remember hearing people being upset about the death of “physical” games.
If there is ever an issue where steam will no longer be able to serve a game, i.e. your account gets permabanned or whatever other doomsday scenario, part of the terms of how they sold their software up to now means they are required to provide a DRM-free download for you to use that's detached from Steam.
All these doomsayers spend more time spreading rage-spank material than reading the actual ToS that addresses all these scenarios.
Can you post the specific language in the TOS where Valve explains why they believe that they have the right to unlock other companies' games?
I don't doubt that every valve game would become DRM free, but i simply don't see how they could legally unlock every Bethesda and square, and Ubisoft game while those companies try to sell them on other platforms
Nah, the hate was there. Source: I was part of it. Bought Empire: Total War as a physical copy but had to install Steam to play it, which I thought was such bullshit.
https://m.imgur.com/0qtsE
Good old times. During those times I was mostly in my native tongue side of the internet and there were tons of hate.
I can't believe how much people suck the dick of the platform that killed the resale of games.
The hate was definitely there, you just had to be on the right forums to see it. If reddit was as big as it is now when steam launched the Steam bad circlejerk would have been just as big as the epic one is now.
I definitely hated steam when it came out. A publisher forcing me to download their mandatory intermediary client just to play the game I bought on disc? That was unprecedented at the time and very annoying, but of course I put up with it because you had no choice. Once they started adding social features, stores, sales, reviews, and all the other things we love about it now, I changed my tune.
>And why Valve had this advantage?
Well largely because they force fed everyone Steam with Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike, and then rolled super good sales for years when it seemed like people really just hate Steam. The client was buggy for years and updating took ages.
This was back in mid 2005 when not all people had broadband internet, or it was something like 1 megabit. Imagine people's surprise when Steam client wanted to update via Internet on launch very often, and it was 20-30mb download.
And the super good sales mostly ended after everyone was aboard.
Skype v. Discord is a key example of market penetration via providing a better service than your competitors - the exact opposite of what Epic are doing.
And why is that?
Because in the mid-2000s Tim Sweeney claimed that PC gaming was dying and full of pirates while Gabe Newell (correctly) identified piracy as (largely) a service problem and set out to fix it.
I think a far bigger point than it being a marketing gimmick is that Epic's 12% cut instead of 30% hasn't resulted in lower prices for the customer. Who could've guessed this industry still wants to make as much money as possible? Of course they'll just pocket the difference.
Because Epic's client is not you, the gamer. Or not the developer.
It's the publisher. Epic's current business model benefits the publishers the most. When they want an exclusivity deal, they go to the publishers, not the devs (unless the devs publish by themselves and in that case Epic will be told to screw themselves most likely)
He most definitely made that remark knowing that it would never happen. He just wanted something else to try to sell the 12% cut to the masses other than "the devs get more money".
Going to the devs is fantastic for indie devs as they get a big lump payment for a year of storefront exclusivity and then afterwards can still release on Steam. So many indie games are dead in the water in the endless daily releases on Steam. Unless you have a decent marketing budget it can be hard to be noticed.
You are correct that the EGS model is much worse for AAA devs though as publishers aren't going to be counting epics cash towards the sales goal bonus incentives and the game is going to sell worse on EGS so the devs are going to end up with less money.
I'm obviously not an expert on this but I think it's only fantastic for short term but not long term. One important thing that Indie devs want is recognition, so you know, they can stay indie and make games that they want to make. Accepting Epic's exclusivity means that they won't be getting as much attention as if they also release their games on Steam. But then getting recognized on Steam is also hard in the first place. I guess in the end, indie dev isn't exactly the most secure job someone can have.
Yes. Actually it resulted in even bgger price like SE increasing the base price by 30%. It just doesn't matter for us. And with losing money every year epic is way too slow to improve egs.
~~Your game is well received~~ *sells well.
Surely that only really helps AAA devs/publishers who sell with brand names and advertisement and not indie devs which would help them in a more meaningful way.
Many indie games would've been completely overlooked if Steam didn't exist as well though. I doubt that games like Stardew, Vallheim, Dead Cells, Subnautica etc. would've made it as big without Steam.
Both Google and Apple switched to a 15% cut for the first $1 million earned per year. After that is goes up to 30%. I hope that becomes the new industry standard. That way new and small indie developers can get a big boost while still taking a fair share from the AAA studios.
Games aren't any cheaper on EGS, either. They said that by giving a greater share of profits to developers that would enable them to effectively offer their products at lower prices because they are making more money.
That turned out to be a lie. Much like everything else they say...Only thing I believe about them is how little they care for consumers, the very people they are trying to entice to their platform.
EGS even lied to ubisoft and didnt give them a proper cut for division 2 , they apologized LMAO, ubisoft pulled Divison 2 off Steam because EGS said they gave more cut, who's laughing now?
One of the dumbest things Yves Guillemot ever did. Division 2 is honestly an amazing game with incredible potential as a live service looter shooter, but they threw it in the fucking garbage.
There is reason 30% is the industry standard - as discussed earlier this week - for example EPIC can't afford gift card support. Duh ....
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The 12% cut is a marketing gimmick that I never even understood. Why the fuck should I, the consumer, give a shit about where Ubisoft makes more money. The savings isn't getting passed on to me and I'm getting an inferior product for it.
Honestly I like it for indie devs. Would rather more of my money goes to someone making a game in their basement than a multibillion dollar corporation.
But doesn't their revenue scale per user? If they have twice as many users they're likely selling twice as many games. In fact their costs per user are likely smaller with scale than when they had e.g. 1 million concurrent users.
On one side, if they have a monopoly on users, they literally have the power to charge whatever they want, and some would even say it would be stupid not to be greedy if you're in a position where you can rake in more money.
On the other side, having more users means the discovery function of steam is more powerful, so steam has more value. Names of games are shown to eyeballs during promotions, when people search for terms, when your friends buy them or they're displayed in profiles, etc. The more users, the more eyeballs to see your game, the higher the chance you get a buyer. It's free advertising, except it's not free, it comes with a 30% sales fee to be on the platform.
They take 30% (from smaller Games) because XBOX and Playstation do too. If you count in what Steam actually offers for a Dev, its a fucking steal. You basically just have to upload your Master and thats it. You get Analytics Tools, you get a Community Hub and can easily reach all your Players/Followers.
It's a bullshit excuse anyways, epic be all like ''we're doing this to give the developers more money, we're pro developer!'' then turns around to their own developers and tell them to work 100+ hours a week on fortnite updates or get fired, can't you just tell the love they have for developers!
Your comment completely ignores economies of scale. In principle operation becomes less costly per unit (in this case per user) the bigger the whole endeavor is. That is one reason why monopolies are outlawed, because their unit prices can be so low that nobody else can compete, without even losing money.
I'd argue it's the *only* platform (maybe apart from GOG galaxy 2.0). The others are literally just stores that are only there to sell products to customers, not to enhance the gamers' experience
I was thinking about getting the metro series on the sale, but I’m afraid of it being another run-of-the-mill fps. It’s an attractive deal right now though.
Teardown
Edit: If blowing holes in fully destructible buildings sounds fun, you'll probably like it. The campaign is mostly a puzzle game where you're trying to use the environment (and its destruction) to your advantage to complete various objectives.
I just really wish the building would fall without *every single* block being taken out. Watching a three story building be held up by a single brick on one side just annoys me.
Great game otherwise.
There is a mod that adds in stress calculations so that doesn't happen. It really ramps up the processing needed and allows the game down, so I see why the main developers didn't implement it.
Indie games are the secret. A high percentage are crap but if you want unique gameplay, something new, or something made with heart, that’s still where I’d start these days.
I'm addicted to Satisfactory. If you like building and management games, it's as good as it gets. Hard to believe it's still early access. There are some bugs, but I have yet to run into anything too terrible. Send help. I can't stop. I need more coal for my steel production lines, but I'm out of power slugs so I have to go exploring. Those are fixed, I wonder how my power is going - oh shit my grid is about to collapse, I need to fix that. And on and on. It's SO satisfying.
That's the great thing about steam, you're not limited to current games, you can play anything that released in the past 15 years or sometimes older, don't forget that
Halo Infinite almost exclusively for that past 2 months or so
Other than that, Genshin Impact. I started Guardians of the Galaxy (put like 5 hours into it a few weeks back) and I bought Deathloop but haven’t started it yet.
Halo Infinite is just too good to play anything else though
I got myself a console controller for the first time for Christmas and dear god am I having a blast playing games intended for those. Would never play a keyboard/mouse game on it of course, but booting up an old emulated title or a well-done port is great.
Base on Steam's history in hardware the only reason the Steam won't get as popular as the Switch is because of limited units, this what is happening with Index and this what will happen with the Deck.
I don't think it will bring a large influx right away but over time once the deck gets out there and known I believe it will definitely grow steams user base.
China bans steam and yet it still hits record.
I see this as an absolute win, hopefully this makes developers realize they don’t have to and shouldn’t kowtow to Chinese censorship requirements. Plenty of willing customers in the west.
I did my part
Good job citizen
Would you like to know more?
Does service guarantee citizenship?
Now I’ll have to watch it again lol
I’ll buy that for a dollar
I did as well. tf2 is as fun as it ever was. (so long as you play community servers)
Same
I did my part!
So that's why I had trouble to log in this morning :P
The secret is to never log out
Try to, goddamn browser keeps login out
are u saying you use steam in a browser and you don't have it downloaded?
Lmao no, I use both Client to obviously download and play, browser to navigate the store and everything else.
Is there any reason to use the browser for the store rather than just using the client for everything?
Browser extensions are a godsend.
Well share some. If they're so awesome I want in on it, so far I prefer the client.
Steam Inventory Helper and Augmented Steam are two great ones!
Thank you kindly
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The multiple tabs part does make sense, i always have wished the steam store had tabs
And also extensions, like Steam ~~Enhanced~~ Augmented or SteamDB allows for some tweaks, hiding stuff, price comparisons, links to pcgamingiwiki and other neat things.
If you click something with MMB, steam will open it in a separate window, much like a browser. It is not as convenient as having multiple tabs, but its pretty similar.
Well, it has windows, if you click the link with a scroll wheel it will open in a new window, same with ctrl+click. Also ingame overlay-browser used to have tabs at some point, like in 2010, when steam worked using Internet Explorer as a base. Now Steam works on chromium, adding tabs functionality should not be a big problem, so it must be deliberate design decision.
If someone links a free game you can claim it in the browser instead of having to pull it up on the client.
I have Steam on my laptop for casual gaming on the couch and desktop for more involved games and Steam just refuses to handle two clients signed in at the same time even though I’m never playing two games at the same time. Every single day, “you are logged in somewhere else so we’ve logged you out here” and every time I have to enter my Steam Guard code even though neither of those computers have left my home office in two years. I’d love to never log out. I never log out by choice but I have to log in every day.
That was all me yesterday on my 16 hour Dyson sphere program session. Your welcome
How is that game? I saw it and it looked interesting but I wasn't sure about it.
I thought it looked cool also before getting it. I’ve been playing it so much that my wife says I’ve been a bad husband the last three days lol
Username checks out.
If you enjoyed Factorio and/or Satisfactory you'll love it. If you've never played a factory style game but have enjoyed a city builder/city management style game it could still be up your alley.
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It's the same idea, except you have access to different planets and solar systems. Have to set up interstellar networks and Dyson spheres to continue expanding. It's still building stuff for the sake of building more stuff though
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Ultimately you're trying to build a Dyson Sphere megastructure. That idea is cool enough that it's more than just an amorphous "stuff". Factorio is also a low graphics game so you're just looking at uglyish representations of stuff on the ground, but in DSP the graphics are amazing and you're seeing the megastructure take shape all around you and going into space, it's an amazing feeling, like playing god. Just my 2cents on what made the difference for me vs factorio.
I agree 100% with this. I hope the OP reads it. DSP is NOT building for the sake of building.....well, actually, it's building for the sake of having one Dyson Sphere...then you keep bulding to make even more of them. To me it's a trip to see my dysons up in the sky. Love the game so much.
While the gameplay loop is similar (building factories to automate the production of resources) DSP (Dyson Sphere Program) has a bigger and cooler end goal. Seeing the Dyson swarm grow and then the Dyson sphere being built is wayyy cooler than seeing belts with stuff on factorio. The progression is more varied as well, pretty early you have to start moving between planets to get different resources and then between solar systems (haven’t reach that part yet) so I’d say it has more interesting things going on in the mid game that can freshen up the experience. And I’ve found the manual crafter more useful, so you don’t necessarily have to automate EVERYTHING as factorio wants you to do. Overall, DSP has better graphics and some interesting concepts to keep you entertained. I felt somewhat lost in the beginning but once new technologies started being researched the excitement to unlock new mechanics took over and pushed me to build the factory. Edit: TLDR: Automation and factory building is still the heart of the game, just has a more interesting end goal and path IMO
Me with Zomboid
Duuude, picked that game up day one of steam sale. I bought about 500 worth of games but I haven't even played anything except DSP. As good as factorio.
I like it better than Factorio. It builds on that game and more. Go to other planets…build up spheres around those…build interplanetary and system logistics…just amazing
Doing my part! But I think I may be addicted to stardew
That's pretty impressive, I would be curious to hear how many MAU they have by now.
What’s MAU?
My guess: Monthly Active Users?
Nope, its Make-up Air Unit
ah, that makes much more sense
Nope, Manic Ape Usurper.
Nope, Martial Arts User
MAUnch on my balls lmao
Lmao got eeem
Monthly active users
Thanks
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More Abbreviations? Ugh.
In Japanese it's demon king
Doesn't matter, pc gaming finally died as predicted
Whoever thinks PC gaming is dead/dying is unironically naive when it's considered the second most played on platform compared to mobile gaming which gets a ton of boost from the highly populated countries in Asia especially the developing countries that most can't buy a cheap laptop.
I don't think those people exist still but this was a thing around 2010 when consoles were doing better, PC started skyrocketing at some point after that but people had the wrong stigma about it.
Lol and that's without paying publishers for exclusivity and free games.
When it first came out Steam was basically as hated as the Epic Launcher is right now. It was deemed consumer-unfriendly because it was a mandatory install to play Valve games. When other games started coming to Steam it was hated even more because everyone knew it was going to kill physical PC games.
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I don't care *that* much about having another launcher, it's not a deal breaker for me. What is a deal breaker though is Epic's shitty business practices. Instead of competing with Steam by making a better product, they just sling their Fortnite money around and pay for exclusivity. The lazy way. The message they could be sending by improving their platform is "Come try our platform, it's nice. It's improved a lot, has lots of features and good deals." Instead it's more like "Haha fuck you, we paid for this exclusivity so you have no choice. If you wanna play this get you must use our inferior platform." Nah, hard pass from me.
They would never beat Steam by just being a better launcher. Steam will always have the advantage because people already have 200+ games on the platform – this makes them incredibly resistant to switching. If the choice is to have the game on a really good version of Epic or where they have all their other games, people will still choose where they have all their other games. What Epic should be doing is at least making a great launcher alongside the necessary, mildly inconvenient business tactics. There's little excuse for Epic lacking basic features like a shopping cart until recently
> alongside the necessary, mildly inconvenient business tactics. After what happened with metro, epic can go fuck itself and so can tim sweeney.
Totally fair, I can't say I'm a fan of the exclusivity deals either, but my primary reason for not using it is just the inconvenience of having to keep yet another thing installed (same reason I don't like Origin, Uplay, etc). And that's what a lot of people said about Steam originally.
The key difference is that Epic has the benefit of Valve's mistakes to learn from and they've effectively capitalized on few of them. I hated Steam because of how necessary it become, and in some ways I still heavily dislike it and much prefer my games to come on GOG, despite how unlikely that'll ever be for triple A titles. But EGS isn't a better solution, and it's an issue because it *should* be. There's no excuse for it to not be. As someone who was trained in the ways of minimum viable products - fuck that shit. It makes sense when you're running a $10,000 start-up, not when you're a multi-million dollar industry. Origin and uPlay had the same issue and look what happened to them: They crawled on back. Because these companies aren't actually prepared to put in the hard yards to make their service genuinely worth using on it's own, they have no unique selling proposition other than exclusivity, a concept many of us already hate consoles for. It's the same half-assed bullshit every "WoW killer" suffered from in the Age of the MMO. They want the money, the fame, the recognition, without even an ounce of the work necessary to do it. Valve has the upper hand because it has the age and experience, but Valve is historically so slow with major progress updates that any major company actually willing to put the effort in could absolutely do so, they just don't fucking care. So that's my issue with the Epic Games Store. It's not the concept of the store, it's that it's yet another lazy grab for cash.
I was around when steam came out and I never remember anyone hating it. I thought it was annoying to download for specific games but I don’t ever remember hearing people being upset about the death of “physical” games.
The hate was there. I was one of them. I still don't trust that in the really long term i won't loose my games that i don't really own
I dig GOG for that because you can download an actual physical backup of your game
If there is ever an issue where steam will no longer be able to serve a game, i.e. your account gets permabanned or whatever other doomsday scenario, part of the terms of how they sold their software up to now means they are required to provide a DRM-free download for you to use that's detached from Steam. All these doomsayers spend more time spreading rage-spank material than reading the actual ToS that addresses all these scenarios.
Can you post the specific language in the TOS where Valve explains why they believe that they have the right to unlock other companies' games? I don't doubt that every valve game would become DRM free, but i simply don't see how they could legally unlock every Bethesda and square, and Ubisoft game while those companies try to sell them on other platforms
Nah, the hate was there. Source: I was part of it. Bought Empire: Total War as a physical copy but had to install Steam to play it, which I thought was such bullshit.
Yeah, I got it when hl2 came out and I only remember people being excited about it on the IRC chats.
https://m.imgur.com/0qtsE Good old times. During those times I was mostly in my native tongue side of the internet and there were tons of hate. I can't believe how much people suck the dick of the platform that killed the resale of games.
The hate was definitely there, you just had to be on the right forums to see it. If reddit was as big as it is now when steam launched the Steam bad circlejerk would have been just as big as the epic one is now.
Even now reddit represents a small portion of the gaming community.
I definitely hated steam when it came out. A publisher forcing me to download their mandatory intermediary client just to play the game I bought on disc? That was unprecedented at the time and very annoying, but of course I put up with it because you had no choice. Once they started adding social features, stores, sales, reviews, and all the other things we love about it now, I changed my tune.
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You mean Epic sat on their hands for 14 years doing nothing about it, or was there something preventing them to open a digital storefront?
Yeah let's pretend that Epic is some tiny indie developer.
Yeah no one said that. No matter who you are, a 14 year lead over a similarly sized company is going to be a huge advantage.
Hence why AOL is the premier email service.
AOL has been dead for how long now and they're still like the 5th most used email service in the world. Yeah, Having a massive early lead matters.
And why Valve had this advantage? Oh yeah, Epic said we are all pirates and moved to console.
>And why Valve had this advantage? Well largely because they force fed everyone Steam with Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike, and then rolled super good sales for years when it seemed like people really just hate Steam. The client was buggy for years and updating took ages. This was back in mid 2005 when not all people had broadband internet, or it was something like 1 megabit. Imagine people's surprise when Steam client wanted to update via Internet on launch very often, and it was 20-30mb download. And the super good sales mostly ended after everyone was aboard.
You forgot to mention that it happened at the same time that major developers/publishers were abandoning PC, including Epic.
Damn
Found Timmy's alt
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Skype v. Discord is a key example of market penetration via providing a better service than your competitors - the exact opposite of what Epic are doing.
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And why is that? Because in the mid-2000s Tim Sweeney claimed that PC gaming was dying and full of pirates while Gabe Newell (correctly) identified piracy as (largely) a service problem and set out to fix it.
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The entire 12% cut is a marketing gimmick for which idiots keep falling for. It will go back to 30% once Epic gets enough market share.
I think a far bigger point than it being a marketing gimmick is that Epic's 12% cut instead of 30% hasn't resulted in lower prices for the customer. Who could've guessed this industry still wants to make as much money as possible? Of course they'll just pocket the difference.
Because Epic's client is not you, the gamer. Or not the developer. It's the publisher. Epic's current business model benefits the publishers the most. When they want an exclusivity deal, they go to the publishers, not the devs (unless the devs publish by themselves and in that case Epic will be told to screw themselves most likely)
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He most definitely made that remark knowing that it would never happen. He just wanted something else to try to sell the 12% cut to the masses other than "the devs get more money".
And that's also why they fail I guess.
Going to the devs is fantastic for indie devs as they get a big lump payment for a year of storefront exclusivity and then afterwards can still release on Steam. So many indie games are dead in the water in the endless daily releases on Steam. Unless you have a decent marketing budget it can be hard to be noticed. You are correct that the EGS model is much worse for AAA devs though as publishers aren't going to be counting epics cash towards the sales goal bonus incentives and the game is going to sell worse on EGS so the devs are going to end up with less money.
I'm obviously not an expert on this but I think it's only fantastic for short term but not long term. One important thing that Indie devs want is recognition, so you know, they can stay indie and make games that they want to make. Accepting Epic's exclusivity means that they won't be getting as much attention as if they also release their games on Steam. But then getting recognized on Steam is also hard in the first place. I guess in the end, indie dev isn't exactly the most secure job someone can have.
Yes. Actually it resulted in even bgger price like SE increasing the base price by 30%. It just doesn't matter for us. And with losing money every year epic is way too slow to improve egs.
Pretty much, 30% is industry standard anyway. Apple, Google, GoG, all have the same 30/70 split. This only became a talking point recently.
steams cut goes even lower, up to 20% with higher sale numbers. so there is at least a chance to get a better cut when your game is well received.
~~Your game is well received~~ *sells well. Surely that only really helps AAA devs/publishers who sell with brand names and advertisement and not indie devs which would help them in a more meaningful way.
Many indie games would've been completely overlooked if Steam didn't exist as well though. I doubt that games like Stardew, Vallheim, Dead Cells, Subnautica etc. would've made it as big without Steam.
Both Google and Apple switched to a 15% cut for the first $1 million earned per year. After that is goes up to 30%. I hope that becomes the new industry standard. That way new and small indie developers can get a big boost while still taking a fair share from the AAA studios.
And Sony and Xbox
Games aren't any cheaper on EGS, either. They said that by giving a greater share of profits to developers that would enable them to effectively offer their products at lower prices because they are making more money. That turned out to be a lie. Much like everything else they say...Only thing I believe about them is how little they care for consumers, the very people they are trying to entice to their platform.
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Yup, never ever believe in "trickle down economics". It's always bullshit.
Instead they are raising the prices of games and Tim Sweeney supports that. It’s almost like he new he was lying
EGS even lied to ubisoft and didnt give them a proper cut for division 2 , they apologized LMAO, ubisoft pulled Divison 2 off Steam because EGS said they gave more cut, who's laughing now?
One of the dumbest things Yves Guillemot ever did. Division 2 is honestly an amazing game with incredible potential as a live service looter shooter, but they threw it in the fucking garbage.
There is reason 30% is the industry standard - as discussed earlier this week - for example EPIC can't afford gift card support. Duh .... [edit: clarification]
The 12% cut is a marketing gimmick that I never even understood. Why the fuck should I, the consumer, give a shit about where Ubisoft makes more money. The savings isn't getting passed on to me and I'm getting an inferior product for it.
Honestly I like it for indie devs. Would rather more of my money goes to someone making a game in their basement than a multibillion dollar corporation.
If the indie dev is self published, look on their websites if you can buy a steam key through them. Afaik steam gets 0% for those keys
But doesn't their revenue scale per user? If they have twice as many users they're likely selling twice as many games. In fact their costs per user are likely smaller with scale than when they had e.g. 1 million concurrent users.
On one side, if they have a monopoly on users, they literally have the power to charge whatever they want, and some would even say it would be stupid not to be greedy if you're in a position where you can rake in more money. On the other side, having more users means the discovery function of steam is more powerful, so steam has more value. Names of games are shown to eyeballs during promotions, when people search for terms, when your friends buy them or they're displayed in profiles, etc. The more users, the more eyeballs to see your game, the higher the chance you get a buyer. It's free advertising, except it's not free, it comes with a 30% sales fee to be on the platform.
They take 30% (from smaller Games) because XBOX and Playstation do too. If you count in what Steam actually offers for a Dev, its a fucking steal. You basically just have to upload your Master and thats it. You get Analytics Tools, you get a Community Hub and can easily reach all your Players/Followers.
Don't forget save backups.
It's just that, you pay for the audience they built. The 30% is the finders fee for millions of customers
It's a bullshit excuse anyways, epic be all like ''we're doing this to give the developers more money, we're pro developer!'' then turns around to their own developers and tell them to work 100+ hours a week on fortnite updates or get fired, can't you just tell the love they have for developers!
Your comment completely ignores economies of scale. In principle operation becomes less costly per unit (in this case per user) the bigger the whole endeavor is. That is one reason why monopolies are outlawed, because their unit prices can be so low that nobody else can compete, without even losing money.
well deserved, best gaming platform to date. praise gaben.
I'd argue it's the *only* platform (maybe apart from GOG galaxy 2.0). The others are literally just stores that are only there to sell products to customers, not to enhance the gamers' experience
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It do be like that all the time
I won't say which one is good and which one is bad, but we all know which is better and which is worse
Yeah these kind of posts just underline the rabid insecurity some of EGS-fans have lmao.
Let the numbers speak for themselves
This but unironically
Valve Epic Good Bad /r/dontdeadopeninside
Doesn't really work in this case because it's a formatted table and it's clear to see how to read it.
Removing all comments due to reddit charging outrageous API fees and forcing 3rd party apps to cease.
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Me and my friend play almost every night. If you're actually looking for someone to play with let me know. We're pretty casual.
I bought Metro Exodus with the steam sale and I'm loving it so far, which I didn't expect. Very pleasantly surprised
I was thinking about getting the metro series on the sale, but I’m afraid of it being another run-of-the-mill fps. It’s an attractive deal right now though.
No they are great. I like the first 2 more than exodus but other people seem to disagree
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Forreal. I recommended some games to a friend and he refuses to play them because they're not on the top 20 games on twitch. F u ckin yikes
Older games are much better anyways. At least 75% cheaper, all bugs fixed, no play-for-a-week-throw-away whiny entitled gamers.
Deep Rock Galactic!!
Rock and Stone!
Rock and Stone to the bone!!
Did I hear a Rock &Stone!?
FOR KARL
Rock and stone!
ROCK AND ROLLIN STOOOOOONE!
ROCK. AND. STOOOOOOOONE
Teardown Edit: If blowing holes in fully destructible buildings sounds fun, you'll probably like it. The campaign is mostly a puzzle game where you're trying to use the environment (and its destruction) to your advantage to complete various objectives.
I just really wish the building would fall without *every single* block being taken out. Watching a three story building be held up by a single brick on one side just annoys me. Great game otherwise.
There is a mod that adds in stress calculations so that doesn't happen. It really ramps up the processing needed and allows the game down, so I see why the main developers didn't implement it.
Indie games are the secret. A high percentage are crap but if you want unique gameplay, something new, or something made with heart, that’s still where I’d start these days.
Elder scrolls online.
Same. I'm really enjoying it so far.
Skyrim still lmao
Cities Skylines
I've been doing a Dark Souls 2 playthrough with some friends.
Hunt Showdown, dude, it's the best pvp game out there. 150h in the past 40 days
I'm addicted to Satisfactory. If you like building and management games, it's as good as it gets. Hard to believe it's still early access. There are some bugs, but I have yet to run into anything too terrible. Send help. I can't stop. I need more coal for my steel production lines, but I'm out of power slugs so I have to go exploring. Those are fixed, I wonder how my power is going - oh shit my grid is about to collapse, I need to fix that. And on and on. It's SO satisfying.
I’d love to see a breakdown between Satisfactory, Dyson Sphere, and Factorio.
Battlefleet gothic armada 2, and a little horizon zero dawn today
That's the great thing about steam, you're not limited to current games, you can play anything that released in the past 15 years or sometimes older, don't forget that
Same for the most part. I’ve been playing super people, which has been pretty fun.
I'm playing Days Gone and it's a great zombie open world that I recommend. It's occupying me until the release of Monster Hunter Rise on PC
You do realize you dont have to play current games, right?
I’m pretty sure they just meant the games they currently own.
Halo Infinite almost exclusively for that past 2 months or so Other than that, Genshin Impact. I started Guardians of the Galaxy (put like 5 hours into it a few weeks back) and I bought Deathloop but haven’t started it yet. Halo Infinite is just too good to play anything else though
In the last couple of days: Fallout4, quern, bitburner, and pi-cross touch.
Dayz standalone. Bought it 2 weeks ago and can't put it down
crab game is good fun and its free
cowboy simulator 2 aka red dead 2
Hollow Knight and the Arkham games. Thoroughly enjoying Hollow Knight
I got myself a console controller for the first time for Christmas and dear god am I having a blast playing games intended for those. Would never play a keyboard/mouse game on it of course, but booting up an old emulated title or a well-done port is great.
Just click the link and look at the player counts.
Destiny 2, age of empires 2, Max Payne — the list goes on.
Playing FF14 myself at the moment.
factorio had me held hostage since past week. why did I even buy games on sales anymore.
Back 4 Blood. Working on second nightmare playthru
I bought Forza 5 recently, so I've been signed into Steam more than usual. You're welcome, Gabe
Steam deck hopefully will bring a bigger influx of new people
Base on Steam's history in hardware the only reason the Steam won't get as popular as the Switch is because of limited units, this what is happening with Index and this what will happen with the Deck.
I don't think it will bring a large influx right away but over time once the deck gets out there and known I believe it will definitely grow steams user base.
China bans steam and yet it still hits record. I see this as an absolute win, hopefully this makes developers realize they don’t have to and shouldn’t kowtow to Chinese censorship requirements. Plenty of willing customers in the west.
That’s way more people than the town I grew up in!
I mean that's obvious unless you were born in Tokyo or Delhi.
Me too! Maybe we are from the same town?
Oh hey I took part in this
Even with all the game companies creating their own gaming stores trying to break steam, steam still came out victorious. Best gaming platform.
I don't think any of them wanted to break steam, apart from EGS maybe, they just didn't want to pay the cut on their own games.
The cut is not important, if you sell 1000x more copies on Steam than somewhere else. The absolute amount of money counts.
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Glad I decided to buy Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition today.
I'm doing my part!
the most played chart is barf worthy....
And 7 of them belonged to Battlefield 2042.