Steam: here’s a platform. We know some corpos won’t release games without DRM, so here’s our in-house solution that’s non-intrusive, but if you don’t want to put DRM in your game, we won’t force you. Want to include a backup installer? Cool. No worries. Oh you don’t have solid internet? That’s cool, if you get the games installed somehow, you can use offline mode indefinitely with no issues, sorry it took us so long to work out the bugs.
Epic: YOU MUST YSE OUR SHITTY DRM FOR ANY GAME RELEASED ON OUR PLATFORM, AND YOU MUST BE ONLINE AT ALL TIMES OR YOU CANNOT PLAY THE GAMES YOU PURCHASED.
If what you said was true at the time you don't look silly at all, because people don't follow companies they decide they are done with.
If it's outdated the reasonable response is simply informing people it's out dated. Expecting them to keep up with a latest news of a company they don't like makes you look silly.
If what you said was true at the time you don’t look silly at all, because people don’t follow companies they decide they are done with.
That's only true if you actually state it as such. It's really easy to clarify such a statement with "Back when I last checked ..." or "Years ago it was ..."
That's like saying "in my opinion": it's unnecessary. Of course it's your opinion or you wouldn't have said it, and of course that was true last you checked or you wouldn't claim that was the case.
If someone's information is out of date it is appropriate to correct them. It is absurd to expect people to do research before posting anything about anything to make sure it is "up to date".
For example: did you double check that you can in fact still play games off-line using Epic before posting? Or did you just assume it was true based on "last you checked"?
Well, don't talk about them if you don't because you don't know what you're talking about. You're like an old man saying that a new computer sucks because it doesn't have a Voodoo card inside.
"I don't purchase from comapny X ever since they did Y" is a perfectly reasonable thing to say when people are talking about company X. The reasonable response to someone saying that is simply "They don't do Y anymore, they haven't done that since [date]", not "HOW DARE YOU SHARE THE REASON YOU STOPPED USING COMPANY X IF YOU HAVEN'T BEEN FOLLOWING EVERYTHING THEY'VE DONE FOR THE PAST COUPLE YEARS!"
Every single one of those requires a connection to your Steam account to install. On GOG I can download the installers for my games and then use them whereever and whenever I want. That's impossible with Steam.
Many of those allow you to copy the files freely and move them between computers, even to computers that don’t have Steam. Hell, I played Half-Life on my Linux handheld yesterday, and I didn’t install it through steam. Just copied the files onto the SD card, set up a script to bind the controls, and launched the game.
Now, I’ll concede you must initially sign in to get access to the files, just as you must sign in to download installers on gog.
I use both often though. I play a lot on the aforementioned Linux handheld, and you can port pretty much any DRM-free game to it. Most surprisingly work better using the Steam version than they do the GoG version, though that is likely to be down to the handheld and not anything the stores are doing.
Oh so exactly what Steam did to implant itself and what gamers were complaining about because it would "kill publishers and physical copies" way back when?
The only game I could find that was arguably a third party exclusive for steam was Darwinia in 2005, and they weren't paid by Valve to do so, which pretty much scuttles the comparison.
If you meant first party exclusivity then sure Valve does that with their own games, as does Epic and others. First party exclusivity isn't the problem here though, it's the third party kind instead.
You think Steam doesn't users tactics to make it so publishers only release games on their service thus driving out competition and bringing in more money? Come on.
Some retailers refused to sell games because they required the installation of Steam to play, that's what I call exclusivity.
They had to be sued left and right because of their return policy, they've forced devs to sell games at the same price on other platforms in order to have their game on Steam.
Had Steam been in another industry they would have been forced to split up their services because of how big they got.