Gearbox founder says Epic Games Store hopes were “misplaced or overly optimistic”
Gearbox founder says Epic Games Store hopes were “misplaced or overly optimistic”
Pitchford's prediction that Steam could be "a dying store" have not come to pass.
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Imagine if Steam and EGS were hotdog vendors.
Steam offers all the condiments; mustard, ketchup, mayo, relish, onions, pickles, tomatoes, bacon, cheese, chili, etc.
EGS is just a plain hotdog. No condiments. You're lucky to even get a bun.
Both are equal price.
Which hotdog are you getting?
Now imagine that the plain hotdog guy keeps whining that nobody wants his hotdogs.
The hotdog vendor keeps going on about how he’s the good guy because he pays more to the sausage suppliers. As if that’s at all relevant to his customers.
He also tried suing the fruit vendor because they wouldn't let them sell their hotdogs on their Apple cart.
I'm having a really hard time keeping up with the analogies at this point, haha
I'm just waiting for the fast food to join at this point because I'm Lovin it
To be fair, with regular groceries, it's not uncommon for consumers to be concerned about whether or not the person who manufactured or processed the good or food you are buying was paid a fair wage. So in that sense, it is kind of relevant to the hotdog vendors customers.
I'm only playing devils advocate though. Fuck epic lol
That, and Gabe's hotdog stand has spent decades building customer trust by generally acting decently towards its customers, right after it invented the concept of the hotdog stand.
Making the core of your business model revolve around whining about your competitors doesn't work so great when your main competitor is already significantly better than you are.
Not to mention the gabe stand made the hot dogs at all accessible for some nerds. Hotdogs were really hard to eat for the penguins.
Epic games store occasionally gives you a free hotdog every week. But it also contains no fixings, and you gotta eat it at the counter.
I eat that free hotdog every week, then go across the street and buy another one.
I eat that free hotdog every week, then go across the street and buy another one.
You actually eat it? I put it in the fridge for bad times but only eat the ones from the other side.
To be fair, I also put most of the hot dogs I buy across the street in the fridge too.
I have a 100 plus free hotdogs
Sometimes the epic hot dog isn't fully cooked, or has everything on it because they grabbed it out of steams hands then gave it to their customer
yesssssssss, but the second hot-dog vendor wants to offer customers lower prices, and the first says they can't because otherwise those hot dogs will be banned from their stand, and the second responds by attempting to throw piss water-balloons at any passers by, or something
Nope, you are wrong, this is a common mistake that Epic keeps spreading as missinformation. Valve does NOT enforce price parity on other platforms, there are games that are sold cheaper on other stores, this is up to the publisher to decide, but most publishers find it easier to have the same price across the board. If this was true games that are exclusive on Epic would be cheaper until they come to Steam years later, but they aren't.
The mistake happens because there is one specific case in which Valve enforces price parity, but for this you need to know three things:
- Valve gives away for free infinite steam keys to publishers
- Those keys can be sold by the publisher elsewhere
- If they do that the publisher keeps 100% of the revenue of that sale
That sale of that free steam key for which Valve is not charging anything is regulated and can't be sold cheaper than Steam on regular basis, it can be in a sale for cheaper, but the regular price must match Steam and if it goes on sale outside of Steam eventually it needs to do a similar sale on Steam (but not necessarily at the same time).
So one thing that's amazing that Valve does for people who publish their games with them is getting them hate because of Epic, please stop spreading missinformation.
But when I asked Valve about this plan, they replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM.
In that link you have one person making a claim without any backing or evidence. Even if that did happen there are multiple possible explanations:
- The email was not clear about the other stores not selling keys
- The person who answered the email did not understand that they weren't talking about steam keys
- The person answering the email doesn't know what they're talking about
- Etc
And in that same link you have multiple persons in the comments describing the exact opposite experience providing the same amount of evidence, so if the text on that link is evidence that Valve does that, then the comments there are even more evidence that they don't.
If only there was a way of knowing... Well, they did say they opened a lawsuit, and those are public record so the email would be there since it's crucial to the case, without it they would have no case, right? Feel free to read the entire complaint here and you'll notice the email is suspiciously missing, their claims are that Valve wouldn't give them more keys to resell, which is directly opposite to what the blog claims.
I can do you one better, Overgrowth is a sequel to Lugaru, which is paid on Steam but free if you install via your package manager on Linux, therefore completely disproving the fact that Steam enforces price parity even for games from this company
Um, I've read the complaint from top to bottom and it claims way more than just 'Valve wouldn't give them keys to resell' if they're not at the same price as on steam. It also claims Valve puts a 'Price Veto' clause which allows them to delist games from Steam if the publisher gives bigger sales on other platforms, even if they do not using steam keys, which does sound super uncompetitive to me.
Although I'll agree the evidence listed in the complaint seem a bit on the light side. Do you know if the trial happened yet? And if so, do you know where I can find what resolution they reached?
Yeah, it does, but the only claim for which they present any evidence is the keys thing, showing a couple of screenshots.
I haven't read it all, but it seems that here is a ruling for most of the stuff.
Thank you for the link! It helped putting things into proper nuance and context (indcluding throwing away that ridiculous notion that the 'Steam Store' and the 'Steam Gaming Platform' are two completly different things in different markets).
However, reading the whole thing, it sounds to me like while the court dismissed some of the claims (1 to 4 and 7 apparently), they agreed that Wolfire and the other plaitiffs had the right to 'plausibly allege unlawful conduct' about the 'Most-favored-nations restraints' (the part where Steam forces publishers to set prices on all stores without steam keys being involved) without mentioning anything more on the subject.
I'm not americain so I'm not sure if I understand correctly, but that means the ruling isn't over and it'll go into an appeal court, right?
I'm also not American (well, technically I'm, but you meant from the USA not from the American continent) but yeah, I think it's still ongoing, although I remember hearing a while back that Valve settled some case, not sure if this one (notice that settling doesn't mean admitting guilt or that they were going to lose, but sometimes it's just cheaper to settle than to keep defending yourself (the problem is that on the long run this sends a message that you're a good target).
Also I believe they would have won the claim that they don't enforce price parity just by pointing at the other game from Wolfire (Lugaru) which is paid on Steam and free outside of it, and Valve never did anything about it.
you say valve isn't doing something, i provide an example where they are, and your defense is that they're just a big stinky liar?
cool, nice chat
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You provide a link to someone saying "Valve said they would do X" without evidence, I point out that in that same link you have multiple people saying "Valve told me they would not do X" with the same amount of evidence.
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I additionally show you the lawsuit the blog talks about where at no point the supposed email is shown
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Additionally I show you another game from the same company that has lower price outside of Steam
I don't know how much more evidence do you need.
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the second hot-dog vendor wants to offer customers lower prices, and the first says they can't because otherwise those hot dogs will be banned from their stand
It's more accurate to say that the plain hotdog vendor wants to sell the other vendor's hotdogs at a lower price at his own stand, thereby undercutting the sales of the first vendor for their own hotdogs.
not really, unless you're implying the fancy hotdog vendor paid for the development of said hotdogs, which they didn't
games don't belong to valve
The keys that put the game in your Steam library are. And that's what those pricing guidelines are about; Steam keys, not the actual game.
But when I asked Valve about this plan, they replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM.
I think I lost this analogy. What are the condiments in this metaphor?
I don't know so much about EGS, but probably some of the following (most of which I don't use very often, I hope I recall correctly)
- Refunds
- Family sharing of games
- Sharing games for other local users
- Being able to lend games
- Remote Play (with friends)
- Remote Play (stream for a local machine)
- Linux support through proton
- probably more?
- Workshop, providing mod hosting/browser/framework for API
- controller configuration tools
- Better storefront with decent discovery and better search (Although this wouldn't be a condiment in the anology)
- Passable social tools (IE voice chat)
- Game streaming to friends
- Cloud saves
- Relatively good review system
- Item marketplace and trading
Free cloud backups of save files is really nice.
Free hosting of screenshots, too.
Free forums (though they tend to suck. I guess that's like they only have basic yellow mustard or something, in this metaphor)