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.
I have some personal qualms about supporting "the biggest fish" in the pond, since that tends to lead to the Apples, the Googles, and the Microsofts.
However, Steam hasn't particularly abused its market power, and has even used it to create a very successful Linux handheld that has both helped propel Linux desktop adoption and added upstream improvements to Linux in general.
I'll revise my opinion when Valve changes to a more overtly predatory model of capitalism, but for now, I'll enjoy only needing to keep a partial eye open.
I'll revise my opinion when Valve changes to a more overtly predatory model of capitalism
I believe as long they’re not publicly traded )and Gabe is in charge), that’s not a concern.
Being public (or owned by a publicly traded company) tend to bring out these nasty traits. It’s more about finding ways to bring value to shareholders than the customers.
I'm terrified of Gabe retiring or passing away. He's been amazing for the company and I don't trust anyone else to not want to use Valve for their own greedy purposes. The next president of Valve will likely ruin all the good things about it, thanks to late-stage capitalism.
I firmly believe in voting with your wallet; I normally don't invest much long-term interest into businesses because you never know how they'll change over time, but I've been so happy with Valve that I've gladly given them thousands of dollars over the decades for Steam games. My library is sitting at just over 3,500 games right now. I don't know what I'm gonna do when Valve crumbles one day. I really hope they give me an option to download and play offline all the games I've bought, because that's a massive library to lose.
I've never given a penny to Epic Games, and unless they get on-par with Steam's functionality, I won't ever buy or play any of their games. The one thing that might make Epic Games competitive (and could convince me to use their platform) is letting Steam users copy their libraries over, so we're not just starting over from scratch with a new service.
That's what got me on Steam in the first place. Back around 2010 or so, I discovered that if you had a physical PC game that was also in Steam's store, you could type in the serial number on the game box and it would register and add it to your Steam library. That's how I got my collection of early Call of Duty titles on Steam, as well as Half-Life and some others. I moved my physical game library over to Steam and I've been a Steam loyalist ever since.
I really hope GabeN has a continuity plan that involves a nonprofit governance board when he's no longer in the picture. I don't even want to imagine valve as a publicly traded company (or owned by a private equity company for that matter.)
The joys of not having a duty to shareholders.
They're also directly funding linux devs to work on related projects, which the most mutually-beneficial way to build products around linux
The one thing I like about them is they recognized why people really wanted to stick with steam: they have a large established library and don't want to bounce back and forth.
They took that and said "ok we'll give you free games every week until you have a large library here and won't want to leave!"
Jokes on them, I now have a large library of completely free games on epic and still use steam for the games I want to buy because I refuse to support their exclusivity bullshit.
I mean, Steam is also very functional and has a ton of support features. Especially for modding. It's not just stockholm syndrome.
I get the games on epic but I haven't even bothered playing them because I game exclusively on linux and just have not bothered with lutris / heroic etc. Proton with steam is just effortless and after years of tinkering with wine back in the day I want the simplicity
Heroic also makes it effortless, but I agree with all your points.
You don’t need a subscription like Prime to get the free games? I was under the impression you do.
Can you also launch the games through steam to get features like the overlay and stuff
Epic feels like a kid's toy compared to steam imo. Just overall less usable and dumbed down.
The Epic Games Launcher is so far behind on features compared to Steam it's not even funny. Epic chose not to try and compete with Steam on that front and to try and force users onto the platform with exclusivity deals and sweeten the deal with free games.
The one user-centric killer feature Epic has in their stack IMHO is the built-in multiplayer crossplay. Except it's not even exclusive to their store ironically (you do need an Epic account for it though).
Steam is the only game store that is on linux
itch.io also has a Linux app
Oh yeah
Let me know when Heroic integrates it
Lose the 'infinite growth' promise to shareholders (in fact, lose the whole shareholder thing entirely). That's the root of all evil right there. It's the cause of all woes suffered by gamers, devs and even the very sociopathic CEOs who think Epic exclusivity is a sound financial strategy. We all suffer for it, and all to benefit shareholders who, in 2024, still believe the lie that next year's profits will exceed this year's. It's delusional, and even if it weren't, it would quite literally be cancerous. Cancer is just a board of shareholders in a biological system.
Things I need a storefront/launcher to provide me:
- Reviews
- Wish list
- Beta/Alternate build installations
- Friend list, chat, game invite functions
- Mod browser
- Refund policy
- Excellent search and discovery tools
Nice to have:
- Forum for guides/support
- Game sharing
- Ability to move game files
As a family...I need the family sharing provided by steam. Especially the recent beta version. It's fantastic.
- Linux support
One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates. -- Gabe Newell, 2011
Time and again, digital distribution platforms have proved this. Apple Music became a dominant music distribution platform at the height of Napster, LimeWire and other peer to peer sharing apps. They did it, because it was easier to just buy the tracks/albums you wanted than to dig through trackers and websites which may or may not actually have what you want. Netflix became the de-facto source for streaming movies at a time when BitTorrent was common and well known. Again, they made it easy and convenient, while not charging an arm and a leg. Steam also faced competition from BitTorrent piracy. But again, Steam made buying, downloading and running games easier than the pirates. And people are willing to pay for that convenience and not dealing with the crap which floats around the high seas.
And, so long as Steam continues to treat it's customers right, those customers will keep coming back. And that's the problem with Pitchford's whole premise. Developers will go where the customers are. Sure, you'll get the odd case of a publisher/developer doing an exclusivity deal. But even then, it's probably limited, because the customers are on Steam. If another storefront wants to draw customers, they need to start with treating customers well. They will still face headwinds, as Steam has a large "first mover" advantage. But, success is going to start with making customers want to come back.
yea let's just forget about the illegality of those things and how companies, ISPs and law enforcements fight tooth and nail to shut those services down repeatedly.
You ever wonder why these companies don't operate in countries that don't have strict piracy laws and can't shut down sites with court orders? Because it's still easier to pirate than face criminal charges.
Re-read what I wrote, but hop down off your high horse first, it's obvious you weren't able to read it clearly from up there. I'm neither promoting nor defending piracy. Quite the contrary, I'm praising the legitimate services (and Steam in particular) for understanding that competition with piracy isn't all about money, it's often about the quality of service. Funny enough, your own comments are actually a point in favor of this:
You ever wonder why these companies don’t operate in countries that don’t have strict piracy laws and can’t shut down sites with court orders? Because it’s still easier to pirate than face criminal charges.
Yet somehow, with a lot of time, money and effort put into shutting down piracy, the pirates were able to provide a better service. Seriously, step back from the whole "napster bad" for a moment and think about the dissonance of the situation. Large companies, pulling in millions of dollars a year, with no need to worry about law enforcement or monied interests coming after them, somehow failed to create anything resembling a functional digital marketplace. They were stuck in the physical distribution paradigm and fought tooth and nail to avoid digital distribution. At the same time, a few kids, with little money, and law enforcement trying to shut them down created a pretty good user experience. Sure, some of that is not having to worry about licensing. But, a large part of it is understanding what the users want and giving it to them.
It wasn't until Apple came along and basically created "Napster, but legitimate" that music piracy really fell off. Netflix pulled off something similar with video (though that is rebuilding some rough edges at the moment) and Steam did it for games. Sure, piracy still exists, and it will always be a problem. But, a lot of piracy can be tamped down by having a good service available.
No shit. Everyone was saying this from day one, but Sweeney was too stupid to realize it.
Any decent person who would have been "overly optimistic" at the time would have supported epic, and just that. There was no need to go out of his way to trashtalk others like a whiny bitch, especially when at the time said "others" where the place they had a chance to make money before.
I log into EGS via heroic a few times a year to claim a free game. Yet to ever play any said free games 🤷
Remember to claim The Callisto Protocol!
There's only one thing I want from gearbox anymore. For them to re-enable the online servers for Battleborn so I can finish the damn story mode for a game I bought.
ReBorn doesn't work on Linux yet, (or at least it crashes for me).
Be sure to sign the citizen's initiative!
Already have. Unfortunately even if it becomes law one day, it will only apply going forward in time.
well the only thing i want from gearbox is them not sucking so i guess we can't all have what we want
I want them to let Civvie 1v1 Randy, it's been a long time coming.
Let them fight in a sewer.
A glorious mental image
Huh, that was what 5 years ago now? I will remember telling randy he was wrong (in perhaps an alcohol fuelled rant 🤭) only to get swiftly blocked.
Brick voice 'Ahhh good times!'
with the amount of money they apparently had available to spend on this little jolly, it's absolutely incredible how much they fumbled things by trying to force their way in instead of asking nicely
if they just hadn't done exclusives, and had instead relied on their decreased split to offer lower prices, while chucking in the odd free game, they'd probably be a lot closer to the 50% of revenue they were hoping for when they started
valve is actively abusing their monopoly by preventing epic from offering the same product(s) at lower prices in their storefront, and their customer base are happy about it because of thoroughly epic pissed everybody off with their opening move
what chumps
I was actually excited about a new storefront that, if anything, might’ve made steam improve and then there was that game awards where it felt like every single game they showed was an epic exclusive and I lost all interest.