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I think that Steam monoculture was quite healthy. Probably a bit stagnant, but definitively not as bad as it could have been. Valve had/has considerable power b

by Faark 7y ago

I think that Steam monoculture was quite healthy. Probably a bit stagnant, but definitively not as bad as it could have been. Valve had/has considerable power but didn't go evil. I'll give them a lot of respect for that. Epic on the other hand scares me. They spend heavily on exclusives and will have to make that money back. I doubt this will be possible on just their share in a highly competitive market. Thus I doubt their long term plan coming to fruition will be in us cumstomers best interest.

vkou 7y ago
> I think that Steam monoculture was quite healthy. It wasn't healthy if you were a developer, and were forking over a monopolistic 'PC game tax' to Valve. Or if you cared about discovery. Or if you cared about curation (Steam is full of crap!), or approval of games (Steam won't approve my game!). (These are two extremes of the same problem, and many people have issue with Steam's handling of it - they either want it to be stricter, or less strict.) Mind you, it's entirely possible that you were perfectly content with all of Steam's positions on this (As well as how capriciously they changed, year, over year... But if you claim that, you stretch my credulity.) However, if you were not 100% satisfied with the state of that storefront, its searchability, discoverability, recommendation engine, curation policies, and refund policies, then it would have been in your best interests, as a consumer, to have multiple competing storefronts. GoG gave Steam a kick in the ass about a number of its consumer-unfriendly policies. Epic is giving Steam a kick in the ass about its market-gouging 30% tax. The Satan-spawn of Origin, UPlay, GFWL are giving Steam an example of how not to run a storefront. I don't even know what Twitch and Discord are doing.
- Faark 7y ago
  > It wasn't healthy if you were a developer, and were forking over a monopolistic 'PC game tax' to Valve. You can sell directly though your own channel and give steam keys. Afaik without paying the 30% steam tax. Those keys don't count for stuff like reviews, to prevent abuse. But this seems like a reasonable trade-off for all parties involved. I'm happy to use the launcher of my choice, dev is happy to avoid the tax, steam is happy to make more likely to use their storefront. I mostly agree with you and would welcome competition. But I don't see benefits for me if stores compete based on their library of exclusive titles.

by Faark 7y ago

vkou 7y ago

> I think that Steam monoculture was quite healthy. It wasn't healthy if you were a developer, and were forking over a monopolistic 'PC game tax' to Valve. Or if you cared about discovery. Or if you cared about curation (Steam is full of crap!), or approval of games (Steam won't approve my game!). (These are two extremes of the same problem, and many people have issue with Steam's handling of it - they either want it to be stricter, or less strict.) Mind you, it's entirely possible that you were perfectly content with all of Steam's positions on this (As well as how capriciously they changed, year, over year... But if you claim that, you stretch my credulity.) However, if you were not 100% satisfied with the state of that storefront, its searchability, discoverability, recommendation engine, curation policies, and refund policies, then it would have been in your best interests, as a consumer, to have multiple competing storefronts. GoG gave Steam a kick in the ass about a number of its consumer-unfriendly policies. Epic is giving Steam a kick in the ass about its market-gouging 30% tax. The Satan-spawn of Origin, UPlay, GFWL are giving Steam an example of how not to run a storefront. I don't even know what Twitch and Discord are doing.

Faark 7y ago
> It wasn't healthy if you were a developer, and were forking over a monopolistic 'PC game tax' to Valve. You can sell directly though your own channel and give steam keys. Afaik without paying the 30% steam tax. Those keys don't count for stuff like reviews, to prevent abuse. But this seems like a reasonable trade-off for all parties involved. I'm happy to use the launcher of my choice, dev is happy to avoid the tax, steam is happy to make more likely to use their storefront. I mostly agree with you and would welcome competition. But I don't see benefits for me if stores compete based on their library of exclusive titles.