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Steam took a 30% cut even when it was just a glorified CDN and payment processor. It's not charging for features, it's charging for its near-monopoly on digital

Steam took a 30% cut even when it was just a glorified CDN and payment processor. It's not charging for features, it's charging for its near-monopoly on digital PC game sales. FWIW, I agree with Epic's stance on chat: Discord is good, use Discord. Steam chat is awful; I effectively never use it, and all of my friends use Discord servers. Epic could build their own chat platform, but for what purpose? I do agree that there are some sorely-missing other features from the Epic Store, though. But I'm fine with them shipping an MVP to force Steam to offer more-competitive pricing sooner rather than later — which is what happened. > depend on epic to provide a framework for it (sentiment seems to be "don't hold your breath") Sentiment amongst whom? Angry gamers? Epic released their 2019 roadmap, it seems fairly reasonable; cloud saves apparently are coming in the next 1-3 months: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/epic-games-store-cloud-saves-finally-achievements-/1100-6465613/ https://www.gamespot.com/articles/epic-games-store-cloud-sav...

philliphaydon 8y ago
The cost of data storage and sending was a lot more in 2003 than it is now. Where costs have reduced steam has just added more and more features for consumers and developers.
- eridius 8y ago
  I can't think of any "feature" Steam has added since cloud saves that have impacted me. Any feature development seems to be focused on VR (I don't have PC VR, nor room at my PC to use VR) or streaming (I don't want to stream my game to another device, I just want to play on the PC). And in the meantime their client has stagnated, looking identical to how it did a decade ago, and even functioning the same (e.g. the practically nonexistent library curation features). Hell, even their TOTP app is still the same piece of garbage that they originally shipped years ago, not even supporting 5.5" iPhone screens, let alone the iPhone X form-factor.

philliphaydon 8y ago

The cost of data storage and sending was a lot more in 2003 than it is now. Where costs have reduced steam has just added more and more features for consumers and developers.

eridius 8y ago
I can't think of any "feature" Steam has added since cloud saves that have impacted me. Any feature development seems to be focused on VR (I don't have PC VR, nor room at my PC to use VR) or streaming (I don't want to stream my game to another device, I just want to play on the PC). And in the meantime their client has stagnated, looking identical to how it did a decade ago, and even functioning the same (e.g. the practically nonexistent library curation features). Hell, even their TOTP app is still the same piece of garbage that they originally shipped years ago, not even supporting 5.5" iPhone screens, let alone the iPhone X form-factor.