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That's a really bitter way of saying that Steam's been chugging along doing fine for some time now. Epic's store was never really a competitor until Sweeney sta
by tomc1985 6y ago
That's a really bitter way of saying that Steam's been chugging along doing fine for some time now. Epic's store was never really a competitor until Sweeney starting getting itinerant over his royalties red herring, paying developers for exclusive launches, and giving away at least a game a week for something like a year now. It's still missing a ton of features compared to Steam (though one could argue how many of those features should stay missing), and it is slow as molasses.
Steam's only other potential competitor was GOG, and it seems those two have had a fairly friendly relationship over the years. Remember that Valve gives away Steam keys to developers and resellers at very little cost, and that there are thriving third-party markets because of that.
You could argue that they have been stagnant in terms of game development, but everyone knows that isn't exactly true since Alyx was released. I don't really know what state VR was in before its release but from this outsider's perspective it seems to have raised the bar considerably.
Save for GOG, the DRM war is effectively lost, and so I'd rather be living under Gaben's benevolent dictatorship than some of the other more corporate-minded masters.
- kipchak 6y agoOn the subject of game development at Valve, there's a lot of things that have been worked on but never turned into an actual release. There were 5 cancelled Half-Lifes between Episode 2 and Alyx (Including Half Life 3), Left 4 Dead 3, F-Stop, "RPG". A.R.T.I, SimTrek and probably a few more. That sometimes over-cancelling willingness I think is also part of what makes the end result great-TF2 took 9 years and several versions similarly to Alyx, but I think both were worth the wait.