4 ms·

I’ve wondered how much money was burned on Tim Sweeneys quixotic quest to re-create the Steam store. I know a lot of people who would religiously download the “

by pram 7mo ago

I’ve wondered how much money was burned on Tim Sweeneys quixotic quest to re-create the Steam store. I know a lot of people who would religiously download the “free games” but never spent a cent.

fidotron 7mo ago
In fairness, someone has to try. We can't rely on GabeN being (relatively) benign without serious competition.
- gonzalohm 7mo ago
  Everyone has tried already. EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard, Epic...
  - fidotron 7mo ago
    I was at EA during peak Origin mania and the defining regret of my career is not having slapped sense into the appropriate people when I had the opportunity to do so. We really did have a far better shot at it than even most insiders appreciated (to the point rival companies would tell me to my face how confused they were by the apparent failure to execute), however, the core team were more interested in fighting over who would take credit for it when it succeeded than ever ensuring that it would.
  - shimman 7mo ago
    Always thought the hate against EA Origin was unwarranted. They 24 hour no questions ask refund policy back in ~2010 that took steam like 5 years to implement themselves. Outside of being forced to use a game launcher to launch their games, what was the real crime? Not enabling gambling on their platform like steam?
    - Maken 7mo ago
      The main problem with EA Origin was EA itself. They have burnt every single bit of costumer trust EA as a company could have.
      - shimman 7mo ago
        Yes but EA Origin was still very consumer friendly at that time. They were one of the only people offering digital refunds at the time. Being able to refund a game on origin then buying a different one on steam was definitely a peak in consumer gaming (that plus the humble bundle being good added to the feeling).
        mylies43 7mo ago
        I agree with you about the consumer friendlyness at the time and honestly it was not bad at first, but the problems they had were way more technical with difficulties in buying and downloading and hell even just friending someone and jumping in. When it first came out I thought it was decent and improving but then it just....stopped. They could have competed with Valve but it really felt like they stopped caring one day
        Maken 7mo ago
        No matter how consumer friendly they were, nobody trusted them in the long term. Buying games on EA Origin meant giving them control over games' sales, and a EA monopoly in digital distribution was a nightmare scenario. Their bad PR at the time simply killed the platform, no matter how good or bad the product itself was at the time.
    - lreeves 7mo ago
      I bought Battlefield 2 and it's DLC and one of the earlier Dirt games on EA Origin and it was an absolute nightmare. My games and the DLC would constantly not be authed in my account and I still have like dozens of support threads in my old mailbox trying to get things working. At the same time Steam had polished a lot of the rough edges like this for their catalog and other publishers so there's really no excuse. I've never had to open support tickets with any other storefront because the DLC map pack for a game would stop loading while the base game kept working.
    - josephg 7mo ago
      > Outside of being forced to use a game launcher to launch their games, what was the real crime? To me, this was the crime. Me and my friends played mass effect 3 multiplayer around launch, which was an EA Origin exclusive. It was a total pain! All of us needed to download and install the launcher, then buy & download the game through it. Then add each other as "EA origin friends". The whole process was riddled with bugs at the time - including payment problems and download problems. Origin would crash sometimes. Sometimes we couldn't see each other in multiplayer, and needed to restart origin to fix it. Sometimes another of our friends would join us - and it was always "oh god, what do I have to do to make this work??". I really love mass effect 3. But the experience was traumatic enough that I never bought or played anything through EA Origin ever since then. The quality of Steam is table stakes now. And there's so many good games coming out that game exclusivity usually isn't enough to get you over that initial hump. The biggest gripe I have with the origin launcher (and to a lesser extent, the epic launcher) other than "why does it exist at all?" is how laggy all UI actions are. Game developers can render a 3d world at 120+fps. Why on earth does it take multiple seconds for the UI to respond to a button press sometimes? Its completely inexcusable. The blizzard launcher is (IMO) the best launcher by this metric. You can tell competent people made it, because everything responds instantly. (The EA launcher might be good now, I wouldn't know. I mostly only play games that release on steam.)
  - sph 7mo ago
    Everyone that needs to respond to shareholders has tried already, and failed against a privately-owned company. Gabe Newell is a billionaire and has shown no particular need to enshittify his brand just to extract more profit. May he blessed with health and a long life.
  - CodesInChaos 7mo ago
    Most of those didn't try to create an open store. They only tried to create a store and launcher for their own products.
- 0pranav 7mo ago
  I think the following is the bare minimum to compete with Steam at this point: 1. Store with discoverability, 2. A functional cart feature at launch 3. A wishlist with notifications for discount 4. Relatively high download speeds (500Mbps at least) 5. Friends list and activity feed 6. Achievements 7. An equivalent to steam input API 8. Regional pricing with robust payment options 9. Development/Beta build distribution as easy as steam. 10. A useful in-game overlay with at least performance metrics. optionally a web browser and notes. All of the competition has missed either one or more of the features, making them feel like only a cash grab trying to avoid Valve's cut for providing these features.
  - mvdtnz 7mo ago
    I guess everyone gets different value from different features but I for one would not even notice if Steam removed the overlay, achievements, activity feed, input API or beta distribution. It all seems like bloat to me.
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
  - Akronymus 7mo ago
    Missing a few things there: Reviews and working on linux, for example.
    - mylies43 7mo ago
      Reviews for sure but I think you could drop linux and just add it whenever everything is stable, I don't think Linux is that big of a gaming population( though growing, thanks deck! )
  - apparatur 7mo ago
    Those features are important but I think the key things are the actual games and friends. You cannot start with empty catalog and you also cannot start with older games people already own on Steam. You also need friends to be there on day 1 for multiplayer.
- yoyohello13 7mo ago
  If Epic wasn’t actively hostile toward Linux (to the point of calling Linux cancer) I could be persuaded, but as it is now Steam is basically the only company actually trying to make gaming on Linux a thing. And because of that Steam will always get my money.
Rapzid 7mo ago
It's a noble quest. And realistic; it's almost beyond reason how bad EGS is/was for so long with so much money and "the best people" thrown at it for a decade+. Anway, it's not quixotic IMHO.
- fidotron 7mo ago
  I've been involved enough with a few (mobile and PC) efforts in this direction, and now believe the US business culture can't create new ones in established markets. The reason is the highly successful competitor, in that case Steam, inspires a sort of megalomania in those aiming to compete with them, which leads to spectacular self destruction and consumer confusion as stores try to act big long before they are self sustaining.
  - Ekaros 7mo ago
    Also really makes me question your average USA based developer. Making a program and storefront to manage few dozen to few hundred applications can not be that complicated problem. I am not here even talking about scale of Steam libraries that outlier customers have. There must be some fundamental problem with either developers or management system or both...
    - zem 7mo ago
      my completely uninformed speculation is that they didn't want to just build a clean, simple store that got out of your way, they wanted to throw in some sort of rent extraction or user control at every step.
      - fidotron 7mo ago
        Right, to apparently every MBA wielding PM they are actually primarily user ID systems which allow you to buy things (including whole games). And doing this requires including a near complete web browser with piles of added hooks, obviously.
    - johnnyanmac 7mo ago
alephnerd 7mo ago
> Tim Sweeneys quixotic quest to re-create the Steam store Building a marketplace or AppStore isn't quixotic - it helps build distribution and gives Epic the power needed to drive studios to the Unreal Engine, though this strategy clearly went to the backburner due to Fortnite and it's entire ecosystem becoming the golden goose. That said, Epic is also significantly more overstaffed than it's peers.
b3lvedere 7mo ago
The Epic Games store/browser is awful. I have bought one (insanely discounted) game on it and get all the free games, because i like to collect videogames. But i almost never play them, because the application is super slow. Steam has absolutely the best application, then (with a huge enormous gap) comes Gog, Amazon, Xbox, EA, Ubisoft and Epic at the rock bottom. I don't use Blizzards program, so i can't judge on that one.
- kgwxd 7mo ago
  > i like to collect videogames Starting thinking of it as collection licenses to maybe install games, assuming the license is still valid when you finally get around to playing it. And your account is still valid. And the servers are still running. And your operating system will still run it. etc. Maybe just get off the train. Your numbers add to the awful business model these games are built on.
  - daedrdev 7mo ago
    What do you think these game companies should do instead? The license lets you make your own copies on your own devices while preventing stealing by people who might make a copy and then resell, which would absolutely happen if allowed.
  - tsimionescu 7mo ago
    The majority of games on Gog offer fully offline installers, where the copy you download is enough to run forever (assuming Windows and hardware compatibility, of coruse).
  - ijk 7mo ago
    Which is GOG's selling point, versus Steam.
    - throwatdem12311 7mo ago
      Everything is DRM free and they provide offline installers. They are also proactive in making sure the games they sell run on modern systems.
jeffwask 7mo ago
> religiously download the “free games” but never spent a cent. We are Legion.
NotGMan 7mo ago
My main issue with Epic' Store is that it doesn't have a rating/review system just like Steam has. Since game journos are completely woke and unreliable using Steam's game ratings from REAL players is a God-send. Without it you simply wouldn't know if a game is any good or not.
zzzoom 7mo ago
I can't even play the decent free games I got because I can't find them in the UI. It doesn't have sort by rating (or any other popularity metric) so you have to wade through the junk. Imagine paying for that experience...
georgeecollins 7mo ago
I wouldn't say it was quixotic. Think about it this way: If fortnite made at it's peak $5.5b, and 2/3rd of that was PC (I have no idea of the ratio, just guessing), Epic would have been paying $1b to Valve in just that one year (3.66* 0.30). You could spend a lot on developing a store to avoid paying $1b in fees! Plus, your chance to launch a store is when you have a big product. Valve launched Steam with Half Life 2. It didn't really work that well at first but everyone wanted to play HL2.

by pram 7mo ago

fidotron 7mo ago

In fairness, someone has to try. We can't rely on GabeN being (relatively) benign without serious competition.

gonzalohm 7mo ago
Everyone has tried already. EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard, Epic...
- fidotron 7mo ago
  I was at EA during peak Origin mania and the defining regret of my career is not having slapped sense into the appropriate people when I had the opportunity to do so. We really did have a far better shot at it than even most insiders appreciated (to the point rival companies would tell me to my face how confused they were by the apparent failure to execute), however, the core team were more interested in fighting over who would take credit for it when it succeeded than ever ensuring that it would.
- shimman 7mo ago
  Always thought the hate against EA Origin was unwarranted. They 24 hour no questions ask refund policy back in ~2010 that took steam like 5 years to implement themselves. Outside of being forced to use a game launcher to launch their games, what was the real crime? Not enabling gambling on their platform like steam?
  - Maken 7mo ago
    The main problem with EA Origin was EA itself. They have burnt every single bit of costumer trust EA as a company could have.
    - shimman 7mo ago
      Yes but EA Origin was still very consumer friendly at that time. They were one of the only people offering digital refunds at the time. Being able to refund a game on origin then buying a different one on steam was definitely a peak in consumer gaming (that plus the humble bundle being good added to the feeling).
      - mylies43 7mo ago
        I agree with you about the consumer friendlyness at the time and honestly it was not bad at first, but the problems they had were way more technical with difficulties in buying and downloading and hell even just friending someone and jumping in. When it first came out I thought it was decent and improving but then it just....stopped. They could have competed with Valve but it really felt like they stopped caring one day
      - Maken 7mo ago
        No matter how consumer friendly they were, nobody trusted them in the long term. Buying games on EA Origin meant giving them control over games' sales, and a EA monopoly in digital distribution was a nightmare scenario. Their bad PR at the time simply killed the platform, no matter how good or bad the product itself was at the time.
  - lreeves 7mo ago
    I bought Battlefield 2 and it's DLC and one of the earlier Dirt games on EA Origin and it was an absolute nightmare. My games and the DLC would constantly not be authed in my account and I still have like dozens of support threads in my old mailbox trying to get things working. At the same time Steam had polished a lot of the rough edges like this for their catalog and other publishers so there's really no excuse. I've never had to open support tickets with any other storefront because the DLC map pack for a game would stop loading while the base game kept working.
  - josephg 7mo ago
    > Outside of being forced to use a game launcher to launch their games, what was the real crime? To me, this was the crime. Me and my friends played mass effect 3 multiplayer around launch, which was an EA Origin exclusive. It was a total pain! All of us needed to download and install the launcher, then buy & download the game through it. Then add each other as "EA origin friends". The whole process was riddled with bugs at the time - including payment problems and download problems. Origin would crash sometimes. Sometimes we couldn't see each other in multiplayer, and needed to restart origin to fix it. Sometimes another of our friends would join us - and it was always "oh god, what do I have to do to make this work??". I really love mass effect 3. But the experience was traumatic enough that I never bought or played anything through EA Origin ever since then. The quality of Steam is table stakes now. And there's so many good games coming out that game exclusivity usually isn't enough to get you over that initial hump. The biggest gripe I have with the origin launcher (and to a lesser extent, the epic launcher) other than "why does it exist at all?" is how laggy all UI actions are. Game developers can render a 3d world at 120+fps. Why on earth does it take multiple seconds for the UI to respond to a button press sometimes? Its completely inexcusable. The blizzard launcher is (IMO) the best launcher by this metric. You can tell competent people made it, because everything responds instantly. (The EA launcher might be good now, I wouldn't know. I mostly only play games that release on steam.)
- sph 7mo ago
  Everyone that needs to respond to shareholders has tried already, and failed against a privately-owned company. Gabe Newell is a billionaire and has shown no particular need to enshittify his brand just to extract more profit. May he blessed with health and a long life.
- CodesInChaos 7mo ago
  Most of those didn't try to create an open store. They only tried to create a store and launcher for their own products.
0pranav 7mo ago
I think the following is the bare minimum to compete with Steam at this point: 1. Store with discoverability, 2. A functional cart feature at launch 3. A wishlist with notifications for discount 4. Relatively high download speeds (500Mbps at least) 5. Friends list and activity feed 6. Achievements 7. An equivalent to steam input API 8. Regional pricing with robust payment options 9. Development/Beta build distribution as easy as steam. 10. A useful in-game overlay with at least performance metrics. optionally a web browser and notes. All of the competition has missed either one or more of the features, making them feel like only a cash grab trying to avoid Valve's cut for providing these features.
- mvdtnz 7mo ago
  I guess everyone gets different value from different features but I for one would not even notice if Steam removed the overlay, achievements, activity feed, input API or beta distribution. It all seems like bloat to me.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
- Akronymus 7mo ago
  Missing a few things there: Reviews and working on linux, for example.
  - mylies43 7mo ago
    Reviews for sure but I think you could drop linux and just add it whenever everything is stable, I don't think Linux is that big of a gaming population( though growing, thanks deck! )
- apparatur 7mo ago
  Those features are important but I think the key things are the actual games and friends. You cannot start with empty catalog and you also cannot start with older games people already own on Steam. You also need friends to be there on day 1 for multiplayer.
yoyohello13 7mo ago
If Epic wasn’t actively hostile toward Linux (to the point of calling Linux cancer) I could be persuaded, but as it is now Steam is basically the only company actually trying to make gaming on Linux a thing. And because of that Steam will always get my money.

Rapzid 7mo ago

It's a noble quest. And realistic; it's almost beyond reason how bad EGS is/was for so long with so much money and "the best people" thrown at it for a decade+. Anway, it's not quixotic IMHO.

fidotron 7mo ago
I've been involved enough with a few (mobile and PC) efforts in this direction, and now believe the US business culture can't create new ones in established markets. The reason is the highly successful competitor, in that case Steam, inspires a sort of megalomania in those aiming to compete with them, which leads to spectacular self destruction and consumer confusion as stores try to act big long before they are self sustaining.
- Ekaros 7mo ago
  Also really makes me question your average USA based developer. Making a program and storefront to manage few dozen to few hundred applications can not be that complicated problem. I am not here even talking about scale of Steam libraries that outlier customers have. There must be some fundamental problem with either developers or management system or both...
  - zem 7mo ago
    my completely uninformed speculation is that they didn't want to just build a clean, simple store that got out of your way, they wanted to throw in some sort of rent extraction or user control at every step.
    - fidotron 7mo ago
      Right, to apparently every MBA wielding PM they are actually primarily user ID systems which allow you to buy things (including whole games). And doing this requires including a near complete web browser with piles of added hooks, obviously.
  - johnnyanmac 7mo ago

alephnerd 7mo ago

> Tim Sweeneys quixotic quest to re-create the Steam store Building a marketplace or AppStore isn't quixotic - it helps build distribution and gives Epic the power needed to drive studios to the Unreal Engine, though this strategy clearly went to the backburner due to Fortnite and it's entire ecosystem becoming the golden goose. That said, Epic is also significantly more overstaffed than it's peers.

b3lvedere 7mo ago

The Epic Games store/browser is awful. I have bought one (insanely discounted) game on it and get all the free games, because i like to collect videogames. But i almost never play them, because the application is super slow. Steam has absolutely the best application, then (with a huge enormous gap) comes Gog, Amazon, Xbox, EA, Ubisoft and Epic at the rock bottom. I don't use Blizzards program, so i can't judge on that one.

kgwxd 7mo ago
> i like to collect videogames Starting thinking of it as collection licenses to maybe install games, assuming the license is still valid when you finally get around to playing it. And your account is still valid. And the servers are still running. And your operating system will still run it. etc. Maybe just get off the train. Your numbers add to the awful business model these games are built on.
- daedrdev 7mo ago
  What do you think these game companies should do instead? The license lets you make your own copies on your own devices while preventing stealing by people who might make a copy and then resell, which would absolutely happen if allowed.
- tsimionescu 7mo ago
  The majority of games on Gog offer fully offline installers, where the copy you download is enough to run forever (assuming Windows and hardware compatibility, of coruse).
- ijk 7mo ago
  Which is GOG's selling point, versus Steam.
  - throwatdem12311 7mo ago
    Everything is DRM free and they provide offline installers. They are also proactive in making sure the games they sell run on modern systems.

jeffwask 7mo ago

> religiously download the “free games” but never spent a cent. We are Legion.

NotGMan 7mo ago

My main issue with Epic' Store is that it doesn't have a rating/review system just like Steam has. Since game journos are completely woke and unreliable using Steam's game ratings from REAL players is a God-send. Without it you simply wouldn't know if a game is any good or not.

zzzoom 7mo ago

I can't even play the decent free games I got because I can't find them in the UI. It doesn't have sort by rating (or any other popularity metric) so you have to wade through the junk. Imagine paying for that experience...

georgeecollins 7mo ago

I wouldn't say it was quixotic. Think about it this way: If fortnite made at it's peak $5.5b, and 2/3rd of that was PC (I have no idea of the ratio, just guessing), Epic would have been paying $1b to Valve in just that one year (3.66* 0.30). You could spend a lot on developing a store to avoid paying $1b in fees! Plus, your chance to launch a store is when you have a big product. Valve launched Steam with Half Life 2. It didn't really work that well at first but everyone wanted to play HL2.