4 ms·

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

by fidotron 7mo ago

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.

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.