Some interesting industry news for you here. Epic Games have announced a change to the revenue model of the Epic Games Store, as they try to pull in more developers and more gamers to actually purchase things.
I am against monopolistic competition practices and that includes exclusivity deals and predatory pricing.
And as far as I know, Epic does this more than Valve or GOG. Granted, Valve doesn’t need to, because they are already the main player, but they also mostly avoided enshittyfication for now.
Granted it is hard to enter a market that is already dominated by another company, but instead of doing those business practices they could offer a better service.
Yes. That is rather high, but AFAIK the same on Xbox, PlayStation and GOG. Itch.io is on 10%.
It’s not possible for valve OR epic to enshit according to the definition of the word.
What do you mean by that? Enshittyfication is when companies try to offer a good platform first to reach many content producers and consumers and then, once the consumers and producers depend on the platform, it goes bad for them in order to favor profits of the company owners or stakeholders.
Just because a company is private, it can still change to favor short term money extractions from all their customers.
I don’t really understand what it is I would be wrong about. Is it about the word “shareholders” in the wiki instead of “owners”, what I called them?
Shareholders of a private company is often a small group of individuals or just one person, and they can also be called the owners. “Private” means the shares are not traded publicly.
A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as stockholder) of corporate stock refers to an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) that is registered by the corporation as the legal owner of shares of the share capital of a public or private corporation.
no, it’s because they had about a 15 year head start. you think steam started the way it is now? it started as a launcher for steam games and it was worse than ubisoft’s launcher.
Also, folks fucking hated it at the jump. Whats wild to me is that Epic could factor in all the lessons Steam learned over near two decades resulting in a relatively equal product, but instead… doesn’t.
GOG doesn’t need a launcher, because the games don’t have DRM. It is just nice to have, in order to keep games up to date.
Steam, Epic, Origin and the Microsoft thing needs a launcher, because DRM. The non-optional part is what is annoying, it is not a choice, if you buy something there, you have to use their launcher software, that needs to run in the background all the time (Sure it doesn’t need to run all the time, but just having to start it in addition to the game, is annoying).
With Steam being the first one to require a launcher, it was annoying at first, but became useful and people started considering it the standard game delivery solution. Now we need another one for Epic and all other stores that peddle DRMified games.
If Epic would be just another store, where you buy and download games, nobody would complain, but Epic created (reinvented) an additional incompatible game delivery solution that required their launcher, that is what people are mostly annoyed about.
If the industry would come together and create a vendor neutral and compatible software and game delivery mechanism, where people are free to choose where to buy their software and games, and with which launcher they want to keep it up to date, that would be awesome, but sadly capitalism favors short sighted, wasteful and monopoly building competition instead of cooperation.
If Steam turns to shit I have no problems reacquiring my collection through Piracy. There is no sunk-cost here. Epic is actively anti-consumer so I refuse to use it.
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I guess I don’t understand Epic’s model. How is Epic different from Steam in this regard?
epic can have a seat at the table when they actually start competing with valve in terms of features and customer service.
You can’t tell me that if epic somehow wins this war that they won’t immediately enshittify the platform. Valve has my trust.
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in this case you can.
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I am against monopolistic competition practices and that includes exclusivity deals and predatory pricing.
And as far as I know, Epic does this more than Valve or GOG. Granted, Valve doesn’t need to, because they are already the main player, but they also mostly avoided enshittyfication for now.
Granted it is hard to enter a market that is already dominated by another company, but instead of doing those business practices they could offer a better service.
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Yes. That is rather high, but AFAIK the same on Xbox, PlayStation and GOG. Itch.io is on 10%.
What do you mean by that? Enshittyfication is when companies try to offer a good platform first to reach many content producers and consumers and then, once the consumers and producers depend on the platform, it goes bad for them in order to favor profits of the company owners or stakeholders.
Just because a company is private, it can still change to favor short term money extractions from all their customers.
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I don’t really understand what it is I would be wrong about. Is it about the word “shareholders” in the wiki instead of “owners”, what I called them?
Shareholders of a private company is often a small group of individuals or just one person, and they can also be called the owners. “Private” means the shares are not traded publicly.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder
Steam is a monopoly because it is the only one of these platforms to actually be good.
Epic can even beat them if they just improved their store, but they would rather fight other stores so that it would be worse for everyone.
It’s more than the store they need to improve.
They’re not just playing catch-up either.
no, it’s because they had about a 15 year head start. you think steam started the way it is now? it started as a launcher for steam games and it was worse than ubisoft’s launcher.
Also, folks fucking hated it at the jump. Whats wild to me is that Epic could factor in all the lessons Steam learned over near two decades resulting in a relatively equal product, but instead… doesn’t.
eh it’s currently second only to steam imo. and don’t come at me with gog galaxy, it’s absolutely awful, and feels like it’s also abandoned.
GOG doesn’t need a launcher, because the games don’t have DRM. It is just nice to have, in order to keep games up to date.
Steam, Epic, Origin and the Microsoft thing needs a launcher, because DRM. The non-optional part is what is annoying, it is not a choice, if you buy something there, you have to use their launcher software, that needs to run in the background all the time (Sure it doesn’t need to run all the time, but just having to start it in addition to the game, is annoying).
With Steam being the first one to require a launcher, it was annoying at first, but became useful and people started considering it the standard game delivery solution. Now we need another one for Epic and all other stores that peddle DRMified games.
If Epic would be just another store, where you buy and download games, nobody would complain, but Epic created (reinvented) an additional incompatible game delivery solution that required their launcher, that is what people are mostly annoyed about.
If the industry would come together and create a vendor neutral and compatible software and game delivery mechanism, where people are free to choose where to buy their software and games, and with which launcher they want to keep it up to date, that would be awesome, but sadly capitalism favors short sighted, wasteful and monopoly building competition instead of cooperation.
Steam fans are a cult lol. Invested too much money they hate to admit so now they sing it’s praises till they die.
If Steam turns to shit I have no problems reacquiring my collection through Piracy. There is no sunk-cost here. Epic is actively anti-consumer so I refuse to use it.
Can I like and dislike a comment at the same time?
Am just gonna like yours to show my split opinion.