*smile* the whole point of publishers back in the day before the internet *was* distribution and marketing. no I am not mistaking one for the other.

No, you absolutely are. Publishers will typically pay for retail manufacturing costs (so printing, boxing and shipping), but that's not the same as digital distribution. Digital distribution doesn't map to shipping game boxes, it maps to retail. Which is why games on Steam have deals with publishers, NOT with Valve.

> so they can keep feeding a monopoly that licenses drm keys to them. I guess I don't understand Epic's model. How is Epic different from Steam in this regard?

> Invested too much money 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.

If my purchase on Epic helps the game reach $1 million in revenue then I am giving money to Epic.

> One approach is objectively better for the little guys than the other. I'm a littler guy than any game company, Epic treats me like shit. So I'm not going to use Epic.

Honestly, I completely forgot I had Epic installed on my PC

Yes, that's what exclusive access to games mean. You can't buy them from other stores because Epic is actively preventing the developers from doing so.

I mentioned two stores in my comment, what exclusive access to money are you talking about?

By....signing legal agreements that the developers enter into willingly? We aren't talking momandpop shops here, these game producers have legal teams.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

Good job cassie

So we can't complain about Valve's 30% cut, then? Because its a legal agreement that game companies willingly enter into, is it not? What about game companies overworking their developers? It's all dandy because the devs willingly agreed when they enter into the employment? You're also forgetting about games that Epic pulled from other stores after buying the company making them. That's even shittier than releasing games exclusively on Epic.

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. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder

I can't wait to get more games on my Epic deck, oh wait it was Valve who pioneered an incredible platform that can play AAA games on a handheld running Linux and made compatibility a reality for thousands of games.

No, I'm not. you're *assuming* i am. game developers dont *generally* have the relationships with distributors. the whole point of a publisher is to handle that relationship + the relationship with marketing avenues. with digital distribution the role of a publisher is greatly reduced. mostly down to just marketing.

What's epics problem? I only log in to get free games but I think competition should work out better for the consumer

They could literally just copy steam, add their "we take less of a cut" thing, and be in a good place. Instead, using their storefront sucks, their customer service sucks, they lack features you'd expect of a major platform, and they're pretentious dicks about it. Instead of fixing these obvious problems, they're bribing devs for exclusivity, pumping their marketing with bullshit, and litigating apple over their app store (actually that last one is kinda great). The epic store today would be competition to steam if steam was still as it was 20 years ago when everyone hated steam.

A lot of Steam Stans here. Here's some neat facts: - Epic Games is the same Source Developers behind Unreal Engine 5. UE5 is arguably the best game engine right now for modern graphics. - Epic Games Unreal Engine 5 is Free to start developing and only kicks in commission after X% of sales. - Both Steam and GoG take a ~30% commission on all game sales. - Steam games aren't DRM-free (neither is EGS, but 0% + the driving force behind UE5?) - The Steam Source 2 Engine is proprietary; only their team can develop Source games. It sucks that EGS is looking to suck up games, customers, data, etc. Their App / Interface also kinda sucks. UE5 on the other hand kinda rules, and Steam has been quietly collecting cheques while their Source Engine has collected dust. Almost all my games are on Steam but the ones I want to keep I've been getting through GoG. Steam is going to have to make some tough decisions I think to compete as time goes on. GoG on the other hand has a solid business model of old DRM free games.

Yet Steam has a history that proves they will not fuck customers over, and if they try new features people hate they'll not pushing it through no matter what for the purpose of maximizing profits (also not through dark patterns). This is something phenomenally rare and which you can't buy with any amount of money. So yeah, not sure what will happen in the future. But competing with Steam always will be just painful unless you got your own niche (like GOG) by the mere fact that Valve isn't "just another company that will screw you over" <-- the default expectation these days.