Indies don’t release there either. I wrote about an observation in this comment thread - small devs are no longer releasing their games outside of Steam because they need all sales to go into one pot - if they split it between stores they rank lower.

that should absolutely be regulated globally and it better damn well include roblox and literally every gacha and shooter game too. Parents should really be doing the wallet voting and politician mailing there but I've seen dads quiet their kids by letting them roll gacha on the phone while waiting to pay for food and when I told my friends about the pedos on roblox situation they told me off saying I don't know what its like to have kids... When the parents are happy to feed their children to the machine what the fuck can I do about it?

Your screenshot doesn't support your text, and from what I recall they say that: - if you put your game on sale cheaper elsewhere (but are selling steam keys), you need to have a similar (not even identical) sale on Steam at some point. - You can't undercut Steam's price and sell the freely generated CD keys that add the game to a steam account elsewhere for a lower price. That's it. It's actually about the CD keys, not the game itself. There's no rule about selling the game on another store, using that store. https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3 Your screenshot there seems to be quoting this page, in fact. You're welcome to check the documentation out, or find any other source that isn't bad reporting based on a lawsuit that wasn't successful?

If gambling can be regulated then why not monopolies?

Heroic can add the Game to steam too

Dec 2025 https://www.gog.com/blog/gog-is-getting-acquired-by-its-original-co-founder-what-it-means-for-you/

I think the store and the library search sucks on EGS. You can't even tell what games you have purchased and for what platform (pc/ios/android). Best you have is the purchase history on their website and app. I use Heroic Launcher (on Arch btw and Bazzite for kids) and that luckily works really well for displaying games that you have bought on PC. But there's no such alternative for iOS or Android, and even Heroic doesn't show you what games there are in your library for mobile.

Before? Their policy was: we don't issue refunds. _Maybe_ if you had an egregious example of a game not functioning at all, they might issue a one off. But I was denied one trying to refund one of the cod black ops games that crashed within 10 mins of starting a match for weeks until they finally patched it. And even that was an upgrade from: never.

If you already have an answer then copy paste it. If you already have an answer then why do this weasel dance? You clearly don't have an answer.

Enforce interoperability, lower Valve cut as abusive and punish abusive clauses in developer agreement (you can’t price your game lower than Steam on other storefronts). Ideally you’d treat Valve like a telecom monopoly, meaning break down Valve into two companies - Valve infra (handling license ledger, storage, bandwidth) and Valve store/developer. Allow other stores to notify that user owns a game and allow access to Valve infra with third party stores.

Under Linux, running a game on Epic is a pain next to Steam, so if the game is good enough...

Thank you. I'm not against any of that, exist maybe some definition needs to be applied to what is infra and what is store. For instance, a big part of what people like about steam is that they have reliable reviews. That would need to remain true with this split. I think there is a fine line to walk between enforcing interoperability and compromising or letting other companies leech on steam for no reason. You also seem to be implying that regardless of what store you purchase something on, you can access it from any other store because steam manages the licenses? Seems strange to me.

It’s not leeching, Valve mostly lucked into this monopoly at first because of how grossly incompetent competition was at the time. Valve owners were rewarded handsomely for this already, there’s no reason for this to continue until heat death of the universe because there’s not that much value added that they provide now. It’s cool that they pay salaries of like 3 Linux devs and piggyback on Wine work that Codeweavers funded for the past 30 years. You’d think there’s so much more they could do with 30% cut of nearly all PC game sales however which is why they need competition.

Been saying this for years. Valve has brainwashed gamers and gained a monopoly using the same tactics people decry Epic for using.

[Relevant xkcd](https://xkcd.com/979/)

> not leeching, Valve mostly lucked into this monopoly because of how grossly incompetent competition was at the time. Just to be clear, the majority of the *current* competition is not only incompetent but actively malicious. The ones that don't suck already have a toehold and I would like to see flourish because competition is good for everyone, but this picture you paint of steam is honestly ridiculous.

Consumers aren’t the only consideration. Even if Epic sucks in many ways they’re much more better for smaller devs because they don’t take anything until you make $1M. One would think that this would be enough for indies to publish there but they don’t want to split sales between platforms (they need all sales to happen on Steam so that they rank better there, it’s the only store that matters). It’s a viscous cycle where smaller competition like GOG or Itch.io have no chance in hell to compete. I’m pretty sure anyone considering competing with Steam has done this math, hence you get only competition backed by big $$$, which usually is the worst people imaginable.

I edited my comment. Yes. It totally helps.

I've said this in the past but I think it's worth restating. I'm amazed that EGS is willing to even front the cost of these free games. Like I would expect some form of arbitrary restriction like requiring periodic actual money purchase to be eligible. They have posted income reports that state the free program just isn't working. Sure it's increasing numbers, but that isn't very helpful when your revenue is still decreasing ontop of the cost of the program. for perspective: my last purchase was void train in super early stages of the game (2021 I think?) and prior to that was satisfactory somewhere around 2018 or 19. Meanwhile I have collected a lot of decent games from the program. And I'm one of the better cases. I have /tons/ of friends who have zero intention of ever actually buying anything on the shop, they only use it as a log in, claim the weekly freebie, log out or play the freebie system. Heck, there are programs that are dedicated exclusivley to log in as you, and claim the weekly freebies so you never even have to log onto the storefront. It isn't a sustainable model. I feel like they would be better off forcing an annual payment history check on the platform, something stupid small like "if total paid is > 5$" or something cheap, or even like how steam does it where once you purchase something once everything unlocks. From a financial/business mindset, I don't get their intent on the current program. It only encourages people to grab games and never actually spend money on the sinkhole.

Sure, try the buggy Epic version then buy the usable Steam version.