> Steam has about 80% of the PC digital distribution market for new releases. So it is a bad thing now that Steam makes new releases more discoverable than the other storefronts that have a larger installed base than Steam? Microsoft's store has a close to 100% penetration of home installation of Windows 10 and newer. Opening Microsoft Store: Boom, top spots for Microsofts properties (Activision Blizzard sale, Minecraft, Candy Crush).  Switching to the Games tab: PC Game Pass, more Activision Blizzard sale, COD Black Ops 6 with a dedicated banner, more Minecraft, more Candy Crush.  Visiting one of Microsoft's other game stores, Battle.net: 100% Microsoft exclusive. Not just Blizzard games but Doom, Avowed, Sea of Thieves, PC GamePass. That's unregulated Microsoft on full display. Not a single 3rd party game even available but the rest of the Microsoft catalogue integrated after the takeover of Activision Blizzard.  Compare that to Steam: Huge banner advertising the sale promotion of EA.  Scrolling a bit further down, Microsoft games advertised, some convention for narrative games.  Nobody but Microsoft and Epic are to blame for their huge installed bases not converting to sales of 3rd party games. Mostly advertising their own properties and paid exclusives. All your emotional outbursts do not change facts.

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.

fuck apple and their customers btw

Eventhough I adore GOG, they really need to step up their linux support, which is non-existent

Because they have to, because their store is based in bribing developers for artificial exclusivity in an attempt to hurt Valve for proving that Pig Swiney was a moron a decade ago when he said PC gaming was dead. This is all a vain attempt by a man child to get back at Gabe, and it’s abso fucking lutely a hilarious delight what an abject failure it all is. Garbage store with no customer services struggles and burns money, because that’s what’s lazy customer fucking cash grabs should do - burn. Fuck epic, fuck Swiney, and fuck you if you defend them.

They’re constantly making cool, free shit for gamers because valve at its core is a company of gamers - they happen to make a shit ton of money because their passion for gaming ended up delivering a superior product, but it’s that passion that keeps them at the top. Look at remote play together and family sharing - neither of those concepts help valve sell more games… if anything, they reduce the number of games sold (ie, their entire profit model), but they’re great ideas that make sense… so they spent a bunch of the companies time and money developing them. Epic will forever be garbage as long as it’s only goal is to dick with steam… and it will always fail because they’re treating steam like a greedy corporation when really, it’s just a bunch of passionate gamers building the toys they wish they had when they were kids.

You can't tell me that if epic somehow wins this war that they won't immediately enshittify the platform. Valve has my trust.

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 and wasteful competition instead of cooperation. IMO the

Correct, nobody can predict the future with accuracy.

Valve is private and already takes a 30% cut. It's not possible for valve OR epic to enshit according to the definition of the word.

Are they? Interesting word definitions here.

> Valve is private and already takes a 30% cut. 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.

Care to elaborate further on specific events or even just link some articles for a lazy bones like me? (I only get free games from epic and then never play them)

Wait, I'm confused. The article is about how Epic *won't* take a cut to a point. Surely, you're not giving money to Epic if you buy the game on EGS?

Completely unrelated, but is your username a reference to the movie Can't Hardly Wait?

At least Valve takes some of the money that they make from Steam and use it for Steam. You cant run an entire gaming platform based on developers alone, you also need to make it at least somewhat bearable for consumers.

100% of $0 is still $0. I'll spend my money on platforms that have proven to respect their customers.

epic can have a seat at the table when they actually start competing with valve in terms of features and customer service.

even if they do become pro-consumer you shouldn't spend there. because it'd be a temporary affair and soon as they win market share from steam it'll disappear.