Operating in China and having 10% of your company publicly owned by an entity of the Chinese government are two different things, and EGS has reportedly been all to happy to give over any and all information they have on identified users to the CCP. One article in 2019 suggesting that Hong Kong activists were being targeted by data in part provided through such means.

> Operating in China and having 10% of your company publicly owned by an entity of the Chinese government are two different things I don't think it is. Steam operates in China and even allows China to censor the Steam store page and games as needed. Valve doesn't take much issue bending over for China either in that regard. EGS and Steam are both Corporations and China is a large market.

Steam is good, but competitors can only make it even better. Worst case it doesn't change.

Not one of those data points justifies their shitty client, which, as a consumer, is all I really care about.

Not even a little bit. Man, you sure like to keep digging when given a shovel, huh? Look, I'm not here to write a textbook on game publishing, but I do recommend you take that shovel and go dig up some accurate information in the off-chance you're not just posting whatever autocorrect feeds you as the first word choice.

I don't think "epic bad". But right now, I don't see why I should use their platform when all my stuff is on steam. They should bring either: better experience or better value. Right now they don't really do either. Sure they give you free games but I have 10x the amount on my platform of choice. I'm not married to steam I just want epic to give me a reason to use them.

I agree but heroic has nothing to do with gog...

You go write that text book. Let me know when you publish your first game, you clearly have it all figured out! You minus the basics. Your problem is your antivalve for reasons no one really gives a shit about. Your issues with valve are not the %age it changes for sales on its stram store, but with moral positions ypu have personally and it colors your viewpoints. Facts: valve has charged a 30% commission since it made steam available for other studios to use. Fact: no one complained for literally 15 years. Fact: complaints about the split start after two things occurred. Massive inflation cutting into margins and steam dominating the distribution of games. You're arguments to date have been: Gabe/valve are bad people because they're a monopoly! Here are issues from over a decade that are *no longer even relevant*. Like if you want to argue that the percentage valve takes is too high, then sure we can discuss that. And hey, you wont even hear a peep from me in that case. Because its *true* imo. *But* the problem is GOG *also* takes 30%. And every other distributor has reputational issues that make them non-starters. unless you have a *valid* and *active* issue with valves practices that are *unique to valve* maybe its time to take the L and fuck off on this tolic and fet a clue?

Thats because they have a reputational problem that makes them toxic to the gamer base. If they ever get market share that split will change willy nilly.

I'm interested in why you think they are toxic to the gamer base?

Gog doesnt support linux or id look at them. But they also charge 30%

Thought i responded to this, but oh well will do it again. Epic, EA, Microsoft, sony, ubisoft all have a kong history of poor worker conditions or anti-consumer practices. Valve and gog have 20+ years of *decent" history of worker and pro gamer practices. The contention in this thread is from people who think valve cant be trusted because capitalism and those who say as long as they continue good behavior they're a better choice than *any* of the others in the space. Basically gog is their only real competitor and since they dont support linux or provide many of the game featurss valve does for developers its no contest.

From what I've been hearing, their fee is flexible. 30% is uncommon on PC.

So is valves. *Shrug*. Simply using the publicly available information.

I'm not aware of any evidence of Valve's cut ever adapting to a dev's circumstances. It's 30% until they've made $10M, which drops it to 25%, and to 20% after $50M. I'd call that scalability available only to the most successful few, not flexibility.

That is a dynamic rate by definition, not saying its perfect. But its available to any dev whos game hits those numbers.

I don’t disagree that’s a problem, but that is not what I said or implied. That’s the reason Steam has other mechanisms for scoring and scaling reviews. There are plenty of valid reasons for “review bombing” that are organic and natural consequences of developer activity: like adding Denuvo a year after release, adding a launxher or login/account requirement after the fact, etc. Making reviews “invite only” is anti-consumer.

If we dig just a bit deeper, it seems your issue is with the whole concept of not owning games, which is the very nature of Steam and its main policy, aptly called the **subscriber** agreement. Taking that out on game developers, let alone a competitor with more lax DRM practices, is also missing the first for the trees.

That is absolutely an issue I have, but it’s a whole separate can of worms. One I could talk about all day. Right now I’m just comparing Epics meaningless, useless review system against Steam.

And the thing is... Because Steam is better for the user, it becomes better from the developer. 70% of your game's Steam revenue will *always* be bigger than 100% of your Epic revenue. It's probably bigger than *300%* of your Epic revenue. That's why Steam doesn't need to buy exclusives or run loss leaders or try to lock you in with "free!" promos. Epic needs to pay developers up front to get them to *not* go to Steam, because in every case a dual Steam/whatever-else release is better than a whatever-else release. So Epic needs to pay the indie game studio that made a $10 game a million dollars for timed exclusivity, which allows the studio to not worry about losing their Steam revenue from selling 130,000 copies. Then they release it on Steam later anyway.