GOG and Itch are both great services. Epic is run by a psychopath and working hard to create the walled garden they themselves have been railing against. That's why EGS can go to hell but I'll gladly buy from the others.

From the POV of steam, you want the big releases to happen on your platform and take your cut even if its a bit smaller. In the end people change platforms for the big releases. Its the main reason I haven't fully switched to GOG yet, it doesn't have the major releases I want (or gets them late like Kingdom Come Deliverance 2). You can spread idealism, but I rather stay realistic.

And yet, still, they can go fuck themselves.

Couldn't you just like... sell those stolen gift cards on G2A, Kinguin and such instead? You wouldn't have the 100 euro posting game fee + needing to have it checked and such.

> Steam keeps getting slammed from both sides. They keep getting accused of being a monopoly, , while also getting accused of their rates. ...those are not different sides? The only reason they can charge such absurd rates is because of their position in the marketplace.

How are they affording this? It can't be a sustainable model, right?

Fortnite, and it's not. The store loses them hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

> Assassin’s Creed, FIFA, Call of Duty? Not big enough. Still have to deal with Steam. They don't have to. OK, maybe Microsoft has to because they are the actual monopolist and making the Activision Blizzard franchises available on storefronts other than Microsoft's own is to keep the watchdogs away. Also, none of the franchises are exclusive to Steam, so Steam has no monopoly. > It takes being significantly bigger than the entire Epic store to even consider not doing Steam on PC. That sentence makes no sense. Fortnite is exclusive to EGS, therefore it cannot be "significantly bigger than the entire Epic store". Steam has no policies that forbid offering games on other stores, Epic has policies that makes certain games timed exclusives to EGS. What makes EGS unattractive compared to Steam is the simple fact that Epic chooses to most prominently display their own games on EGS. Valve does front page banners, fests, that window that opens with every Steam launch, etc. and goes out of their way to make everything from big launches as well as solo dev indie games discoverable. Epic has it in their own hands to make EGS more than the Fortnite launcher. They could promote other EGS games inside Fortnite but they don't. They host concerts inside Fortnite but nothing to promote 3rd party EGS games, for examle.

That's the kind of competition I want. Not a plucky newcomer with fresh ideas, but an industry titan able to burn more money than some companies ever see in an attempt to undercut the competition. They surely aren't factoring this as a deficit to recoup when they pull a massive reversal after securing market dominance. That's never happened in the history of capitalism. Epic can huff my huffables.

What they had been charging was about what other stores have been charging. Do you think a company that was by far in the lead over other stores dropping their prices further wouldn't increase their user base even further, making it even harder for competition? They already have active legal cases against them for monopolizing.

> What they had been charging was about what other stores have been charging It's not what Epic charges. > Do you think a company that was by far in the lead over other stores dropping their prices further wouldn't increase their user base even further, making it even harder for competition? No one would care if they were a monopoly and also charged less than everyone else. Pretty much every monopoly discussion revolves almost entirely around their absurd commission rates.

> I’ll take good unofficial support in the meantime. And that unofficial support is brought to you by Valve's contributions to Wine, DXVK, RADV, LibSDL,... > There’s no workaround for monpolistic positions Considering that the only monopolist in PC gaming is Microsoft, the workaround for that Windows monopoly is to spend money on products that make non-Windows PC gaming better and currently that's almost exclusively Valve.

I assume they mostly just do Steam sale and store organization stuff these days

Easy. On EGS most games don't sell at all, so 0% of $0 is still $0. They get most of their money from Fortnite.

Plus steam input, remote play, play together, trophies, hell there's a whole API for you to use to make your game multiplayer and have it integrate with steam friends easily. So much built in for devs lives to be easier.

... and it still won't dent Steam's de-facto monopoly.

I mean, cool. I don't need Valve to be a moustache-twirling cartoon villain to not like them having a monopolistic position. They make a great platform, I generally like their hardware and, much as it is a byproduct of them trying to cut Microsoft out of the loop, I think it's great that they are basing their efforts on Linux. They still shouldn't become the sole platform for PC gaming and that means they should lose some market share, though. You really, really, really don't need to pick a side between multibillion dollar corporations and support it like it's a sports team.

> What they had been charging was about what other stores have been charging. When they have absolute monopoly. Nintendo charges that much because only Nintendo provides Switch software. Microsoft charges that much because only Microsoft provides Xbox software. Sony charges that much because only Sony provides Playstation software. Apple charges that much because only Apple provides iOS software... despite the EU's best efforts. Steam and Android act like they're the only store that matters, for their platform. And it works. Because they are.

Oh, yeah, they have to. All of those examples are from publishers that tried to have their own platforms and then could not sustain that option and had to come back to the Steam platform. So they're not big enough. As for Fortnite being bigger than EGS... well, yeah, it is. So much so that Epic themselves report on the two separately. And Fortnite makes more money than every other game in there. 10 Bn for Steam revenue this year, by the way. They are the only thing growing in the space. Everything else pulling money is aging games, 5-10 years old, that have a fossilized playerbase mobile-style. The money flows to Valve because Valve doesn't need to make ANY games at all, pay for exclusives or do anything else. Especially since the fanboys paint any attempt at competing against a monopolistic actor as an anticompetitive act, somehow.

> They still shouldn’t become the sole platform for PC gaming and that means they should lose some market share, though. So CD Project should take a tiny fraction of their massive Cyberpunk earnings and make GOG Galaxy with Proton integration available on Linux. > You really, really, really don’t need to pick a side between multibillion dollar corporations and support it like it’s a sports team. No, it has nothing to do with sports. Picking the vendor that invests into making an open source alternative to Windows viable is pure egoism. Their contributions will have a positive effect long into the future of PC gaming.