> 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.

I mean, yeah. You sorta figured out competition in marketplaces. Hey, I'm a social democrat. I'm all for intervening in markets, but for commodity entertainment products competition works pretty well, as you just explained.

GOG also doesn't support Linux. And I'm not gonna hold that against Epic if I don't hold it against GOG.

> Do they officially support Linux yet? Unreal Engine has official Linux support since ages. Unreal Engine running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux is what movie CGI creators often use these days. It's a highly lucrative market they're not going to give up. Epic Online Services supports Linux as well: https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/epic-online-services/eos-get-started/platform-support ([which includes Easy Anti Cheat](https://onlineservices.epicgames.com/en-US/news/epic-online-services-launches-anti-cheat-support-for-linux-mac-and-steam-deck)) So when Fortnite and Rocket League have no Linux versions, it's just because of lack of will, not anything technological.

Dont they also get royalties from Unreal Engine?

Here's the details on the financials https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/exclusive-the-numbers-behind-epics They'd been paying a fortune for other ways to get more titles which never panned out. Steam said fuck the little guys so they're trying to capitalize on that right now.

> There is absolutely no reason for Epic to support Linux in anyway Except for the fact that their entire technology stack already supports it and making Linux versions of their games is a compilation step away. Their Tencent buddies at One-Notebook would surely make a OneXPlayer with EpicOS. "Comes with Fortnite and get free games each week". > They’ll never grow to the size of Steam, and that’s okay. EGS has a massive installed base because of Fortnite.

> 10 Bn for Steam revenue this year, by the way. So still far off anything resembling >50% market share on PC. Good to know they're still not a monopoly. > The money flows to Valve because Valve doesn’t need to make ANY games at all, pay for exclusives or do anything else. So Valve is not engaging in any anti-competitive behaviour as well as pumping resources into Linux support to break the Windows hegemony? Great! > Especially since the fanboys paint any attempt at competing against a monopolistic actor as an anticompetitive act, somehow. Yeah, these people are very strange. I mean, it's a fact that Microsoft is the convicted monopolist because of the grip Windows has on the industry, the same Microsoft that bought Minecraft, Bethesda, and Activision Blizzard King to become the world's single biggest games publisher and their Windows-exclusive PC GamePass is also growing (surely at least partially thanks to Microsoft "[continuing to misuse its Windows operating system monopoly](https://www.justice.gov/atr/complaint-us-v-microsoft-corp)" to promote their other services). And yet, there are people who put the sole Linux supporter in the same corner, as if that company had anything approaching Microsoft's market power. Not even the EU thought Valve was important enough. Microsoft, Apple, Google, ByteDance, and Meta are Digital Market Gatekeepers, not Valve.

I would rather buy a game on steam, or better yet on gog, than giving my money to a company that is trying to make store exclusive games a thing.

It's not about how easy it is to compile, my first point was literally that they actively maintain an engine for Linux. The install base is too low right now. Hopefully as our numbers grow we'll have enough market impact to warrant pushing other store fronts. Fortnite is great for Epic, but their debacle with Apple kind of proved that one popular game isn't enough to push the public off one store front onto another.

Steams competitors are mostly GOG and Epic Games...