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Another big thing is trust. With any of these digital markets I'm not truly buying games, I'm purchasing a revocable license. That requires a certain amount of trust that the platform isn't going to screw me over.

Steam isn't perfect: they initially had to be forced to offer refunds, and their item economy enables barely disguised gambling. But by and large they have behaved very predictably and consumer-friendly. Sometimes by outright consumer-friendly policies like generous refunds or labeling games with AI assets. But usually by just not doing anything greedy. Or as the meme goes: "Gabe does nothing. wins."

The big "test" there for Steam will be when "Gabe goes away". It's gonna happen sooner or later.

I'm normally firmly against piracy, because I believe it to be morally equivalent to theft and I want to fund the artists making stuff I enjoy. But if Valve shreds my purchases when Gabe dies or retires, I will hoist the black flag on those games and not feel an ounce of guilt. As the saying says: if buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.

But we'll see. I hope it doesn't come to that. That said, I'm trying to change my purchase habits over to GOG because even if Gabe's successor doesn't screw over the Steam customers, eventually someone will. With GOG there's no possibility of the games I pay for being taken away from me.

They have shown its a wildly successful model. They would be very crazy if they changed it, and it would make them vulnerable to Epic and the Windows store. It's more likely that your OS/ hardware will change in a way that isn't supported by an old game.

Unfortunately, "this is a wildly successful model that prints money for us with almost no upkeep required" has historically not been a bulletproof argument when new management comes in and wants to prove themselves. Human beings are not necessarily rational and the kinds of people that tend to rise to the top of large corporations don't necessarily have the best interests of customers or the business itself in mind.

That being said, I believe that Gabe is taking his "succession planning" seriously, so I'd be fairly optimistic for the next decade at least.

One thing to keep in mind is that Valve is fully private so Gabe can not just be replaced by some random person by a board of directors like in other companies.

He probably already has a will set up that details how ownership should be transferred.

Isn't Epic private?

It is, but I'm not sure why that's relevant? xdertz's point wasn't, "Valve is private and therefore it engages in ethical consumer practices"; the point was "Valve engages in relatively ethical practices and because it's private, the board can't replace Gabe with a CEO who would engage in more unethical practices".

Not sure if this is relevant, but I have read reports[1] that Tencent currently holds a 28% stake in Epic Games. So private, but with unknown levels of ownership.

[1]: https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/trump-adm...

I thought he was already effectively retired. Not sure who's running the show now but the COO Scott has been there 20+ years I think.

I agree. No company is perfect, but if someone asked me to name the most consumer-friendly large tech company, I'd say Valve. And honestly, I can't think of a second one.

I hate to break it to you, you're never buying any games, only licenses. If you don't like that, get copyright law abolished.

Even if you "buy" a physical "game", you are just buying a license.

I've rebought games on Steam I had on Epic for free, just because the platform is so terrible. As far as a metric goes, that's pretty clear.

It's definitely not about lock-in for me. It's everything from local streaming, to linux support, to cloud saving working properly, to 100s of other things that become apparent if you try to do anything other than launch a game in a bog standard way on a windows machine.

Same. Sometimes I will play a givewayway game on EGS and like it enough to e.g. buy the DLC. In that case I'll buy the game on Steam, just to buy the DLC there too.

Doing Big Picture Mode well is another.

Epic have had decades to get any one of these right, and yet they refuse to meet us even half way on a single point.

I have the EGS with games on it me and my kids actively play. I don't resent EGS for exclusivity deals nor hold any other kind of grudge towards them. If a game I want comes out first on EGS, I'll buy it on EGS. I don't actively play with friends, so who is or is not on EGS to play with is barely a factor on my radar.

I still prefer to buy on Steam if I can, because using the EGS sucks in every way possible compared to using Steam. If I want to sit to rest I can do it on a cold and irregular rock, but if there's a bench right next to it, then I'll use the bench.

That said, you can do a lot worse than EGS. MS Store I'm looking at you. In the above metaphor, you'd like sitting on the wet and muddy ground.

If Steam was run by EA I’d abandon it in a second though. All those games that are left behind aren’t super relevant since I already barely play them.

The big one for me is linux support, followed by steam input remapping. Input remapping, turbo, combo / chord buttons is incredibly important for accessibility.

agreed, the epic games store is crappy enough that i will not use it even for free and/or exclusive games. I might have if it was marketed as a clean, unobtrusive experience, but we all know that will never happen.

It makes sense that those with huge libraries may never want to move. But there are many existing and future PC gamers who do not have particularly large libraries on Steam, who would likely be much easier to lure if Epic actually made their launcher worth it.

You don't need to move stores, though, do you? Want to play a Steam exclusive? Fine, launch Steam. Want to play an Epic exclusive? Fine, launch Epic.

What you do need is to avoid tying your game socialisation to a _store_. Some day, Steam will be enshittified too.

But I don't want all these app stores!!

The ideal number of app stores I want installed on my computer is ZERO. I don't want to have to load a damn "store" just to obtain and run your game. I am willing to angrily live with ONE store on my computer, Steam, but no way in hell am I going to tolerate having to have an Epic Store and a Microsoft Store and an Activision Store and a goddamn Rockstar Store and an Ubi Store and a fucking Adobe store for Photoshop. I don't want to have to install store after store for each damn app developer on my computer, yet that's the way the industry seems to be headed.

I don't know why "zero" is ideal. That means going back to the old days where every single company would need their own launcher.

Having a separate company focus on distribution sounds more ideal.

Epic Games had an opportunity here to erode the app store margins through standardization, instead, they've become a copycat of what they resented with a slightly smaller cut.

A very bad copycat

Why would games need their own launcher?

Just install the damn game, ask if you want icons on the desktop as well as in the start menu.

OS handles it all for you.

Perhaps some multiplayer functionality and such makes sense to share cross-game, but I miss the bad old days of every game having a bunch of privately maintained servers and its own server browser list etc. You could eventually find a few servers that fit your playstyle and make online gamer friends that way.

The only benefit steam brings to the table as far as I can tell is making it easy to reinstall your library on a fresh PC.

Yea, that's another way games are terrible today. I don't want a launcher for my game. My OS is my launcher. I don't want a launcher, I don't want a store, I don't want a "helper," I don't want a tray icon, I don't want an updater. Why can't game companies just ship their game and that's it?

Try shipping a game and you’ll find out real quick.

I mostly play games on a computer in my living room. It boots into Steam Big Picture, which I use to launch a game (or sometimes buy new games) using an xbox controller.

And yet Epic is shitty today.

It's both things, really.

But other platforms really are rather pathetic in terms of feature set compared to Steam. Steam has a bajillion features, and it looks like other platforms aren't even trying to compete to provide a good user experience.