Voice chat is generally a very cool thing in 5vs5 competitive titles, no? When it’s not used for verbal abuse obviously 😁

Being "more developed than Steam" won't be enough to pull users from a platform with 120 million monthly users as of last year.

On itself alone? Probably, but Epic also has Fortnite, one of the most popular games on PC and just in general as their 1st party exclusive. They've also added Rocket League to that lately. EGS would have had a stable userbase regardless of free games and exclusives just having those two. And then you can actually grow by providing better features and deals and slowly create your own loyal audience.

And Epic isn't competing with physical retailers now.

No, they don't. Physical retailers are pretty much dead today, especially compared to how dominant they were in 90s and 00s. Steam had to convince people to use online shopping + download whilst most people still preferred older convenient and also more reliable (at the time) physical copies. You probably don't even remember the amount of backlash Steam had up until late 00's.

They easily could have applied the "HL2" treatment to lots of popular 3rd party titles so you had to use Steam to even download them but they didn't.

So it's still not a valid comparison, sorry.

It's a totally valid comparison, sorry :)

Pray tell me, what marketplace like Steam held dominance

Physical retailers. Steam had to compete with them till late 00's and they could have easily made some 3rd party titles to be Steam-only like they did with their 1st party ones (HL2 and CSS). But they didn't.

I play DOTA 2 so I can safely say: "Fuck League of Legends".

You kinda got it wrong way. Steam OS (and Valve generally supporting Linux more and more over the years) came as a response to Microsoft giving signals of their desires to make Windows a more "closed garden" system with Microsoft Store being somewhat like Appstore on Apple devices.

The fact that Epic has even managed to get a lock on certain titles is proof of them being competitive.

Again, that logic makes 0 sense. zero. You as a customer are still not getting competed for (and thus your choice of being able to decide where to obtain a product is removed) if a company X gets an exclusive control on Y. Exclusives of any kind on any platform are always anti-competition and anti-consumer for this reason alone.

Epic is doing the great evil of performing the industry norm of gasp, making deals where Valve and other storefronts wouldn't

The "industry norm" is always set between the biggest players of the industry. In the PC gaming industry all major players (aside from Epic) are not participating in anti-consumer anti-competitive practises such as buying out 3rd exclusivity deals . So ye, it's as far away from a "norm" as you can get on PC.

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Did you similarly shit your pants when Microsoft bought out third party studios like Bethesda and Double Fine or when Sony bought out Insomniac? Did you also cry about how 'uncompetitive' this 'bribery' was?

Yes, you can watch my comment history and find me ranting on both r/games and r/pcgaming when any acqusition news appear, I am a big anti-monopolization advocate and hate the future where each mid-range gaming company loses its independece (something that kinda already happened with Remedy btw). But I know for sure you won't do that lol.

I'm not changing your mind, and I'm tired of seeing both of ourselves repeat the same points just with different words and examples

It's us repeating our points only because you're trying your hardest to actually run away from the topic (which is "are Epic exclusivity deals anti-CONSUMER") and instead change it to something like "why Valve are not participating in these practises when Epic is so this is why Epic is competitive and Valve is not" (changing the topic from consumer's rights and privileges to companies competing with each other which is irrelevant in this particular matter, btw). When you actually respond to the topic of the debate it can actually start, but, again, I very doubt you will.

Although iirc they have said other launchers would run on it.

That would require you scrapping SteamOS and installing Windows instead and then installing those launchers (which is yet unkown how well they even gonna work) which I guess most people won't do.

In one case we have Epic actively making sure a game X is not apprearing on Steam, in other case we have Steam just existing and not doing ANYTHING to EGS.

Steam don't need to pay for exclusives, they have market dominance.

They weren't paying for exclusive even prior to having a market dominance which they achieved around 2010-2011.

Why even come to reddit if the almighty games forums on steam are soooo fantastic?

Because most of games on Steam are indies and their communities generally are too small to organize a subreddit so they just use steam forums since its easier to access/find.

Create a better, more developed version of Steam with maybe some next-gen technology and ride on the Fortnite hype? Sounds totally possible.

It's not anti-consumer for Sony to not put a game they paid for on their competitors console.

It IS anti-consumer to pay X amount of money for a game that can easily exist on numerous platforms simulteniously to not appear there so you can sell more of your hardware (unless they are publishers/developers and their funding is literally what makes games exist at all).

It's also not anti-consumer for Epic to not put a game they paid for on their competitors store.

It also is, for the same reasons. But even more so since releasing a game on PC across multiple stores is 10 times easier than making different console versions thus Epic restricting the games from appearing on Steam/GOG is even more scummy from a consumer POV lol.

Because I dont see the point of arguing against what you believe to be anticonsumer. You perceive it differently, and I doubt I can change your mind about it as I have already shared my point of view on it

I shared my opinion, then you shared yours, I replied with counter-arguments to each of your points yet you decided to just ignore your turn of providing counter-arguments. Makes one think whether do you even have those counter-argument at all! :)

Epic offering them cash for the ports is pretty the same LOL.

No. Again, it is literally not. In one case we have Epic funding the developement game > making sure it actually exists, in another we have Epic bribing devs to get exclusive access to an already existing title thus they have no direct effect on that game existing or not. 2 totally different situations.

It's not Epic's fault that Valve being as uncompetitive as they are

Stop making things 180*. It's not Valve being uncompetitive, its Valve not participating in anti-competitive practises of Epic. Buying out 3rd party exclusives is not an accepted norm for all PC storefronts with a simple exception of... EGS :)

But anyway, I still think it's pointless for us to argue on this. What you perceive to be 'bribery', I see as publishers simply and rightfully offering better deals than the competition

The consumer (you and me) still gets the same result when his choice of where he want to get a product X is removed.

Okay how do you suggest them competing against steam epic other than making games since they are just focused on fortnite

Well, why shouldn't they even be succesful then if they are not ready to place enough money/manpower to actually become better than Steam?

It's not like you deserve to become a good and viable store just because you're not Steam and we need any competition, you have to earn it.

I don't think you need to worry about Epic unless they start selling one hardware flop after another lmao

There was a period between late 2000s and 2017 when Epic literally did not produce a single succesful title, so their track record is not that "clean".

Ye, forgot to add -- only between late April and early September lol.

In other seasons SPB is literally "the city of grey" where you never see a sun for months. It's worse than London in that regard.

Oh I didn’t know that company that don’t need a budget choose epic games for greed but it would be the company’s fault since they chose to have more money instead of putting the consumer first

Both are to blame, imho. A company for choosing cash over their loyal fans (given they have them), Epic for trying to avoid actually directly competing with Steam by making games exclusive.

can you give an example on which games like I said before I know

Anno, Chivalry 2, Metro, Watch Dogs and Tony Hawk.

And let me ask you something imagine you have a game on your wishlist and epic is giving it for free would you consider using their stores or just buy it on steam

I get free games on EGS every week. I might dislike the company and their practises but a free game is a free game.

I am not really mad or an anti-Nintendo dude, it just buffles my mind how greedy and yet beloved Nintendo still is on Reddit and other media websites. They are worse than EA yet the latter gets 10 times more negative coverage.

Convenient for you to literally just ignore my entire message and again focus on your own points. Why didn't you comment on my first paragraph, or the second. Do you agree with them or not? If not, why?

You do realize that most (if not all) of the "exclusives" Epic has is from them fully funding a project right?

That is factually incorrect. https://www.gamewatcher.com/news/Epic-games-store-exclusives . The majority of EGS exclusives had no Epic Games funding their developements/ports and instead just Epic offering them cash after the game is already finished.

If Steam wanted to be competitive, they would have shown off some cash too

Your logic doesnt make sense. A company X is participating in C (anti-consumer/anti-competition practise in our case) shouldn't translate into company Y also neeeding to participate in C to remain "competitive". Especially when that practise C is anti-consumer in its core so there's an obvious reputational damage.

Should I call out Steam for being anti-consumer and uncompetitive when Half Life 3 doesn't show up on other storefronts in the future?

Nobody blames Epic (as far as I know) for not putting Fortnite on Steam. Their game of their own creation. People only blame Epic for holding others titles as hostages so they can gain a market advantage.

Shit, are you the type of person who thinks GoW being PS exclusive and Mario being Nintendo exclusive is anticonsumer

Well, its a more complicated matter since porting a game from console to console actually takes time and money (unlike on PC where you pretty much can easily release a game everywhere at one). So... not really.

But console wars for exclusives (between XBOX and PS primarily) when the devs are bribed from not appearing on the rival's device are 100% anti-consumer, yes. The same way EGS is anti-consumer for stopping steam users from getting access to a title they would have gotten otherwise.

If a game needs budget and epic gives them money to make it happen while steam does nothing than it is their loss I don’t see why people are mad if the choice is between not having a game at all on pc or epic exclusive then epic is the obvious source

That is a valid argument and that is why I personally never ever blame indie devs for accepting Epic's cash. But when a midsized or a large gaming companies that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars do that for pure greed...

I don’t see why people are mad if the choice is between not having a game at all on pc or epic exclusive then epic is the obvious source

I also understand that argument. Well, props to Epic for actually funding+bringing all these games to PC, even if they are EGS exclusives. But the thing is that still the majority of EGS exclusives aren't of that origin. In most cases its a company that has a finished product ready to appear on Steam any moment and then Epic coming in and offering free cash so it doesn't. Obviously it's quite scammy and anti-consumer and that's why people are usually mad.

At least on r/NintendoSwitch

Nintendo fans are closest to being corporate zombies in all of gaming sphere. It's insane how you people were conditioned to accept SUCH dirty anti-consumer practises and still generally appreciate Nintendo lol.

I'm still blown away by the fact that people lose their mind when they have to use a different client to play games, when people on console literally have to buy multiple different consoles to play and nobody bats an eye.

"How dare a group A be outraged by anti-consumer practises when a group B has already been conditioned to not care about that!"

This is literally how you sound lol.

Steam is about to become its own ecosystem with the whole Steam Deck + SteamOS though so if you plan to getting a steam deck you should be interesting for every PC game to appear on Steam so you can run it naturally.

When everything is available everywhere, consumers will go to the most convenient store.

And what stops other companies from creating a better/more convenient stores given all games appear everywhere?