Larian Studios defends Valve: Steam's success is deserved
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Devs are still free to sell their game outside of Steam and charge whatever price they want for that version
Alan Wake 2 didn’t make its money back for a year despite being a huge game on the second-biggest service.
Steam doesn’t care about other stores because other stores do not matter. They can let other stores sell Steam keys, and it still doesn’t threaten their untouchable market share.
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As a player, I feel like discovery is great. I found literally dozens of interesting games just by scrolling down the main page.
I don’t know how it’s for devs, but it’s probably all but impossible to get traction if you’re just throwing your game in there, Fests being a compromised solution to an impossible problem
i kinda wish we had greenlit, there’s so much shovelware assetflip shit…lotta crap to wade through to find the good stuff.
but greenlit itself is probably worse in the longrun, maybe they should just increase the cost to post a game (that deposit is refunded after certain number of sales, iirc). larger deposit would make it less lucrative to throw out shit
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That’s hard to do when Steam has all but cornered the market. Say what you will about Epic’s ineptitude, but even investing billions, the publisher of the biggest game ever can’t break into the market. Now imagine how hard it’d be for a smaller player.
There being a barrier to entry isn’t Steam’s fault. If someone comes and makes a competitor launcher and storefront that is just as good, people can easily switch. Both developers and customers. Nobody is locked in
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The competition is at work, but too many fanboys blindly bashing on anything that isn’t Steam is making it very hard for them.
Steam took years and years earning customers trust slowly but surely. Why would we greet Epic, EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard with anything other than suspicion?
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This does not address the issue I brought up in my reply. Besides the brought up point, it would not solve all other issues I would have. I know the functionality to add non-Steam games since I am on Steam over 12 years ago.
Oh cool then just be a prick about it for no reason. Go fuck yourself, I was just trying to help you.
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Oh cool then just be a prick about it for no reason. Go fuck yourself, I was just trying to help you.
I told you that it does not address my issue. No need to be mad, I have no bad intentions. I expressed what issue I have and adding the game as a non-Steam game does not solve the issues I have.
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That’s hard to do when Steam has all but cornered the market. Say what you will about Epic’s ineptitude, but even investing billions, the publisher of the biggest game ever can’t break into the market. Now imagine how hard it’d be for a smaller player.
The epic launcher is a fucking piece of shit. It being a bloated unreal application to serve as a glorified web browser does not help at all
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I told you that it does not address my issue. No need to be mad, I have no bad intentions. I expressed what issue I have and adding the game as a non-Steam game does not solve the issues I have.
It came off as hostile but maybe I misread.
How does it not fix the problem? You can buy a gog game, add it to Steam and launch it with Proton. You’d just be using Steam instead of the gog launcher you want.
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Larian isn’t wrong, Steam mostly works. Stable client, refunds, workshop, Proton, massive userbase and tools that actually help developers and players. A lot of other stores still feel half-baked next to that.
But deserved != harmless. Valve has way too much power, discovery is a dumpster fire, and their communication and policy decisions can be arbitrary. Dominance like that rewards sloppiness and makes it harder for better alternatives to gain traction.
So yeah, Steam earned its place, but I do not want any one company owning PC gaming. Competition keeps them honest, and right now we need more real contenders, not just storefronts throwing money at exclusives.
This is a bot ^^
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Looking at how other tech areas have all consolidated into monopolies or oligopolies, valve is the best case scenario for PC gaming.
Imagine anyone else being in control. Activision? EA? Ubisoft? The gaming industry is not immune from disgusting money hungry corporations stepping on the users to squeeze out every little penny they can. Valve has never done this and has kept others in check for the longest time. The day we lose the current version of Valve will be disastrous for the industry, I’m pretty sure.
I think you might reconsider what qualifies as “best case scenario” if you end that statement with “when this thing goes, it’s taking the industry with it”. Like, best out of a bad bunch, for sure, but the best possible outcome?
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Larian Studios defends Valve: Steam's success is deserved
While many accuse Valve of monopolising the PC gaming market, others argue that Steam\'s dominance is simply the result of doing things right.
Gamereactor UK (www.gamereactor.eu)
Steam kinda killed gaming piracy for many. Hope they won’t go the Netflix way in the future.
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Hmm. The founder’s son usually just squeezes the company for profit.
But you don’t have to do anything at all to get rich off of steam
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I don’t think you can create new tags can you ? At least I have not seen a place to do that.
But I do also think that there could be more specific tags.
And yeah, being able to AND / OR would be hella good.However, I would not describe it as a dumpster fire, it’s pretty good all things considered.
You can’t create new ones afaik, but you can add and report tags. If enough users do either and it meets the threshold it will be added/removed. The order tags appear is also relevant, if the first tag is FPS then it’s the most voted tag. I’m sure devs/publishers can set initial tags but after that it’s users that maintain them.
It is a good idea to keep this simple in theory, but it also is exploitable. Especially since you can’t search by tags set by users vs devs/publishers. Or the first 4-5 tags. I see a lot go into safeguarding reviews, but very little in tag abuse. There’s cheep no effort games with a crazy number of tags - most people can identify trash, but if it can be abused, then what about other legitimate games?
Steam also categorizes tags in 4 types: Genres, Visual, Theme, and Features. It would be nice to search, say, games that are primarily one genre. When I search for JRPG, I don’t want a City Builder that has JRPGish elements, but I’d be ok with a JRPG with City Builderish elements. You could really narrow down what you want if you used some advanced logic. But that’s not simple, so I can see why they don’t, I just wish I could if I wanted to.
But I’d have to disagree, if it’s open to abuse, then it is a dumpster fire. The thing is that the alternative is…well they aren’t doing it. It’s one of the few things I think, if a competitor focused on and got right, would really hurt steam. But no one seems interested in doing that, so for now, steam is all we got.
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In the past, before Proton, if a game was available at comparable prices on GOG and on Steam, I’d buy it on GOG, also because no DRM meant better compatibility. After Proton, my purchases from GOG went way down.
You can run GOG games via Proton these days btw!
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I would buy from GOG too, if they provided Linux support in form of an official launcher. And if available also official Linux builds. Back in the days GOG did that, but they stopped doing it. And before someone comes after me, I know there are alternative launchers on Linux. But I don’t want to give GOG money for work others doing it for free. I don’t want support a company who only cares about Windows.
I could understand this sentiment for any pc-platform but GOG. After all, they are the only ones (afaik) that make their launcher optional. And while i do ocassionally use launcher-functionalities from for example steam, i would much rather not have to bother with it if i didnt have to.
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It came off as hostile but maybe I misread.
How does it not fix the problem? You can buy a gog game, add it to Steam and launch it with Proton. You’d just be using Steam instead of the gog launcher you want.
The problem is the launcher. He does not want one.
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You can, and plenty do
Steam’s “most favored nation” contracts with devs explicitly prohibit this
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Steam’s “most favored nation” contracts with devs explicitly prohibit this
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I would buy from GOG too, if they provided Linux support in form of an official launcher. And if available also official Linux builds. Back in the days GOG did that, but they stopped doing it. And before someone comes after me, I know there are alternative launchers on Linux. But I don’t want to give GOG money for work others doing it for free. I don’t want support a company who only cares about Windows.
Yeah they were ahead of Steam there for a while.
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You’re right that going public would virtually guarantee they enshittify, but staying private does not guarantee they remain customer focused. It’s still a business, and right now the only thing making it so good for customers, IMHO, is an ideological vision that favours long term stability, and steady profits. That is not the norm in the business world (of tech platforms).
