Larian Studios defends Valve: Steam's success is deserved
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Yes, I still need to go through Steam for every install.
Non-drm steam games can actually just be copied around like you would copy the installer
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Epic can’t break into the market because of their own shitty launcher, not because of anything Steam has done to lock down the competition.
Now imagine how hard it’d be for a smaller player.
Not very hard, if they were willing to create a decent launcher and engage in sustainable business practices (and regional pricing).
I sincerely doubt that even if another launcher did everything Steam does, it would rival it without huge amounts of money being thrown around. People already use Steam.
And that’s assuming they get to this point, ignoring that Steam had decades to get there. It used to be ass.
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I sincerely doubt that even if another launcher did everything Steam does, it would rival it without huge amounts of money being thrown around. People already use Steam.
And that’s assuming they get to this point, ignoring that Steam had decades to get there. It used to be ass.
Not every company can pull it off, but I’m certain if Epic had invested in their launchers it could have worked.
A few years in and their launcher has stagnated completely -
Mr biggest problem with tags is that it’s user curated and you can recommend an unlimited number of them.
Just because a game has a few funny moments, doesn’t mean it gets the comedy tag. Just because it has a brief driving sequence doesn’t mean it gets the racing tag. Just because there’s some reading involved doesn’t mean you get the visual novel tag.
It’s getting to the point I feel like there’s a conspiracy where there’s teams of people intentionally sabotaging the tag system and teams trying to counter it, all so they can control views and sales. It’s really noticeable when a publisher stops marketing and moves to another release.
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.
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I sincerely doubt that even if another launcher did everything Steam does, it would rival it without huge amounts of money being thrown around. People already use Steam.
And that’s assuming they get to this point, ignoring that Steam had decades to get there. It used to be ass.
I sincerely doubt that even if another launcher did everything Steam does, it would rival it. People already use Steam.
At that point, you can start grabbing business from steam via promotions and such. You don’t need to rival or outgrow Steam to break into the market, you just need a bit of the market.
And that’s assuming they get to this point, ignoring that Steam had decades to get there. It used to be ass.
It’s not even that other launchers have less features than Steam. It’s just that other than GoG, which has a very limited catalog and no regional pricing, there is not a single store that is not actively anti-consumer to a hilarious extent.
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He wasnt talking about search it was about algorithmic recommendation.
But you can filter by multiple tags. When you click search select the advanced search at the bottom of the dropdown. It does all the things you mention and far more
Did I really missed such a feature? I’ll try it out later.
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OpenAI is a non-profit
A non-profit which owns a portion of OpenAI, the for-profit company.
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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.
