5 years ago*

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Will you buy it there ?

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Yes
Potato
No
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5 years ago
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5 years ago
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exactly this

5 years ago
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+1. I haven't played a ubisoft title on Steam since AC:Rogue. It's always way cheaper to buy directly from Uplay or resellers like GMG.

5 years ago*
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Steam not being a monopoly is a good, important thing. But I would like to see platforms trying to provide better service than Steam, rather than hijacking players via this exclusivity bullshit... which I'm definitely not going to support.

5 years ago
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Agreed, I'm all for for it when it means the Indie Devs will make more money but i will not be supporting all of this crap with numerous launchers, fun thing about PC gaming is that there are thousands of games so skipping out on one here and there isn't a big loss.

5 years ago
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Steam is not a monopoly. They allow devs to generate free keys and sell them where they want without margin.

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5 years ago
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I won't call it monopoly as they allow releasing on any and all other platforms...

5 years ago
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It's still not monopoly.

5 years ago
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There exist monopolies in varying degrees and Steam definitely fit all the techinical critearia of a monopoly:

  1. One producer control supply of a good/service (in this case Steam keys - they can just stop generating keys and humble, gmg and all other stores will just die)
  2. Entry of new producers is prevented or highly restricted. (Their gigantic - and overly loyal - user base is a huge entry barrier)
  3. Restricted output (They just restricted key generation a year ago and could do it again if they so desire)
  4. Show little or no responsiveness (Their updates take forever because they don't need to keep innovating at the same pace as new competitors. They're already settled in the market)

Text book definiton of a monopoly.

5 years ago
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That text book is wrong. And you as well.

  1. Steam doesn't control the supply as it is not the only one on the market. Not as a distributor and neither as a platform. Mono means one, Steam can't be monopoly as long as you can get the same product elsewhere. Which you can. Not only there's a huge console market of digital games, not even as a PC platform they are the monopoly.

  2. It is not. There is no way Steam can prevent other companies to join the venture. Exhibit A - Epic Game Store. Steam was a pioneer of digital distribution of video games but since then, many other joined and a little side note - Steam never pulled any exclusivity bullshit on them. And their user base and its loyalty is not an entry barrier, neither applicable or relevant aspect in that matter. Customers can leave whenever they want, they can freely buy and use products from other companies. How can you quality of service and customer loyalty classify as "huge entry barrier". I mean - I don't even.

  3. They didn't restricted key distribution - they limited it and for reasons obvious. Nothing against the law there. I wouldn't even label it as a move against competition as they were only protecting themselves. Again, they didn't restricted anything and they still allow 3rd party resellers to distribute their keys. They just don't want it to be exploited which is understandable and the way they did it, was reasonable as far as I'm concerned. The only developers who suffered from that, were the ones exploiting Steam.

  4. Debatable and I would argue against it. Little or no responsiveness is nowhere near what Steam is doing. They don't need to keep innovating (you're right there) but they still do. They innovate much more than their competition, namely Uplay, Origin, Battle.net and the whole console market. Compared to rest of the market, they are whipping out new features left and right.

So yea, Steam is nowhere near being a monopoly.

5 years ago
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Valve even admitted that they are:
https://venturebeat.com/2017/02/13/valve-wont-manually-curate-steam-because-it-dominates-pc-gaming/

Although, you are free to go to them and say "Hey guys, I know you have your data about dominating the market, but I know better how big you are than you yourselves."

5 years ago
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Well for starters, they could say whatever they wanted about themselves, but that doesn't make it true, does it?

However I still fail to find any quote that would say what you claim in that article.

5 years ago
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In the US, a market share of greater than fifty percent has been necessary for courts to find the existence of monopoly power. In 2011, Forbes estimated Steam market share to be between 50-70%. This article from 2017 says it controls 50 to 80% of the global games distribution market.
Therefore, yes, Steam has monopoly power over the PC gaming market and somehow, facts are wrong, but you're are right. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  1. There are resellers, but Steam isn't competing with Humble or GMG when they sell Steam keys. They all activate on Steam. If Humble could sell Steam, Origins and Uplay keys for the same game and the consumer could choose which one they want.
  2. Being a monopoly isn't about preventing new companies to join a market. You would know that if you ever read a microeconomics textbook. It's about being so big that other you discourage others from even trying and if/when they do try, they would have to pull a bunch of "stunts" just to have a minimal chance of succeeding: GA free stuff, get exclusivity deals, new features, etc. Do you really think that Epic is giving copies of Super Meat Boy right now because they like any of us?
  3. I never said it was against the law. It's understandable, sure. They had to respond to this exploit, but what stops them from "protecting themselves" against other people in the future as well? Valve is a privately held company, Gabe doesn't have to answer to anyone. I remember GMG having to get Witcher 3 elsewhere because CDPR - GOG owners - refused to sell it to them for example.
  4. I agree that they have been much better with updates this last year. (probably because they started seeing the competition arrivi) They even started using their blog and all, but they did sit own their past achievements for far too long. I have no idea how big of a cut these other pc stores take, but if they take 30% as well, they're doing a very poor job too. MS and Sony use that money to make first party titles, which bring new consumers to the console ecosystem. Valve's last big game was Dota 2 in 2013.

I highly recommend you to read the first article, if you wanna learn more about monopolies. I could sent you some papers on the subject as well, if you want. Just let me know. :)

5 years ago*
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Thanks for the links but these are not facts but estimates provided by journalists so yeah, these 'facts' might as well be wrong. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

  1. I wasn't talking about resellers. I was talking about direct competition in field of digital distribution of video games, e.g. Uplay, Origin, GoG, battle.net, Microsoft Store, PSN, Bethesda Launcher, Epic Game Store and even more niche platforms like Nutaku, itch.io and so on. About solely a DD of PC gaming - I don't know (as I don't have the numbers) but I would tend to believe that might easily have more than 50% share of the market, mostly thanks to the opening their platform for indie developers via Steam Direct (and previously Steam Greenlight). So in terms of PC gaming only, I might agree with you, but we could still both be wrong.

  2. Aaaand I never said so. Those were your words. You specifically stated this being one of the criteria of monopoly definition:
    "Entry of new producers is prevented or highly restricted."
    It was a clever line about me not ever reading microeconomics textbook, but it looks like you didn't read one and neither what you wrote.
    And no, Steam is not so big that others are discouraged others from even trying. That's why there is Uplay, Origin, GoG, battle.net, Microsoft Store and two new digital distribution platforms that opened their services in mere what... last two months or so? And we will definitely see more coming soon. If something, major publishers seem to be more and more encouraged to start their own platforms and depart from Steam altogether. Unfortunately, they all are failing to provide a better service than Steam does, which is main reason why Steam remains at the top.

  3. "They had to respond to this exploit, but what stops them from "protecting themselves" against other people in the future as well? "
    Well the thing is that I don't see into future so I can only talk about past or preferably present.
    About the GOG thing... if the CDPR denied GMG the distribution rights, what does that have to do with Steam? I fail to see a connection between CDPR not choosing GMG as the distribution rights holder and therefore direct and official reseller and Steam being monopoly, but hey, maybe I just didn't read enough textbooks :)

  4. I'm genuinely glad we can agree on something :) Yes, MS and Sony use the money to make first party titles, but those are mostly exclusive titles and they are not making them to make gaming industry better. They are making them only to gain a bigger share of the market and crush the opposition. Steam does have many exclusive titles in its library (definitely more than anyone) but note that all of them are exclusive by a choice of the developer. They are all still free to distribute their games anywhere else and most of them do. SONY and MS on the other hand, are doing the exact opposite and hurting the gaming industry with their exclusivity deals much more than Steam with anything else.

Be that as it may, I don't think Steam is necessarily hurting PC gaming industry by it's huge market share (PC gaming is blooming more than ever and Steam is one of the reasons why PC gaming had its renaissance a decade ago), but I am definitely afraid it might one day.
And I'm gonna go ahead and take a raincheck on those papers mate :) That has to a be a douchiest thing anybody ever wrote to me here :D

5 years ago
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If you don't consider sites like Forbes as a trustful source of information, I really don't know what kind of publications I'd have to list for you...

  1. We could be wrong, sure, but most publications seem to agree that Steam controls more than 50% of the pc gaming distribution market. I tend to believe when more than handful of decent articles state the same thing.
  2. prevented OR highly restricted. You assumed I was talking about preventing, when in Steam's case - and all non-government monopolies - it's about the latter. Steam discourages them so much that they have to pull their games out of steam, pay for exclusivity deals, giveaway games. etc. If they could compete with Steam without resorting to any of those tactics they definitely would, they just can't. I really hope we see more coming soon. Competition is always good. And yeah, I got a major in economics without reading a single book about microeconomics. I wish I was that smart!
  3. Neither do I. The future is a mystery, but having such a foothold in the market like Steam does just brings more uncertainty because they can get away with a lot of things smaller players can't.

Neither do I, but I'm always pro competition for the sake of customers and Valve controlling such a huge portion of the market isn't good for anyone, but Gabe and his colleagues.

That text book is wrong. And you as well.

And this has to a be a douchiest thing anybody ever wrote to me here :D

I guess, we should stop here because this isn't leading anywhere. Have a good day.

5 years ago*
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You too!

5 years ago
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These topics are always amusing, I'm curious where this one will go :D

5 years ago
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  1. I get my Ubi games on Uplay thanks to GMG prices( horay for Brexit)
  2. I really really wonder what kind of deal Epic offered to Ubi for them do that.
  3. I'm pretty sure that even if you get it on Epic(which also will probably have same price as on Uplay) you will still need Uplay to access the game so I wonder what the catch will be.
5 years ago
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So where's the deal?

5 years ago
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I want as many different launchers on my desktop as possible and all my games are spread out so I can't see them all at once !

5 years ago
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lol

5 years ago
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ya same here. i want 20 different friend lists. and i want to forget what platform has witch games i own. and i also want to eat up more hard drive space with many different platforms. and i want my comp constantly updating at least 1 of my 20 platforms.

5 years ago
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oh i also want my games to sell different dlc's and give out different bonus's depending on where i buy it from.

5 years ago
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oh ya. i also want to sign as many licensing agreements as possible.

5 years ago
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Yes you want as many different company's having you details as possible, It's safer that way.

5 years ago
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ya privacy is for bad people. they must be up to no good if they dont want all there info in the open for the world to see.

5 years ago
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i'm so freaking mad they're using less DRM layers than before. now i don't even need to repurchase a game after having played it 2 or 3 times or on another computer. the hell is that ?

5 years ago
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long live DRM!!! nobody wants to play there 1 player games offline.

5 years ago
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You can use (yet another) launcher to collect them all, like Playnite for example.

5 years ago
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Like Pokemon !

5 years ago
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I tried Playnite but I wouldn't recommend it if you have 10k+ games on Steam as it just freezes up when trying to collect all the metadata.

Also seems to be some issues with resizing the window and waste of space like this: https://i.imgur.com/U0f9V9p.png
Another annoyance that understandably isn't really the fault of the program, but still: https://i.imgur.com/8fweD4D.jpg

5 years ago
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So... Instead of having a Ubi game in only one (S/U) "not-steam" platform, we'll need to have it in two (E/U) now? Community isn't a "thing" nowadays for Steam, but Epic have nothing to add and this strike isn't smart because the reason that lots of people buy Ubi games is because they can have it on Steam.

5 years ago*
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I hope soon we have a hybrid because i hate how dirty my PC looks with all that launcher pollution.

5 years ago
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You can use Playnite. You don't need to keep a bunch of shortcuts on your desktop. It's great!
I was told Discord has this feature as well.

5 years ago*
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I'm thinking more about something that can handle the lanchers "dll's" to skip their need, but the app you suggested can do the possible better than i thought! I'm already giving it a try!

Edit: WOW! I've been using Despressurizer for a long time to manage my library and it still working like a charm, but Playnite can do Tag Search and it's something that aren't present in Steam. It can help me find some local-coop games easily. (I have Rambo and it's split screen!)

5 years ago*
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Lately I like Uplay more and more so I don't see any point if Epic won't make some great deal and even that isn't such great posibility to make Epic platform competitive against Steam/Uplay/Origin etc. Epic should think more on exclusives if they want to get users money.

5 years ago
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Uplay launcher isn't that bad and the community works fine, from where I'm looking at, i think Ubi is investing in a way to bring people DIRECTLY for them instead of having a mediator (Steam) that have the "ways" to enchant costumers.

Logic:

EPIC: Nothing
Steam: A lot
Uplay: Enough

5 years ago
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Even now every Ubi game available on Steam needs to run Uplay and any other way of buying Ubi games other than Steam gives Uplay key. So I rather play Ubi games on Uplay(and have those coins for in game items or 20% discount). Epic want's to get nice pice of cake called digital market but imo at this point they don't have means to bite it.

5 years ago
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Indeed.

What bothers me is the fact of having many launchers, i don't mind if Epic bite Steam share of anything else, but the costumers are being neglected. In other hand, we can all be rewarded with their fight for preference, which isn't happening yet i guess.

Steam's Hello Neighbor (Share of 20%) - $29.99
Epic's Hello Neighbor (Share of 12%) - $29.99

Discord is also offering all of their service with just 10% of share and i think they are pretty more "equipped" than Epic.

5 years ago
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Huh, thanks to regional pricing, it's better for me to buy this game on Epic than on Steam.

Good to remember if I ever want to buy it.

5 years ago
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After region pricing most of the times it's better in Poland to buy physical copy of the game on relase then even on steam sale(Monster Hunter World is quite good example). xD
Launchers don't bother me that much but if every publisher will make one it will be a joke.
And price on Hello Neighbor here is lower on Epic about 30% - it costs about 20$. :O

5 years ago
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139.999 IDR on Steam (around 10 USD).

Three times more expensive on Epic.

Thanks o Lord Gaben.

5 years ago
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$25 for me on Steam, $35 on the Epic Store >_>

5 years ago
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uPlay is fine as launcher. As a store? Meh. Steam has regional pricing and Steam bundles allow me to get expensive games for dirt cheap.

5 years ago
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Speaking of ubi, the settlers heritage of kings just got delisted.

5 years ago
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Isn't the real problem here that you STILL need uPlay to play it on PC regardless of the store you bought it from? At that point you might as well get it from uPlay and skip one hoop to jump through.

5 years ago
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You're getting the "access" for a uPlay game when you get it on Steam/Epic and the fact you still need to run uP is because of their micro-transactions.

5 years ago
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mostly reason i buy on steam store becuz i make some money on market to buy game instead top up steam wallet

5 years ago
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Epic Games Launcher is the worse DRM trash I've ever had the unfortunate chance of using. So no. I'll never buy anything from there.

5 years ago
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Oooh, new viewpoint. If you have the time, feel free to go into it a bit more.

Next to all the "Too many launchers", "Steam monopoly" and "Epic is the best", this is a breath of fresh air.
I've had some shitty experiences with them (mainly by them literally not letting me uninstall their shitty launcher from my old PC, wish I was kidding.) but i'm guessing you have a different issue with them.

But yeah, if you have the time, feel free to go into detail, because I think I'm not the only one who wants to hear something other than the 3 main talking points.

5 years ago
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I haven't had an issue with the Epic launcher yet, but I did notice that the Epic Store won't let you wishlist games. That seems like online store functionality 101, so it's really surprising that it's missing.

5 years ago
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Aside from the fact that it can never hope to compete with other DRMs in term of features (lack of community-driven features such as reviews/ratings, chats, forums, achievements, guides, groups, wishlists, proper searching/categorizing, etc), the launcher itself uses all of my processor's power at all times it is open on my screen. It is also extremely slow in general, probably for the same reason. Games sometimes crash when launching games from EGL, and although I can't confirm if the launcher is the case and not the game, I have suspicions that EGL is the cause of the issue as well.

I honestly haven't used it much, but the few times I've tried launching some of the free games it offered, my experience was very disappointing. Until they actually put effort in making a fully functioning platform for launching games, I won't bother with it - and until they actually implement features which people are looking for (as mentioned above), people will be reluctant to consider using, even more switching to EGL as their primary DRM. But I digress - all I want is a DRM that actually lets me play my games without being an inconvenient to my entire system.

Obviously, not all people are having similar experiences with the launcher - I'm confident that some people may think that EGL is a decent DRM - not I, for my experience was bad. First impressions are very important, and now that my first impression has been "a broken piece of garbage DRM with nothing to offer", it won't be easy gaining my trust.

5 years ago
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Nah, I think that's completely fair and there's no reason to preface everything by saying that you haven't used it too much or that others might have a different experience.
If they're dumb enough to think that personal experiences are automatically presented as universal, then they won't be smart enough to understand the prefacing anyways.

But yeah, I can see the issue. I haven't checked the resource usage myself, but I wouldn't be too surprised. While Steam, UPlay and Origin aren't amazing with their launchers/clients, they have the advantage of being polished up enough that issues like that aren't common. Epic hasn't had that yet, so seeing issues like this makes sense to me.

Thanks for elaborating.

5 years ago
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Not Epic but Discord's DRM is shitty. I have Nitro, never will I ever subscribe to them again.

5 years ago
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Oh, that's unexpected, for me at least.

What bothered you with their DRM?

5 years ago
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Please elaborate. I used it only once to play Fortnite but uninstalled a bit afterwards because I didn't like it.

5 years ago
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Remember Desura?

5 years ago
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A lot of big companies are uncomfortable with Steam as it is almost a monopoly. This is obvious. But Ubisoft is capitalist as fuck. They don't want Steam as monopoly but they welcome their revenue from it. Even EA Games have more foot in Origin. So i think, Ubi want to see how it goes. If Steam's crown shakes, they will try to go ahead with the decision to the next step. If not, they will be the first to go away from Epic store back to Steam.

Even though i didn't work at these companies, i worked at a reseller company which made me communicate with them all. So.. it's an educated guess..

Btw i hate Ubisoft for what they have done to Might & Magic franchise

5 years ago*
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It will probably use UPlay anyway.
Also, wasn't the first game already the most divisive of the standard UbiSoft open-world fuckaroundery games, mostly because its MMORPG-like grinding and enemy levelling system?

5 years ago
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I never wanna use it, I'm so tired of adding more and more launchers to the point where you have more store launchers installed than actual games. And in this case who cares, you have to use Uplay anyway so it doesn't make a difference to us.

5 years ago
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I actually think that game developers that decide to put their game only on another platform but steam damage themself more than steam. Of course if a big title like a GTA, a Final Fantasy, a The Witcher or a Football Manager would come out elsewhere it would have the same success but the division 2 is not that big

5 years ago
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Football Manager being a big title? Like where?? UK only? xD

5 years ago
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6th game of top players on Steam right now.
Third if you exclude Steam Titans - CSGO, Dota2 and PUBG.

5 years ago
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oh wow, never knew/assumed that it was that big. Pretty nice for a manager title!

5 years ago
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Yeah there are lot of people who play a single sport game like Fifa or FM every year. Maybe they're not very into videogames but they will buy their game every season.

5 years ago
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Yep.

Football Manager (and its predecessor) has been a big game for two decades if not more. I have been playing it since my high school era.

5 years ago
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If the Epic Launcher does not provide anything usefull to the customer i can understand at least why they try so hard with exclusives.

But for that? Whats the Point?
It is not sold on Steam period.
Why should someone take the Epic launcher that does not add anything on top of the uplay one for this game?

5 years ago
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They should include a stick of 16gb of ram(free of charge) with every Division 2 purchase if they want us to have another launcher clogging our PCs.

5 years ago
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uPlay is actually very lightweight. 70 MB on the background. Considering I have 16 GB RAM rig I wouldn't complain.

To put it into perspective, when all launchers are put on the background:

Steam: 200 MB+
Discord: 190 MB
Dropbox: 130 MB
Spotify: 193 MB
Outlook: 85 MB
Battle Net: 80 MB

Bonus: Chrome 2 GB
Firefox 1.5 GB

Yep that's on my machine. 45% memory used and can still load Overwatch + Dead by Daylight no issue. All at once.

5 years ago
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What I meant was that there are so many apps that I have to run on my PC that it starts eating the memory, I'm using 8gb.

5 years ago
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5 years ago
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Oh no... Not Tom Clancy's The Division 2 as brought to us by Ubisoft... What if all the AAA sandboxes and games advertised by slapping on dead people's names disappear from Steam? It'll be the end of Valve for sure.

I feel an emotion coming on... no wait, that was a yawn. False alarm everyone, as you were.

5 years ago
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Hehehe. Nice one.

5 years ago
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Funny note: from Steam Top Sellers Ubisoft have 3 games in Platinium Tier (and two of them from 2018, beside Monster Hunter they are the only 2018 games on that list), additional one in Golden Tier, one in Silver and few more in Bronze.

They made Valve tons of money.

5 years ago
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I'm not saying them being gone from Steam is a bad development (if they start doing this consistently). Valve could definitely stand to earn less money, as far as I'm concerned. They've grown fat and complacent. (Unfortunately, the things they'd have to do to bind AAA publishers/developers more tightly to them wouldn't have anything to do with improving things for consumers, but that's another matter.)

5 years ago
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Nope, won't buy it on the Epic store. But I wouldn't buy this on UPlay or Steam either. Don't have an interest in the game ;)

5 years ago
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It's not my kind of game too.

5 years ago
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I'll just play Division 2 directly on Uplay in 2 years when it's in a HB monthly unlock =P

5 years ago
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Hmm that's bit strange. I would think a big company would want their games on as many stores as possible. But I guess unlike the other games epic has captured, at least ubi has their own launcher which allows the sale of keys, so we won't be forced to use the crapfest that is the epic launcher. Most third party stores only sell uplay keys now anyway, so not that much will change unless you only ever exclusively buy from valve.

5 years ago
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5 years ago*
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More players in the distribution means more discounts, as they have to fight for YOUR attention, its a good thing and i hope EPIC can a real competitor to steam

5 years ago
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How is having it on one less store, more competition?

5 years ago
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one more you mean?
right now its 1 big one (Steam) and some small ones and with this move and more on the epic side will be
2 big ones and other small ones... Meaning more competition and more(and better) campaigns to get OUR money

5 years ago
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You miss the point. You can have 999 stores if you want. But if each product is available exclusively at its respective store, you literally have no competition. Literally. This is, believe it or not, called monopoly. - when only one place has/controls one particular product.

5 years ago
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It won't be 2 big ones.
It will be One big one and Another One big one.
They will offer different products (I'll be suprised if Valve won't start their exclusive deals) and it will end with us having to decide if you want Epic Exclusive or Steam Exclusive.

And only campaigns they will be able to do is "yes, we don't have Game You Want, but we have Some Similar Game".

5 years ago
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What do you mean one more? It was removed from Steam. That's one less.

Steam doesn't enforce exclusivity.

5 years ago
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Replying to all of you: Steam has the advantage, so they dont need exclusives, they wont go there coz they are well established.
Steam will probably exploit some advantage they already have or make new ones.

Exclusive wars arent feasible in distribution, havent you guys seen Origin? they have something going but its not a major distribution platform coz they only sell their own stuff, that isnt the case with EPIC, they want the market, so they will sell p much all the games.

5 years ago
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But developers set the discounts for their games, not the store. Why would a developer offer bigger discounts based on how many stores there are? I can see why developers with their own store would offer better discounts if you buy directly from them (i.e, GOG and The Witcher games), but for the rest of the games it wouldn't make much sense.

I think that even the Epic revenue share won't make a difference on prices. If I'm a developer and I choose Epic over Steam to get that extra 18% from the sale, if I sell the game cheaper on Epic I'm losing money.

Also, PC games get discounted really fast and much more often than on other platforms, so I wouldn't expect any significant change on discounts in the future.

5 years ago
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publishers set the discount prices

5 years ago
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OK, that's right, but that wasn't the point. The point was that Steam and Epic can't just offer better discounts to get more buyers.

5 years ago
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ya sry, i dont like being a wikipenis but every1 throws around the word dev's. dev's never do anything shitty. its the publishers the bend us gamers over backwards.

5 years ago
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cool, slowly no AAA publisher will remain on steam

sadly there is only a handful of indie games I care about and there is too much trash on steam to dive through

well, more money for me then

5 years ago
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I don't understand the hate towards steam. Every major store Psn, Xbox live takes a 30% cut. About steams monopoly ...what did they do wrong ? are they selling a 60$ games at 120$ price because of that monopoly?No....... Not to mention free online option on steam where in psn and Xbox live the customer has to pay a certain amount. Not to mention epic is own by Tencent. Just search in google about Tencent scandal.

5 years ago
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its because of monopoly and open market, on consoles you cant run other launcher, so you cant change those 30%,

5 years ago
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Shit/nonexistant community
Shit forums (two SG users got banned because developers abusing their power)
Steam Direct
Troll reviews with Steam not caring (not even about death-threats)
Steam still not caring about anything, as long as they get money.
Steam caring more about how the store looks than making the client stable, way too many problems with it from the end-user, and from the developers' side too.

5 years ago
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Shit forums

Yet people are using those shit forums to get help with problems they have with games they got from the Epic store

Steam still not caring about anything

If you don't offer the functionality then you don't have to care, so that's good for Epic.

5 years ago
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because it's cool to hate popular things.
nvidia? valve? microsoft? bethesda? apple? (ok, i'm kidding, apple is trash 😁)
hate them or you're out of fashion. :3

it's seems it's also cool to constantly bash steam and say they prefer gog and epic, while at the same time spend 10 hours on sg leeching...... steam games. 🤦‍♀️🤷

that's how some of the sg-userbase operates. ^^

5 years ago
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Sony and MS use this 30% fee to fund first party titles and improve PSN and Xbox Live respectively. On the other hand, Steam have't made a real game in forever and take forever to even update their client. Improved chat was one of the most requested things and took them years. Same for refunds. Big devs don't think they have a right to take the same cut. Neither does Steam because they just announced that they'll reduce their cut, but apparently it's not working as they expected.

I don't agree 100% with this, but that's what I heard from a dev. They think Valve grew too complacent. Instead of adjusting their cut, they chased after Hardware RIP Steam Machines, VR and stupid card games.

5 years ago*
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take forever to even update their client

Even if they take forever they still offer more functionality than any other client. They were one of the first offering refunds, so even if they took their time they still did it before most.

They have also kept improving Steam, maybe the UI has been largely unchanged. But they did add Big picture, Steam controller (were you can pretty much use any controller and they'll work), family sharing, stream link (does any other PC store even offer this or would you have to use third party software?), workshop, VR functionality (that you mentioned), they just recently released Proton and probably other improvements I'm forgetting.

5 years ago
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Exactly, new stores will never compete with steam without a lot of steam's features. Instead of actually making a good new store with review systems, discussion forums, mod support etc, they just go the lazy and easy way - exclusive game titles.

5 years ago
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They were one of the first offering refunds

They were the last pc gaming store to offer them... They did that June 3, 2015. By that time all other stores already had some kind of refund. Origin and GOG being the first and still the best refund policies out there.

Anyway, as I said at the end, this is not my opnion, but what I heard from a dev that work for a mid-size publisher. Apparently, in their opnion none of these features you listed justify a 30% cut. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

5 years ago
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Origin only offered refunds for their own games not games they were selling from other publishers at the beginning (they do offer more games now).

And I really they doubt they were the last of the pc stores. And even then there are still the console companies which also sold digital games.

5 years ago
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I have no idea about console companies. I don't follow them. I was only talking about pc. Well, even it were just for their games, at least they had some kind of refund policy. Not sure about the date, but I remember refunding Dragon Age IIRC because I found a cheaper copy on Uplay.
I only remember this because I was really surprised to see that game being sold there. xD

5 years ago
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"Steam have't made a real game in forever"

They just had Artifact, which might be good or not, i dont know but it follows modern cash grab traditions, but card collecting games always worked like this and IRL card collecting games much worse.

Its also official that they working on 3 other games... since ages.

5 years ago
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That's exactly why I added the "real" part, instead of another microtransaction ridden game.
Besides, the fact that they keep saying that they're "working on x games", but haven't released anything worthwhile since forever corroborates to the argument.

5 years ago
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Sony and MS use this 30% fee to fund first party titles and improve PSN and Xbox Live respectively.

And I am sure the devs are thrilled that Sony and MS that are selling their games to funding their competition. /s

Also what is the PSN or Xbox Live subscription for? Steam doesn't have a subscription.

5 years ago
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AFAIK, first party titles are more than just a game. They're a "necessery evil" because they bring new customers to a platform, therefore, even if they are direct competitors, they are still preferable than no exclusive titles at all. Think about how many people bought a PS4 just for God of War or Spider-man. I'm sure they'll end up buying other games later. Afterall, the console is already there.
I'm not saying that I like it, I hate exclusives as a pc gamer, but that's how capitalism works. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Again, I'm not a console gamer, but I'm pretty sure both PSN and Live have a list of games you get every month like the HB Monthly.

Anyway, it was more about how they see that MS and Sony are using their cut better than Steam whose ventures all failed - some of them spectacularly - like the Steam Machines.

5 years ago
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Gamestop and other retail stores that take a cut of sales don't use that money to develop games, either. It seems more neutral if they don't. This is kind of like a publisher saying their game will only be sold at Best Buy and having the advertisements at Walmart taken down.

On the other hand, I doubt Steam and other digital stores approach the cost of renting physical storefronts, so maybe it would be reasonable to lower that cut.

5 years ago
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How come no one made an exclusive client for preordering yet? Like, you have to download a dedicated client if you want to preorder a game for 20%, otherwise, you have to buy it at full price. I tell you, it's a next big thing. Screencap this!

5 years ago
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EA had it better: you had to pay for the higher tier of a recurring subscription service to be eligible to pre-order and play Battlefield V the soonest. Top that!

5 years ago
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Didn't Bethesda basically do something like that with 76? New launcher "specially" for the game... (sure, they'd use it for others too, but it started with 76 preorders)

5 years ago
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Closed 3 years ago by Andreakoss.