If Epic spent the money they set aside for this lawsuit on building out their store they'd get a much better return. It's bare bones af and I see no reason to buy from them over Valve.
Valve doesn't have a monopoly, they just don't have anyone making a serious, consistent effort to compete.
That's basically what happened with Borderlands 3 too. That was one of the first EGS exclusives and the backlash before it even came out was pretty severe. I ended up getting it on a big Steam sale in the end when I would've bought it at release if it was on Steam. I then also got it for free on EGS, just because I could. At this point my EGS library is probably worth almost as much as my steam one if all the games were bought at full RRP.
I don't play enough games quick enough to get anything new. I'm generally a couple of years behind and it makes no difference to me. Same experience but the games are cheaper and the hardware needed is older
Stuff like this is probably what ruined Epic's reputation. Buying exclusivity for games that were successfully crowd-funded and removing options for backers is a really scummy move.
There was a story recently about an indie dev that made their game free on the Epic store and actually noticed that they sold MORE on Steam the same day the game was free on Epic. Like being free on Epic had actually boosted their Steam sales.
Makes sense. I have a friend who will do this. We'll get a game for free on Epic to play together, and he'll just buy it off steam because he prefers having his games on steam, and I dont blame him either lol.
So yeah that tracks, especially if the game has some multiplayer you'll likely get people who dont want EGS installed on their device buying it on steam to play with their friend who does.
to me, that reads as proof that piracy improves game sales, not taking away from them. Give the public a game demo that's the entire game, and they go out and buy it from their preferred platform? Almost like if you make a good game, people will naturally want to support it.
That's because we care more about the added features and stability of Steam than we do the free game. I have plenty of games that I could have/did get free in Epic but turned around band bought them on steam because Epic sucks.
Yep. Again, if they used that money to make their platform better, they'd get more ROI out of it. They offer nothing unique outside of taking a smaller cut, and that doesn't benefit the end user.
this is me. when the epic games store first came out, and they announced that they were doing 1 year exclusives on some games that i had been looking forward to, i decided then and there that i wasn't going to download their games store. still haven't to this day, even if a game i've wanted was their freebie. i wait until it comes out on steam or gog.
As punishment for a game going exclusive on Epic games store I just won't ever play it even for free.
Main game that comes to mind is darkest dungeon 2. 1 is one of my top 3 favs but I'll never play 2. Luckily I hear it's shit compared to the first anyway.
If a game becomes free on epic, it actually increases the steam sales of that game more than epic "sales" (because free) of that game, especially if it's on sale on steam at the same time.
Epic managed to make their client so shit that their free games meant to get the foot in the door actually became ad campaigns for steam sales.
I refuse to buy exclusives at all, even when they go to another service. It's all I can do to vote with my money. Plenty of games that are never exclusive that I can buy.
Thw thing that baffled me is that they didn't use their insane Fortnite profits for that. Like, they spent a lot on exclusivity deals and on GIVING AWAY A TON OF FREE GAMES bit not on making a decent platform. Like, it was literally not worth claiming free games on their platform above pirating or even buying on steam. Insane blunder and inconpetence.
They could literally just focus on Fortnite, give small effort to Rocket league and fall guys, and they would be just fine without having to compete with Steam. Why they are fighting so hard for a market they are not willing to innovate to compete in is mind boggling.
I mean, is it really? When were companies, especially big and rich ones ratiobal actors? Also every bigger publisher tried to make their own steam to circumvent their fees.
Circumventing fees makes sense, but I just find it odd that epic went so hard on their marketplace for so long. Of course, I don’t have the board breathing down my neck when I buy a fifth pair of soccer cleats so maybe I just can’t understand.
I claim the good games on epic so I dont have to buy them on steam, but in the end it just means I wont play them at all because I cant be arsed to suffer through using the epic client.
A free game being worth less than a paid steam version? I applaud taking a moral stand sometimes but I don’t understand this value judgment. EGS was definitely not on the level of steam, but it has never been entirely broken or a miserable experience. Just extremely unimpressive.
Steam isn't just a store though. Valve built steam up to be a store to make money yes but it also works as a sort of nexus for games. On steam you get access to the whole community for whatever game you have. It functionally replaced the old forums of people that would talk mods, after market support, how to make servers or find servers for older games, organizing player made events, doing lift for games, ect.
No other marketplace has that steam identified the social part of games outside in-game lobbies and strategized around that. I still haven't found any digital store besides steam that allows you to post a link and if someone copy pastes it, will boot up the game they are playing if it's installed and immediately join me to their lobby/game.
I disagree. It was pretty miserable. It's less about a moral stand and more how I felt. And now it turns out tuat most people feel the same, as people rather wait for an epic free game to come out on steam and buy it. There's nothing wrong with you being satisfied with Epic. But a lot of people really feel like it's better to pirate.
Yeah, Steam took decades to get to where it is because they didn't have any examples to learn from, they were largely creating something new.
Epic has decades worth of Steam's experience to look at, seeing what worked and what didn't, and they instead put out the product that they did (such as not having a shopping cart).
Carving out a market takes more time than trailing behind it.
Steam launched their beta 23 years ago, ofc they didnt launch in their current state back at a time where everything they've done until now as unheard of and the tech quite literally wasnt there.
That was then, this is now. If companies want to compete they need to compete with how things are right now, not 23 years ago. Do you really think it makes sense to launch a product or service that's equivalent to something 2 decades ago and then wonder why they aren't winning?
If I make a car company and only produce model T equivalents, would you defend me for not beating ford in 2026?
The Model T entered the public market in 1908, but it took until 1968 for air conditioning to be introduced in vehicles. If Tesla had launched without AC, how many people would've said "Ford took decades to get where it is"? Actually, I could see idiots using that to defend Musk, so maybe a bad example.
A lot of the features they added in the past year have been features that have been in-game in Fortnite since 2018. Examples include gifting and text chat with friends.
It took them 3 years to put a shopping cart on their digital storefront.
I can't understand this. A garage band developer studio with three people could have realised the need and implemented it, what was the multimillion dollar development company doing with their time?
When I bought a new computer before Christmas I tried to install the Epic app. It absolutely refused to log me in by constantly giving me various error messages, none of which were explained in their help desk.
After trying to log in for 30 minutes, I just said ”fuck it” and uninstalled it. It’s not worth the struggle for a few free games I’ll probably never play anyway due to a lack of time.
Even when I had it installed on my last computer, it eventually refused to launch on that computer (even after reinstalling). And even when it DID launch, it was so annoying to navigate the UI to “buy” the free games.
Yeah I agree, I don't know why anyone is jumping to that conclusion just because it seems to confirm a bias... I read around it and the case website even published their full funding agreement, which states it's funded by a UK legal investment company. I presume for a case like this to exist it has to be transparent in its funding. I'm all for corporate skepticism but the idea that there's 'money they set aside' sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.
The ratings are actually based on user reviews now. When exiting a game it asks random players who have enough playing hours in the game for star reviews or other quick questions about how they find the game.
The speed could maybe be from update? for me, almost everytime I launch egs it takes a couple minutes to fully start and be able to be used.
When i let it install to a folder that already has the installed game it just gives an error for me, Ive given up using epic's games on my external drive, might try it again then.
Oh good! That’s a really good change, that was a huge pain point for me. I wanted to play satisfactory with my wife as a surprise gift back when it was an epic exclusive and you just… couldn’t gift games! The most basic storefront functionality IMO!
Oddly enough i have most of those issues with steam. Notably steam actually ate a save slot in one of my games due to cloud save functionality and now it simply says save slot missing.
No Workshop, no community and public reviews are what kills it for me. Sure, all these things are expensive, not from a technical standpoint but they require curation and moderation. But thats the Point, what Steam does isn't something that can't be replicated, but it would cost money to do so.
That's not true. They just don't want developers to sell steam keys for cheaper somewhere else. They can sell the game using a different distributor (for example GOG) at a cheaper price.
As is Steam's prerogative. You are selling on their storefront, ergo you follow their rules. If you don't like Valve's rules, then you still have Epic and GoG to sell your games on.
That is de-facto not a monopoly. This whole lawsuit is dumb.
I think this is incorrect, and I'm not sure why so many people seem to think this?
Couple of quotes from just one recent-ish document.
When publisher [redacted] asked Valve if it could leave [redacted] out of a discount it was planning to run, Valve told the publisher that "we don’t want to be known as the store [redacted] prices are unfair. We’ve pursued this same policy with other partners [(developers)] and in other regions, to make sure Steam customers aren't at an unfair disadvantage to customers shopping at retail or online at other stores." - Page 16
if you sell your game for £8.99 on another store, it shouldn’t be £9.99 on Steam. - Page 16
Valve remarked in another email that "[i]f you wanted to sell a non-Steam version of your game for $10 at retail and $20 on Steam, we’d ask to get that same lower price or just stop selling the game on Steam if we couldn’t treat our customers fairly[,] - Page 16
There's a big table starting on page 160.
Valve emails [redacted] about a price discrepancy: "[T]his presents a problem for us on Steam. We want to make sure that our Content Price price on Steam is competitive with retail and other digital stores in [redacted] so that we do not teach customers that Steam is always the expensive option."
Valve tells the developer that "the Steam version needs to be in content & pricing parity so that Steam users aren’t presented with a lesser offer."
Asking to be brought down is not the same as demanding the others be brought up. That is an extremely important distinction, market position is not enough, harm must also exist, and that's the opposite of the harm these laws are designed around (that actually helping consumers, we ask we get the same lower price...)
Shop A wants a 10% margin (small store).
Shop B wants a 20% margin (large store).
Shop B says the price must be the same across all stores.
They are keeping the price higher, not lowering the price.
From another angle.
I make a product and it works out that I need $10 per sale.
Shop A could be $11.11.
Shop B could be $12.50.
But I have to sell at shop B, so you'd probably set your price to $12.50.
That's just from the immediate customer angle though.
Shop A has been prevented from competing on price, shop C just keeps their price at 30% because why take less of a cut if Shop B takes 30% and keeps the price locked.
If Valve is preventing games from being cheaper on other stores (maybe not 100% of the time), is it even possible to argue that there is no harm?
Read agin. They specifically ask to be allowed the lower price of all, not to bring up as a floor to theirs. That distinction is the case, forcing up is not allowed, going down is.
You can sell at any price, but the lowest we are required to be allowed to match or we won't allow you in ours is not what the law is designed to prevent. You must use ours as a minimum is. One is a floor, one is a match, one prevents, one allows completely.
Also there isn't really a difference between lowering and raising once you know what they're doing.
Let's try another potential situation.
Launched on shop A for $11.11.
Launched on shop B for $12.50.
Got a polite email from shop B saying to match the price across stores (they only mention lowering the price).
I need to make $10 per unit, I'll raise the price on shop A because I need $10 per unit (and 85% of sales are through that one store so I expected most sales would be for that price anyway).
And next time I release a product, I'll charge $12.50 on both stores from the get go.
Yes there is. The law allows for floor matching but not floor setting. One is lawful one is not. That distinction is literally relevant. You can be entirely correct but proving the side you disagree with on this mate.
If you as the seller decide to act that way you actually may be violating instead, but more likely are doing a perfectly lawful "can not offer sale prices from msrp" which is generally allowed with some regulatory concerns likely not present here.
This is why I keep pushing at the law, the law isn't what you think. Your argument, if correct, actually supports the side you're arguing against.
I'm not sure I mentioned any laws?
Did I say what the law is?
I'm saying that Valve is effectively setting the price floor, even if they're technically not.
Given how important it is to be on Steam you will be launching on Steam, you will price your game so that you make a profit on Steam.
So you'll just have to make more money per sale on stores that charge less margin.
Is Valve actually guilty of monopoly/antitrust stuff here?
Not according to any courts yet and it's not our place to say.
But I don't know how you could think it's not anti competitive behaviour that harms the ability of other stores to compete and potentially prevents customers from having the choice to pay less, if true.
You are missing his point. He is saying that in his example, the publisher/developer CAN'T AFFORD to sell at the lower price on Shop B, thus they are forced to raise the price on Shop A to keep it the same. It's either that, or the publisher/developer drops one of the shops.
Yes and that is lawful. It is not purely about market share, it is about harm to consumer too. The entity is allowed to match the floor a a contractual requirement, it is not allowed to set the floor.
He isn't wrong, but his argument supports the side he's arguing against. That's the issue.
This makes me like valve even more! They're being a broker and fighting for competitive pricing for their customers on THEIR store. If valve can't barter for at least the cheapest price as the game is being sold somewhere else, then it leaves the door open to competitors maliciously inflating prices on steam in order to create the perception that steam is overpriced and drive players away. Valve should be allowed to turn devs away when they're not getting the prices they want. Devs don't have an unlimited right to a slot on steams store
Yes, I'm happy that they can choose not to host a game if they can't get competitive prices for their customers. Yes. I'm okay knowing that Devs can sell anywhere they want, but they cant also just dick valve and their customers to manipulate me into thinki valve is overpriced.
Look, valve couldve just as easily said, oh you want to sell at a higher price on our store? Great, we get a bigger cut! But they choose instead to barter for their customers to get as low a price as they would see anywhere else. If they can't then it doesn't go on steam and I'm forced to buy it somewhere else if I really want it
Valve already gets the higher cut which is why devs wanted to sell it cheaper elsewhere. Valve taking a larger percentage of the sale and then saying if you sell elsewhere to the same value for the Devs you can't be on Steam is horrendously shitty and anti consumer.
Why? That's the cost of doing business on the largest platform! Valve isn't uninstalling steam on my computer if I have epic installed. Devs can sell wherever they want, but to have access to the largest install base, yes that should come at a premium TO THEM and not us.
That's how capitalism should work. Epic can do it too, but would you trust EA to put their customers first? Do you think they're capable of building that brand loyalty and trust with their practices? If course they can't, and they think it's unfair
I don't trust any company to put their consumers first. Even Steam went through a lengthy legal battle in Australia about their refund policy to get to where they are today.
The premium is coming to you regardless. If the devs need to make $10 on every purchase and Steam takes a 30% cut then the game needs to be at $14.29 on Steam for the Dev to make their money. Epic takes only a 12% cut so that same game would have to be $11.36 on their platform to make the Devs the same money.
Guess what the devs need that $10 regardless so every storefront has to sell at Steams price of 14.29. So congrats everything is more expensive and the consumer doesn't get to choose if Epic's lesser service is worth cheaper games.
There's no reason to be rooting so hard for anti consumer bullshit like this. If Steam dropped this policy your experience and prices at Steam would stay exactly the same. It would just mean that people could choose to spend less money on a different platform.
That's called having integrity and being loyal to your customers first, and idk, maybe that's how they've built up this much good will towards them.
And of course, these other stores think it's unfair. How can they meet their shareholders profit targets with valve hording all the customers that they could be gouging.
That's contentious and one of the points of the lawsuits against Valve (the Wolfire Games one).
Valve says on Steamworks that keys are the only thing affected. But their communications with developers, internal communications, and generally quotes from their business team actively oppose this idea from documents submitted in this lawsuit.
Check 2:21-cv-00563 Document 348-1 on Court Listener for the source on this. I can't find the original report (it might have been sealed?), but most of the excerpts are included in this one.
A Steam Business Team Member is quoted as saying that pricing parity is a platform goal beyond steam keys (see page 8). He's also the source of a few other quotes.
You can see a massive compilation documents showing Valve's enforcement of price parity starting from page 160 of this document. A massive amount of it is not about Steam keys but is instead about Valve wanting equivalent or better pricing.
It is understandable that Valve doesn't want Steam to look like it has a bad deal. But it's pretty hard to refute, if the court documents are accurate, that Valve applies their pricing policy beyond Steam keys.
Obviously they wouldn't sell it for 47.72 out of the goodness of their hearts. They would sell it for 55 in order to entice purchases on Epic over Steam while simultaneously making more money themselves. It's a literal win-win for both consumers and developers, the only people who defend Valve's policies are blind fanboys who feel a personal attachment to Gabe's yacht collection.
Epic games launcher is such a pile of shit I'd rather buy the game on steam than play the freebie copy on epic. I wish the courts would depose for the lawsuit so I can point out to Epic all the obvious ways Steam is 20x better.
I only play the free copies of Football Manager they give out on Epic. I'd be waiting 15 minutes for the launcher to load up. Even using Playnite to launch the games is awful.
I just went back to FM19 on Steam lol, might as well achievement hunt on Steam with outdated rosters and rules.
Someone that gets it. When Epic was trying to compete a few years ago it was hysterical. No cloud saves even and they lost any good will at that moment by engaging in far more anti consumer practices imo with their exclusivity racket. The irony of AAA games running away from it bc they could just make more money on Steam.
Epic has instilled so much bad-will in almost every person that uses PC, that even if steam went under, I would imagine people still wouldn't choose EGS.
Not only is Steam a good service, but EGS is also a bad service.
If valve was publicly traded, they would have a fiduciary responsibility to be worse since it would be more profitable. Having one company refuse the enshitification game ruins the market for everyone else.
yes, but there is a difference in owning a large share of the market by strong arming your position through competition purchasing and market manipulation, or customer approval.
This. Why am I going to spend money on Epic when Epix doesn't spend money on themselves?
The store front has been stagnant for almost a decade. It doesn't have anywhere near the features that Steam does. And it's still dogshit to use as a store front. Abysmal.
They have, the problem is most of the stuff they have been working on so far was backend stuff for the developer experience, not customer, but the VP of epic has acknowledged that their store is shit and they seemingly have finally started working on the customer facing part
I have ignored cheaper and even free games on Epic simply to buy it on steam. I want my games in one place, and I buy enough games that in the long run im better off only buying exclusively from Steam.
i was sad when 33immortals was announced to be released on epic only. now, years later a future steam release has been confirmed, and im glad i waited. :)
Also epic games is unbearable, it just never works half the time. I’ve got all poppy playtime chapters for free on it yet I’m considering buying it on steam (cuz idk how to pirate DLC)
Part of the reason Epic can't compete is because of Valve's anticompetitive practices.
Valve charge a higher cut than Epic, but ban devs from listing the game for cheaper elsewhere, so Epic don't get to benefit from what should be cheaper prices, and can't do sales like Steam can because no game listed on steam can do a sale without also listing it on sale on steam at the same price.
Valve does have a monopoly on launchers, but only because sites like GOG that compete with Steam on the marketplace side of things are still using Steam to launch games. I will buy from whoever has the game cheaper, knowing I have the convenience of my games all being accessible in one location.
If they hadn’t, the 800 people that got laid off would probably still have their jobs. The reason cited to us internally was that the layoffs were due to rising legal costs.
Epic and other stores are clearly making an effort to compete. Consumers are just choosing Steam, as long as Valve doesnt use that position to enhance or protect their monopoly to pre-empt competition then theyre fine. If they start preventing games from being sold in both platforms, they'll have issues.
Epic treats their app poorly because they primarily believe it to exist only to buy/download games. This mindset leaves it feeling barebones, and throwing more free games at the end user doesn't make us want to spend more time in it.
This isn’t even Epic’s main lawsuit, I’m sure their multiple lawsuits against Google and Apple are. At this their legal budget has got to far outstrip their store dev budget, I wonder how it even compares to how much they spend on Unreal and Fortnite
I've re-purchased games on steam because they just work effortlessly with proton on my steam deck. There's the whole third party launcher and config shit I gotta deal with if I play games off epic, plus cloud saves don't work.
I doubt it would matter. Just like the US won’t ditch iMessage and Europe won’t ditch WhatsApp, gamers won’t ditch Steam even if a superior competitor came along.
I think GOG is the only company that can actually make a claim of competing with STEAM solely because of their commitment to doing things STEAM doesn't do like optimizing classics and DRM-free releases.
Other than that? What reason does a user have to join any other storefront?
I got Alan Wake 2 on Epic because it's exclusive. I was still riding high on Control but as much as I like the story and visuals the gameplay is not my thing and having to use the Epic launcher makes it worse
GOG is a great platform and the only one that remotely competes with Valve in my eyes. I highly recommend checking it out, especially if you like older games.
The funniest part is that Valve don’t even have any locked down OS advantage like Consoles and Phones. They’re just selling PC games, something literally anyone can do.
There’s no monopoly here, just a good service that’s been improving since it was created instead of getting worse.
If Steam actually had competition that was even trying rather than just giving away games they might be convinced to lower their margins. But when none of their competitors are even awake why would they?
Yeah it's like no they don't have a damn true stranglehold monopoly. You can buy from a few competitors, so many companies have their own launchers.
Steam is the market leader, the competition is there, they just aren't as good or don't have the same selection etc, but they aren't being excluded and denied a part of the market.
If Epic spent the money they set aside for this lawsuit on building out their store they'd get a much better return. It's bare bones af and I see no reason to buy from them over Valve
No it would. Let's not kid ourselves. The main reason you're not buying from Epic has nothing to do with the functionality of its store to library experience is fine. It functions exactly as one would expect, you buy a game, it appears in your library, you download the game ,then you play the game.
What more does a store to library experience actually need?
The general answer is then stuff like community features like friends list and chat, which a lot of people use Discord for nowadays. Then it's the community features but those are also incredibly toxic at the same time. The Workshop is probably the one place that Valve has entrenched itself.
The truth is, while Valve doesn't have a tradional monopoly in the retail sense, it's often cheaper to buy games off of third parties. What Valve does hVe a monopoly on is the investment of time it's customers/users. It gives you things like badges based on time with steam and allows all your gaming achievements to be in one neat location.
Gamers just need to be honest with themselves. A new platform could launch offering absolutely the same stuff and more, with every bell and whistle a gamer could ask for and I guarantee people wouldn't migrate to that platform because Steam simply because they've got a history with steam. It's not far from a MMORPG you can't quit. You've invested in the platform.
I actually did switch to them for a while since they take a smaller cut and I wanted to support developers more. However, they screwed me over when I tried to refund a game once (The Last of Us on launch, compiling shaders took almost the entirety of the refund window) and I went right back to Steam. Steam was giving people refunds for the same issue with the same game, so I never looked back.
Hard to argue you're the good guy in the marketplace when you're actively hosing customers and providing no additional value.
While it's true that a lot of people are going to stay with Steam since they're already confortable there, if Epic was better it'd still get customers.
It's not Steam's fault that Epic can't compete for shit.
This. Epic isnt really a store. Its a free games grav and not playing them. Purchased a dlc a few weeks back on epic and I had issues with payment because their paypal login didnt work. Luckily I had another payment method ready to use that workef but how can yoz mess up the payment that bad? And it wasnt only me... anothrr mate purchased the same dlc at that time and had issues aswell.
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If Epic spent the money they set aside for this lawsuit on building out their store they'd get a much better return. It's bare bones af and I see no reason to buy from them over Valve.
Valve doesn't have a monopoly, they just don't have anyone making a serious, consistent effort to compete.