okay,all due respect to people talking about healthy competition and all.
Wouldnt it be "healthy" if both stores had it?
So You can choose? (I know its not easy to do so, but oh well)
If its only a niche shop exclusive, like Borderlands 3 has a chance to become, then we have no choice whatsoever.
Id say its against the rights of a consumer (in a weird, flawed way but bare with me).
Its like, imagine You are standing neck high in a puddle of urine, and there is a person ready to shovel excrement all over Your face.
Will You dive in the piss? or will You take on the s***?
But, I will wait until an actual reveal, before I get carried away with my imagination.
mr Pitchford dont let me down.
Competition is not just for those buying the games, it is for those looking to sell their wares too.
Now for transparency, I'm an indy game dev. Both of these are platforms looking for my content ( not just mine, don't get me wrong).
Valve want to take 30% of my income before I pay any other bills, engine rights, content creation bills and such. Now ok it slides, they only want that for the first 10 mil made. Then they want 25% of the next 40 mil and then 20% of everything after 50mil. Then if I use their engine they still want paying another 15% on top of everything regardless. Epic, on the other hand, want a 12% flat rate. Then if I use their engine they don't charge the 5% fee for that. They don't want paying twice which valve do.
How is that for a competitive reason to avoid steam?
Now from a game buying perspective, which I also am. I love games and metro is by far my all time favourite single player series. I want the people whose work I enjoy to profit from my money. I want my money to go to improving the game or funding more. If that means using origin, uplay or in this case epics store so be it.
Valve used to be the shit. 12/15 years ago they made the best games in the world in my eyes. They used that to leverage steam and forced the PC gaming world into its walled garden. Now today they no longer make games as they get a pretty nice chunk of all the games they sell.
Now it has plus points too, they took the best parts from xfire (showing my age now xD) and integrated it into the game delivery system. It made pc gaming easier for gamers, no doubt. But that focus soon shifted to one that just made them money. Not the people making the contents, not savings for those spending the money....
Now look at steam, they are reacting as we speak. The GUI update is a knee jerk reaction. No doubt they will follow suit with things too, better deals for Devs, maybe even with improved sdks or possibly grants too? Who knows where it will end.
For me I will buy my games where I know the people making it get the best deal. Right now it's epic, maybe tomorrow it will be steam or discord or some new one?