I despise Epic. Not for creating an opposing/rival storefront to steam - I like Valve’s games as much as the next person but I am no Steam fanboy. I pay the lower price between Steam, GOG, and (rarely) Origin/Ubi. I don’t dislike Epic for having a more basic platform. Not even for their ties to Tencent (though that does give me pause).
No, I hate Epic because of the **** exclusivity agreements with developers. That stifles price competition and does nothing to help consumers. Ideally, the marketplaces should compete on price, features, ease of use, etc. Instead of this, Epic’s approach is to give us a platform lacking much basic functionality while locking games into exlusivity agreements that drastically limit future price competition. This is the sort of thing that could lead to higher prices for new games and fewer protections for customers - after all, why make concessions on price or offer “no reason” refunds if your store is the only one that can carry a given product?
TL,DR - Exclusivity agreements harm PC gaming overall.
Do (mostly timed) exclusivity agreements really harm PC gaming? More than a single actor maintaining their monopoly in the market would? I seriously doubt that. And how, exactly, do (timed) exclusivity deals hinder future price competition or drive up prices for future games? You need to explain the logic behind those claims, because they don't make much sense along the lines of typical market thinking. If a timed exclusive passes for a big title, the competing store(s) are likely to jump on the chance to not only now have a cool big title on offer, but to have it cheapest too - to prove that they are better in some way. As for prices for future games, those are set based on industry standards, development and marketing costs, and heaps of other factors. The existence of exclusivity deals is highly unlikely to change that, and other factors (such as the precarious situation of most developers, and increasing development costs of modern games) are much more likely to affect this.
Also, why do you waste energy
hating a company that has only the most tangential relation to you? Isn't that just a massive waste of time and energy? Hate is a useless and silly emotion.
Oh, by the way, Steam refunds? Grudgingly implemented as their previous no-refund policy was illegal in Europe. Praising them for following the law is a pretty low bar. Just because they went the no-effort route of not demanding a reason for refunds (which is a cost savings measure first, saving them personnel costs, not primarily a customer friendly feature) doesn't make it any better - and to a certain degree it also harms developers of small niche games that can often be played in full within the refund window.
Publishers really should follow the CD Projekt Red example and just sell their games everywhere so people can just buy it where they want.
If only it were that easy. Sadly, that is exactly how monopolies are maintained, as the vast majority of users don't even know of other storefronts, and certainly don't care beyond convenience and price. With that approach, Steam would continue to entrench their position, gaining ever more power over PC gaming. Relying on conscientious consumers to take down a monopoly is naive to the extreme. No thanks.
Same here, except that I check Steam first because I somehow accumulated most of my games there.
"Somehow" - that made me laugh
It takes some serious effort for that
not to happen. Where else would you do so?
EGS per se is not a problem, a new player in the game is good to see: people like me are complaining about the "exclusivities" policy and for me, stealing work done on Steam platform during devlopment. Valantar disagrees with me about this, but to-day, an indie game is also "made" (sort of) by community, channels, streamers, etc. and Steam helps developers in this way (speaking with knowledge about one of them: Dead Cells, and loving the clear policy of Motion Twin on the subject, a bit of publicity for them.)
The thing is, the problem with what you are describing can't actually be laid at the feet of Epic - it's not them that are (by your account) abandoning their communities or denying others credit, it's developers. It goes without saying that if you're developing an early access title with a lot of community input and are offered an exclusivity deal on a competing platform, you need to give something back to your supporters. What that ends up being is of course up to your negotiating power, but it could be anything from a (significant) discount on the final game to getting it for free due to your early access support. We've see EGS honor Steam pre-orders on other games, so this is possible. Also, this is a fitting illustration of the dire straits of most developers; that they would be in such dire need of financial stability that they are willing to possibly piss off their community by taking a deal like that tells us a lot about how precarious their situations are. Most developers like this work on shoestring budgets, have no salary, and are dependent on Patreon or similar charities to survive at all. With no guarantee of high sales on Steam (where indie games go to drown and die), it really isn't any wonder that they gladly accept an EGS exclusivity deal for the financial stability it offers.
Examples of this? Genuinely curious. I pay little attention to the Valve side of things.
While this might sound a tad speculative, the Steam Sale is the most clear-cut example of this - a monopolist pricing their competitors out of the market through their financial strength. (Oh, and before you bring up key resellers; those sell Steam keys, which Steam still profit off of - after all, a key is a zero-cost item.) This is textbook anti-competitive behaviour. Today there are alternatives that are able to offer similar discounts, and Steam has largely created an industry standard (Xbox and Playstation have copied this model, among others), but in the first years the Steam Sale was a tool to lock in gamers to their platform and squeeze out smaller competitors that suddenly looked crazy expensive. Heck, they even made a huge "event" out of it with "leaked" Steam Sale dates and the like, which just further served to stop sales on competing platforms.
Quite frankly, in the overall scheme of things I don't think the needle has moved much with the tactics they have employed. I'd really love some hard numbers on sales Epic actually does and game sale comparisons of prior exclusives that have been released on steam. As I said before, I get why dev's take the Epic deal. It's how some have acted after taking it that turns me off.
I can understand that - though being defensive about taking a controversial decision that you view as borderline necessary for your survival is also understandable. Most developers aren't very good at PR. As for the needle not moving much, I think you're mostly right - again, monopolies don't have to make much of an effort to maintain their position, they have mindshare and consumer habits to rely on - but even if they have 1% market share, that is dramatically higher than they would have had by just saying "Hey, we're here too!".
There is where you are wrong. I will open the store page to see trailers/reviews/discussions and in another tab have isthereanydeal open. Of the 1200 games I own on Steam, I'd wager less than 500 I've actually purchased through steam. Many of those before learning of things like Humble Bundle and other storefronts existing. Not shopping around when you have a myriad of storefronts competing for your business is how you put it, incredibly naive.
Firstly, you are then in a clear minority. The vast majority of Steam keys/games are sold through Steam, and the vast majority of people buying games neither know of other places to buy games nor look for them. And, of course, Steam still makes money on Steam keys sold through other storefronts, even if they don't make their full cut there. The wide distribution of Steam keys actually serves as another example of an underhanded and anticompetitive move by Steam - it created the illusion of competition, while in reality the "choice" of consumers was to buy from Steam, or buy from someone buying from Steam (with any price difference mostly (but not entirely) coming out of developers' cuts. That's another classic monopolist move, to become not only a retailer but also the distributor that all your competitors become reliant on; thus you have total control of the market even if you give off the impression of competing.
Let me get this on the table: other than exclusives, I bear no hate for Epic. I do, however, think their store isn't worth using right now beyond their free game giveaways. Trying to browse their store is difficult, there are a ton of Quality of Life features that should have been implemented day 1 that still aren't there. (Not even including the shopping cart, which I think is Epic just trying to meme by this point) The launcher itself is very barebones and not useful in the slightest. It all just feels like a 5 year old putting on his dad's clothes and trying to sit at the adult's Thanksgiving Poker game. "I can sell games too!" it exclaims, while throwing play money on the table.
I can agree that the EGS store is lacking in features (the lack of a shopping cart is particularly egregious, though the Nintendo eShop doesn't have one either), and the 15-year disadvantage against Steam in terms of features definitely shows. They have most of the basics down, but I completely agree that they don't yet have what it takes to be a fully competitive alternative. GOG is
miles ahead in that regard, though they also beat out Steam on a lot of points. Steam wins in the high-tech, high-concept features like remote play, though their UX is
terrible and their recent facelift didn't do much to improve that. The Steam overlay is still a confusing and messy piece of junk. But back to EGS, we can't really expect feature parity from a brand new storefront either - though it's on them to fix this as quickly as possible. The more time passes without them adding necessary features, the worse they look.
Tim Sweeny can suck a fat one though.
Along with every other "big personality" in the gaming industry. As with most other successful businesspeople, they tend to be a**holes.
