Another big thing is trust. With any of these digital markets I'm not truly buying games, I'm purchasing a revocable license. That requires a certain amount of trust that the platform isn't going to screw me over.

Steam isn't perfect: they initially had to be forced to offer refunds, and their item economy enables barely disguised gambling. But by and large they have behaved very predictably and consumer-friendly. Sometimes by outright consumer-friendly policies like generous refunds or labeling games with AI assets. But usually by just not doing anything greedy. Or as the meme goes: "Gabe does nothing. wins."

I've rebought games on Steam I had on Epic for free, just because the platform is so terrible. As far as a metric goes, that's pretty clear.

It's definitely not about lock-in for me. It's everything from local streaming, to linux support, to cloud saving working properly, to 100s of other things that become apparent if you try to do anything other than launch a game in a bog standard way on a windows machine.

I have the EGS with games on it me and my kids actively play. I don't resent EGS for exclusivity deals nor hold any other kind of grudge towards them. If a game I want comes out first on EGS, I'll buy it on EGS. I don't actively play with friends, so who is or is not on EGS to play with is barely a factor on my radar.

I still prefer to buy on Steam if I can, because using the EGS sucks in every way possible compared to using Steam. If I want to sit to rest I can do it on a cold and irregular rock, but if there's a bench right next to it, then I'll use the bench.

That said, you can do a lot worse than EGS. MS Store I'm looking at you. In the above metaphor, you'd like sitting on the wet and muddy ground.

If Steam was run by EA I’d abandon it in a second though. All those games that are left behind aren’t super relevant since I already barely play them.

The big one for me is linux support, followed by steam input remapping. Input remapping, turbo, combo / chord buttons is incredibly important for accessibility.

agreed, the epic games store is crappy enough that i will not use it even for free and/or exclusive games. I might have if it was marketed as a clean, unobtrusive experience, but we all know that will never happen.

It makes sense that those with huge libraries may never want to move. But there are many existing and future PC gamers who do not have particularly large libraries on Steam, who would likely be much easier to lure if Epic actually made their launcher worth it.

You don't need to move stores, though, do you? Want to play a Steam exclusive? Fine, launch Steam. Want to play an Epic exclusive? Fine, launch Epic.

What you do need is to avoid tying your game socialisation to a _store_. Some day, Steam will be enshittified too.

It's both things, really.

But other platforms really are rather pathetic in terms of feature set compared to Steam. Steam has a bajillion features, and it looks like other platforms aren't even trying to compete to provide a good user experience.

It's truly incredible how difficult business people make doing business.

Doing business is very simple, easy, and straightforward, but I suspect in a lot of cases the individual behavioral aspects of the executives get in the way of doing good business.

Direction and leadership is something that these companies never seem to get right.

Well, we might make it a nice experience until we've attracted enough of you people to have a network affect. And then it's a steady march of price increases, additional revenue streams (including selling your data!) and reduction in features because they were "too expensive to maintain"

Steam does. That's why they're the undefeated king.

This applies to everything. If you see a product category where users are legitimately unhappy; then enter it, build something actually good, you'll be the biggest and richest in no-time.

Not with that attitude!

Demanding it is how Steam came about!

only if you're publicly traded

15 years is not some insane gap that you can't get around. The biggest issue is that the EGS is just an inferior experience compared to steam, that's simply it.

If Epic games really wanted to start eating away at steams market share, they would do one thing. Make EGS not shitty for the user

> How do you convince someone who might have hundreds of games tied to one online account, that it is in their interest to open a new online account with a new merchant and start over from scratch?

I haven't play a PC game in a long time, so don't have any experience with the modern game stores and playing downloadable games.

I understand that these stores are more than just places to buy games--they also include extensive social media aspects.

But surely you don't have to give up one store if you make another account on another store? If you are on Steam and have a large friends list there and want to try a game that is only on some other PC game store couldn't you send a message to your Steam friends saying you are going to try that other game and asking if anyone else wants to come play with you?

If you meet people in that new game and want to be online friends, just point them to your Steam account and say that's your main gaming social media site, or point them to some non-gaming social media if you actively use any and they aren't also on Steam.

Freebies and discounts helps get people in the door. Having an experience that people don't hate might keep them there.

I don't buy a lot of games, but when I do, I don't usually look at Epic. I'd rather buy on GOG or Steam. Steam is probably from inertia, but if Epic provided a better than Steam experience on the games I've gotten for free, than I might consider it. I don't really know what would qualify as better than steam though... maybe faster startup, less dumb prompts?

I don't even consider buying games on the Microsoft store though, so Epic has a leg up --- if it's sale season, I will look to see if Epic has a bigger sale than Steam.

> Your experience can't just be nicer,

No but it has to be at least nicer and they didn't manage that.

Why did they need to make a store? Seems like there was no need for it...

The litigation angle to legitmatize a mobile storefront was smart. Having a company able to offer premium mobile games with a proven track record could have had it stand out from Steam, or at least open on an untapped market.

But it seems that gamble slowed as the economy did. Worse yet, China and Korea have gotten much more attractive to get people into their casinos. Competition is stiffer than ever.

This being microsoft, my expectation UX wise is that similar to those Xbox ROG devices you'll have to drop to the windows desktop to install updates, and they'll probably also throw in some copilot to help you through the process. I don't think they have it in them to innovate here and make it pleasant in any meaningful way

My guess is it doesn't go well -- with Gamepass they've taught Xbox gamers not to buy games, and with Steam integration they've given Xbox gamers a competing place to buy games (where Microsoft will pay a percentage to steam!)

It'll probably turn a division of Microsoft that usually loses money into one that loses...more money.

I can run Epic and GoG games in Steamdeck. All Steam had to do is not block them.

I think if it were a good plan Phil Spencer would still have a job.

It does use Chromium.

Any web browser can seem slow vs a native app, though.

Epic games goes out of their way to be hostile to Linux users. I'm at the point where I just ignore windows only games. And I'm the exact type of person they'd want to convert cause I tell all my friends about my gaming experiences. They could even take proton and use it in their store.

They could totally carve their niche if they focused in making their store better.

Could it surpass Steam? Probably not. But you don't need to surpass Steam to have a viable, profitable store. GoG is the alternative that proves the rule - it is smaller, but they have their niche offering.

EGS is shit, and relied on exclusives (which everyone typically hates, especially on PC).

Anyone else find it interesting the massive set of fines financially lines up with their "Savings findings"?

> together with over $500 million of identified cost savings in contracting, marketing, and closing some open roles puts us in a more stable place.

I think sweeny is an awful person overall. The lawsuit against apple and google is a net positive for consumers though. Having someone as big as Epic stand up to these digital silos is a good thing.

And lets not forget Tim Sweeney's dishonest representation. Sure, Steam can take a 30% cut, but they also offer a lot of avenues to avoid that. With Steam, a publisher can get a ton of activation codes and sell those activation codes on their site and not get hit with the 30% cut. No fee on in-game transactions, and as you build a user base for your games, Steam also lowers the 30%.

I don't disagree with what you're saying. But for technical platforms it needs to be a combination of both. Discord is the perfect example of this, plenty of people I know of were completely fine with their Mumble/Teamspeak/Ventrilo setups, and in a lot of cases some of those were better than what Discord was offering for individual features, but the overall feature set and platform ease-of-use that Discord was offering drew in a large initial user base which then created the network effect you describe. A lot of my friends feel 'locked in' to Discord now and with their age verification roll out fiasco a lot of people want to leave, but there isn't a single offering that matches Discord's platform features and integrations. There definitely needs to be an incentive to leave sometimes and break away from that network effect, but if there's no actual competition then obviously yeah you're always going to be stuck.

I bought a game on Epic once but I ran into some problems. Epic doesn't have a community so I had to ask for help on the Steam forums..

Can't escape the feeling that Epic just want to sell games without engaging with their customers much.

I don't care about my Steam profile. I do care about the convenience of having all games in a single "launcher" and seamless Linux compatibility through Proton.

That isn't true though. The only restriction is if the thing you're selling on that other store is Steam Keys themselves.

Are you seriously blaming Steam for game developers setting the price of their games the same on all platforms? They're the ones pocketing that 18% difference by the way and that 18% difference is literally the selling point that is supposed to lure in game developers to the epic games store. There has never been a promise of cheaper games.

The "most favored nation" pricing you're complaining about being abusive refers to Steam key sales on third party platforms and that pricing exists for a blatantly obvious reason. How much of a percentage does Valve get from that sale? 0%. Absolutely nothing. The developer generated keys are free and Valve will still pay the distribution costs (storefront, downloads, multiplayer, etc) for you. If it was possible to sell a Steam key cheaper on another platform, then nobody would buy Steam keys from the Steam store anymore, which means their revenue would tank to zero, which in turn means they would have to cancel free steam key generation, duh. Valve is being extremely accommodating here and you're twisting it into its opposite, which is pretty disgusting.